Comment by drudolph914
3 days ago
next time op comes up for air is when he finds out their employer replaced them with a college student making $10/hour.
I’m so happy I quit tech a year ago. this guy is driving straight off a cliff and doesn’t even seem to realize.
curious, is this the default culture at tech companies now?
It won't be a student on $10 replacing him. Who would hire an inexperienced student when there are piles of displaced experienced devs looking for work? One of them and a couple of AI licences could try to replace several people the way things are going.
At least until the investment capital starts to be called in and use of decent AI models becomes noticeable more expensive, assuming that happens long before open free models are good enough to replace them.
Of course that will lead to there being very few experienced people in a couple of decades, as most of the remaining ones age out, but I'll be long done by the time that becomes a big problem, I'm not on the right side of the mid-life divide!
> It won't be a student in $10 replacing him. Who would hire an inexperienced student when there are piles of displaced experienced devs looking for work?
Yeah it won't be a student making $10 an hour replacing him, it will be an experienced dev making $10 an hour because hey at least that beats starving to death.
The next step after "juniors are doomed, but seniors still get work" is pretty obviously that senior salaries are going to start rapidly dropping.
not sure where this meme of 'ai will become very expensive any time now!' comes from
consumer subscriptions are subsidized but the companies make very healthy margins via api pricing, which is what enterprises use, and cost per intelligence is dropping rapidly
> not sure where this meme of 'ai will become very expensive any time now!' comes from
Money out > money in. https://isaiprofitable.com/
That can't go on forever, which is why the big AI companies are crying for regulation to slow things down - they need to make some of that money back before others come along and start eating what little moat they have.
That, and a lot of that investment money seems to be moving in a rather circular fashion, which usually means that when things change it will happen quickly as there is effectively one pot that will all dry up at the same time.
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Why does everyone keep framing this as if this is a decision this person is making?
This is what is happening to the industry. It's a fact of life. A new technology has disrupted the method through which software is created. There's no going back and there's no pretending we can continue not using it.
You either adopt the tools now and have trouble finding a job later or have trouble finding a job now.
> next time op comes up for air is when he finds out their employer replaced them with a college student making $10/hour.
I mean numerous firms seem to already be doing this, and they're making HN's front page regularly for week-long downtimes, blog posts tearing them apart for shockingly shit engineering practices, and their userbase in open rebellion from the sheer STATE of the product.
My employer has absolutely no interest in cutting any engineering staff in favor of AI. But we're also not a VC-funded human misery mill, and we have a sustainable business model involving selling actual products, so these facts may be related to that.
> blog posts tearing them apart for shockingly shit engineering practices, and their userbase in open rebellion from the sheer STATE of the product
So far I've seen relatively little anger of that level, except perhaps aimed at MS for the state of Windows. And unfortunately for the humans most companies high on AI juice are more likely to follow the path of finding better ways to use AI (or switching to what they think is a better model) rather than re-engaging with the meat workers, is such a user revolt seems imminent.
My DayJob is riding high on AI AMT, though quality is not currently falling (in fact by some metrics there is an improvement) because people are properly reviewing everything that comes out of it. I'm still planning on not touching the stuff though, if it comes to a choice of “AI or be redundant”, I'll be redundant, but even the Luddite that I am can see there is a benefit if it is used well.
> I’m so happy I quit tech a year ago.
What do you do now? I'm also looking to get out of this industry, but it's tough to voluntarily give up the pay.
How much money do you need?! I don't find it a particularly hard sell to not sell off my time after having reached my retirement number.
You need enough money to be able to afford to retire, for starters…
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Did you retire or do something else?
Might as well stick around until the option is no longer there, as long as they enjoy it.
Feels like AI is just exposing what was always glorified software-configuration