Lower level tech losing jobs

[berettafan]

A buddy who is fairly high up in the tech world now and working in AI told me what they refer to as level 1 and level 2 service people will likely be gone from the landscape in 6-12 months.

He's sharp, I don't doubt what he says. This is moving much faster than most realize.

Of course we have a lot more options for memes and stupid videos so we got that going for us.

****ing AI.

[RANDY P]

Now everything will be run with a phone attendant

rjp

[gsxrken]

I’m working with a NVIDIA partner and can confirm. From producing requirements, to evaluating existing code capabilities, producing a gap analysis between the two, stubbing out 75% of the necessary code and then writing the test cases to test the new requirements, it’s already blowing away the need to hire new people. Layoffs are next.

[herr_oberst]

From someone on the outside looking in who doesn't know what he's talking about, there's sad irony in that tech people are losing jobs because tech people are automating more and more complex tasks.

We are watching the evolution of the human species on a grand scale. The dumbest (and cruelest) among us have a global megaphone with a ready supply of willing adherents, and the smartest among us have tools so fast and powerful which are simultaneously benefitting and dooming our future. In the meantime, the rest of us plebes watch from the sidelines, kinda hoping for the best, watching our past become more and more antiquated, and our personal hopes sort of transform into shadows of what we thought possible.

[Deschodt]

Yes and no. I mean some days, when dealing with L1 and L2 I WISH for them to be replaced by AI, honestly. At times they act like an answering service and drive me nuts, no troubleshooting, no effort, just punt.. Then again they deal with extreme idiocy a lot of times. AI is not gonna come to your PC and fix something for someone who can barely distinguish a mouse from their sandwich. I can see it replacing basic service desk L1, and log tickets better than a human (or spectacularly worse). But probably not so L2 especially the ones in the field. I work for hospitals, you're not gonna tie a nurse down to a PC on the phone more than 2 minutes with an AI nor trust an automated repair on a clinical system. It IS scary though, as a sort of sysadmin myself, I already use AI to write scripts for me in languages I rarely use (or even those I do) and "edit" that (it's never perfect, don't ever think that) in seconds, and it saves me time..

Like most tech it will be "whoever leverages the new tech to their advantage", and also my engineering group is such a piñata that "they" will much prefer beating up on real people ;-) It's crazy though, I did not see it coming this fast - some of my kid's friends are studying coding and I'm like "why? be a plumber, AI's never gonna unclog toilets for $$$ ". I hope it hurts consultants like Deloitte a lot though.

[masraum]

Something to consider. Many/most of the folks at higher levels than level 1 and level 2 are at higher levels because they started at level 1 and learned and worked their way up to those higher levels. Where are the new Level 3 and 4 folks going to come from if there is no Level 1 & 2 jobs?

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Deschodt

Yes and no. I mean some days, when dealing with L1 and L2 I WISH for them to be replaced by AI, honestly. At times they act like an answering service and drive me nuts, no troubleshooting, no effort, just punt.. Then again they deal with extreme idiocy a lot of times. AI is not gonna come to your PC and fix something for someone who can barely distinguish a mouse from their sandwich. I can see it replacing basic service desk L1, and log tickets better than a human (or spectacularly worse). But probably not so L2 especially the ones in the field. I work for hospitals, you're not gonna tie a nurse down to a PC on the phone more than 2 minutes with an AI nor trust an automated repair on a clinical system. It IS scary though, as a sort of sysadmin myself, I already use AI to write scripts for me in languages I rarely use (or even those I do) and "edit" that (it's never perfect, don't ever think that) in seconds, and it saves me time..

Like most tech it will be "whoever leverages the new tech to their advantage", and also my engineering group is such a piñata that "they" will much prefer beating up on real people ;-) It's crazy though, I did not see it coming this fast - some of my kid's friends are studying coding and I'm like "why? be a plumber, AI's never gonna unclog toilets for $$$ ". I hope it hurts consultants like Deloitte a lot though.

Yep, all true!

I wonder if the AI thing is going to be like the outsourcing to foreign countries things that happened years ago. I worked for Cisco providing their TAC support. They decided that it would be cheaper to outsource a bunch of the TAC stuff overseas. There was eventually backlash because 1 - the folks doing the work weren't as knowledgeable and 2 - the accents hampered communications. We had a call once where someone called in and our guy was going to transfer him. He said, "please don't transfer me there. I don't have anything against them or have a problem with their technical ability, I just can't understand their accent." Obviously the accent thing isn't going to be a problem with AI, but I suspect there will be other limitations that will be an issue.

As you've said, when you use them for coding, it's never 100% the first time around.

[Deschodt]

Good point, we got some decent engineers that came from L1/L2, not many but some... sort of a different mindset, not everyone adapts. Oh God, don't get me started on outsourcing -> insourcing -> outsourcing again, each time some VP gets their bonuses and a pat on the back. It's like the wheel of time... The accent story is funny because I told my boss the same "sorry man I speak 3 languages but I do not understand murdered english"

I think with AI the problem is it's gonna get real good real fast and there will be an incentive to let it take over higher levels... And then, it'll do a weird brain fart that takes down an entire business sector, something worthy of inclusion in the excellent robot series from Asimov, and we'll go back to human supervision or the butlerian Jihad Maybe... LOL

I don't see Skynet murdering us all because of sentience/logic, I see it happening because it's gonna F somethign up bad and we'll run out of power or food or something ;-)

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Deschodt

Good point, we got some decent engineers that came from L1/L2, not many but some... sort of a different mindset, not everyone adapts. Oh God, don't get me started on outsourcing -> insourcing -> outsourcing again, each time some VP gets their bonuses and a pat on the back. It's like the wheel of time... The accent story is funny because I told my boss the same "sorry man I speak 3 languages but I do not understand murdered english"

I think with AI the problem is it's gonna get real good real fast and there will be an incentive to let it take over higher levels... And then, it'll do a weird brain fart that takes down an entire business sector, something worthy of inclusion in the excellent robot series from Asimov, and we'll go back to human supervision or the butlerian Jihad Maybe... LOL

I don't see Skynet murdering us all because of sentience/logic, I see it happening because it's gonna F somethign up bad and we'll run out of power or food or something ;-)

Yep, 100%. My retirement shouldn't be for another 10 years, maybe more if I'm having fun . But AI could give me early retirement. We'll have to figure out some way to keep skynet dumb.

[911 Rod]

Please listen carefully as the prompts have changed .....

[Dixie]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

From someone on the outside looking in who doesn't know what he's talking about, there's sad irony in that tech people are losing jobs because tech people are automating more and more complex tasks.

That's only because tech understands tech. Fear not though, a lot of people are going to be replaced by AI. That includes people who are sure their jobs take too much education and training to be done by AI.

[gacook]

I manage two Help Desks for the Army (Tier 2/3 support). AI is the big push right now, especially as we're being pushed to reduce spending in the government. My tech is extremely niche, so highly unlikely it'll get absorbed by the AI bots but MANY service desks are already being subsumed. The problem from my foxhole is that many/most soldiers these days don't want to read and try to figure out their own solutions--they want to be spoon fed. AI will not do that. It points you to a knowledge article, or walks you through rudimentary troubleshooting procedures. It's going to be some interesting learning curves ahead for us.

[Alan A]

The piece that really stinks in this - and look at INTC and how many they are ****-canning - is that I still hear people saying we need more H1Bs.

[Alan A]

Originally Posted by Dixie

That's only because tech understands tech. Fear not though, a lot of people are going to be replaced by AI. That includes people who are sure their jobs take too much education and training to be done by AI.

Lawyers, Doctors and Teachers are prime candidates for this.

I know a few people that jumped feet first into incorporating ai into education a couple of years ago and that space is ripe for disintermediation.

Same deal with your PCP.
Mine looks at his damn laptop to decide which question to ask next.
He's completely unnecessary for 99% of my medical interactions.
An AI could do it better, faster.

[berettafan]

Originally Posted by masraum

Something to consider. Many/most of the folks at higher levels than level 1 and level 2 are at higher levels because they started at level 1 and learned and worked their way up to those higher levels. Where are the new Level 3 and 4 folks going to come from if there is no Level 1 & 2 jobs?

it would seem to follow that as AI is busy replacing the bottom two levels of people the upper levels will be busy training AI to take their jobs as well.

all of us working on cloud based and internet connected systems are training our software vendors to replace us and offer 'skip the middle man' software to our customers.

go just a little further down this rabbit hole and you will quickly understand that the guy who is thinking 'well that's ok I'll just fire my staff and be incredibly efficient and make a ton of money' is failing to understand how a software company looks at and treats a captive customer base.

[id10t]

So much of the service desk type stuff is solved easily if someone RTFM. Tier 1 helpdesk stuff is almost all of that, at least that is what I see where I work. And AI can be very good at presenting TFM in a polite way.

And yes, I know that being an .edu we are kinda weird, but almost all of our tier 1 and tier 2 are students or recent graduates, and almost our entire systems/networking group (up to dept manager) started there, and about 20% of our dev team came from internships or got their degrees with us, left to get jobs and came back later.

[flatbutt]

So, now the traditional trades are in for a surge of apprentices? AI can't sweat a joint or join a PEX fitting. Someone needs to hammer in the nails, run wiring, install windows etc. I suppose a robot can mow a lawn once it is mapped but re-shingle a roof? Repoint a stone chimney?

[Arizona_928]

Originally Posted by gacook

I manage two Help Desks for the Army (Tier 2/3 support). AI is the big push right now, especially as we're being pushed to reduce spending in the government. My tech is extremely niche, so highly unlikely it'll get absorbed by the AI bots but MANY service desks are already being subsumed. The problem from my foxhole is that many/most soldiers these days don't want to read and try to figure out their own solutions--they want to be spoon fed. AI will not do that. It points you to a knowledge article, or walks you through rudimentary troubleshooting procedures. It's going to be some interesting learning curves ahead for us.

You mean camoGPT?

[Crowbob]

I think the Amish won’t even notice.

[KFC911]

I used to be a level 1 PPOT poster ... replaced by bots that actually speel and grammer mo' better too!

They never did understand my accent either