Comment by echelon
1 month ago
No. They're firing high paid seniors and replacing them with low pay juniors. This is IBM we're talking about.
The "limits of AI" bit is just smokescreen.
Firing seniors:
> Just a week after his comments, however, IBM announced it would cut thousands of workers by the end of the year as it shifts focus to high-growth software and AI areas. A company spokesperson told Fortune at the time that the round of layoffs would impact a relatively low single-digit percentage of the company’s global workforce, and when combined with new hiring, would leave IBM’s U.S. headcount roughly flat.
New workers will use AI:
> While she admitted that many of the responsibilities that previously defined entry-level jobs can now be automated, IBM has since rewritten its roles across sectors to account for AI fluency. For example, software engineers will spend less time on routine coding—and more on interacting with customers, and HR staffers will work more on intervening with chatbots, rather than having to answer every question.
Where does it say those cuts were senior software developers?
Obviously they want new workers to use AI but I don't really see anything to suggest they're so successful with AI that they're firing all their seniors and hiring juniors to be meatbags for LLMs.
This just doesn't make any sense. Juniors + AI just does not equal seniors, except for prototyping greenfield projects. Who knows about 2 months from now, it moves fast and stuff, but not right now.
> just doesn't make any sense
I suspect the gap is that you don't know enough about IBM's business model.
When something doesn't make sense, a very common cause is a lack of context: many things can be extremely sensible for a business to do; things which appear insane from an outsider's point of view.
probably aren't going to find a lot of articles discussing how water is wet, either.
LOL great example. There are tons of articles on this topic:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/is-water-wet https://centreforinquiry.ca/keiths-conundrums-is-water-wet https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-17... http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=6097 https://parknotes.substack.com/p/is-water-wet-or-does-it-jus...
...etc. Turns out, it's not a solved question!