this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
287 points (95.0% liked)
Programming
20294 readers
329 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't understand how you think this works.
If I say, "now we have robots that can build a car from scratch!" the automakers will be salivating. But if my robot actually cannot build a car, then I don't think it's going to cause mass layoffs.
Many of the big software companies are doing mass layoffs. It's not because AI has taken over the jobs. They always hired extra people as a form of anti-competitiveness. Now they're doing layoffs to drive salaries down. That sucks and tech workers would be smart to unionize (we won't). But I don't see any radical shift in the industry.
A big part of the changed software job market in the US is caused by the rise of interest rates, and in consequence a large part of high-risk venture capital money drying up. This was finsncing a lot of start-ups without any solid product or business model. And, this began very clearly before the AI hype.
The trope that AI is actually replacing jobs is a lie that AI companies want you to believe.
Companies are also using AI to mask layoffs. "Yeah we dont need as many employees because AI can do their jobs better. Please shareholders, buy more stock and ignore our numbers!"