Comment by tombert
18 hours ago
Tinfoil hat thoroughly fixed upon my head, but a part of me kind of thinks that this might have been a long-game from big tech in the same vein as Grapes of Wrath.
Software engineers make a lot of money, at least historically because of supply/demand mechanics. By suddenly and continuously flooding the market with lots and lots of software engineers, you effectively can bring down wages, since if people are unemployed long enough they're likely to take a lower salary.
The FAGMAN companies got caught colluding to depress wages by avoiding hiring people already employed by the others, so they learned to accomplish the same thing without writing it down by having these periodic huge layoffs across the entire industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
> The FAGMAN companies
For sardonic reasons, I prefer "MANNA".
It seems heavenly until the wailing and gnashing of teeth begin.
I remember hearing about that.
Of course, this is just when they got caught doing it. Who knows how often it happens where they don't.
> The FAGMAN companies
Buahahahaaha
[dead]
They (the industry) have always wanted to find a way to do this. Tools like Rational Rose and Visual Basic were touted as being able to do this. Sending work overseas is another way. AI is just the next in line.
I don't know what the overall answer is, but I would say that if you have high demand skills, you can still earn a living.
>Software engineers
This Microsoft deal for the large part is not being offered to software engineering orgs.
The measurers? Software engineers have a lot of extra time to measure things now and are still much more valuable..
Only works if employees can't found something new. Which might be the case right now.
Really, it feels like we're in a quiet depression.
The 3% growth in the us market is virtually (90%+?) all in AI company valuations/investment. It is a depression, that hasnt been announced. Wait till after midterms for the blame to be leveled with the announcement.
Yep. We'll be told to argue over our collective political beliefs while corporations and billionaires continue to drive the economy for the 99% into the crapper. It's a machine that cannot stop until we all have nothing left.
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What is your definition of depression, exactly?
Besides "sounds cool with shock value online"
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Definitely
If they actually had a need for those software engineers right now, they wouldn't play that game. (Or rather, if they could make more money by having them create something than they could save on wages from playing the game.)
But at that point, they almost should be laying off engineers, even without playing any such game.
To me it does not seem like any bigger conspiracy than people always wanted to pay less and earn more at the same time.