Anecdotally, there's an AI job crisis for juniors right now
My best advice for folks that want to get into software now is be willing to do it cheap for awhile and then jump once you've developed some skills. If you were getting into this industry for the money you're properly fucked and I hope you didn't load up on debt. If you're passionate about building stuff there's still room but the path forward is a lot murkier.
when everybody can just press a button in elevator, you do not need dedicated paid person to do it.
Oh, you're saying it's all getting automated. I see. So acceleration to AGI, ASI, and beyond is just a couple of years away. Good to know.
We only have like 2 seniors down from 30 and they are more productive than ever.
I expect with Mythos we can get this down to at least 1 highly paid senior engineer and the rest a swarm of agents they are managing.
Turns out we didn't need these engineers and you can just have one or two strong seniors on this.
They are more productive than ever.
The reality is most firms are running out of projects to take that make economic sense.
Note: ECONOMIC SENSE. This has nothing to do with refactoring for the sake of refactoring. Its all to do with earnings growth with respect to the cost of capital.
I have been out of the tech startup labor market for many years. But when I was doing hiring in a startup around 2017, we had to put specific, conscious effort into accepting inexperienced candidates. The default mode for hiring is finding like-minded individuals whose experience overlaps with the existing team.
Using AI as a scapegoat for hiring freezes or layoffs is just more FUD. Like all propaganda campaigns, the purpose of fatigue is to induce an amnesia effect.
Definitely feel the murkiness. I've been programming as a hobby for over ten years and only recently started wanting to do it professionally. I'm actually wondering if there's a path for me.
There is no need for developers, testers, PMs, TPMs, devops, leads anymore. Communication burden and structure imposed by these roles is too high when you have AI. It doesn’t make sense to tell somebody to do something and for them to type it into the AI. You can type it into the AI yourself without wasting the time.
There is new job - software creator. Think of it as a single person replacing a team. This job requires different mix of skills, and different level of autonomy. Hiring needs to be adapted to this really, and people need to adapt. Some will shine in this new world, and those who still narrowly think of themselves as specialists in the specific old role are going to be jobless.
Then you might as well work for yourself.
> getting into this industry for the money
I can make more money doing HVAC but I'm tired of being on hot roofs.
> the path forward is a lot murkier.
If you're just here for the money go somewhere else. If you're here because you love computer science then ignore these people and do the work. If you can't find a company get a dayjob and do it for yourself.
I haven't been on the market for long luckily, but as an independent consultant I went from getting 2 to 3 contacts per week to none per months.