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Comment by nawgz | Hacker News Reader

> However it seems just like common sense that if an AI can do junior-engineer-level coding work, that a company has less reason to hire a junior engineer.

I mean, if we want to not talk about economics that’s fine, but can the AI actually do junior work at the same price? What if we don’t look only at quarterly reports, and instead include the value of having people knowing about the business having to explain it to others, who then learn it and can improve it over time?

I think it’s clear the AI is strong, there’s no doubt about that, but that’s not the whole picture.

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>I mean, if we want to not talk about economics that’s fine, but can the AI actually do junior work at the same price?

Even if we assume it can then not hiring Juniors still doesn't make sense - where will seniors come from in the future?

That's a problem for the next CEO of course

This is a collective action problem. Its too easy to claim the answer is "we'll hire our competitors juniors when they become seniors" and then every company wants to do that and not train their own juniors. Soon no one is willing to train juniors because theyll just leave for the companies that dont train juniors.

The point is not whether it’s a mistake to not hire juniors, but whether it’s actually factoring into the hiring/layoff decisions at tech companies. Many claims are being made that no companies are actually changing hiring/layoff decisions on account of AI, and are using it as a distraction to avoid admitting their mistakes over hiring. That may be true, but many managers and execs actually do seem to consider AI a sufficient replacement for much of their engineering team, and are stalling hiring/prompting layoffs because of it.

It's not so much a question of whether AI is strong or not. It's a question of whether the tradeoffs (theft of intellectual property, coal burning, lack of transparency, stealing water, rising energy prices, global surveillance, etc.) are worth the outcomes. It's not even a serious question.

If AI was truly strong, we would be seeing signs in the job market. And we would certainly be seeing a lot more subscriptions and demand for these services. For most people, AI does not improve their lives. For a lot of them, especially younger people, it makes their lives much harder and sadder.

> If AI was truly strong, we would be seeing signs in the job market.

Recalling past business cycles, the job market can look "strong" with low unemployment, even while a lot of creative destruction is going on. Look at the 2004-2009 cycle, where the economy looked strong until some time in 2008 even though a lot of money was being wasted on bad projects.

It's only when the tide goes out that you see who's swimming without trunks. So unemployment doesn't typically rise until the recession part of the cycle.

> include the value of having people knowing about the business having to explain it to others, who then learn it and can improve it over time?

It's always been difficult to put a number on that value, which is the problem for the MBAs running the show. There's no number on the P&L assigned to tribal knowledge, and improvements that can be made by those with that knowledge and experience within the business.

It's a mistake that businesses keep repeating, over and over again, yet never actually learning the lesson. And now the industry is going to repeat it again, until there's enough pain that they realize that lost value and start rehiring again.

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