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Idk there’s a lot of diff variables and it’s complicated of course, I really don’t think it’s because “AI’s taking the jobs” tho.
https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/labor-market-data...
If you are in Western Europe, then yes it's because of a shadow recession.
If you are in Seattle, then it's because the larger employers are shifting headcount to the Bay or abroad.
If you are not in the Bay, NYC, or Seattle, it's because domestic nearshoring during 2019-23 failed (eg. Cisco, NetApp, and Google in RTP)
Certainly the job market is more brutal than it was during the covid mass hiring spree, but it doesn't seem any worse than historical average. My view is anecdotal but I haven't seen any real data on the other side of it either.
If I was to bet, it seems that tasks that were given to new hires are now done by senior engineers and a prompt.
A collegue claims that the difference between an MBA and a mediocre compsci grad have disappeared due to vibe coding, so the compscis grads feel the job market is tougher because of increased competition.
All I know is that it's super hard to get junior devs to not be junior anymore because they don't have the opportunity anymore to learn on easy tasks.
Point is it's too early to declare what the effect will be. It can take years for large organizations to change the way of doing things. The only sure-fire way to speed that up is if they suddenly start losing market-share. Otherwise, it's all herd-following and complacency in the majority of companies.
Newsflash: AI is already remarkably good at replacing the exact office and civil service paper-pushing they do every day.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronschmelzer/2026/07/14/ai-isnt...
Building something new is where they struggle most.
Most people I deal with still struggle with basic things. These were the types of people that couldn't program a VCR back in the 80's. Yes eventually they may get left behind but they are the majority of the population.
I'm sure AI is all the rage in SV but everywhere else I go, no one gives a damn about any of this. I was just in Florida for work last week. 5 days and not one person I talked to brought AI up outside of a vendor trying to scare me about Mythos. It's just a nonissue for most people.
In time maybe that changes, but I still hear people arguing about "the cloud" which was over a decade ago at this point in terms of tech trends. Expecting any of these people to understand what skills are or MD files or MCP is unrealistic. They simply don't give a fuck.
I'm not sure how relevant the sentiment of average people are regarding the future. People are generally not well tuned in to any such things. Things just happen to most of us and we spend our lives thinking about gossip and life stuff, family, friends, chores etc., not musing about the future which we have little impact on.
Think about people's views on the coronavirus in February 2020. Things can change fast, and people will be like "Where did this come from all of a sudden? I was told by all the experts that AI is a bubble and irrelevant chatbot stuff." Most people hold extremely outdated (ie ~1-3 year out of date) ideas about AI capabilities and are absolutely unable to imagine what the capabilities in 1-3 years in the future will be (because they are unable to imagine what is already possible with frontier models today).
I've also seen already existing SaaS offerings integrating AI into their already existing product. How well that's going to work... I'm not sure. The economics of at least some of what I've seen is questionable (e.g. giving end users essentially unlimited token spend without passing any of the cost along), and at least one company in my field is clearly adding AI features because they're spooked that the existence of AI is damaging their moat/vendor lock in.
The shift might look like 'company Y contracts with AI companies A, B, and C, and as a result does more with less and therefore needs 30% fewer people'. In theory, companies A, B, and C are creating jobs so the job numbers shift, but your point about a certain level of understanding being needed to do those new jobs definitely stands.
The question is are there enough competent people to staff the middleman companies (I'd say yes specifically because entry level tech is a bloodbath atm) and how simple can these tools be made? Can they be dumbed down enough so that businesses can just buy a package from a vendor where they can give tool access to the people who can't program VCRs and trust that they won't shoot themselves in the foot? That, I don't know.
Even managers just follow the trends and just say things others are saying, they understand that their position is not granted in case of middle management in case of bigger upheaval.
For me, I can't even have access to any recent model at work, just heavily constrained gitlab duo which is still fine for most stuff. I cost them a day much more than good monthly subscription, but so are the policies of higher management, so - I don't care. It will come, I can pick up those skills a bit later, they are not that wide and deep if one is just an agentic user. If I get fired in next few years it will be other multinational corporate forces, not this. Proper SW engineering skills and experience picked over past 25 years are not going away anytime soon, its the solid base I can build on for anything next decade or two can bring my way. Summer is here, time to enjoy the mountains, lakes and family, thats what matters long term much more.
Did hiring managers just pump the brakes "just in case this AI thing is real". So we should see some big spike in hiring now that we know AI isn't going to do everything?
Or, the actual real numbers of hiring, is for real an indicator that AI is already taking jobs, or reducing jobs. Teams of 5, can now be teams of 2 or 3.
If anything it feels like AI has sucked the air out of the room as far as investment dollars goes.
In many corporate places including mine, software dev team's work is maybe 20% coding, and rest is simply getting things delivered to production and maintaning existing stuff. Nothing keeps working for long if left unattended. Meaning multiple layers of test envs, syncing with rest of the project, troubleshooting/bugfixing, deliveries.
Llms won't help a nanometer here unless companies restructuralize their IT from ground up, firing entrenched teams/managers doing half-nothing. So ie if our team would went from 5->2, we would have 40% of the velocity, maaaybe 50%. Realistically, probably even less (since env maintenance is constant drag on productivity regardless on team's size)
Also, many jobs are being threatened, including my own. And I don't really want to get a different job, even though I will if I have to. I like my current one and I'm very specific about what I do. I will get another job but it's probably not going to be as fun.
I hate AI and the people that made it.
Be careful not to generalize from your job. The programmers I know do not have jobs that sound like yours.
I’m not sure if your question misunderstands what AI is and what it can do, or if it misunderstands what cancer is and how medical research works.
And solving some cases of cancer is not worth the even greater medical problems AI will be foisting upon the world.
My life is sustained by medicine produced by large international pharma companies, and I also feel really uncomfortable about that.
I don't think badly of anyone who uses AI who makes a living because, survival. But on the other hand, I think the world would be better off without it. One can still wish for a better world while trying to survive in the current one using the tools at one's disposal, even if that situation is suboptimal.
We are so far off from these discussions that AI hype these days really sounds like a couple of frat bros BSing and not knowing what to do with their Ivy League credentials and inheritance money.
Nowhere near close, but on the high side. AI has propagated far faster, and is being adopted by a far greater proportion of businesses and individuals than electricity or conveyor belts at a similar age. AI is scaling faster than any tech in history. Exploding may be a better word choice.