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Ask HN: Are you scared of AI and advancements in next few years?

1 points hypetrain | 2 comments | 04 Jul 25 20:28 UTC | HN request time: 1.643s | source

We saw almost 750k layoffs since 2022.

Where are all these people finding jobs? When I see r/layoffs on reddit, people are literally crying. Many are searching jobs for months and probably a year or so.

I had someone beg job to me on customer discovery call. I was really sad that person was in that state but I could not help since we are hiring for last 18 months. All job positions are fake or stale.

VCs and especially Silicon Valley juggernauts are salivating over the fact that they can have 10 people team create a trillon dollar software and thus supermaxing their investment.

If AI automates even 20% of software engineering jobs, do you think we will survive with more layoffs and downturns?

What about regular software folks, sales, and marketing folks?

I find it extremely disturbing that companies are allowed to raise in the US and then outsource jobs to India. That's how you get scamsters like Soham. Whole thing could be a manufactured PR similar to what Cluely (Chunging Lee) did.

So on one hand you have companies creating job but sending them to offhose, layoffs due to limited need for humans and cost cutting.

Starting a company is also of no use until you get funded or become hot like Cursor. For those who dont know Cursor came to fame in 2023 but they started in 2022. They are all MIT and likely very smart people who had tons of other options.

What are your thoughts as middle age people?

Btw, Happy Fourth of July.

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alganet ◴[04 Jul 25 20:55 UTC] No.44467824[source]▶
I win either way.

If AI takes over in the predicted scale and timeline, I'll be one of the members of the last generation of developers who never felt even a single drop of impostor syndrome. People like me will be essentially walking legends.

If AI fails, then my skeptical predictions become true, and I'll be a visionary that saw through the bullshit while everyone was full of wool in their eyes.

Both of these scenarios provide people like me plenty of opportunity. If it doesn't pan out for _me specifically_, then it's just a statistical fluke, probably not related to the whole thing.

These concerns about employability are quite misguided. These are 2-3 years ahead, highly volatile unknowns. I try to think decades ahead, sometimes more, and quite more broadly.

replies(1): >>44469442 #
1. hypetrain ◴[05 Jul 25 01:34 UTC] No.44469442[source]▶
I like your attitude. You are optimistic.
replies(1): >>44469475 #
2. alganet ◴[05 Jul 25 01:42 UTC] No.44469475[source]▶
This is more related to how little I think of the current crop of LLMs to how optimistic my worldviews are.

I've seen many waves of amazing new tech over the years. The good ones often form healthy communities. Sometimes there's competition, but always in good sport.

LLMs seems like a viper's nest. It's a bad one. Lots of people at each others throats.