How to tell if AI threatens YOUR job
I don&#x27;t really get the comments from HN people. I could understand my neighbour (non-tech) saying &quot;Ha ha, you software engineers will become jobless because of AI&quot;, but the HN crowd saying that? Here&#x27;s my rationale:<p>- AI is a catalyzer. It will let us do more with less<p>- Most of the companies out there are greedy. They don&#x27;t look for stability, but for growth<p>- If right now, it takes a company X resources to build product Y in N months, then with AI the company will have to decide between a) build the same product Y with X&#x2F;10 resources and in N&#x2F;10 months, or b) build 10 different products with X resources and in N months. Greedy companies will not choose option &#x27;a&#x27; because that options leads to stability; they will choose option &#x27;b&#x27; which is the one that leads to (hyper) growth<p>Just imagine your usual startup in 2024 invigorated with AI:<p>- Founder 1: I want to build product X. Cool, with this AI thingy I can hire only 1 engineer, 1 product manager and maybe 1 designer to build what it would have cost 20 engineers, 2 managers and 3 designers in 2020.<p>- Founder 2: Cool. So we just hire 3 people and launch X in 1 month, right?<p>- Founder 1: Well, we could do that. Or, we could hire 20 engineers, 2 managers and 3 designers to build not just product X, but also product Y and product Z. Right? I mean, why should we limit ourselves with one product only? What if it fails? At least if we launch 3 products, we&#x27;ll have more chances of &quot;winning&quot;<p>- Founder 2: brilliant!<p>So, AI will just boost customer demands and greedy companies (the majority of companies). There will be plenty of jobs for all of us. If you don&#x27;t believe this, not long ago, Twitter had around 7000 employees. Yeez, could you believe that? And Twitter had technology of the 21st century!<p>My bet is that AI will enable tech companies to look more like Google: small-medium companies will be able to do A LOT more (e.g., we&#x27;ll see small companies launching complete G-suite-like software in less than 6 months, we&#x27;ll see YouTube-like competitors like we see nowadays TODO lists)... but that won&#x27;t be achieved with 10 or 20 engineers only.