squatin64

why does this not mention ai? these layoffs are essentially only because of ai both indirectly and directly, perhaps not because of current impactful productivity gains but realignment of strategic resources to invest in ai infrastructure (capital vs labor) and then also likely preparation for the continued exponential improvement of models and coding agents which will require humans to get out of the loop

essentially imo all 'pacts' between employers and companies is going to change because basically the entire category of economic work we are doing as a society will become not necessary over the next decade due to this

its just that software development is going to come earlier due to its critical nature to the roadmap of model improvement and increasing lab research speed. also due to the fact that RL works quite well for software development, including the more advanced applications like model research

also as a preemptive rebuttal for anyone saying i have no idea how swe/ai research works i am a swe who also does ai research work

ive also realized lately that the value for software creation/agents comes when we take humans out of the loop entirely and don't do code reviews or even that much work on architecture, just presentation of product/technical ideas & tastemaking based on that, thats the real unlock

i hope many swes can transition to something like that but then again i think commoditization makes it such that there isn't as much opportunity economically to do something like that