How should software engineers adapt to AI-driven layoffs?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42735129

by nguyentranvu • 2 years ago

15 24 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

With major tech companies laying off mid-level engineers due to AI efficiency gains, what strategies are engineers using to stay competitive?

I'm interested in both immediate adaptations from those affected and how upcoming CS graduates are preparing for an AI-augmented industry.

What does the engineering career look like in the future ?

billconan• 2 years ago

I'm buying AI tech stocks and studying AI in depth.

Terr_2• 2 years ago

I'm buying AI tech stocks

I'm not sure that's really hedging your bets, since there are a bunch of potential futures where you might lose your job and those stocks lose value.

scarface_743• 2 years ago

So is everyone else…

paradite2• 2 years ago

I recently wrote my thoughts on this topic.

https://github.com/paradite/ai-replace-swe

Short answer: Leverage AI, become more productive with AI and make sure you can output more value than just AI itself. Also move up the value chain to product management, team management.

kasey_junk2• 2 years ago

It’s a strange idea that team management is going to be more valuable if individual engineers are more productive.

I’m actually _more_ worried about team managers than line engineers when it comes to AI impact.

mattbrewsbytes• 2 years ago

AI can’t attend meetings and converse with humans on other teams to understand what the priorities are, what features need to be built, what issues are happening, etc.

paradite2• 2 years ago

I think someone needs to "manage" these AI engineers still, to supervise them working, and review code, PRs.

It's less about personal development, but more on performance management.

RicoElectrico• 2 years ago

Is it really AI or an excuse for a COVID / low interest rates over-hire?

I find it very confusing that everyone took the AI narrative at face value, and the AI "replacement" as fait accompli. Did it happen at all? At best, AI is intern level right now.

Terr_2• 2 years ago

Assuming it's a real trend rather than hype/excuses... It'll be interesting to see all the bugs and maintenance headaches that occur on a delay. That said, the job market can probably stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent.

I expect to lean heavily on softer skills like "being able to collaborate with product owners help them figure out what they actually want to build", or "able to usefully simplify concepts in a way that helps non-developers make decisions."

scarface_743• 2 years ago

It’s funny, when this article was submitted earlier today…

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/you-blamed-dei-for-hur...

Someone said that people would start blaming AI.

It’s not AI. There are too many people chasing too few jobs and the BigTech companies aside from Google are focusing on profitable segments.

The IPO market is dead and which caused the entire VC Ponzi scheme to collapse.

As far as upcoming CS graduates? They are screwed. Why would most companies want to hire new grads when there are proven experienced people looking for jobs?

gnz11• 2 years ago

New grads will work for less and less compensation?

scarface_743• 2 years ago

And they are spending months doing negative work. How much use are new grads for the first year? Especially with remote work, you can find plenty of experienced CRUD/enterprise/framework devs willing to work for $125K.

exitb2• 2 years ago

So, Salesforce stops hiring software engineers, but OpenAI has 20 pages of open positions? That doesn't sound quite right.

AznHisoka• 2 years ago

That makes complete sense to me. OpenAI is selling shovels and putting $$$ into improving and selling those shovels.

Salesforce (and other app builders) are buying those shovels (AI) to lower costs to build applications

exitb2• 2 years ago

Keeping this analogy, I guess it would be like not using shovels to build a shovel factory. Obviously, OpenAI needs a group of very talented experts, which are not getting replaced by AI soon, but they hire for all kinds of positions, including regular software engineers.

moomoo11• 2 years ago

Start a food company. People need to eat.

meiraleal• 2 years ago

That's where my thoughts are

gaws• 2 years ago

Learn a trade.

gdhkgdhkvff• 2 years ago

Senior eng at a big tech here. Layoffs have nothing to do with AI. There’s more work to do then any time in recent memory because of the shift going on with AI enablement. Layoffs are because of a few things.

1. Coordinated layoffs flood the market with talent forcing wages down overall and creating a chilling effect for existing employees. Believe it or not, layoffs are actually having the reverse effect from what some might think. They don’t make people want to leave, they make people scared to leave.

2. Wall Street loves layoffs.

3. Money is more expensive now.

4. Layoffs have a performative aspect for the incoming administration that all tech execs are so desperately trying to publicly please.

5. The narrative that “tech employees are lazy mooches” that’s been pushed by tech execs in alternative media has become mainstream. Places like the AllIn podcast and anything that Musk posts on Twitter have been pushing this narrative for a while and people have bought it. Since people think this now, it gives tech execs much more leeway in cutting employees “because they were underperforming” rather than “because we don’t have enough money” or “because Wallstreet wants us to.”

Ask any manager at big tech companies. They’ve been WANTING to hire for like 2 years now, but hiring freezes because of budget constraints have left them without the wanted headcount. Pretty strange that managers almost universally have been wanting to hire, but been told “no we don’t have the budget,” but then layoffs come through and it’s “because ai is handling all the work!”

gashmol• 2 years ago

The layoffs and/or pay cuts are coming this year.

I don't see companies keeping large engineering head counts when they can get working software in minutes from specs.

So, I suggest you become better in writing software specs.

Writing specs is safe for the foreseeable future because:

1. There is still no ai architecture that is comparable to human brain other than rot memory.

2. There is no enough data to train a model from such architecture if and when it's invented.

skydhash• 2 years ago

It’s like people have never read any books about software project management. While coding skills matters, most failures isn’t due to lack of language knowledge or coding speed.

sky2224• 2 years ago

Exactly. I've repeated this a lot this month: Coding is the easy part.

How should software engineers adapt to AI-driven layoffs?

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