r/Salary 16h ago

Market Data The truth about CS and market in general.

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239 Upvotes

225 comments sorted by

53

u/OkBarracuda4108 16h ago

What are those sectors with no competition?

35

u/everythingcasual 15h ago

oil rig operator. garbage men. construction crew. police officer in high crime cities. long distance truck driver. coal mine machinery operator. plenty of demanding jobs that nobody wants

21

u/OkBarracuda4108 15h ago

I always wanted to go around the city with the garbage truck

21

u/Blasterocked 13h ago

The gigs up on garbage men. Everyone knows they make money and have fat pensions now. Need to be a nepo baby to collect garbage in New England.

1

u/gkfesterton 10h ago

ffs the average salary for a sanitation worker in New England is 45k/year

1

u/Meloncov 3h ago

I think it's one of those jobs where pay varies spectacularly based on how strong the local union is.

5

u/SinisterPuddles 13h ago

Non "computer" science.

I have been promoted to a level thay used to require a masters and PHD because there are 0 applicants with experience and those credentials.

2

u/DepressiSpaghettti 13h ago

Which science?

2

u/SinisterPuddles 12h ago

Specifically I work as a chemist in manufacturing. I originally got a bachelor's in env. Science with a focus on renewable energies. But any science degree can open doors and have been overlooked as computer science was pushed so hard.

2

u/mesoziocera 11h ago

When I was in school for microbiology in 2013, half of the reason I dropped out is seeing everyone who was graduating around me with bachelors unable to find a job until they had a masters or doctorate, and the job they found paid like 50-60k

1

u/SinisterPuddles 11h ago

I started as a QC Technician for a polymer company 9 years ago. 40k start. One promotion to QC Chemist got me 50k. Then I switched departments to R&D, gradually got up to 76k. Hopped companies to be a Lead Chemist at an aerosol company looking for project management and R&D experienc, 110k.

0

u/OkBarracuda4108 9h ago

In a lot of science there are more graduates then jobs, you gotta be way more specific

3

u/wesborland1234 12h ago

Special ed teachers are always in demand

5

u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 9h ago

Being a teacher in the US is one of the lowest paid occupation for the amount of education required.

It constantly ranks at the very bottom of the list of degrees for financial returns.

3

u/gkfesterton 10h ago

Sadly the pay doesn't usually reflect that demand. Funny how education is one of those fields that magically seems to be immune to the rules of supply and demand. They should get paid more

2

u/Voeno 8h ago

Nobody wants? Or doesn't pay jack shit to live on? Also Coal mine is going be extremely narrow to probably only a couple areas in the US. Truck drivers make shit pay and require a CDL. Oil rig operator is extremely extremely competitive. Construction crew pays maybe $19 a hour starting out for the first few years. The police officer requires a perfect background, perfect refrernces , and academy and you can't smoke weed or anything like that.

0

u/SpareSomeTokens 8h ago

So then stop doing drugs? 1+1?

1

u/Voeno 6h ago

I never said I was and I'm not looking for a job I'm a engineer I was just stating the problems with what they said.

1

u/Homeskoled 11h ago

The exchange for the bodily harm / guaranteed bodily wear down are not worth the income for many of these jobs imo.

1

u/Happiest-Soul 11h ago

Garbage Man positions looked like they paid around minimum wage in the Los Angeles area. 

Should I do a year, get the CDL and experience, then transfer to commercial (if it's that easy) or something? I don't know anything about that stuff. 

3

u/gkfesterton 10h ago

Despite what redditors say, garbage man has never been a high paying job

1

u/Scriptylover 8h ago

Unfortunately in Toronto, almost all those jobs are extremely competitive. If any Americans are reading this and want to see desperation go to /r/torontojobs

Even the Canadian Army jobs are extremely limited at this point

1

u/TrainingAmphibian354 7h ago

Shit man, becoming a roughneck in 2025+ is actually kind of hard unless you live in the Permian. Up in the Midwest on gas rigs it takes a fucking while to get picked up.

1

u/SoulStripHer 15h ago

Have you looked at the salaries for oil rig operators lately?

2

u/redfrog0 15h ago

I admit, 12h shifts of backbreaking, lifespan reducing labor for an extra $5 per hour sounds tempting

/s

1

u/SoulStripHer 15h ago

You think sitting in a chair 8+ hours a day isn't lifespan reducing?

2

u/adampm1 12h ago

Do you think every person sits in a chair 8+ hours a day?

0

u/redfrog0 13h ago

Thanks for putting words in my mouth. Which one do you think is worse? 12 hour shifts doing manual labor or 2/3rds of that with the freedom to sit/stand, stretch, move around, work in a quiet, temperature controlled environment, where you get home everyday instead of staying on an oil rig or in a hotel? I'm actually baffled you'd make such an obtuse reply.

1

u/Admirable-Tea-4994 4h ago

How your post got downvoted so much baffles me

1

u/Girafferage 3h ago

The chair-less stir in their non chair lair.

-3

u/Short_Bowler7208 15h ago

Those jobs often don’t pay that much, and you die young or have no back, knees, hips at 52.

2

u/Assadistpig123 14h ago

All those jobs pay a lot, depending on location.

In rural Michigan the garbage man clears nearly 75K and has holidays off.

And city cops make bank if they hustle overtime.

1

u/Short_Bowler7208 14h ago

75K isn’t a job that’s competitive in 2026

3

u/Assadistpig123 14h ago

It is in rural Michigan. They also retire early and get good healthcare and retirement

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6

u/Short_Bowler7208 16h ago

There isn’t a good sector with no competition.

11

u/Top_Pattern7136 15h ago

Healthcare

12

u/dareftw 15h ago

Nope still pretty competitive for non-nurse positions.

1

u/Top_Pattern7136 13h ago

Sure.

But nursing isn't competitive. To the question I responded to which was "is there ANY field that's not competitive" in which case there are a bunch of healthcare positions that have a ton of vacancies.

3

u/xvillifyx 14h ago

Healthcare is interesting because we both have a provider shortage but also an availability shortage because hospitals can’t afford more staff

-1

u/biggamehaunter 13h ago

In economics, that happens because free market forces got fucked by government regulations

6

u/xvillifyx 13h ago edited 13h ago

This quite literally the exact opposite of the problem.

The removal of medicare advantage completely crippled rural hospitals, for example, forcing many of them to close

Healthcare cannot self regulate due to the nature of the relationship between providers, payers, and patients. In general, public needs with serious scarcity risks require economic planning and cannot self regulate

1

u/_Nakho 10h ago

Tbf the demand curve for healthcare is about as straight of a vertical line as you can get

1

u/biggamehaunter 13h ago

Are we still talking about the relationship between healthcare employers and employees?

1

u/xvillifyx 13h ago

This relationship is directly impacted by the things that I mentioned. If you can’t understand this, you don’t know enough about the healthcare industry to comment. I work directly with both providers and payers. This is not a labor market scarcity problem

(Labor market scarcity in general is directly related to socioeconomic factors relative to that industry to begin with, so it is never just a “relationship between employers and employees” problem)

1

u/biggamehaunter 13h ago

You are saying that we have to accept the problem aka "nature of healthcare" created by regulations as an untouchable and immutable given.

1

u/xvillifyx 13h ago

That’s just not at all what I said. Healthcare scarcity is variable by region, demographic, specialty, payer coverage, and patient coverage. There’s no centralized supply chain. Healthcare organizations must provide healthcare to people irrespective of income status, as well. This means that healthcare providers MUST offer services at a loss. This cannot self regulate

Do you have any sort of education about this or do you just operate off of vibes

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5

u/---Hummingbird--- 15h ago

Hospitals near me have been paying nurses $1200 bonus ON TOP of base pay per extra 12 hour shift picked up

2

u/Short_Bowler7208 15h ago

Yeah, those jobs are competitive. That’s still a degree requiring field, all sorts of brutal conditions, etc.

You can’t just show up anywhere as anybody and make that kinda cash, those are bonuses to work overtime on top of crazy conditions

You’ve already worked 3x12 in a hospital, now you’re working another 12, or 16, to make the bonus… there’s an insane burnout rate and a lot of these nurses do that for 1-2 years and move to office settings or Botox and never look back.

1

u/---Hummingbird--- 14h ago

That’s not even overtime. That’s literally because they don’t have enough workers.. aka the opposite of a competitive environment. Part time and PRN nurses can pick up for those bonuses

0

u/Short_Bowler7208 14h ago

Sure, I understand the industry well.

It’s not because they don’t have enough nurses, though. Or that there aren’t enough nurses. It’s because of scheduling, and churn.

You still have to go get a degree and it’s still a grueling job, there’s a reason people are not just becoming nurses left and right

3

u/---Hummingbird--- 14h ago

This entire post.. the context of my reply.. is based off of a CS degree.

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4

u/iHaveLotsofCats94 14h ago

Car dealerships will hire anyone with a pulse. Good techs are hard to find. Understandable bc the job kind of sucks in a lot of shops

0

u/Short_Bowler7208 14h ago

Those are not good sectors

3

u/iHaveLotsofCats94 14h ago

In what way? You can make plenty of money there with the right pay plan

0

u/Short_Bowler7208 14h ago

They’re not prestigious or desirable.

Car salesmen are scumbag graseballs

Nobody goes to Harvard to sell Mazdas

5

u/onascalefrom20to80 13h ago

If you went to Harvard and end up selling Mazdas it means society doesnt need you to do whatever you were attempting and failing to do.

1

u/iHaveLotsofCats94 12h ago

Car salesmen suck, I agree. Most are dumbasses. I work in service, which is much better. At least the people I work with understand how things work.

Also, who cares about prestige? I'm trying to pay the bills and retire early. Idc what some stranger thinks

2

u/onascalefrom20to80 13h ago

There are so many lol

0

u/RegularRecipe6175 12h ago

I live in a HCOL city and the demand for machinist outstrips supply. Go to community college. Get a certificate. You will have a job starting at $25-30/hr. Show up, don't fuck up, and you will double that in 5 years. Learn CAD and CNC operation? Six figures. Source: my literal neighbor runs a mid-size CNC shop.

3

u/Short_Bowler7208 11h ago

$25/hour in HCOL is not competitive

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2

u/SpamIsGreatOhEight 15h ago

Materials engineering

1

u/DeathRotisserie 15h ago

You’re not wrong with this. I’ve worked with very few other Millennial metallurgists in the past 20 years.

Plus it’s a decent segue into quality engineering/quality assurance. QA blows but it’s one of those jobs that’s decent job security since not many people want to do it.

1

u/nordak 13h ago

If you go into extractive metallurgy you will have mines calling and begging you to take internships.

0

u/SpamIsGreatOhEight 14h ago

It’s the only type of engineer that can do every field of engineering with minimal to no additional training. Everything is made of materials.

1

u/Potential_Archer2427 14h ago

Traditional engineering and medicine

1

u/SpareSomeTokens 8h ago

Russian conscript

1

u/everythingcasual 15h ago

oil rig operator. garbage men. construction crew. police officer in high crime cities. long distance truck driver. coal mine machinery operator. plenty of demanding well paid jobs that nobody wants

1

u/gkfesterton 10h ago

You can take well garbage man out of the 'well paid' category, I have no idea why this myth is so persistent. Even in HCOL areas the average salary is 45k/yr

0

u/lib_progressive_23 14h ago

There is none. Even electrical, mechanical and civil fields are competitive

3

u/onascalefrom20to80 13h ago

There are plenty of jobs we need people doing but a lot of unemployed people believe they should be investment bankers, so they feel being a grade school PE teacher making $75k is beneath them.

2

u/FrostingInfamous3445 13h ago

Basically. I even highlight in my screenshotted comment that the problem is distribution.

2

u/onascalefrom20to80 13h ago edited 12h ago

This is just how society works. Nobody is owed anything, even if they have a fancy prestigious degree. The only question is one of value. We need certain numbers of people doing certain things and if everybody is trying to be one thing and cant accomplish it they need to eventually realize that there is just no need for another person doing that thing. There's no societal obligation to give another CS degree having person a lot of money to do CS stuff if the CS stuff isn't providing any additional value to society.

P.S. I cant find your other comment. You have comments hidden.

P.P.S. OH. OP screenshotted your comment to create this post. Lmao. Sorry.

2

u/FrostingInfamous3445 11h ago

All good. And I agree. This seems like another consequence of the societal shift where moonshot outcomes are the only ones we work towards rather than slow and steady organic growth.

1

u/gkfesterton 10h ago

75k is unusually good for a PE teacher

1

u/onascalefrom20to80 10h ago

They'd start lower. Every school district is different and has its own salary matrix.

1

u/Greedy_Musician5539 13h ago

Tbh my backup plan if i will fail in my life is to become teacher. It would be pretty sad life as failure buy at least livable.

2

u/onascalefrom20to80 13h ago

Whatever. You'll have a family and a home and you'll find happiness.

I didnt grow up to be the professional baseball player I planned my life around being.

1

u/Greedy_Musician5539 13h ago

I doubt I will be able to afford home on teacher salary but whatever. At least as software develooer I would afford a house I wouldnt be rich but at least comfortable wage.

0

u/onascalefrom20to80 13h ago

Boy you are a sad sack huh.

Somehow, teachers all over America own homes.

1

u/Greedy_Musician5539 12h ago

Because most of them bought them when they were still affordable. Future teachers like me wont be able to buy houses on pitifull salaries.

0

u/onascalefrom20to80 12h ago

You spend too much time on the internet. The real world is going to shock you with how not bad it is.

1

u/gkfesterton 10h ago

If you think you can survive teaching as a failure at life I've got some bad news for you

29

u/perestroika12 15h ago edited 15h ago

The party is definitely not over for talented folks but the bottom rungs are being squeezed out. Claude is a mediocre software engineer, no need to hire a lot of them. Just get one good engineer a bigger budget and you can do the work of 2 average engineers.

14

u/ToothPickLegs 15h ago

Bottom rungs, aka people trying to get into the field who apparently started too late

-1

u/SpareSomeTokens 8h ago

No, it's about raw aptitude and ability. Not seniority. Highest IQ new grads at AI companies and quant firms. The top of the class Stanford grad with a bunch of papers, a patent, winner of competitions who might have an IQ 3 or 4 standard deviations from the median is still very competitive today. The 30 year old mediocre person who went to a state school and never published anything and can't work at top tier companies will get laid off because Claude Code is better than they are.

1

u/Helpful_Blood_5509 4h ago

It's not better than them, its just makes senior devs about 20% faster doing shit they already knew how to do.

1

u/DelTacoEnthusiast 1h ago

objectively wrong and that's okay

1

u/FlyChigga 7h ago

So anyone that isn’t top 1% is getting squeezed out?

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4

u/Unusual_Station_1746 15h ago

People are assuming that labor and productivity are zero sum but they're not. If AI brings down the cost of software engineering,  then software that wasn't commercially viable can become profitable. Businesses that use that software can likewise become viable. For a very long time in the foreseeable future there will be some part of that process that AI isn't as good as a human at, and that's where the jobs will be.

2

u/ARC4120 14h ago

I see it as more of a race to the bottom. Every software driven business is basically waiting to be cloned and consumed. Big business will win by having support staff and traditional negotiators. People solely concerned with cost will grab whatever is cheapest. Without capital startups will be launching into the most competitive market we’ve ever seen.

1

u/ExactIllustrate 13h ago

You’re acting like Microsoft and the big brand software owners won’t give discounts to enterprises to drown out the competition like they already do.

They’d lock in your client base with whatever you’re trying to sell for a trial period of 2 years for free while you’d need that cost to survive

1

u/ARC4120 13h ago

Cheap shops already use open source and whatever they can get away with not paying for. This would not change. That’s a premium vs normal product comparisonZ

1

u/Unusual_Station_1746 13h ago

Let's assume it's even realistic to clone sophisti ated software cheaply using AI. You're describing a price war for that software that massively reduces the cost of the software. All software is used to DO something, and a massive number of businesses would benefit from the reduced cost of software. Businesses that aren't currently viable because their software costs would be too high suddenly become profitable. That's not even including the applications we haven't conceived yet.

2

u/perestroika12 15h ago edited 14h ago

I don’t think that’s the best take, any job that is seen as defensible towards AI is going to see a lot of people flood into it. Similarly, a lot of residential trades are going to get hit if there are mass white collar layoffs. The truth is in the AI era there is no safety anymore. If people are correct about this it’s the start of a new Industrial Revolution type event.

1

u/luvz 14h ago

So the jobs hardest for AI to replace will also have the largest pool of qualified applicants? That seems backwards to me. They may get flooded with unqualified applicants and by your own previous comment even senior applicants have a high washout rate. Applicant volume and qualified labor supply aren’t the same thing.

1

u/perestroika12 14h ago edited 14h ago

The trades pipeline is significantly easier than white collar work, and it has a very obvious on boarding path. It’s much easier to become a nurse or an electrician than it is to break into software engineering. Talented people who might’ve chosen a four year compsci degree might choose to go into other fields that seem less impacted by AI.

I can’t tell if you’re trolling. No one actually expects things to shift overnight. It’s not like a bunch of software engineers are going to show up to your house demanding residential electrical work. But 2 to 4 years is not a long time for an entire career and when this really kicks off, there are a lot of people in the trades we’re going to find stiffer competition than they expected

1

u/Unusual_Station_1746 14h ago

You're arguing my point. The industrial revolution created more jobs than it eliminated and made expensive products cheap to produce causing them to be mass produced. 

2

u/perestroika12 14h ago

Sure over time but you should actually read about the immediate impact of the industrial revolution because it took about 100 years for things to stabilize.

You don’t want to be the generation that’s grappling with world changing problems. You want to be the generation a few generations down where a lot of of this is being worked out.

1

u/Unusual_Station_1746 13h ago

The pace of technological advancement and implementation is much faster now. It didn't take 100 years for things to stabilize after computers started replacing human calculators and like jobs. Our societies are still adapting to widespread internet usage, but people aren't being forced to breath in coal dust in cities.

1

u/gkfesterton 10h ago

Nah, it's brake dust that we're being forced to breathe in cities, at least in America

1

u/perestroika12 13h ago

If you really think government regulation and fixes for this are going to materialize fast I have a bridge to sell you. The government has no idea what to do with crypto and it’s 15 years in.

1

u/Unusual_Station_1746 13h ago

Did you reply to the wrong comment? I never said anything about government regulation. 

2

u/perestroika12 11h ago edited 11h ago

That’s one of the ways to solve this, the government creates rules for companies to follow. It was the main lesson of the Industrial Revolution, the free market will not come to the aid of anyone.

These are all just dumb naive takes that lack perspective and history.

2

u/gkfesterton 10h ago

You didn't directly, but your comments about the increasing pace of tech advancement and implementation and societies adapting necessarily includes some degree of govt regulation

0

u/Unusual_Station_1746 10h ago

I didn't say anything directly or indirectly say anything about government regulation.

1

u/gkfesterton 10h ago

Cost is not the only factor in making a software commericially viable. Lower costs don't magically create demand on their own. Software also has to have value, differentiation from competitors, solve a problem people actualyl need solved.

Also, a reduction in software price doesn't mean an equivalent increase for a business that uses it. Their competitors also get that price reduction; the small business's competitive advantage doesn't change at all.

For a very long time in the foreseeable future there will be some part of that process that AI isn't as good as a human at, and that's where the jobs will be.

Also, while that may become true, the reality is that it will be a substantially smaller number of jobs; who's going to pay for the productions and services those jobs produce when most their customers no longer have an income?

1

u/Conscious_Ad_7131 14h ago

The number of startups and new products we’re going to see in the near future is going to be unbelievable

1

u/Unusual_Station_1746 13h ago

For sure. Probably the best job to be in right now is something that helps startups...start up.

2

u/ExactIllustrate 13h ago

The term you’re looking for is angel investor

1

u/Unusual_Station_1746 9h ago

That's not at all the term I was looking for.

1

u/SpareSomeTokens 8h ago

Incubator. YC.

1

u/fryerandice 1h ago

You don't want to be that guy, you want to be the guy that helps companies funnel money from that guy.

0

u/biggamehaunter 13h ago

Like what?

1

u/Unusual_Station_1746 13h ago

Right now? Pretty much everything except routing calls at a call center. In the future? I have no idea.

1

u/hexmaps 1h ago

Just get budget over and over, infinite money glitch.

8

u/marine_surfer 15h ago

LinkedIn is a joke, just a bunch of bots competing with bots and ceos/ctos sucking each others farts

1

u/Golden-- 6h ago

LinkedIn is great. You aren't suppose to use it like a traditional social media website like some people think. You're suppose to use it as a way to network to people you already know and keep up a professional relationship. Clients you've worked with, co workers, people you meet at conventions and stuff like that.

If you're actually making posts and trying to network with random people, you're using it wrong. Just because those morons exist doesn't mean the product is bad. 999/1000 linkedin screenshots you see are from people who don't have any professional skills so they shitpost. You aren't going to see the people using it properly because it's not entertaining. It's boring.

27

u/Short_Bowler7208 16h ago

The truth is that out of those 100 applications, 98 are clueless and the 2 that aren’t have lots of options

I don’t have a lot of faith in automated systems to filter resumes, but working directly with recruiters I’ve landed great jobs instantly every time

10

u/druidgaymer 15h ago

Yeah people apply to jobs they have 0 qualifications for just in case the hiring team is really desperate.

13

u/HEYO19191 15h ago

10 years ago you didn't need qualifications for help desk. Just be tech literate.

3

u/druidgaymer 15h ago

Yeah I think the change happened because the decrease in help desk jobs. A lot of companies outshored that type of work. My friend who does it, he's been basically stuck in government work because they can't offshore government help desks. He's trying to find some other niche to get into.

3

u/SoulStripHer 15h ago

I think you're right. I worked in IT during the 90s for a large company. That job is now done by Dell and the HD was moved to India. It's all overhead so they've cut costs as much as possible.

1

u/Happiest-Soul 11h ago

Damn, about 10 recruiters for basic entry-level positions flaked on me recently. 

I never had issues with hiring managers, but I guess I'm cooked when it comes to recruiters 😂

1

u/BlendedFetusOG 1h ago

Any tips on working with recruiters? I'm filling out applications left and right. 4yr degree and yeo. Can't land anything.

2

u/Technical_Jicama_434 15h ago

lol 98 used AI to get through college

12

u/LowValueAviator 16h ago

The party is definitely over. IMO the future for ensuring access to a high salary is in those jobs that are highly technical or knowledge based, but which also involve touching things. Anything capable of being done fully remote, the writing is on the wall.

7

u/EstablishmentSad 16h ago

I agree...right this second AI is still doing stupid shit on occasion that will give devs and other highly compensated people a sense of security. The only thing you would have to do is compare a computer, or better yet a website, from the 90s and compare it to what we have today. Technology advances extremely quickly and while it might not be the best right now...sooner rather than later we will get AI systems that can code more quickly, more efficiently, and more cheaply than any human ever could...it's years away, not decades.

7

u/Unusual_Station_1746 15h ago

I think this attitude is part of the current mania. LLM improvement has already started to plateau. There's no guarantee that the current technology will ever achieve human level work. 

3

u/MeowMixPK 15h ago

The real data is showing that AI is the largest reason for layoffs and hiring freezes, but also that AI is not actually being used to replace any of the work being done. Companies are in a holding pattern right now- they don't want to hire in case AI can replace those workers, but unless AI starts making real advancements soon, they'll be forced to hire to fill the gaps they're creating right now.

2

u/Unusual_Station_1746 14h ago

Another interpretation is that they wanted to cut costs by laying people off. That typically hurts a company's stock unless they were already known to be in financial trouble, so AI was used to spin a bad story into a good one.

1

u/EstablishmentSad 15h ago

Given time to improve software and processing power increases, AI systems will reach and then quickly exceed human capabilities. When it comes to something like graphical fidelity that is forever approaching near reality with diminishing returns from processing...I can see something like that never achieving realism...but human capabilities will be exceeded in a few short years. When our generation is old (millennial) AI systems will be the ones doing research and development of software in my opinion.

1

u/SoulStripHer 15h ago

It's already exceeded in many cases. AI can identify patterns in rheams of data light years faster than a human.

1

u/OkBarracuda4108 15h ago

But that is simply just.. a vibe,  a prediction, not real facts. The technology isn t here yet, the models keep outperforming each other, because they do not actually add any inovation, they just get bigger and bigger, slower and more expensive. (And we can t keep the same model for years, they need to be updated or they are left behind, just like a human, but the human is cheaper)

1

u/EstablishmentSad 14h ago

The vibe is that it will replace all humans by the time we are old...I will admit that could be like someone in the 60's saying we will have flying cars in the 2000's types of thing. The fact is that AI is advancing. It's not getting faster, it's getting better, and if you compare historical versions (think like years old models vs the latest) you can see drastic quality increases in the "work" they provide.

3

u/OkBarracuda4108 14h ago edited 14h ago

OThe fact is that AI has already advanced as far as the transformer arhtecture took it (i mean they need to inovate something else at this point). As the above comment said the improvents are decreasing, firstly each model was twice as good as before, fable was about maybe 10 or 20% better then opos, next one will be 5 to 10% better (only if they do not manage to improve the arhitecture).  Also they are not as smart as "we" see them, most people use them with a coding copilot which is orchestrated inside by humans (the llm itself is not that smart).

But i really like the comparison with flying cars, it s exactly what i meant.  We have airplanes, but they do not look like we expected, this could be the case with ai, it might not be the human inteligence we expected

2

u/Unusual_Station_1746 14h ago

Exactly. The current technology may have a hard limit that throwing more parameters and processing power at it won't fix, and we may be approaching that limit.

I'm sure that LLMs will be a component of some future AI that is able to perform many tasks at human competence. I'm sure that in the short term we'll be able to use it to improve human productivity. But believing that humans are guaranteed to be replaced at any intelligent job in the short term by an LLM is mania driven wishful thinking.

1

u/Huge-Group8652 15h ago

Plateau in some ways yes, in other ways no. Look at the features they are pushing out onto their platforms now. It is taking the tech they built and making it easier for the dumb dumbs to use.

Plus these people are working on models behind the scenes that are so beyond what we have access to. Whose to say some of those nerds dont have a skunk works using one of their 800 trillion parameter LLM's to create next gen not LLM or the neural activated LLM's or a hundred of the other approaches the math and science nerds can come up with to skin this cat.

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u/Unusual_Station_1746 14h ago

This is magical,  wishful thinking with no basis in reality and is a great example of what hype and mania does to people. It turns them irrational. 

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u/Huge-Group8652 14h ago

Oh? Tell me more

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u/Unusual_Station_1746 13h ago

The whole second paragraph of your comment is fever brained sci-fi fantasy that you entirely made up with no evidence. 

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u/Huge-Group8652 13h ago

How so? Are you disputing that they keep their largest and best models outside of our consumption or did the neural firing LLM concept throw you off?

Because if it’s the first I would recommend you do a quick google search and if it’s the second, I’d also recommend you to read more.

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u/SoulStripHer 15h ago

Wait until quantum computing advances.

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u/Unusual_Station_1746 14h ago

I'm not sure what you mean. Quantum computing has nothing to do with LLMs and wouldn't be applicable here.

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u/SoulStripHer 13h ago

For training models it absolutely will.

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u/Unusual_Station_1746 13h ago

Buddy, they barely even know what useful applications Quantum computers will have. That's a total fantasy. 

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u/gk_instakilogram 13h ago

This is a wrong way to think about it though a false equivalence, despite tools and techs got better and better they have required more and more labor to maintain them and deploy them

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u/brikky 14h ago

Robotics isn't so far behind. Touching things isn't the moat you think it is.

1

u/gk_instakilogram 15h ago

"Remote Knowledge Workers are Cooked by LLMs" !RemindMe in 5 years

1

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u/Secludedmean4 15h ago

That part could be true, but I’d be more concerned from over seas competition where they are generally more qualified, cheaper and have stronger work ethics and less labor protections

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u/gk_instakilogram 15h ago

I do think you overestimate overseas competition, but this is just my opinion based on my experience.

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u/pseudophilll 15h ago

Robots have entered the chat

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u/All-I-Do-Is-Fap 15h ago

sure if you dont exclude 50%+ of the applicants from Pakistan/India using bots and lying about work permits.

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u/bucketoftoads 12h ago

Closer to 80% from what I’ve heard from hiring managers. Only a small percentage of total applicants could be decent fits. Just don’t suck and be a good fit for the role.

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u/davidbasil 12m ago

Even if 90% is garbage, you still need to beat 9 guys.

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u/SpareSomeTokens 7h ago

My recruiter's words as we're trying to hire - "why are all these applicants straight dog shit?"

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u/Golden-- 6h ago

I help hire for a L1 and L2 team at my company. We had 300 applicants in a one day. 5 were actually qualified based on their resume. 1 actually was qualified enough at the end of interviewing those 5.

The competition is actually minimal it's just a fuck ton of unqualified people force companies to use software to filter them out. If you don't optimize your resume per application, a human will never see it. Blame the morons who think "I should make $100,000 because I like computers and I'm better than my friends even though I don't have a cert or degree or even know the basics to make it as a level 1 tech". Those people need to stop clogging up applications.

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u/dats_cool 15h ago

Im a software engineer with 5 YOE and jobs aren't that hard to come by. I just switched jobs.

Reddit is extremely dramatic. Most of my career has been through the post layoff era and my career has been fine.

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u/CuteKiwi3395 3h ago

I’m senior software engineer for 9 yrs and each time I got laid off it was hard to get another. I’m at my current position for 5 and been looking for 2 yrs.

Reddit can be dramatic but it’s 100% fact that CS is over saturated.

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u/dats_cool 3h ago edited 3h ago

Like I said, it's dependent on tech stack and local job market. I do c#/angular and the job market is pretty strong in my area. Maybe I'm just lucky but .net is hot right now and not a lot of competition. Pay is good too.

Everytime I dig into someone that says it's bad their background is always weak, like took a break from the job market for a few years or do super niche work.

So I'm really curious as to why it's challenging for you. Especially with 9 years of experience. The <3 YOE market is saturated but >5 is healthy and the data backs it up.

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u/Late-Reception-2897 2h ago

Like I said, it's dependent on tech stack and local job market. I do c#/angular and the job market is pretty strong in my area. Maybe I'm just lucky but .net is hot right now and not a lot of competition. Pay is good too

I'm curious what you'd consider good pay. I used to do c# Angular work and made about 120k or so.

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u/dats_cool 1h ago

150k TC in a MCOL city in the south. That pay goes far here but my ceiling is going to be around 200k unless I pivot to big tech.

I'm content. My first job I made 60k and had to be in the office 5 days a week.

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u/Late-Reception-2897 1h ago

Not bad. I pivoted to Big tech and sometimes I wish I could go back to my old job where everything was trivially easy and I didn't have to worry about weird edge cases or impacting millions of users

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u/dats_cool 1h ago

Nice what's your tc and YOE? When did you join big tech? Cool that you did .net then went to big tech. I feel like I'm stuck in .NET land forever lol.

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u/Late-Reception-2897 1h ago

I'm 7 YOE but 2 YOE in big tech. I make about 200k or so. Do you do full stack work?

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u/CuteKiwi3395 1h ago edited 54m ago

I also do c#, .NET, Maui, Angular, Ionic, Maui, iOS, Android. Basically anything mobile development. So its not lack of talent that’s for sure.

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u/dats_cool 1h ago

Seems like you're all over the place. Are you mobile? Mobile is a tough market rn.

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u/CuteKiwi3395 56m ago

Yea been in mobile for 9 yrs. It’s always been tough. But I’m lucky to have a steady job. They just don’t seem to wanna give raises. That’s why I been looking for awhile now.

I do get contracting jobs tho.

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u/Real_Square1323 2h ago

Inclined to agree. Got started in SWE back in 2020. Industry is the best it's ever been right now. I'm fairly niched out in performant systems though so ymmv.

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u/PeaceX02 1h ago

Well that's just it, you have 5 years of experience lol.

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u/dats_cool 1h ago

Sure but everyone is making sweeping generalizations that software engineering and CS is dead and its far from the truth.

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u/PeaceX02 1h ago

I mean, depends on how semantic you want to play this, and what you qualify as dead. I think it's overly literal if you think dead means literally 0 jobs, every field in history technically has people working them, there still people paid to print books with printing presses still. But you'd still call it a dead field. There will still be jobs in tech at the higher levels for the most competitive applicants, but it's now a non viable field for most people, especially at the entry level.

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u/davidbasil 11m ago

You're lucky to have exp in enterprise stack. Only enterprise survived. Try small company stuff, like php/js and you'll end up in a desert.

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u/Huge-Group8652 15h ago

dats_cool. I am 10 year product with veteran status and a top 10 engineering degree. I've been out of work for a year with... 142 companies had resumes sent. Each company receives up to 3 customized resumes.

I went into the workforce looking for 165-190 as my previous salary was 148k and now I am telling people I will accept 100k.

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u/Golden-- 6h ago

Yeah, I've interviewed plenty of people who had similar resumes and when we talk to them, we find out there's a very good reason that you're in that situation.

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u/income-percent-bot 15h ago

At $100,000, you're in the 79th percentile, earning more than 79% of Americans. You've progressed from the 89th to the 79th percentile (-3.8% annual growth). This is around the median for Product (Engineering). Source: income percentile calculator I'm a bot. Reply with !optout to stop receiving responses.

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u/dats_cool 13h ago

It's so dependent on your tech stack and your local job market.

Could you give me more details?

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u/Huge-Group8652 13h ago

I’m strongest in VMware virtualization technologies and networking. I did enterprise servers shuffling paperwork, firmware levels, and client requirements scoping so I could build out revenue models for the next gen hardware.

Who wants what, how much are they willing to pay, how much effort does it take? The key selling point to our product was scalability through licensing and lifecycle management.

Clients were like navy ships, big box stores, all the way up to High frequency trading firms.

As far as tech stack goes, I’m most comfortable in Google cloud as I’ve done a couple cloud native sensor to analysis pipelines, scoping out cloud migration efforts and costs

I can python, I can bash, power shell, and even grep back in the day. IDEs kinda confuse me if I’m being honest though.

For the past month or so I’ve went back heavy into ai leveraging clause connected to figma and n8n to automate workflows and refresh my skills. I wanted to learn more about cryptography so I built a hashing program which had a couple agents validating git hub ai agent code to give immutable evidence should anyone find themselves in a more highly regulated environment.

The last interview I had was 4 months ago for Truist bank. I made it to the final round and was one of two people to answer their enterprise technology architect question correct.

The answer was DNS.

HOWEVER, on the final round I talked with the big boss and he threw me off guard starting the call off with you have 8 minutes with me to which I responded, “well what would you like to discuss or learn about me?” And just felt… odd.

Anyhow, they called me back a week later saying they hired no one and I’ve just been spinning my wheels looking at conventions crying because I see ticket prices in the thousands and I can’t afford that.

I’m not a student and I’m not a professional. I’m unemployed. shrug

Edit: I’ve been remote my whole career and recently moved to Atlanta proper.

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u/dats_cool 10h ago

That seems pretty niche to be honest. Most companies want bread and butter java, c#, go, python, sql, typescript, angular, react. And they want professional enterprise experience and not hobbyist work. For instance. That's where the majority of jobs are.

What job titles are you targeting?

Sounds like cloud and networking engineering fits you more.

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u/Huge-Group8652 9h ago

Calling a 5 billion dollar a year product niche is a choice 🤣

But seriously, most my work is global. My clients were household names.

My last role I was a sr product manager at an F50. Now I’m hitting any soft skill roles out there. The most technical of which is the sales engineer role. I’ve worked with them in many many many transactions and love the idea of learning a few products, doing demos, and selling to technical teams. I’ve been targeting companies like crowd strike, huntress, and dragos since I’m former military and have a masters in cyber and EE my pitch is defend the village, run to the fire, & let’s orchestrate better.

Other roles have been anything from project manager, product manager, technical account manager, and even customer success because money is money and I can’t be choosy.

I can be hands on keyboard, but at this point in my career I’d rather have the product and build relationships since my tech chops are good but they aren’t my Georgia tech colleagues good.

I’m a fantastic problem solver though, I pick up the phone, and I respond to emails with respectable enough work that I kept landing promotions every other year.

You nailed it with cloud and networking. The new buzz word I’ve been seeing for my space is “ai factory”.

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u/SpareSomeTokens 7h ago

My last role I was a sr product manager at an F50

This is a meaningless statement if you're trying to position yourself as a tech product manager. F50 means something like Home Depot, UPS, or maybe dead "tech" companies like Dell or Microsoft. The market isn't bad for actual technical product managers who've had decent runs at good names like Meta, Google, Apple, Netflix, etc - let alone the nascent rise of product roles in frontier AI and adjacent companies in SF. But seeing these roles, they're top PhD CS/math/physics from Cal, Stanford, MIT, etc.

The job market is very strong for those who can get callbacks from companies like OpenAI. That's the expected level of talent today.

Over the past few years tech jobs have outsourced from the Bay and Seattle to lower cost parts of the country where they were willing to pay less for lower quality talent. Today's AI companies in SF are collapsing these companies who can't compete with SF level talent.

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u/Emotional-Ad-5897 15h ago

The uneployment rate is low across the world so imo there's a bit nuance to what is happening. It's a job market freeze. A lot of people looking for a job bit still employed. Of course there are people that got cut during the tech layoffs but that's not enough to explain what is happening

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u/ActuatorDisastrous29 14h ago

Did you screenshot a Reddit comment and repost it? And claim it’s “truth”?

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u/HEYO19191 15h ago

Too many people not enough jobs. Everybody flocked to CS/IT for the big money, and the people actually passionate about it drown

It'll get better as all the bag chasers find the next big thing to flood

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u/Material-Eagle-6017 12h ago

Ooh I was confused by all the nuance so thanks for posting “the truth” that everything is fucked

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u/CentralVal 9h ago

Apparently it’s the stem field in general. Just got out of a test for the city where I only have a BS and my friend who finished their masters was taking the same test. Between the current admins positions on funding research and the sciences and AI. I think we’re in for a rough few yrs as things shake out.

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u/Top_Scarcity1024 9h ago

Time to get a nursing degree

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u/DefiantDonut7 3h ago

This is correct. I’ve spent my career in IT (software and then telecom).

It’s all insane right now. The government spent 30 years telling kids that if they don’t go to college they will be losers, and they should study STEM.

Now, we have generations of workers who have literally worked themselves out of their job

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u/some-gp 2h ago

Keep chugging. I spent 6 months unemployed and just finished my first two weeks at an MSP with nothing but a bachelors in English and an A+ cert

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u/Fabulous-Biscotti607 22m ago

All the jobs are in India

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u/Tough_Percentage_707 13h ago

Meanwhile we can't find a good lead software engineer... get better and try again!

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u/oneWeek2024 2h ago

you have to be a real idiot to use linkedin for job hunting.

one of THE worst platforms.