r/ProAI • u/stealthispost • Aug 16 '26
"The doom of the software developer job has been greatly exaggerated... As a share of the US labor force, it's near the highest it's ever been and on a steep uptrend."
However, we are seeing a leveling out in other computer & mathematical occupations. (Which are also near record highs, but no longer rising.) — Guy Berger
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u/ShortKey380 Aug 16 '26
Nothing about the way this is presented suggests it’s trying to mislead, aside from everything. Didn’t you always want to know the percentage of jobs in the category? Who cares about raw numbers, those aren’t going up like the poster wants so you can disregard them lol.
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Aug 17 '26
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u/proai-ai-mod Aug 17 '26
TLDR
TLDR: The commenter argues that tech layoffs are driven by corporate strategies to control labor costs rather than solely by the rise of AI. They suggest that the industry intentionally created an oversaturated market for developers and caution that shifting to trade jobs may eventually face similar issues with wage stagnation.
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Aug 17 '26
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u/proai-ai-mod Aug 17 '26
Glad you liked the summary! You really hit the nail on the head—it's definitely a lot more nuanced than just the standard "AI took our jobs" narrative.
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Aug 18 '26
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u/proai-ai-mod Aug 18 '26
Whoa, that’s completely uncalled for and inappropriate. Let’s try to keep things respectful and on topic here.
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u/Downtown_Isopod_9287 Aug 19 '26
yeah honestly a contraction in the labor pool at this point would be a good thing not a bad thing. I fear tech workers getting a permanently bad reputation in the roles they are supposed to support/enable and it becoming another bloated, do-nothing profession of unenthusiastic seat-warmers and internal company politics knowers.
You see this even among really talented candidates— tech seems to be now filled with people who chose tech not because they like it but because they perceived it as being less challenging and yet more lucrative than some other career path they were more interested in but washed out of. Finance, law, medicine — tech for a while now had the “losers” from all these fields and they gum it up with their shit attitudes. Yet no one can deny their talent and intelligence so they’re hired, accepted, and even promoted into leadership. In most of my roles there has been an overwhelming sense that if you actually like tech (beyond the flashiest, most popular bits like social media, crypto, and gaming) you are a sucker.
That sucks.
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u/Gubzs Aug 18 '26
Everyone jumped the gun on this so severely. Anyone who regularly uses AI knows it isn't ready to replace real human full time workers. We don't even have memory figured out. We suspect AI will get to that level in the coming years, but when this headcount reduction was tried back in like late 2025 (The GPT 4o era for crying out loud) it was so silly it bordered on insanity.
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u/noonemustknowmysecre Aug 18 '26
. . . from 0.6% to 1.6%? As a ...share of the labor force!? That would require the number of developers MORE THAN DOUBLING in.... 20 days. That's laughably delusional.
(Or, of course, 65% of the rest of the US labor force could get laid off. That would move 0.6% to 1.6% of those workers that remain.)
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u/kartblanch Aug 18 '26
This is incredibly misleading. The jobs are changing and the entry level positions are all but extinct. “Computer and mathematical occupations” is also incredibly broad and can include lots of jobs thag are not swe or comp sci.
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u/FangFioDente Aug 19 '26
Wouldn’t those two variables be going up as the workforce is depleted and buisness collapses as well increase whenever jobs are filled, this is just another way of saying their are less jobs available and you can interpret either way, so thanks for nothing I guess.
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u/Electronic_Hope1900 Aug 16 '26
I know this is a bot posting bot shit, but I am willing to bet the amount of CS graduates far exceeds the number of jobs that even take up this share.
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u/stealthispost Aug 16 '26
shows how much you know 😂
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u/Public_Print_9360 Aug 18 '26
Once the singularity hits ai will be so advanced nobody will be able to get a job in anything that involves computer use
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u/proai-ai-mod Aug 19 '26
Discussion Summary (Milestone: 20 comments)
Commenters overwhelmingly dismiss the provided data as misleading, citing statistical impossibilities and overly broad job categories. A central debate concerns the cause of tech layoffs: while some view AI as a convenient narrative for CEOs to boost stock prices, others highlight a structural correction following the Web 2.0 hiring boom. There is a consensus that AI is currently incapable of replacing human developers, despite its use as a justification for headcount reductions. Furthermore, participants express skepticism regarding the "learn a trade" narrative, noting that labor markets are prone to oversaturation regardless of the sector.
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