What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

simonw

A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in late November, which for most people meant early January due to the December break. General agents (OpenClaw, Anthropic Copilot, ChatGPT "Work") started working even later than that. This category of software may have a much more meaningful impact on work than the mostly-chat systems we were using from 2022-2025. Studies that mainly focus on 2022 to end of 2025 might be missing out on a material uptick in capabilities.

fathermarz

Recently poked around the job market to see what I qualify for in this day and age. Working as a solo builder in my org I would say that I have done enough in the last 18 months to consider myself “with it”. What I found was pretty brutal. Companies asking for 4 years of agentic AI experience… pardon? Then it hit me. Oh they are all making shit up now and have no bar that anyone can hit because they are believing in the hype without understanding the fundamentals. GREAT. Even as I climb the AI-Native ranks, I apparently am unqualified for any AI-Native job.

bloaf

Organizational inertia is a real thing. There are still fortune 500 companies with internal bans on AI. A lot of the answer to "how much impact has AI had" comes down to "how much have we even attempted?" In my workplace, we're going to decline to renew some software subscriptions because a non-programmer vibe-coded their replacement in a week. The impacts are here, they're just not evenly distributed yet.

01100011

I don't feel like reading an article that will probably be out of date in 6 months, but from what I've seen, if agents keep improving at this rate, 80% of SWEs are going to be looking for new careers in 5 years.

JSR_FDED

By now I feel I can write these articles: - benefits of AI murky to slightly positive - hiring impact limited except for junior level The problem is that these two statements each have massive implications, so instead of treating these findings as point in time snapshots they are the whole ballgame and should be explored in depth.

bluecheese452

Every job loss and suicide is a dollar in an AI investor’s pocket.

exabrial

Prior to the weaving loom and sewing machines, a factory might be able to make like 20 t-shirts a day with 50 workers. After mass production, factories generally employ the same amount of workers, but people aren't hand-sewing things. Instead roughly 50 people are producing thousands of tshirts a day leveraging giant machines. Most of HN recognized the "We're firing people because AI makes people efficient" as one of the stupidest sales pitches ever and the CEOs that fell for it are just poorly ran companies that outed themselves. AI is just another cycle in technology that is genuinely useful. The companies that are going to jump the gap are those that are hiring to use this new skill. If 10 workers pre-AI yields you 10x, and post AI yields you 100x, you don't cut down to 1 worker so you can keep delivering 10x. You invest, ruthlessly train, hire, and surge forward and leave your competition in the dust.

ChrisArchitect

Related today: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49047969

newsomix9xl

Employees have no incentive to meaningfully implement AI to increase productivity, and if they do so, they have no reason to share it. If AI means job cuts and not using AI means job cuts but no one really tracks AI impact that means performative adoption of AI is safest, and real gains are to be sandbagged as innate magic hand waving. At my work I'm one of the few who says "I made this with Claude" and the near impossibility of using AI with internal email etc for security reasons means AI use is one-shot wonder oriented (for me, in my experience). If AI usage was incentived with actual bonuses and praise it might go over better. So far I haven't seen that. Its just implicit threats.