I'm Worried It Might Get Bad

Don't worry -- soon after that, there will be high demand for human coders as companies scramble to hire to rewrite all the buggy and vuln-ridden AI-hallucinated software. We're on the verge of two revolutions in tech, not one.

Referencing Marc Benioff making bold claims about AI isn't much evidence, he's pulling these numbers out of thin air. Despite claiming they won't hire software engineers in 2025, there are plenty of positions open at Salesforce for software engineers.

I know things are bad, we all know things are bad. But first you’ve got to get mad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug

Here’s the thing: We’re in the complaining stage. It doesn’t hurt enough yet. When it does, we’ll stop complaining and do something.

Complaining is a good first step! That’s how it starts.

There has been convergence of many events:

1. The tax deduction change where costs couldn't be classified as an expense.

2. The saturation in people joining coding. At one point in time everyone wanted to be part of a bootcamp to earn that sweet coding salary.

3. Rising interest rates means the era of borrowing at low costs is over.

etc.

AI is last on my list for the reasons that people being getting laid off. And its not because AI isn't helping people, rather it isn't helping people enough to justify the current layoffs.

And lets be honest - AI and employment is the hot topic right now. You should expect executives to say that they are jumping on the AI bandwagon and looking at time savings.

Once upon a time everyone wanted to add ML to their product. This is just going with the flow. Otherwise their stock prices will take a massive hit. Others yet want to showcase that they are doing everything to extract better margins. These statements can be slightly deceiving.

What does 30% of the code mean exactly? How much of it is going into the products and making into the market?

For now, AI is a convenient scapegoat. Maybe it becomes a force to reckon with and truly leads to people being laid off. Not today.

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.

Here's another possibility:

1. There are fewer new products normal people want to buy, especially in tech.

2. Inflation is making the everyday things people need more expensive.

3. VC money for the most popular products ran out and companies are jacking up prices.

4. Concerns over tech's impact on health is limiting tech use and more negative sentiment.

All of this is causing a slowdown in tech and AI could be the perfect fix:

1. Shiny new product for people to buy.

2. Reduce costs and increase margins right when it's most needed.

3. Justify more investment in the space (super intelligence = best VC investment ever).

4. Solve bread and butter problems in health, education, etc. if safety is prioritized.

My guess is that this need for AI is causing a lot of the tech sector to overestimate how quickly AI will revolutionize things, similar to getting "flying car" predictions right at the top of the automotive s-curve.

I believe AI will have a big impact in the long-term but no where close to as quickly as most people believe, and that the short-term impact will be limited to more narrow use cases. I also believe we're going to see a big rebound to people doing work in the next few years.

Many here likely disagree with me and it will be interesting to see how everything plays out.

AI will definitely have an impact of non physical jobs, and it is hard to see it slowing down. Anyone in any big enough company can easily see right now that there is a top level initiative to reduce employee count by never before imagined margins. And the AI is already good enough to achieve some large reductions. It is hard to see how this will all unfold.

If humans are replaced en masse by AI agents, companies will save billions until there is nobody left who can pay for their products and/or services because we're all destitute and on the dole. I'm scheduled to retire in about 9 years. I'm not sure I'm going to make it that long.

It might be informative to compare this with what happened when retailers introduced automated checkout machines. It seems that the net effect on staff sizes was not that dramatic. These stores need more anti-theft security people and some oversight. Not to mention the people they need for technical support. I wonder if there will develop a new category of skills for checking that AI produced code is correct, effective and optimal?

I've been wondering when the other shoe was going to drop as well. I'm not in a panic, but let's just say that when I occasionally look to re-balance my finances I am no longer moving anything into the stock market.

The trades sure aren't hurting. Where I live, a county of about 120k in the Rockies, appliance repair shops are booking six weeks out, and roofers can book out as long as six months.

I share the concern based on the current productivity expectations but I did stumble across something recently which makes me feel a lot better. There was a change in the tax code that coincides with the beginning of the post-pandemic layoffs[1]. This was changed back last month by the BBB which likely means a bunch of new R&D spend for big tech. I think this is why we are seeing intense M&A activity and if we can keep the AI hype under control it will probably lead to new hiring as well.

[1]: https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-micro...

So, the guy who's a founder of an AI company and makes money if he convinces people to buy into his AI project, is making some alarmist/doomer post about how crazy AI has gotten and how many jobs it's supposedly taking. He presents such thoughts as if they're some gnawing worry he just randomly needs to share.

Well, what do you know, the author just happens to sell an AI system that aims to "make humans better, rather than replacing them".

Surely his takes on the topic of how good AI is, and AI taking jobs, is impartial and objective, and not tied in any way to how he makes money if he manages to convince people of such thoughts.

Solid summary I think, but reading “what the country does if some significant percentage of our 100 million knowledge workers gets laid off because of AI” confused me deeply.

Does verifying the difference between whole milk and oat milk qualify the barista as a knowledge worker?

> We're already primed to fight with each other because we no longer share a common reality.

This is the really scariest part to me.

I can see the author's point but im failing to link it to ai. The ai im using now is a good as a productivity booster for otherwise already well defined problem-- and decently good engineers.

I dont think the layoffs are due to that. It is affecting entry jobs rather badly, but that (anecdotely) constitutes minority.

Why did this fall off the first page so hard? Regardless of the quality of the post, it was getting good engagement I thought.

That layoffs-each-year graph is a prime example of "that's not a suitable graph for that data".

I have no idea where this will go but I'm really not optimistic about the future of software development work. AI is already scarily good today. Sure I can still add value as a senior right now.. but there's no reason why that has to continue to be the case

> We start to see unrest and/or riots against "the rich" because there are no jobs, and people are being evicted

I am surprised this has not already happened. The combination of rampant inequality and lax gun laws (in some states) is very explosive.

Many commenters say that AI is overblown and they're right. But the rise in labor precarity in almost all sectors is real.

If the effect size isn't attributable to AI, then it must be the case that we have been in an unacknowledged recession for over a year.

In tech, change is the only constant. From embedded software in assembly to mobile/web development in javascript to jit-compiled python. This is not easy on engineers or on businesses as they have to keep reskilling at all times. The silver lining to AI is that it is poor at reskilling itself which is why the data-cutoff is circa 2024 for some models.

I'm curious at which point the AIs are doing all the jobs of corporations, so that they can sell their products and services to... no one, since everyone is unemployed ?

Or is the strategy of everyone to sell to the same 0.01% of the population ?

(Also, hilarious that the author mentions UBI as a potential solution. UBI is a massive transfer of wealth. Governements are elected nowadays on the promise of guaranteeing wealth is not transfered - see the recent tax bill in the USA ; and any mention of "taxes" in a political campaign.)

Sure, it wasn't bad when IT caused automation and elimination of many job positions and entire occupations, both manual and office. Now that we're on the receiving end of it, it is a bad thing all of a sudden.

As for the upcoming crisis, there's an increase in inequality and further accumulation of wealth among fewer and fewer individuals. As long as these individuals continue to spend their newly acquired wealth to compensate for lower spend by the less fortunate (which is exactly what's been happening), the economy will be fine.

> And I think that then leads to calls for:

> - Redistribution of wealth

We can talk about excessively wealthy individuals all day, but I'm pretty sure that most knowledge workers are not going to be on the receiving side of wealth redistribution. This is even more likely to be true for the programmers affected by these tech layoffs.

While I have tremendous sympathy for anyone who loses their job, this feels very industry specific. Embedded and hardware spaces (like satellites) are doing really well, lots of advancement and hiring going on, while things such as data science are struggling to get relevant interviews. I'm also not a huge fan of industry specific hiring data, because it's usually tied to a specific HR/hiring software (like indeed), which holds hidden variables (like big companies may be more likely to use one hiring software than the other).

As a final note, however, most engineers will find a point in their career where the skills they've developed are obsolete or outdated, and that is terrifying to me.

The layoff chart, created by AI, would be more impactful (and simultaneously less confusing, which is rare!) if it expressed the 2025 value as an extrapolated run-rate, or as a predicted range.

Surprised he didn’t also mention US national debt and servicing it as interest rates rise.

Daniel's freaking out about an ongoing correction still playing out from '21, and finding struts to support his argument like the "30-50% of the work" is being "done by AI" nonsense lines spouted by talking suits. This is hogwash. It's standard corporate brain fart miss the actual point. Yes, 50%+ of code written might be done by AI, but pretending this is "AI doing the work" reveals the tumor that is management misapprehension of what's going on.

There's a correction coming, but not the one Daniel's fearmongering about.

I've said this before, but the only thing that will convince me that these companies are actually laying people off due to AI will be when they start replacing their leadership staff with it.

Until that happens--IMO it's just an excuse to reduce the overhired workforce without tanking their stock.

Whats the rebuttal to UBI just causing massive inflation again?

Seems like a great opportunity for a non-traditional candidate with some backbone to pull an FDR on this Herbert Hoover.

Take the even more global view of the United States. We can grow more than enough good food for everyone, and there is plenty of land. We have water, working infrastructure, and all the other ingredients.

The rest is just giving people money to do what they please. Really. Do we need faster technology? Do we need to alloy new metals or develop new medicines?

No. We could live the spartan life of fifty years ago, or a hundred. The population will keep reliably replenishing. The rest is all just fashion.

When, not if, AI takes over crummy jobs that people don’t want to do, and society makes a mass change to deal with that, you’ll be surprised how fast it goes back to whatever equilibrium there is.

We’re damned both ways with AI. Either it’s a massive bubble that will pop or it does what it’s intended to do and automates a large portion of the workforce.

Edit: removed a comment about Ai investors getting bailed out because it was secondary to my main point

I share the same concerns as the author. People like to dispute individual issues by saying they’re caused by X or will even out with Y or the government can just do Z if the people voted for it, or that this is all irrelevant anyway because it’s never happened in the data before and therefore extremely unlikely or impossible to ever happen in the future.

And I just stare slackjawed at these people, at how they’re so focused on a narrow vertical or “historical data”, that they fail to even consider the larger picture. It’s why I trot out and bang my drum of “if we replace all the workers with AI then who is going to have money to spend to continue propping up the economy” every time boosters dismiss any social or economic concerns.

By a combination of neglect, malice, misinformation, partisanship, ignorance, and a cadre of new gods (“Big Data”, “the Algorithm”, the myriad of Rationalist cults, “AI”, crypto, etc), we have effectively stockpiled a warehouse full of leaking fuel barrels and dynamite and been commanded to take up smoking by our leaders and Capitalists, assured everything will turn out okay.

And you know what? Maybe it will turn out okay. Maybe this all is just a giant nothingburger. Maybe this is the start of a Golden Age of humanity, where dreams are attainable and fortune is infinite. Maybe this is just a speedbump on the path to extended lifespans, curing diseases, solving climate change. Maybe we’re just overreacting.

But the data sets, the lived experiences, the tone of existence doesn’t lie. Things are presently bad. The current patterns and trends suggest this will get a lot worse.

Maybe we’re wrong, but what I fear more is that we might be right and have done nothing.

Interesting that the author doesn't mention a reduction in working hours as a solution because I see that as THE solution. Federally mandate an 18 hour work week and job demand will soar. It's just as fanciful a thought as his other suggestions given how little power we have over the federal government to exercise our will.

I don't want to come off as insensitive, and as a developer with a few years of experience and about to graduate, I'm obviously a bit worried about AI as well. However, this reads like an American overpanicking because they're used to living with a certain employment and economic stability that is just not the norm in most of the world, and are coming to terms with instability for the first time.

I come from a country where emigrating in search of new work, or trying to reinvent yourself and switch jobs, driving an Uber or flipping burgers if necessary to stay afloat, etc. is the norm. We've had a lot of political and economic instability, science and health defunding, etc., and yes, it's not great, but also people just... live on, and manage to do okay.

Yes, I know about the recent advancements in AI, but barring the AGI case which I believe is a bit overblown in this article, I think the rest, especially the Trump situation, tariffs, unrest, etc., will pass as well.

> A very large number of people dread Monday, and that's not because they show up Monday morning and bring all their creativity and brilliance. It's because it's clocking in and clocking out on a job they'd rather not be doing.

This is a management problem. I don't think it's that hard to figure out how to motivate people. Give them some autonomy and respect. This isn't even hidden knowledge.

But businesses and managers for some reason totally forget this, and treat everyone as cogs in a machine and completely replaceable, monitored by metrics.

Soon developers will wish they unionized or had a culture of collective bargaining and rights. You're labor, you just thought you were above it all. I'm not spiteful. I wish you luck and hope you guys organize.

I think the so-called elites are already smelling blood in the water, from the way some billionaires are investing in doomsday bunkers.

What strikes me as odd as that, even with all the signs of an impeding crisis, US's oligarchs still double down on eliminating the little social safety nets that the US managed to provide to it's population. It's as if they learned nothing from the french revolution, and they think they can exist in a world where society succumbs to poverty and mysery. No wonder we're seeing tech bros pushing for a US dictatorship.

He doesn't even get into the police state that is being methodically constructed around us by the regime.

<sarcasm> At least the Trump administration is opening up opportunities picking strawberries in triple digit heat </sarcasm>

If we look back at all types of mechanization, all that happens is we keep our jobs, they get more complex and the jobs get harder and more technical. in 2-10 years if my job as a software engineer is speedily porting and upgrading banking code with AI assitants then cool. But I don't think we're going to see a crash. Human development doesn't stop. We're going to keep making new stuff and that takes people.

I’m not confident that AI can be used in place of human knowledge workers.

If you’re in software and maintaining a React application front end I can see the appeal: it takes so much code just to add a button. And it’s not like the web platform is going to get good.

It’s automated copy-pasting from stack overflow and GitHub. That can be useful.

But it’s also pretty meh. Humans stop reading code deeply enough to catch errors when they read more than a couple hundred lines of code in an hour. Someone still has to be liable for those errors when they cause harm to customer businesses and assets. Maybe AI and agent tooling will get good enough to keep that error rate low enough to be tolerable.

But maybe not.

What is concerning is that capital is getting so much support from the state. Labourers are being left in the lurch. I think part of that “redistribution of wealth,” needs to involve getting capital to support and work with labour instead of just exploiting it and squeezing everyone dry.

It’s wealth inequality and climate at the end of the day.

I'm worried too. I share most of his concerns, but I'm going to go one step further.

We have a president who is 1) prone to make seat-of-the-pants decisions and 2) prone to over-reach presidential power. And we're going to have a population that is 1) desperate for a quick fix and 2) not willing to let anything stand in the way. The combination is a recipe for further erosion (or the complete destruction) of separation of powers, and also for catastrophic mistakes. If we slide into tyranny (whether or not it keeps a democratic facade) and have Trump - with no restraints - trying to fix the economy, God help us all.

> Homelessness skyrockets because people can't pay their rent, but now it's whole families on the streets

> We start to see unrest and/or riots against "the rich" because there are no jobs, and people are being evicted

> Crime goes up significantly

Arguably once a good percentage of people become unhoused, we are no longer living in a fair society. IT SHOULD break down into violence. But then so say "Crime goes up significantly". What crime? There is no society where a crime can be defined.

This article has been written once a week since the beginning of capitalism. Just insert your preferred $flavor_of_the_week global issues as supporting evidence for it.

Unfortunately we know from hundreds of years of experience now that the only actual way of identifying a recession is in hindsight. Everything else is just doomerism.

I think some of his worries are well founded and others are not. I believe AI is not going to replace everyone or even most. Instead, it will eventually be seen for what it is - not actually intelligent, and the bubble that was built on those hopes and dreams will collapse, kicking off a market crash. At the same time, Trump's tariffs are going to spike inflation, preventing the Fed from cutting. That will further Trump's fight with Powell, which will lead to him installing a puppet. Said puppet will cut rates, leading to record-setting inflation that could lead us into something resembling the Great Depression. That is a very likely outcome, in my opinion.

Those people will go back to doing whatever they would have been doing before the technology revolution, which actually wasn’t so long ago… Like maybe go work at a shipyard. We can only build two ships a year it seems…