My perspective 1.5 months into my first professional job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was hired as a software engineer. I have a lot of free reign starting out at work. Rather than develop full stack software in a structured agile team, my job and research involves getting non-technical people onboarded with AI and somewhat acting as a researcher\/consultant for my company on what big ideas and technology we should adopt next and how how we can best structure our organization for a agent-first future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At my engineering consulting company, despite requiring most of our employees to have a college degree, the vast majority of tasks our employees do are extremely mundane. 80% of engineering is just moving data from one document to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are ripe for automation through agents like Claude Cowork and Codex. And there are a lot of junior roles that are doing this work that will be eliminated, and it doesn’t make sense to continue hiring junior roles \/ interns if this work is so easily done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was my previous role: developing software for people internally – is gone. Now people can ask agents and get reliable solutions to their problems. Moreso innovation people are now just guiding higher level data organization and solution development. Still, development from a developer-first work method is occurring, however, I don’t believe this is how we should develop internal software anymore. We need the people who are going to actually use the software be the ones to develop it. This is the fastest and most efficient form of development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Graduating and having my China trip I wiped away some of the pessimism I had about automation, fewer opportunities for young people, etc. I had the perspective that AI wasn’t going to remove every opprotunity because we might experience Jevons Paradox like gains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But now in the workforce, those thoughts have returned. People are going to lose their jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A prime thought is the fact that AI is advancing faster than people can learn new skills. I had this thought last year in college and it has now returned. I expressed this in my AI and the future of education post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We might still experience Jevons paradox gains, however I think people will be stuck in the middle (particularly entry level jobs) and never have a chance at acquiring the capital to take advantage of potential opportunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only reason people are not losing their jobs yet is just the slow rate and growing pains of adopting agents in an enterprise. And thousands of companies are sitll going through this \/ getting started so it’s why the economy is not facing the shock yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As models get better, more jobs go, automation moves its way up the stack. Everything even in my consulting position can probably be replicated. Engineering is just one giant constraint problem too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I feel, and I really feel this: is the economy collapsing in on itself. It’s like you’re getting squeezed out. I’m a bit scared because I’m not sure of my job protection. But I am happy because an automated world will be a very opportune world. It is wild to say I can see a path forward to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have a long way to go though. Enhancing communication in a company, having good technical leadership and effective tech adoption, are what will set apart the winners from the losers. Some companies will move a lot faster than others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My perspective 1.5 months into my first professional job. I was hired as a software engineer. I have a lot of free reign starting out at work. Rather than develop full stack software in a structured agile team, my job and research involves getting non-technical people onboarded with AI and somewhat acting as a researcher\/consultant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-240","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sethdeegan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sethdeegan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sethdeegan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sethdeegan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sethdeegan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sethdeegan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"https:\/\/sethdeegan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/240\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sethdeegan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}