strict9

My experience in a large US city is surprisingly the opposite. The toy stores I visit are doing great. I suspect this is is because a large portion of their business is for birthday parties.

I assumed many or most were gone because of Amazon. But after having kids and getting gifts for birthday parties, I've learned there are a lot of them and they are doing healthy business. Almost always a line on weekends.

Many or most in line take advantage of free gift wrap because they're on their way to a party.

In many ways it is more convenient than Amazon because you're going out anyway, why not get it at the last second with careful gift wrapping.

But even a recent trip to the suburbs surprised me. The Lego store in the mall had a velvet rope and long line of kids waiting to get in. I had never seen anything like this and apparently it is usually this busy.

https://archive.is/A9Gn0

It is true commercial versions are slightly more expensive. But this is the tradeoff of buying something more durable and meant to be used continuously.

But it's not true that they are difficult to buy.

For my two examples: Commercial washer/dryer sets available through any appliance dealer. Commercial hospitality TVs and other commercial electronics are available via Grainger.

This is an interesting and more apt way to frame smart features.

One way I've found to avoid objects that come alive is to buy the commercial version.

- TVs aimed at commercial hospitality businesses let you avoid a lot of the bloatware and smart features that come bundled with it

- Commercial washer/dryers let you avoid bluetooth and wifi and other junk not needed to wash your clothes. These are available without the coin operated features

Commercial versions of consumer products are usually simpler, more durable, and don't have advertising and smart features.

I've been using ack for a very long time, maybe 15 years.

It's like grep but faster and easier to use. I still use it all the time, even in the era of Claude.

https://beyondgrep.com/

It appears personal devices were also impacted by this via Microsoft Intune. That app is presented to employees as a way to get their email/slack on their personal device without giving IT systems access to it.

IT systems around the country say that they have no access to your personal data and there they can only block access to Intune apps.

But the linked reddit thread[1] in this article notes personal devices getting wiped and locked out.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/1rqopq0/stry...

As I have heard from mid level managers and C suite types across a few dev jobs. Staff are the largest expense and the technology department is the largest cost center. I disagree because Sales couldn't exist with a product but that's a lost point.

This is why those same mid level managers and C suite people are salivating over AI and mentioning it in every press release.

The reality is that costs are being reduced by replacing US teams with offshore teams. And the layoffs are being spun as a result of AI adoption.

AI tools for software development are here to stay and accelerate in the coming months and years and there will be advances. But cost reductions are largely realized via onshore/offshore replacement.

The remaining onshore teams must absorb much more slack and fixes and in a way end up being more productive.

Primarily because web search these days is so shitty but that’s besides the point.

Obviously there are a lot of reasons for this. But I think one of the most important reasons is that there is so few organic interesting content destinations anymore.

Sure there are some neat shopify stores, news sites, and a few dedicated souls keeping up blogs. But so much of the casual browsing that the web once was has been obliterated by the move to social media.

And what hasn't moved is now a mess of AI generated fluff or link farms.

I used to think Google made search worse to increase ad revenue. And maybe it's tangentially related. But the stuff I used to search for and find and get inspiration from has moved to walled gardens. Reddit is one of the few remaining open web destinations left.

AI can't solve that problem.

Almost all tech CEOs think we want an AI button on every window, every app, every dialog. Always there no matter what to make workers more productive or need fewer workers or whatever.

The reality is that even the most ardent supporters of AI want it only in a single web page or in their IDE and that's about it.

Stack Overflow should have been a strong connection for developers who started building software prior to 2022.

A niche place to find the solution for something getting in your way.

Instead, my own experience and every anecdote I've ever heard from those who tried participating mirrors this one.

Genuine questions and thought out responses closed in the harshest way possible.

If the policy on duplicates weren't so rigidly and coldly enforced it would be a place I've visit frequently to learn.

Instead I avoid it and do not feel bad that it's been superseded by LLMs. Which sucks because good human responses are far more preferable.

And all of these outages happening not long after most of them dismissed a large amount of experienced staff while moving jobs offshore to save in labor costs.

Most or all of these lost significant institutional knowledge through layoff after layoff and jobs moved to lower cost countries.

Maybe a coincidence or maybe not.

It basically needs to replace its present Balmer with a Satya.

You had me all the wya until this line.

Interesting insight. High interest rates keep new startups low. Well, not counting AI startups I guess.

And the lack of new (non-AI) startups allows bloated incumbents to get by without innovating or offering new products. Quality destroying measures like offshoring and outsourcing are easier to pull off. As is allowing services and standards to slide.

Maybe we'll only know once interest rates come back down. Or once the AI-replacing-workers veil has been lifted.

I think this dynamic is an under appreciated source of the chart that shows the decoupling of the job market with the stock market [1]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-scary-is-the-scariest-ch...

In the past large developments would win over local government support with promises of jobs and investment in the local economy.

Now the only promises are a strained grid, higher energy bills and loud noise. It doesn't help that AI has been falsely attributed as the reason to lay people off in the past few years by CEOs who are actually just cutting costs or moving jobs offshore.

This situation probably gets worse before it gets better for the companies deploying new data centers.

I agree with this message and happy to see it.

But I think the more important point is the increasing number of layoffs linked in the article [1]. These layoffs are mostly ignored here and everywhere else.

Jobs are getting offshored and outsourced in large quantities and the tech community is on the whole ambivalent about it. Unless you were directly impacted.

The path for software developers looks bleak. While people are wringing their hands over AI while something else entirely is destroying job prospects for young grads.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/layoffs-2025-highest-level-sinc...

Every time one of Zitron's posts come up I think of bitcoin or algorithmic social media feeds. Like those things, I understand people have strong opinions on whether or not it's good or bad for society.

But what's the endgame? Is it to persuade people not to use these things? Make them illegal? Create some other technology that makes them obsolete or non-functional?

Tech employers are saying it's efficiencies gained in AI that led to layoffs for the past few years. Yet they have increased headcount in engineering offices in other countries at the same time.

This is also happening at small and midsize companies that ship software. It's easy to find this information, particularly for the largest companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

Like the article states, there are a number of confounding factors. But it's not AI, no matter how much founders and CEOs want it to be true.

It's the pursuit of lower cost employees.

Necessary step before making a move into hardware. An object you have to remember to use quickly gets forgotten in favor of your phone.

But a device that reaches out to you reminds you to hook back in.

Am I reading this correctly in that Chicago is the only section with dashes indicating a blend of regions?

Seems accurate but interesting this is the only area with crossover.

America is closing a college per week due to student population declines.

This is kind of misleading. There were 16 nonprofit college and university closures in 2024 [1]

I also have reservations about making predictions of what will happen in 10 years, much less 40. There are challenges relating to demographic change but it's not predetermined as you present it.

Every time someone makes a confident prediction about the future 10 or more years out all I can think of is the Population Bomb book [2]

1. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/financial-healt...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb

Interesting to see an opinion piece on the register pointing out 3 camps, none of which apply to most people I know who work in software development.

Mainly that ai is a useful tool. Sometimes it is magical but has limits and is often wrong. It can be a great illustrator of sunk cost fallacy when working on very complex problems. But light years faster and more useful than googling for solutions when faced with a difficult debugging challenge. On net I would much prefer to have ai around than not.

I think it is a miss that software development is completely omitted in this article, esp a tech or tech adjacent publication that's been around for forever.

https://archive.ph/NrGmY

I agree with many of the author's observations. I see a lot of the same thing in my circles.

Where my views differ are when it comes to the leap between layoffs and AI.

Corporate leadership is eager to reduce the biggest source of cost (employees) and happy to use AI as cover. But it's not the reality. AI isn't adding productivity to the company's bottom line in numbers big enough to rationalize the layoffs.

I can point to zero tech roles eliminated where AI performed the same function. Despite the fact me and everyone in my circles use AI on a daily basis and are big proponents of it.

I think the author's biggest incorrect assertion is accepting corporate PR as gospel like this:

Salesforce says AI bots now do 50% of the company's work. They're pushing what they call a "digital workforce" where AI agents handle customer service, sales, and even coding tasks.

All of these companies have great incentive to say AI is replacing workers. But so far no proof has been offered.

Eventually we will get a recession. For a lot of people that work in tech it feels like we are already in one.

But I do not share the author's concerns with AI taking everyone's jobs in the next few months or years.

I lament what is happening with science and research.

But articles consisting of only Hitler and Stalin comparisons persuade just about no one and is not the type of discourse I expect from HN.

I also agree with you. A more recent look is much more relevant and insightful than the linked article.

Several reasons. That and related issue of obesity are biggest factors.

The entire article is comparing modern America to Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR.

The past is a different country. The problems existing now are not the same as those of two empires from 100 years ago.

I've worked in Django across most of my career at a few places for many years.

Every time I work with another framework I am reminded of how well Django has adhered to initial principles (batteries included) while adapting to changes with new technologies.

It has a great community behind it and for that to exist for so long is something remarkable. Other frameworks have advantages in some places. But for overall tooling I think it still is the best choice for anything large and complex yet not a bad choice for micro projects either.

Yes. But in most messaging the layoffs are a result in productivity gains supposedly from AI. Not the same reasoning as capex costs.

I agree with most of that.

But companies have been incentivized to offshore production for decades. In many cases policy decisions have immensely rewarded them for doing so.

The end result is those countries (mainly China) have grown into infinite scaling machines. It probably won't unwind any time soon.