This is, if true, a fundamental shift in the value of labor. There really isn’t a non-Luddite way to save these jobs without destroying American tech’s productivity.

That said, I’m still sceptical it isn’t simply a reflection of an overproduction of engineers and a broader economic slowdown.

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jordanb 6 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah I agree that outsourcing and oversupply are the real culprits and AI is a smoke screen. The outcome is the same though.

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JumpCrisscross 6 days ago | parent [-]

> outcome is the same though

Not really. If it’s overproduction, the solution is tighter standards at universities (and students exercising more discretion around which programmes they enroll in). If it’s overproduction and/or outsourcing, the solutions include labour organisation and, under this administration, immigration curbs and possibly services tariffs.

Either way, if it’s not AI the trend isn’t secular—it should eventually revert. This isn’t a story of junior coding roles being fucked, but one of an unlucky (and possibly poorly planning and misinformed) cohort.

	▲	jordanb 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		It can be oversupply/outsourcing and also secular: You can have basically chronic oversupply due to a declining/maturing industry. Chronic oversupply because the number of engineers needed goes down every year and the pipeline isn't calibrated for that (academia has been dealing with this for a very long time now, look up the postdocalypse). Outsourcing, because as projects mature and new stuff doesn't come along to replace, running maintenance offshore gets easier. Software isn't eating the world. Software ate the world. New use cases have basically not worked out (metaverse!) or are actively harmful.