There’s also the possibility of broader economic headwinds causing decreased youth employment, and they aren’t controlling for that at all. They’re operating on the assumption that the economy is fine.
Comment on The Evidence That AI Is Destroying Jobs For Young People Just Got Stronger
riskable@programming.dev 3 days ago
Meh. Nothing in this article is strong evidence of anything. They’re only looking at a tiny sample of data and wildly speculating about which entry-level jobs are being supplanted by AI.
As a software engineer who uses AI, I fail to see how AI can replace any given entry-level software engineering position. There’s no way! Any company that does that is just asking for trouble.
What’s more likely, is that AI is making senior software engineers more productive so they don’t need to hire more developers to assist them with more trivial/time consuming tasks.
This is a very temporary thing, though. As anyone in software can tell you: Software only gets more complex over time. Eventually these companies will have to start hiring new people again. This process usually takes about six months to a year.
If AI is causing a drop in entry-level hiring, my speculation (which isn’t as wild as in the article since I’m actually there on the ground using this stuff) is that it’s just a temporary blip while companies work out how to take advantage the slightly-enhanced productivity.
It’s inevitable: They’ll start new projects to build new stuff because now—suddenly—they have the budget. Then they’ll hire people to make up the difference.
This is how companies have worked since the invention of bullshit jobs. The need for bullshit grows with productivity.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
elephantium@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I fail to see how AI can replace any given entry-level SE
You don’t “get it”?
AI is making senior software engineers more productive so they don’t need to hire more devs
Yes, I think you do.
I largely look at this as leadership using AI hype as an excuse to cut staff regardless of actual productivity. The house of cards hasn’t come down quite yet.
MudMan@fedia.io 3 days ago
Top upvoted comment just tore a big fat hole into the entire argument and I have to say, good for the comments section. That's so rare.
You have to assume that if anybody puts a hiring freeze for junior employees right now it'd be out of some combination of caution, hype and insecurity about the economic landscape thanks to the usual suspects.
Turns out if the discussion is "quantitatively rich" but is ignoring the obvious qualitative observation it may end up flip-flopping a bunch. I'm not sure I'm as excited about that as the author, because man, is that a constant of the modern corporate world and does it suck and cost people money and stress.