> This seems unlikely

This is already happening. Fewer people are getting hired. Companies are quietly (sometimes not, like Block) letting people go. At a personal level all the leaders in my company are sounding the “catch up or you’ll be left behind” alarm. People are going to be let go at an accelerated pace in the future (1-3 years).

I don’t think that addresses my point. I understand a lot of companies are firing under the guise of AI, but it’s unclear to me whether AI is actually driving this - especially when the article we are both responding to says:

> We find no systematic increase in unemployment for highly exposed workers since late 2022

> This seems unlikely.

It is absolutely likely. The hiring market for juniors is fucked atm.

That's not necessarily a result of AI, you also have to consider the broader economic environment. I mean, it was also difficult to get a job as a graduate in 2008, whereas it's typically been easier to get a job when credit is cheap.

It sure was, but as far as I'm aware, 2026 isn't in the middle of a generation-scale economic collapse.

(And if it is, what is the cause?)

There’s a difference between a collapse and a slowdown. We don’t need a collapse for hiring to slow down [1,2]. I think we’re finally just seeing the maturation of software development. Software is increasingly a commodity, so maybe the era of crazy growth and hiring is over. I don’t think that we need AI to explain this either, although possibly AI will simply commodify more kinds of software.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/02/12/nx-s1-5711455/revised-labor-d...

[2] https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/12/18/expect-more-of-...

Isn't it, for something like 70-80% of families? Just in slow-motion?

How long have we been hearing about crushing affordability problems for property? And how long ago did that start moving into essentials? The COVID-era bullwhip-effect inflation waves triggered a lot of price ratcheting that has slowed but never really reversed. Asset prices are doing great, as people with money continue to need somewhere to put it, and have been very effective at capturing greater and greater shares of productivity increases. But how's the average waiter, cleaning-business sole-proprietor, uber driver, schoolteacher, or pet supply shopowner doing? How's their debt load trending? How's their savings trending?

Because of overhiring during the post-COVID free money glitch, not because of AI.

Aren't we both responding to an article which says:

> We find no systematic increase in unemployment for highly exposed workers since late 2022

It was fucked before AI became "mainstream" too. Companies overhired during and after covid.

Erm its been fucked for many years across many professions, it was just less so for software engineering in particular. Now entry into the S-E profession is taking a hit.

Also dont forget theres only so many viable revenue-generating and cost-saving projects to take. And said above - overhiring in COVID.

FAANG realizing that they can't make infinite money by expanding into every possible market while paying FAANG salaries for low-scale-CRUD-prototyping roles has a lot to do with this, and that started a bit earlier than the AI wave.

Lots going on right now in the market, but IMO that retreat is the biggest one still.

Many companies were basically on a path of infinite hiring between ~2011 and ~2022 until the rapid COVID-era whiplash really drove home "maybe we've been overhiring" and caused the reaction and slowdown that many had been predicting annually since, oh, 2015.

You can't be a manager without anyone to manage.

There's a lot of perverse interests and incentives at play.

Manager gigs at FAANG are pretty rough right now in my network, you can't be a manager when the higher-ups notice your group isn't a big revenue generator and so doesn't justify new hires and bigger org charts, and cutting the middlemen is the easiest way to juice the ROI numbers. If the ICs that now have 1/3 the managerial structure and have to wear more hats don't turn things around, oh well, it's not a critical area anyway, just nuke it.

There's definitely tone deaf statements from managers/leaders like "AI will allow us to do more with less headcount!" As if the end worker is supposed to be excited about that, knuckleheads, lol.

Yeah I’ve been scratching my head about this too. Like, if my boss said this, I would basically start looking for a new job right then and there. Seems like a good way to drive off your own talent.

> If AI removes one of my co-workers, our competitors will keep the co-worker and out-compete us.

This assumes that the companies' business growth is a function of the amount of code written, but that would not make much sense for a software company.

Many companies (including mine) are building our product with an engineering team 1/4 the size of what would have been required a few years ago. The whole idea is that we can build the machine to scale our business with far fewer workers.

How many companies have you worked at in the past where the backlog dried up and the engineering team sat around doing nothing?

Even in companies that are no longer growing I've always seen the roadmap only ever get larger (at that point you get desperate to try to catch back up, or expand into new markets, while also laying people off to cut costs).

Will we finally out-write the backlog of ideas to try and of feature requests? Or will the market get more fragmented as more smaller competitors can carve out different niches in different markets, each with more-complex offerings than they could've offered 5 years ago?

It depends on the "shape" of the company. Larger companies have a lot more of what I call "Conway Overhead", basically a mix of legit coordination overhead and bureaucracy. Startups by necessity have a lot less of that, and so are better "shaped" to fully harness AI.