When it comes to the AI crash honestly my biggest concern is what is going to happen to the job market during and the years following the crash. Not sure how things are in the rest of the world, but as someone in their early 30s working in the IT industry in Sweden I’ve never seen the market this competitive before, even for mid level and senior roles, and it worries me what the future of employment is going to look like.
Maybe those older than me have been through this kind of thing before in 2008-2009 and in the early 2000s but the state of the IT job market in the last year or two has been really concerning to me. Anecdotally I’ve also heard it’s very tough for new graduates these days.
> what the future of employment is going to look like
As an already slightly outdated senior dev in the UK rapidly approaching 50 and not wanting to touch generative AI / agentic dev… … I'm increasingly looking forward to waiting tables, being a hospital porter, or anything else away from tech!
I'm thinking that if I get out soon, I might beat most of the rush and be safely employed before many of the rest of you are forced down the same path.
[more than a little defeatist, yes, but I've be been unhappy in dev for years so for me the AI driven displacement is just the final nail rather than the main big new problem]
Over 40 myself and switched to high school teaching this year. I feel like tech in general has been degrading for a while but 2025 AI really just wiped it out imo.
It's interesting that you're looking to exit the industry as a SR dev - from my casual observations it seems like mostly it's the JR devs and younger folks that have been mostly rejecting agentic dev.
Just out of curiosity, do you have a specific objections to using the technology? I totally understand the burnout however (I'm rapidly approaching 50 myself).
> It's interesting that you're looking to exit the industry as a SR dev
TBH I consider myself a senior in name only, or because I've been around a long time! I've done my best to avoid anything that looks like managing or leading people (or things!). When I was first given such a title I think people were somewhat offended that I wasn't overjoyed (“you can call me what you want”)! I want to do things, tinker with details, etc, not manage people/stuff.
> Just out of curiosity, do you have a specific objections to using the technology?
I want to do things, tinker with details, etc, not manage people/stuff.
I also don't like how the tech came to be, in part via rampant piracy, and how it continues to grow by sucking resources out of everything else, so in at least small part there are principles involved. I know some SRs who railed against generative AI when it was taking jobs of their designer friends, but now they can do the same work with less JRs it is all fine and dandy.
My biggest problem before the Great Displacement was upon us was that I'm one of those people who really don't get on with remote work. While it was a lovely convenience to use occasionally (for instance when I need to work from elsewhere while looking after ill relatives, or when people were getting on my tits and I needed to get away to concentrate) doing it the majority of the time does not work for my mental health. I actually go into the office still, but when the people I'm working most directly with don't I'm still effectively working remote (thought at least I have the work/home separation, I suppose). Teams/equiv doesn't work for me: people on there are just names and faces on a screen and don't register in my head the same as someone in the same room does unless I specifically concentrate on that, especially those I've never met and likely never will. Since the family got its first landline I've not liked talking on phones, I've always been an “in person or in writing” type, so this isn't a new sensation for me. If agentic development continues along its current path, I see a not-too-distant future where I'd just be sat with nothing but 'king Claude for company day-in-day-out, and I'll be buggered if I'm going to do anything to help that come to pass.
Similar boat to you, but I already got out a couple of years ago in anticipation of the direction AI would take things.
Honestly, I've never been happier — that might technically say more about how far from happy I was before, rather than the extent to which I am happy now. But the main point is that I am not less happy.
I still work on side-projects but it's strictly for leisure or occasionally some freelance stuff for long-standing relationships — just pocket money and nothing I'd lament being rid of.
get into telecom is my advice. despite it being the birthplace of monstrosities like 3gpp, there is a suprising amount of sane people. and no amount of ai crash and burn will decrease the need for communications.
I think there's a few things going on and I also believe that in many (if not most, and dare I say ALL) cases AI as an excuse for lay offs is simply a scapegoat. If AI is so great, why aren't you re-training those who are ineffective at using it, and then cutting those who still don't make the cut? If it's this amazing thing for your company, wouldn't it drive revenue up drastically?
I wish the SEC would start auditing claims about AI for job cuts, not sure if its within their ball park but there's people claiming this, when they have no receipts, and then stock goes up, if that's not market manipulation, I'm not sure what is.
This is a good example. If AI increases productivity so much, then having more employees would be beneficial, because each can produce even more output. So the firm would only be limited by the imagination of their product managers and marketing team finding new things to produce with this vast capability.
Devil's advocate: if demand is constrained/finite in a given market, there's an upper bound on revenue, no matter how hard you try. In that case it'd make sense to work on efficiency to maximize profits given fixed revenue.
Even IF somehow you can do with less employees, in the case that you over hired after the "Great Resignation" following COVID (I think this is partial to blame for many lay offs still happening now that people aren't resigning from jobs willy nilly), where are these magical numbers that your current workforce is producing with AI? Are you just shipping more code with less testing? So many questions, only very little remarks. We need receipts.
One of the strong arguments in favor of AI accelerationism is net pain reduction by making the transition period as short as possible. Ideas like “pacing” or a crash and reboot will prolong the inevitable.
That is an absurd position to take. Nobody benefits by having less time to adapt to changes in their employability
I am not calling you out personally here, but this comment bears many hallmarks of the "accelerationist disease": thinking in abstract models rather than in concrete terms; optimising for the fangs of capital rather than human beings, imaginary infinite bets that lead participants to nonsensical conclusions
Not exactly true. If AI goes from 0 to 100 quickly (human level AGI in a few years), we will all lose our jobs together and will have to confront this fact. There is no ignoring such massive societal elephant in the room.
If instead AI improves slowly, lots of people will lose their jobs, but majority will not. Those still with jobs may not be persuaded by the sizable jobless minority to support any societal changes, since they are still OK. This means the jobless will be screwed.
Firstly, this generation of AI is not going to take away all jobs
Secondly, we already know what happens when sectors face mass unemployment from the 1980s, when steel and coal workers were laid off en-masse: nobody came to help
Accelerationists want to see their jobs go up in smoke because they think that if enough white collar workers are impoverished, everyone who was formerly poorer than them, will chip in to rescue us
Just like they didn't in 1985...
In a context where the state already has less tax revenue due to mass unemployment! It's completely bananas thinking that only survives on internet brainrot forums
Human-level AGI is by definition able to take away all human jobs.
> Secondly, we already know what happens when sectors face mass unemployment from the 1980s, when steel and coal workers were laid off en-masse: nobody came to help
There is a massive difference between 20-30% of people in a country being unemployed (historical sector-wide collapses), and 80-100% of people in a country being unemployed (human-level AGI unemployment). The second situation is completely historically unprecedented and will *not* lead to the same results.
> In a context where the state already has less tax revenue due to mass unemployment!
If human-level AGI is an actual reality, taxation (and money itself) is no longer relevant. Only energy and resources may still matter.
> Human-level AGI is by definition able to take away all human jobs.
What definition is this? At best it would be able to take jobs that currently rely on human intelligence. There's a lot of ditch diggers, prostitutes, athletes, models, acrobats, painters, etc, etc out there who have nothing to fear from the first-order availability of disembodied intelligence. (There may be impacts from second-order and higher effects, but this is hard "by definition.")
This would mean that there are no AI companies at all, because there is no one to buy their products. So, they have nowhere to get money for whatever they want to sell.
If people dont buy, company does not have money nor income. Simple as that. There will be no need to use those machines, because you cant sell the output of those machines.
So, you have starwing hopeless population not buying your products. Which means you cant produce. Which means, you eventually become part of that starwing population (or they kill you in some outburst).
You are still thinking in terms of monetary economics about a situation where money is no longer needed.
In a monetary economy, if you need X, you need the money to buy it. In a post-AGI economy, if you need X, you ask your human-level robots to make it (including making more robots). No money involved at all.
In this speculative scenario, robots could do that, but they can't just do it anywhere as it depends on where the minerals and land is at and who owns it, where power plants can be built, how supplies get shipped.
The idea that economics goes out the windows in a post-AGI world is highly speculative and not a situation that has ever happened in the real world.
I did not say economics goes out of the window, I said monetary economics.
With cheap robotic labor, many resource mines that are currently not economically viable will become viable, so basic resources will become much more plentiful.
The new economics will probably be based on needed energy, direct tally of needed material resources, or the number of robot-hours something takes to do.
> Weren't we just saying money was gonna be obsolete?
Land is an inherently limited resource, so some kind of money might still exist for that, even after the singularity. The point is: whatever process exists to obtain land after the singularity, the robots can do it.
> whatever process exists to obtain land after the singularity, the robots can do it
Who's robots? Who will get all this land? And its spoils, and the robots that multiply them?
Because your utopia sounds like a recipe for making our oligarchs even more powerful at the expense of the rest of us. It sounds like a slide into neofeudalism. The already existing don't even need labor to multiply their riches anymore, the rest of us will be robbed of being able to trade our labor for even basic subsistence.
You are missing the point: robotic labor does not create anything "at the expense of the rest of us". It's not some stock market speculation, but real productivity increase. The pie of wealth is not fixed, the robots actually enlarge it, massively. The robot owning class wil not be some exclusive billionaire club: as the price of robots comes down (inevitable, with any technology, doubly so with one that can make itself), essentially everyone will own one, just like almost everyone owns a car today (or could own one if they needed it).
Worst case scenario: you will live exactly as you live today, with one change: instead of you having to do your job, your robot will do it for you, and you gain more free time.
You've already conceded that there is inherently limited resources like land. These are going to be the limiting factor in any economic system, the key question is always how you distribute these.
Robots will not magically produce more land. What they will do is that the ones with the capital to buy many robots will be able to use those robots to then buy up all the land and then extract the resources from there to build even more robots etc.
No resources for you and me. No robots for us either. Why are you talking about prices going down? We're making money obsolete, remember? Why would they even sell us robots when they already own all the land and all the resources to make as many robots as they want? Sure, the pie will get bigger. But you ain't getting a slice.
What leverage would the vast majority of people have? If the oligarchs own all the robots and land and resources, how do we even ensure basic subsistence? Our labor is worthless. Our money is worthless. What stops them from... simply not sharing? The goodness of their hearts?
> Robots will not magically produce more land. What they will do is that the ones with the capital to buy many robots will be able to use those robots to then buy up all the land and then extract the resources from there to build even more robots etc.
The speed at which the availability of the robots to the general population increases will be much faster than the speed at which the initial robot owners would be able to buy land, and exclude others from using it. There are trillionaires today, extremely rich people have existed for a long time, yet they still own only a small fraction of all available land.
There could be a class of people who do not own any robots and thus are dependent on the goodwill of the robot owners to get anything they need to live, but this will be a small fraction of the population, equivalent to the homeless today. Definitely not the majority.
> The speed at which the availability of the robots to the general population increases will be much faster than the speed at which the initial robot owners would be able to buy land, and exclude others from using it. There are trillionaires today, extremely rich people have existed for a long time, yet they still own only a small fraction of all available land.
What are you basing this prediction on?
If you're a robot maker, already part of the oligarchy class, and you knew that robots would rapidly accelerate resource acquisition, why sell the robots at all? Money is about to become useless, remember? Why let the plebes have robots? They'll just use up resources you could hoard.
I feel like you predict the end of market economics, but at the same time make a bunch of assumptions based on them. Why would availability increase, price decrease etc etc if we're ending that whole resource allocation system? It'll be a giant landgrab by the ultra rich to grow and cement their empires, why wouldn't it be?
> Like they will magically create metal and food from nothing?
Not from nothing. How do humans create metal and food? Mining and farming. You ask your human-level robots to do the same. Human-level robots can by definition do everything humans can do, including gathering basic resources and growing food.
> Will they create also water that will be getting more expensive due data center consumption?
Data center consumption of water is miniscule compared to other uses. But yes, you ask the robots to make you water, for example by building desalination plants.
Even if there is still monetary economy, and you come to the conclusion that buying something is the best way to get it, you simply ask your robots to think of a way to earn you money by performing work for others, or making things to sell on the market. If they are truly human-level, they can do it.
> This is absurd.
This is the reality, if human-level AI and robotics is developed.
So, the plan is that AI companies will steal the mines and land from their current owners? Like, you plan to use those robots to beat up the owners and take their stuff? If your actual plan is such fascist takeover where AI companies bully everyone else, then everyone else is entirely valid to wage war against you before you are close to that goal.
> Data center consumption of water is miniscule compared to other uses. But yes, you ask the robots to make you water, for example by building desalination plants.
The water is getting too expensive now. Why are they not doing that now already? Technology is there and work is not the most expensive part of this.
Same with energy. So, you plan to take over the power plants by force? And take over the land to build them on? These AI companies could be building power plants, could even pick places where they dont give kids asthma already ... but they are choosing not to.
> This is the reality, if human-level AI and robotics is developed.
No, it is not reality. You are ignoring reality. Robotics does not imply end of economics. The end of economics will happen only if you win war and install an odious violent autocracy. Which I understand is an intentional goal of current CEOs and their fans. I both disagree with that goal and find it, frankly, stupid.
> So, the plan is that AI companies will steal the mines and land from their current owners? Like, you plan to use those robots to beat up the owners and take their stuff?
What? Why the hell would they need to steal or beat up people? They can buy existing mines, or establish new, robotic mines.
> The water is getting too expensive now. Why are they not doing that now already? Technology is there and work is not the most expensive part of this.
Because human-level robots do not exist yet. And human work is very often the most expensive part of any advanced technological endeavour. It is the limiting factor. Good, qualified workers are very expensive.
> Robotics does not imply end of economics.
Monetary economics only exists because human work is needed to obtain resources and produce stuff, and human work, especially educated human work is currently in limited supply, so we need to allocate this limited resource efficiently. Remove this limitation and there is no longer the need for monetary economics.
> What? Why the hell would they need to steal or beat up people? They can buy existing mines, or establish new, robotic mines.
There are no money in your world, they cant buy them. Why would the owners sell anyway? Selling the land would mean they have absolutely nothing except money they can not start new business with.
>The water is getting too expensive now. [...] Because human-level robots do not exist yet
We are not carrying water in buckets. It is all done with technology now.
> Monetary economics only exists because human work is needed to obtain resources and produce stuff, and human work
No. It exists because people who have thing too much of a thing A and a little of the a thing B. Before money, people would barter - I will give you 5 eggs and you will give me 10 apples. Money were invented to facilitate the barter.
money is just an abstraction over value, it is not value itself. if AGI is achieved, the AI labs will just use AGI to produce what they need instead of trading for it, which would include full vertical integration on all products.
To compare, great depression had 25.6 unemployment rate. It helped the WWII to happen. It wont be the end of capitalism. But, it would mean major outbursts of violence and major civil war or revolution. Where AI companies will be (deservely) the hate targets.
But my point really was that it is economic nonsense.
> Where AI companies will be (deservely) the hate targets.
That depends on what those companies do in response. Giving away robot-produced stuff for free could quicky earn them praise, instead of hate. If human-level robots enable massive increases in efficiency and production, at least one of the companies will decide to mitigate any risks in this way.
You are severely underestimating how much free stuff would 349,163,268 of American citizens need to make a small difference. To achieve that, they would need to steal farms from current owners.
And they will be hated, because they stripped people of future and bought in violent hellscape for literally everyone.
> You are severely underestimating how much free stuff would 349,163,268 of American citizens need to make a small difference.
You don't need to persuade all of them.
> To achieve that, they would need to steal farms from current owners.
Steal, or buy? And perhaps not. With robotic labor massively increasing economic efficiency, other forms of production could become viable, such as vertical farming.
If AI replaces all labor in two years, unemployment insurance and savings can comfortably carry me over the transitional period to universal income or obsolescence of money.
Should AI stagnate at the point where 70% of software engineering jobs are gone, I am going to have a problem.
Concretely, I imagine that I would need to learn other knowledge work. If AI can also perform it, I would have to go into blue collar work.
Late 19th early 20th century job replacement by engine-powered machinery led to the rise of ideologies, two world wars, and reshaping of the entire world. If AI replacement would actually reach even 10% of its promised potential, you'll see far more violence than you are ready to see. That's simply unavoidable in this case.
I am not advocating that, since I am an accelerationist, but basic reading comprehension is obviously a problem for you both here and in your other trolling efforts. (He has since edited his comment to remove the direct claim I was personally advocating terrorism).
You cannot stop the advancement of technology towards AI without the threat of violence towards those that pursue technology. The Unabomber was at least honest about that.
> edit: updated as it is not clear if Mosura is being serious or exaggerating for rhetoric
You are the HN manifestation of that woman’s face when interviewing Sydney Sweeney.
Technological changes to economic conditions in general are not possible to opt out of forever. I'm not an AI accelerationist myself, because I think there are severe risks beyond the merely economic, but the auto industry is a good example of where many countries are engaging in what one might call "EV accelerationism". In principle you don't have to, it's possible to let them roll out only to the extent that the market naturally demands, but if you know internal combustion engines will become a niche hobbyist thing by 2050 there's a lot of value in making that transition faster and intentional.
If humans are machines executing on some medium eventually it will be possible to emulate them on some other medium. Believing otherwise requires some essentially religious convictions on the existence of the soul or similar.
We already have human intelligence. Creating new humans is easy (and fun)
The only reason to emulate human intelligence is to capture it, exploit it, and reduce the negotiating power of those who have it naturally. Anyone who wants this is not a friend of human beings
Creating a new educated, competent human takes ~25 years, and significant costs and resources.
AGI can be just copy-pasted at essentially no cost. Even a robot that is mass-produced for tens of thousands of dollars is still much less expensive and takes much less time to make than a competent human.
Yes, but I think we should separate human economic value from the true purpose of our existence. If AI can replace us in economically valuable tasks, we will have no choice but to do so. The economic value part should be looked at objectively.
Except there's already billions of humans with millions becoming competent humans every year. Also the machine analogy breaks down in some ways for biological organisms. It's messier, more complex and organisms weren't designed for a purpose. There is no software humans are running. That's just a metaphor for whatever the brain & nervous system (throughout the body) does.
That does not follow. The argument about the possibility of artificial intelligence makes absolutely no claims about the purpose of human or artificial intelligence. One is a claim about "is", another is a claim about "ought".
That all persons doing intellectual work die of hunger as they cannot find a job. At least that's how I understand what the parent commenter is implying. They say that all people doing intellectual work better die quickly so they don't suffer a long 'transition period' to inevitably being dead of hunger.
I've already seen an instance of a junior developer being completely unable to fix vibe coded technical debt, even with guidance, because AI analysis is fundamental to how they understand code and they're unable to comprehend what's happening when the AI analysis is not right.
i see this every day in the field with new juniors... they cant fix anything that would be a 1 line change if they could actually read the code but instead spend hours churning the ai to get the answer... if thats all they could do i'd never hire someone like that personally but companies with lots of margins seem to be able to absorb this for now... idk
What if they're cheap, though? Perhaps the pay scale for programmers starts to resemble that for finance bros: very low pay for the first few years because so many go into the field, and those who accumulate skill (and connections, etc) can then hit the hockey stick part of the graph and get a huge pay boost when they become middle and senior. So, it would be a deskilling of programmers at the start of their careers but still worthwhile to hire them if they are cheap and can dig through the tech debt with sheer numbers/manpower. I'm just spitballing here.
I have a different opinion. I agree senior programmers will be in demand again, but not at junior price. Possibly even at a premium senior price. Why would we fix the vibe coded systems for less pay?
My thinking is most seniors could stop working and continue living just fine. Sure, we’d have to cut down travel vacation and other luxuries, but most if not all of us own our homes and have enough passive income to not have to worry about basic bills and food, so I don’t see us working for less.
We already have disruptions in Software engineering, image generation, video generation, etc.
Humans might not like AI, Companies do and with Claude we are no longer sitting on the right side, if a Product manager tells a Boss that the PM now can do also code, the boss will listen.
But we will see other effects in the next 5-15 years: population pyramid is crashing which will increase demand for people. We already have high demand for other jobs.
so i can see a transition for a lot of white collar workers to blue collar workers which will continue the disruption for everyone.
Then the robots come along and AI integration is done and we will have a real issue on our hand. When will this come? No clue i don't think its unrealistic to expeirernece this in my lifetime.
Maybe those older than me have been through this kind of thing before in 2008-2009 and in the early 2000s but the state of the IT job market in the last year or two has been really concerning to me. Anecdotally I’ve also heard it’s very tough for new graduates these days.