alt Hacker News> Meanwhile the AI fad is seeing huge layoffs.
This is really the only point I disagree with. Layoffs are being blamed on AI, but they are really a hangover of the covid hiring boom, and subsequent bust.
All the tech money is going into building data centres (and the gas turbines that power data centres), and it turns out that programmers don’t have the relevant skills to build gas turbines.
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A few months ago I’d have been right there with you; however recently there have been a number of high profile multi-thousand-head layoffs attributed to budget pressure of deploying AI - and so technically it’s more of an indirect rather than “a robot stole my job” replacement, but still causal. Those tokens will be “doing” labor, rather than the human.
And building gas turbines (or even designing them) are probably not jobs that pay salaries developers got accustomed to, especially in Sillicon Valley, over the last 10-20 years.
Jobs at GE in Schenectady may not be what those developers are looking for even if they were qualified.
There are a bunch of factors that are intertwining. And unfortunately, some specific demographics are mostly those being most caught in the crosshairs.
> Layoffs are being blamed on AI, but they are really a hangover of the covid hiring boom.
The world's most convenient virus.