[uhhhhhhh]

Companies are actively not hiring expecting AI to compensate and still have growth. I have seen these same companies giving smaller raises and less promotions, and eliminate junior positions.

The endgame isn't more employees or paying them more. It's paying less people or no skilled people when possible.

That's a fairly massive disruption.

[seadan83]

We're just 3 years after a giant hiring binge, a similar amount of time post zero interest rates, the US economy has been threatening recession for two years, and economic uncertainty is very high, and post Covid had a glut of junior engineers coming onto the market. Between all of these plausible explanations for why hiring is way down, is there macro economic evidence it really is AI and not anything else?

[lovich]

That hiring binge was already nullified by the waves of layoffs.

I think everything else you’re saying is happening/has happened but companies hiring less because of anticipated AI productivity gains is also occurring. Like the scuttlebutt I hear about certain faangs requiring managers have 9-10 direct reports now instead of 7

[shanemhansen]

I don't believe them. I believe that as we exit zero interest rates, companies have to cut back and "we are doing AI" is easier to sell the investors and even their own employees than "yeah we want to spend less on people".

[candiddevmike]

All that I've seen with AI in the workplace is my coworkers becoming dumber. Asking them technical questions they should know the answer to has turned into "let me LLM that for you" and giving me an overly broad response. It's infuriating. I've also hilariously seen this in meetings, where folks are being asked something and awkwardly fill time while they wait for a response which they try and not read word for word.

[zozbot234]

That's totally normal actually. When you ask, you have to tell them "Think through this step by step."