Comment by lvl155
20 hours ago
Software sector basically got cut in half just on Claude Code. You have to wonder what is next. I don’t think loss in economics is 1:1 with replacement so it’s not zero sum. Production doesn’t necessarily go up. In fact, net output is going to go down if you think about all the B2B lost too.
Whoever comes into power next better start thinking about universal income fast. We are gonna get there sooner than expected.
Software productivity doubling would be a huge boon for the economy, not a drag.
Of course it's very disruptive for people that lose their jobs, but many of them will get similar new jobs, and the overall impact is higher output.
> Of course it's very disruptive for people that lose their jobs,
Why would the Jevons Paradox not apply here?
If all companies fire 50% of their engineers, how will anybody find similar new jobs? In an ideal world software productivity doubling WOULD be a huge boon for the economy IF companies used the increased productivity of their engineers as a way to manage tech debt, R&D and other issues that were put in the backlog because historically there were no resources for this. In reality all companies look at increased productivity as a source for layoffs which does not translate in higher output but the same output done by less people. Which is a net negative because now you have 50% of all engineers without a job and no discernible increase in quality of deliverables.
The FAANG companies hoarded engineering talent for years. It was really difficult to hire in any market where they were located. What I think will happen/is happening is the combination of AI assisted development and reduction in FAANG engineering headcount will enable business transformation pretty much everywhere.
The impact of that transformation remains to be seen.
If software engineer productivity basically doubled as is being claimed in this thread, I think you'd see companies scrambling to lay off everyone else in an effort to hire even more software engineers. They'd be by far the most valuable and productive employees at every tech company and you'd be foolish not to have as many as you can. I'm being a bit facetious but throughout history when a resource or profession takes a dramatic leap in efficiency, the demand for that thing rather than decreasing as is predicted here, only increases since it has become far more valuable & effective.
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> If all companies fire 50% of their engineers, how will anybody find similar new jobs?
Why would CEOs care?
Or put it another way, if you were a CEO, would you care?
Politicians at least would pretend to care.
If all companies fire 50% of their engineers,
This is not a reasonable premise.
Why do people keep espousing such bullshit. Anthropic has terrible subscriber numbers, they are absolutely no where near profitability, a 100k people buying a product that struggles to sell itself is NOT the win you think it is.
If any of these tools did 10% of what their proponents claim they would become trillion dollar companies overnight and not you know... struggle so hard selling the amazing elixirs and perpetual labor machines.