The only new thing (to me) was the observation that some of our societal timeframes (e.g picking a 4yr university degree) hinge on assuming a specific rate of societal change. If the rate of disruption exceedes that assumption, the timeframes become inadequate.
> AI is developing faster than humans can individually and collectively understand it and adapt to it. People trying to plan their futures, e.g. trying to plan for a world several years in the future as they enter university, can no longer do so the way previous generations could.
Having the job market completely change during 4 years of college has happened a lot recently. Ask anyone who graduated into the dot-com boom or the 2007-08 financial crisis.
The changes cut both ways and are volatile. Someone who picked Computer Science in 2018 was panicking about their job prospects during their senior year as it felt like the economy was falling apart, but then graduated into one of the most ideal hiring periods all of time for CS grads by 2022.
Prior to mainstream discussion about AI, the most common opinion was that the software industry was getting too bloated. Most people were getting tired of spending most of their week doing an Agile circus (which was different at every company) as they tried to coordinate with all of the PMs, designers, product owners, stakeholders, and other loosely-defined roles that were hired to build out someone's empire.
AI arrived just in time to explode those structures and start fresh. I think there will always be demand for developers in some form, but I don't think we're going back to the days of assembling cross-functional teams of 20 people with different roles and titles to do simple software work.
I do think that AI is going to encourage more software development overall, which will balance this out somewhat.
Either way, I think the people who went into CS because they like building things will have a place to land, even if it looks different than what they expected.
I think the people who went into this path because they like writing software but don't care as much for the product side are going to be sad, but that only really matters if they had a 2nd-best degree choice that would also not have been disrupted. Unlucky if that's the case.
I think the people who only went into software because they thought it was an easy way to make a lot of money by finding an email-job company where they could work a few hours per week are going have a hard time as companies realize they can have smaller, more efficient teams now.
The difference is that potentially every (white collar) job could change radically in the next four years. That's what makes it hard for society to deal with, in a way any previous example I can think of doesn't.
negura · · focus · HN ↗
> AI is developing faster than humans can individually and collectively understand it and adapt to it. People trying to plan their futures, e.g. trying to plan for a world several years in the future as they enter university, can no longer do so the way previous generations could.
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
The changes cut both ways and are volatile. Someone who picked Computer Science in 2018 was panicking about their job prospects during their senior year as it felt like the economy was falling apart, but then graduated into one of the most ideal hiring periods all of time for CS grads by 2022.
Prior to mainstream discussion about AI, the most common opinion was that the software industry was getting too bloated. Most people were getting tired of spending most of their week doing an Agile circus (which was different at every company) as they tried to coordinate with all of the PMs, designers, product owners, stakeholders, and other loosely-defined roles that were hired to build out someone's empire.
AI arrived just in time to explode those structures and start fresh. I think there will always be demand for developers in some form, but I don't think we're going back to the days of assembling cross-functional teams of 20 people with different roles and titles to do simple software work.
I do think that AI is going to encourage more software development overall, which will balance this out somewhat.
Either way, I think the people who went into CS because they like building things will have a place to land, even if it looks different than what they expected.
I think the people who went into this path because they like writing software but don't care as much for the product side are going to be sad, but that only really matters if they had a 2nd-best degree choice that would also not have been disrupted. Unlucky if that's the case.
I think the people who only went into software because they thought it was an easy way to make a lot of money by finding an email-job company where they could work a few hours per week are going have a hard time as companies realize they can have smaller, more efficient teams now.
frabcus · · focus · HN ↗