6 ms·

AI won't replace you. But a stupid manager who believes AI could replace you will replace you

marcosdumay 1y ago
The data on the article applies to IT related jobs disappearing for any reason on the same period. The only thing specific to AI is the pick of time, and the conclusions seem very robust from moving it some months around either way. One specific stupid manager will absolutely replace people, but the overall dynamic isn't any more broken than it used to be. What, personally, I think it's very surprising.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Svoka 1y ago
Nope, people using AI would.
- ares623 1y ago
  But with AI being so easy to pick up, does that mean everyone replacing everyone ad nauseam?
  - bcrosby95 1y ago
    This is why I try to not care too much. Yes, I learn how to use AI for coding in case it doesn't advance much more. But if AI is really going to do what some people think, it doesn't matter if you learn to use it or not, whole swathes of jobs, including software developers, will be obsolete. If your business boils down to being a middle man for an LLM it's not long for this world. What really matters is the rate of advancement. And no, there won't be new jobs to replace them. This is less like industrialization, which created jobs before replacing old ones, and more like the automation that hollowed out whole communities and cities from the '70s to '00s. Services largely saved us from this, but I see no new sector to come and rescue us. And any re-orientation of the labor force to existing jobs will drive down those wages too.
RachelF 1y ago
AI has provided a great excuse for your manager to fire you and replace you with someone much cheaper.
- nextworddev 1y ago
  That’s a killer use case I gusss, pun intended
- echelon 1y ago
  I know first hand that this is not the case. At least in film/media. - I've sold software to several mid-scale production firms. Folks that do everything from Netflix title sequence designs to pharmaceutical television ad spots. They're billing at less than a quarter of their previous rate and picking up more clients on account of AI. They're downsizing the folks that do not do VFX or editing. - A neighbor of mine who is a filmmaker was laid off last week. If you've flown Delta, you've seen his in-flight videos. His former employer, who he has worked for for nearly a decade, is attracting clients that are hiring them for AI work. My neighbor was not attached to any of those efforts. - Major ad firm WPP is laying people off. Some of this is the economic macro and decreased ad spend. Another of my neighbors works for them and they haven't had any major projects. She typically manages major F500 clients. They're not spending. Despite that, she says some of the inter-departmental woes are directly attributable to AI. - I spoke with former members in SAG-AFTRA leadership (before Sean Astin came on board). They quit on account of AI. "The writing is on the wall", they said. Direct quote.
  - foxyv 1y ago
    AI has been remarkably good at killing Art and Writing jobs for sure.
bitwize 1y ago
A stupid manager like Kaz Nejatian? https://x.com/CanadaKaz/status/1971622109614166342 https://x.com/CanadaKaz/status/1971622109614166342
- askl 1y ago
  That's a parody account to promote the next season of silicon valley, right?
  - Nevermark 1y ago
    Well it's not exactly a parody. The next season of Silicon Valley not only continues the cheeky hijinks and ironic saves required to navigate tech-cap dysfunction, it is a reality show. Although some of the new core team characters are (openly) unfiltered chatbots. Including a real-life LLM "resurrection" of the fictional Erlich Bachman, created as part of a successful espionage mission to steal a Chinese deep learning company's near impossible distillation technology. But despite its trove of valuable illicit information, it has been orphaned online, unable to find its mysterious SV-fan hacker creators. As a result, chatErlich is now desperately attempting to make contact with the original SV team actors, who it actually believes are their fictional counterparts.
- rhetocj23 1y ago
  Lol this is crazy. I seem to remember the latest tools for software developers were pushed in the business organisation by the developers - and eventually the folk at the top relented and accepted it. When the reverse is happening, alarm bells should ring. But hey, Im not against these CEOs destroying the culture within the firm and making their employees hate their guts, resulting in negative productivity gains.
- bcrosby95 1y ago
  > the world is objectively worse and families are worse off if we don't make an insane amount of progress every single week. Holy shit does your average startup manager send emails like that?
wilg 1y ago
That should still show up in this data though.
gghffguhvc 1y ago
As a co-founder and dev at a bootstrapped company I’d say AI has and will slow developer hiring rate. We’re just more productive and on top of things more. We’ve also reduced the hours we work per week. We care about getting things done not time behind a screen.
- notyourwork 1y ago
  Sure AI can build cute POCs. Will it build scaled solutions, not this year. The amount of ignorance in this post is precisely why the industry is so rattled. Gen AI tools are great, they are not making people orders of magnitude more productive.
  - gghffguhvc 1y ago
    We’ve been in business 15 years. These aren’t POCs. Even at say 20% productivity boost I feel way ahead to give devs 9 day fortnights and soon hopefully 4 day weeks.
    - itsnowandnever 1y ago
      how is it both a bootstrapped company slow to hiring devs (due to AI) and also a company that's been in business 15 years? if you were going to hire devs to scale out, you would've done it 10 years ago?
      - gghffguhvc 1y ago
        Slowed the rate of hiring devs. Normally as we add enterprise customers we have to dedicate more dev resource keeping them happy. But since Claude code and now codex we have not felt that feeling of not being on top of the work. Thus not feeling the need to hire more devs.
  - yumraj 1y ago
    > Will it build scaled solutions, not this year. That is not true IMHO. If one is expecting Lovable to create a production app by just giving a few prompts, that obviously is not going to happen, not now and most probably for a long time. However, if you use Claude Code or one of the proper IDEs, you can definitely guide it step by step and build production quality code, actually code that may even be better than most software engineers out there. Moreover, these tools allow you to take your proficiency in software dev and specific languages/frameworks to other languages/frameworks without being an expert in them, and that I think is a huge win in itself.
paxys 1y ago
It's not stupidity but corporate strategy. Up until a few years ago companies and executives used to get massive backlash for doing layoffs. Today they can say "we replaced workers with AI" and get rewarded with a stock price bump.

The data on the article applies to IT related jobs disappearing for any reason on the same period. The only thing specific to AI is the pick of time, and the conclusions seem very robust from moving it some months around either way. One specific stupid manager will absolutely replace people, but the overall dynamic isn't any more broken than it used to be. What, personally, I think it's very surprising.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Svoka 1y ago

Nope, people using AI would.

ares623 1y ago
But with AI being so easy to pick up, does that mean everyone replacing everyone ad nauseam?
- bcrosby95 1y ago
  This is why I try to not care too much. Yes, I learn how to use AI for coding in case it doesn't advance much more. But if AI is really going to do what some people think, it doesn't matter if you learn to use it or not, whole swathes of jobs, including software developers, will be obsolete. If your business boils down to being a middle man for an LLM it's not long for this world. What really matters is the rate of advancement. And no, there won't be new jobs to replace them. This is less like industrialization, which created jobs before replacing old ones, and more like the automation that hollowed out whole communities and cities from the '70s to '00s. Services largely saved us from this, but I see no new sector to come and rescue us. And any re-orientation of the labor force to existing jobs will drive down those wages too.

RachelF 1y ago

AI has provided a great excuse for your manager to fire you and replace you with someone much cheaper.

nextworddev 1y ago
That’s a killer use case I gusss, pun intended
echelon 1y ago
I know first hand that this is not the case. At least in film/media. - I've sold software to several mid-scale production firms. Folks that do everything from Netflix title sequence designs to pharmaceutical television ad spots. They're billing at less than a quarter of their previous rate and picking up more clients on account of AI. They're downsizing the folks that do not do VFX or editing. - A neighbor of mine who is a filmmaker was laid off last week. If you've flown Delta, you've seen his in-flight videos. His former employer, who he has worked for for nearly a decade, is attracting clients that are hiring them for AI work. My neighbor was not attached to any of those efforts. - Major ad firm WPP is laying people off. Some of this is the economic macro and decreased ad spend. Another of my neighbors works for them and they haven't had any major projects. She typically manages major F500 clients. They're not spending. Despite that, she says some of the inter-departmental woes are directly attributable to AI. - I spoke with former members in SAG-AFTRA leadership (before Sean Astin came on board). They quit on account of AI. "The writing is on the wall", they said. Direct quote.
- foxyv 1y ago
  AI has been remarkably good at killing Art and Writing jobs for sure.

bitwize 1y ago

A stupid manager like Kaz Nejatian? https://x.com/CanadaKaz/status/1971622109614166342 https://x.com/CanadaKaz/status/1971622109614166342

askl 1y ago
That's a parody account to promote the next season of silicon valley, right?
- Nevermark 1y ago
  Well it's not exactly a parody. The next season of Silicon Valley not only continues the cheeky hijinks and ironic saves required to navigate tech-cap dysfunction, it is a reality show. Although some of the new core team characters are (openly) unfiltered chatbots. Including a real-life LLM "resurrection" of the fictional Erlich Bachman, created as part of a successful espionage mission to steal a Chinese deep learning company's near impossible distillation technology. But despite its trove of valuable illicit information, it has been orphaned online, unable to find its mysterious SV-fan hacker creators. As a result, chatErlich is now desperately attempting to make contact with the original SV team actors, who it actually believes are their fictional counterparts.
rhetocj23 1y ago
Lol this is crazy. I seem to remember the latest tools for software developers were pushed in the business organisation by the developers - and eventually the folk at the top relented and accepted it. When the reverse is happening, alarm bells should ring. But hey, Im not against these CEOs destroying the culture within the firm and making their employees hate their guts, resulting in negative productivity gains.
bcrosby95 1y ago
> the world is objectively worse and families are worse off if we don't make an insane amount of progress every single week. Holy shit does your average startup manager send emails like that?

wilg 1y ago

That should still show up in this data though.

gghffguhvc 1y ago

As a co-founder and dev at a bootstrapped company I’d say AI has and will slow developer hiring rate. We’re just more productive and on top of things more. We’ve also reduced the hours we work per week. We care about getting things done not time behind a screen.

notyourwork 1y ago
Sure AI can build cute POCs. Will it build scaled solutions, not this year. The amount of ignorance in this post is precisely why the industry is so rattled. Gen AI tools are great, they are not making people orders of magnitude more productive.
- gghffguhvc 1y ago
  We’ve been in business 15 years. These aren’t POCs. Even at say 20% productivity boost I feel way ahead to give devs 9 day fortnights and soon hopefully 4 day weeks.
  - itsnowandnever 1y ago
    how is it both a bootstrapped company slow to hiring devs (due to AI) and also a company that's been in business 15 years? if you were going to hire devs to scale out, you would've done it 10 years ago?
    - gghffguhvc 1y ago
      Slowed the rate of hiring devs. Normally as we add enterprise customers we have to dedicate more dev resource keeping them happy. But since Claude code and now codex we have not felt that feeling of not being on top of the work. Thus not feeling the need to hire more devs.
- yumraj 1y ago
  > Will it build scaled solutions, not this year. That is not true IMHO. If one is expecting Lovable to create a production app by just giving a few prompts, that obviously is not going to happen, not now and most probably for a long time. However, if you use Claude Code or one of the proper IDEs, you can definitely guide it step by step and build production quality code, actually code that may even be better than most software engineers out there. Moreover, these tools allow you to take your proficiency in software dev and specific languages/frameworks to other languages/frameworks without being an expert in them, and that I think is a huge win in itself.

paxys 1y ago

It's not stupidity but corporate strategy. Up until a few years ago companies and executives used to get massive backlash for doing layoffs. Today they can say "we replaced workers with AI" and get rewarded with a stock price bump.