[bblost]

I have been a programmer all my life with over 20 years in a Product Company.

Maybe if AI can save time then it should not be that we hire less people.
It should rather be that those who are working, spend lesser time at work.

Reduce work hours to 30 hours a week.

So we can spend time in pursuing our lives outside these prisons.

Travel, cook, read, write.

Of what use are all these technological developments if mankind still remains as fodder for this never ending growth.

Its just a dream but maybe just maybe we will see that technology must just be an aid and not an adversary to living.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Can 9 women create a baby in one month?

I am sorry, I don't deny that productive will improve, but that has never resulted in reducing the number of IT workers

Can one farmer with a tractor do the work of 9 farmers ? I also sincerely hope that the number of IT workers does not reduce. But this is also a new credible tech which was not available earlier for developers.

Have you used Microsoft's Github Copilot in your organization? The question that will be asked everywhere is, is one junior developer + Copilot enterprise user (39$ per month) equal to 2/3 devs?

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Have you used Microsoft's Github Copilot in your organization?

No, but we don't do development all the time. I don't think anyone in my company has written any code in 2024. We are a product company that creates cloud APIs. All my customers are AI companies, but they are not able to replace us with some more AI. As I said before, simple math doesn't explain how IT industry operates.

[xcentrk]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

The question that will be asked everywhere is, is one junior developer + Copilot enterprise user (39$ per month) equal to 2/3 devs?

Nope. If any company believes one juinor dev + copilot equal to 2/3 devs will go down the drain! Junior Dev + Copilot will increase productivity? Maybe. But it will never be equal to 2/3 devs.

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

I also sincerely hope that the number of IT workers does not reduce. But this is also a new credible tech which was not available earlier for developers.

I have seen number of developers getting reduced in certain kind of projects. Kind of projects that are at a lower end of skills. Like :

Migrating 1200 Stored Procedures, Triggers from Oracle to SQL Server.
Upgrade JDK in 400 git Repo and identify breaking changes.
Migrate 400 C++ projects from makefiles to Bazel

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

Kind of projects that are at a lower end of skills.

The low skilled folks were always in the danger of getting replaced, before by younger folks, and now by AI.

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

Migrate 400 C++ projects from makefiles to Bazel

This is mere switching of the build tools. Imagine migrating those 400 C++ projects to Rust. That would be a very different ballgame.

[dragonfire]

Originally Posted by bblost

Reduce work hours to 30 hours a week.

Yep, but they should be paid for 30 hours, not 40.

If I create a tool to reduce my work hours, then I stand to benefit from it. But if the employer provides the tool (pay for it), I don't get to claim the benefit of the effort reduction.

I see a parallel between the current scenario and the industrial revolution. Marx thought that the industrial revolution was a catastrophe for the workers. His compaint was that machines were benefiting the employers rather than the workers. But he ignored the fact that the machines were paid for by the employers and building those machines generated other job opportunities.

AI is not simply going to take away jobs. It will generate other job opportunities.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by dragonfire

I see a parallel between the current scenario and the industrial revolution. Marx thought that the industrial revolution was a catastrophe for the workers. His compaint was that machines were benefiting the employers rather than the workers. But he ignored the fact that the machines were paid for by the employers and building those machines generated other job opportunities.

Actually, he was not wrong. To quote an old post about what happened in Industrial Revolution:

Originally Posted by Samurai

Laborers were forced to work at machine pace for the first time in the history of the world.

Just taking US data:
Steel workers in 19th century worked 84hours (12x7) per week.
Other industrial workers in 19th century worked 60 (10x6) week.
Women in textile mills worked from 5am until 7pm, for an average 73 hours per week. The word spinster comes from these women, because they were spinning yarn until they were old maids.

Capitalists from 19th century would be shocked to know factory workers only did 40 hours in 20th century and beyond. They would literally lose their marbles.

But we survived the jump to 40hours. So we can't say similar shift from 40hours to lesser hours is impossible.

Do read the life of workers in the 18th and 19th century in the pure capitalistic democracy called USA, it was some scary stuff. A People's history of United States is a great book on it. It will also depress the hell out of you, when you understand what capitalism in the absence of regulations did in a democratic country.

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by dragonfire

Yep, but they should be paid for 30 hours, not 40.

But the world does not work that way. If it worked that way, every job requiring 40 hours a week would have a the same pay. Driving a rickshaw for 40 hours would pay the same as flying a Boeing 747 for 40 hours. After all both worked 40 hours.

Pay is often said to be dependent on the output, i.e. work done. And suddenly your logic is that people should get paid less for more work done.

And this has been happening. for doing 64.4% more work, workers are getting paid only 14% more

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

[bblost]

Originally Posted by dragonfire

Yep, but they should be paid for 30 hours, not 40.

Completely agree with this.
But they should increase the per hour rate to balance it out.

From one of my favourite movies:

"We don't have a lot of time on this earth, we weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements."
-Peter Gibbons, "Office Space"

Frankly speaking, most of us can barely manage to actually work 5-6 hours a day.

Of course we can all look very busy and make everyone including ourselves believe that 10-12 hours a day is productive.

The first thing that suffers is the quality of code.
The next thing is the quality of life itself.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Pay is often said to be dependent on the output, i.e. work done.

+1
The world generally works on this logic. The only manner where this gets contested is (For each of us in our respective professions), if we are able to achieve the same output in lesser time; then suddenly questions start getting raised if we are being given enough work or the pay is too much, etc. etc.

Originally Posted by bblost

But they should increase the per hour rate to balance it out.

You, sir, are the response to Narayan Murthy

Originally Posted by bblost

Frankly speaking, most of us can barely manage to actually work 5-6 hours a day.

Not that I disagree but that is where the opportunity lies with remote/hybrid working. The goal is to do the work in 5-6 dedicated hours and use the rest of time elsewhere. Currently work time caters to many things other than work; for instance replying to arguments on teambhp

[Jimnyuser]

Main role of AI is to reduce headcount. Maintenance jobs are going to reduce significantly. Low value customer facing jobs are increasingly being replaced by AI chatbots

[RDS]

I want to retire (LOL, I am just 40 BTW) and have expressed this wish to the founder of the company I work for number of times with a deadline promise of Dec 2024. He will save good monthly package but probably he likes what I bring to the table, so he never discusses this topic despite me not contributing much lately except my thoughts!

I am not putting down papers myself as I have something to lose if I do that before April at least!

Now, that I have made my case, I will share the reason. IT industry is all about selling yourself. The industry "does not" lay off people who justify their salaries - period.

Eventually, layoff is just a function of one aspect - Cost vis-a-vis output. Whether same output can be achieved at lesser cost, is the topic of discussion - always one time or another.
More difficult times, when business is not forthcoming, in that scenario executive decisions to simply stop investing in certain line/geo or stop doing certain business can also be taken.

However, still, the person who is upskilling continuously, staying competitive shall land a new job.
I did, when I was told to leave a company just because I had stood up to face a Senior VP in MNC. I had a better position and better package in another MNC in 1 month - with full disclosure that I had been told to go!

Also, with above logics, a person whose output is great even with 30 hours per week can continue to do very well in the industry. Eventually, I think newer industry has already moved ahead from hours based model to output based model. Yes, some old managers etc. are still playing the age old game of "number of hours" but it is productivity that is seen now. As more and more time passes, this will become very obvious.

My current job is the strategizing and planning the direction where company needs to go.

So, when I had said in some posts that Ford had bad leadership in India that could not strategize as per ground reality, that is coming from my career perspective - this is what I do for a living! They better listen to me and talk to me if they are opening again in India

The Bottomline - In IT industry, you have to continuously upskill. No, no - all these false promises of your parents and teachers that you had to study only till 10th, 12th, Bachelors, Masters - you can forget those in this industry. Otherwise, eventually one day or other you would be blaming someone else while the only blame lies with Self. Continuously upskill and you will always find open doors irrespective of how many close.

[Janus]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Can one farmer with a tractor do the work of 9 farmers ? I also sincerely hope that the number of IT workers does not reduce. But this is also a new credible tech which was not available earlier for developers.

Have you used Microsoft's Github Copilot in your organization? The question that will be asked everywhere is, is one junior developer + Copilot enterprise user (39$ per month) equal to 2/3 devs?

None of the current publicly available Machine Learning Tech is able to reduce our IT workforce or contribute meaningfully to enable cost savings for an organisation. It will enable the developers to reduce the stress during development by a very small percentage.

The discussion was we price ourselves out in the next 15-20 years. So we should look at tech available around 2040-2044. Imagine all the secret development happening in underground bunkers in Government or someone sitting in their Mum's basement (Next Elon or Sam)

Our population will peak around the same time as the work we do starts getting automated and the workforce starts getting reduced. Either we start mining Moon or Mars which will require large workforce or will have to find a way to employ 750 million people when outsourcing would have largely died down.

Even the government finally woke up to this issue and they announced a committee to look into the population growth in this budget.

https://prsindia.org/billtrack/categ...troduction%5D=

PRS is brilliant website for tracking government legislation and if you filter on pending bills and scroll down to the end, there is a constitution amendment from 1992. If only they passed at that time, our time currently would have been different.

[sinharishi]

Originally Posted by RDS

The Bottomline - In IT industry, you have to continuously upskill.

I am a network consultant working on contracts which are short-term (as low as 3-months) and long-term (2 years). Over the last 8+ years I have only seen the requirements changing in my sector. What you said should be the mantra to survive and be relevant. However, majority of the folks in the IT industry don't give importance to up-skilling, even having the advantage of companies sponsoring trainings/certifications.