That still seems super naive, at least if its extended to software engineering. Companies already treat software engineers like disposable cogs to be burnt out and discarded. I don't see how AI will improve that.
The problem isn’t whether or not companies need us— it’s about how many of us they need (demand), and how many of us there are (supply), because that determines our value. Companies pay people what they’ll work for, not based on how much they contribute to the bottom line; in economics, paying more than you have to for anything, including labor, is the irrational path. A steady, high demand for software developers has kept salaries high because that’s the only way they could get capable people to work for them.
The higher-end of markets aren’t immune to this. As the demand for lower-level workers drops, people will upskill trying to move up rather than get lopped off. Since there are fewer positions the further up the hierarchy you get, you don’t need a huge increase in supply to affect demand. That’s when you start seeing the most experienced, highest-earning people getting shit-canned because someone is willing to do a good-enough version of their role for 2/3 their sizable salary.
This can all happen without a single entire role being completely automated out of existence.
Go for it. I got out of that ridiculous ouroboro of an industry years ago. That might be great for you, but surely you can’t imagine VC funding enough startups to save the software labor market? The tech workforce is giant. Do you think there are tens or hundreds of thousands of ways to make unique new software products where even a single digit percentage are commercially viable? Software isn’t fungible: it needs to solve specific problems that people have, and do it well enough to deal with the hassle of switching software.
This isn’t an individual problem— it’s an industry-wide problem.
(I pulled the 2/3 number out of a hat to illustrate the point. I put exactly zero analysis into that.)
> If what you describe happens (33% cut to salaries) then the bar for your own startup to be worth it is suddenly lower.
That sounds like a material reduction in quality of life. Running a startup seems like it would entail way more hours worked and way more pressure, even if you were making better money. IMHO, that's not a good trade off.
> Running a startup seems like it would entail way more hours worked and way more pressure, even if you were making better money.
It is also ignoring scalability issues in the sense that if a large number of people now working regular jobs in tech are forced down this path, the amount of competition among these startups would be astronomical which would result is downward pressure on both the ability to fundraise and the ability to generate revenue for your particular startup.
Impossible for me to believe each individual startup founder would find some profitable niche to fit into.
The value-cost ratio is all that matters to a company. Yes, that implies that they are assuming all variations of value are achievable by AI which isn’t true and probably won’t ever be.
But they do think that, nearly all of them. Because they don’t understand value. This has been true since the very first corporation.
And that’s the problem. They will see a totally cheesed and squeezed metric telling them AI can reach 40% of the value of a “ ___ engineer “ at 10% of the cost and lay off engineers until shit starts exploding.
And the stock market will strongly reward that decision.
> I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable.
Employees in knowledge work don’t generate constant value at all times. And companies want value at all times (that needs to be ever increasing). You’re not disposable at all point in time if you’re providing value at that point in time.
I was and I did. Now there's nobody on the team who can fulfil something we promised to our biggest customer a few months ago. Shrug not my problem because I don't work there.
> I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable.
Businesses want worker fungibility and to reduce bus favor from having single point of failures. That usually, but not always, flies in the face of irreplaceability.
Companies shutdown profitable divisions/products because they aren't profitable enough. 'Providing value' is determined at a whim and by metrics out of your control.
Only quibble that in some areas like the games industry, being disposable (qua susceptibility to layoffs) was closer to the status quo well before AI came around.
>Companies already treat software engineers like disposable cogs to be burnt out and discarded.
I'm sorry but this is simply false. Nothing has really changed on the ground for SWEs. Nothing at all. Compensation is still sky high. Interviews are still the same. Career progression is the same. Everything takes the same amount of time. It's all business as usual for software engineering as a profession. AI is just one more tool in the toolkit; some devs use it, some don't. No engineering org has fallen for any hype in a meaningful way. Ultimately SWE teams on the frontline are busy doing what they always do, mostly in the way that they've always been doing.
The only thing that's changed in a remarkable way is how disconnected the rhetoric on social media is from ground reality. Anyone telling you AI is even replacing 5% of SWEs in the industry is a jobless hack.
> I'm sorry but this is simply false. Nothing has really changed on the ground for SWEs. Nothing at all. Compensation is still sky high. Interviews are still the same. Career progression is the same. Everything takes the same amount of time.
That's not remotely what I'm hearing or seeing from those who are on the job market.
The tech job market hasn't been "easy" for many years (basically since 2015 except for a ~2 year boom from mid 2020 to mid 2022). People always find different things to attribute the difficulty to. I remember way back in the day when bootcamps were the boogeyman.
