From an economics standpoint the current state of the economy and the labor market doesn't really make any sense with the narrative being pushed.
Companies are claiming that they are achieving productivity gains from AI yet we've seen basically no evidence of it. Furthermore, if there were gains from it, we would expect the companies seeing the benefit to invest more into those productivity gains rather than less. Or put bluntly, they claim they are "buying money at a discount" but they just don't feel like buying more money.
The more reasonable explanation is that the economy is actually not in great shape, and companies/leaders are lying about the state of their companies (shocking right?). Companies are taking advantage of "AI" (LLMs) in narrow fields that are already highly codified (software, medical, legal, etc) but adoption is lower or even unwanted in other areas.
The labor market in software probably reflects this. You would avoiding hiring unless you need to; if you need to you are going to hire well because there is a lot of talent in the labor market... the only exception to this might be companies willing to take some risks (lower skill labor) for various reasons (financial, industry, etc).
There are a lot of charlatans out there selling this vision of a world where agents do all the work and software engineers are completely replaced... but it doesn't hold any water. Expect Javons paradox to be your favorite phrase as soon as the economy starts doing better.
From an economics standpoint the current state of the economy and the labor market doesn't really make any sense with the narrative being pushed.
Companies are claiming that they are achieving productivity gains from AI yet we've seen basically no evidence of it. Furthermore, if there were gains from it, we would expect the companies seeing the benefit to invest more into those productivity gains rather than less. Or put bluntly, they claim they are "buying money at a discount" but they just don't feel like buying more money.
The more reasonable explanation is that the economy is actually not in great shape, and companies/leaders are lying about the state of their companies (shocking right?). Companies are taking advantage of "AI" (LLMs) in narrow fields that are already highly codified (software, medical, legal, etc) but adoption is lower or even unwanted in other areas.
The labor market in software probably reflects this. You would avoiding hiring unless you need to; if you need to you are going to hire well because there is a lot of talent in the labor market... the only exception to this might be companies willing to take some risks (lower skill labor) for various reasons (financial, industry, etc).
There are a lot of charlatans out there selling this vision of a world where agents do all the work and software engineers are completely replaced... but it doesn't hold any water. Expect Javons paradox to be your favorite phrase as soon as the economy starts doing better.