[HN Gopher] Ask HN: ChatGPT's Impact on Headcount - What's Your ...
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Ask HN: ChatGPT's Impact on Headcount - What's Your Experience?
I've found it interesting that ChatGPT sparked fresh concern about
AI's impact on jobs and yet many months later we have historically
low unemployment in the US. Obviously, such impact wouldn't be
instantaneous, but I've wondered how companies are thinking about
this in terms of headcount planning. From conversations with
friends it seems that a common approach is attrition with non-
replacement. Companies are using ChatGPT and similar tools to
increase productivity, but don't want to fire a lot of people due
to the negative impact on morale on those that remain--and the
fact, I assume, it's not yet clear how much of a productivity gain
will occur where, so they don't even know exactly who to fire yet.
I was wondering what others on HN are seeing. How are your
companies approaching this? Is attrition with non-replacement a
common strategy? If so, what might that mean for the future job
market and unemployment rate?
Author : simonmesmith
Score : 4 points
Date : 2023-08-15 21:42 UTC (1 hours ago)
| snappyc wrote:
| [dead]
| bitshaker wrote:
| I started a company with a combination of no-code tools and LLMs
| to help me program some of the rest.
|
| I've got a degree in CS, but haven't programmed professionally in
| 15 years.
|
| These new tools have allowed me to create something even larger
| teams would struggle with on my own in a matter of months.
|
| I'm astonished at the progress I'm able to make without much
| assistance.
|
| There is often something I'll need to sit and debug or figure out
| the name for if I want to ask Google or the LLM helping me code,
| but that's about it.
|
| As far as I'm concerned, that means I haven't needed to hire at
| least 2-3 full time engineers, be fully bootstrapped, and
| profitable from day 1 at launch.
|
| Maybe I'll hire people in the future, but so far the LLMs have
| replaced engineers, copywriters, designers, and customer support
| roles. I can handle it all on my own or have the LLM (in the case
| of customer support) do a decent enough job that I don't even
| have to do it anymore.
| deanmoriarty wrote:
| Inspiring! What LLM are you using?
| simonmesmith wrote:
| So in this case, it's negation of 2-3 hires, and likely
| negation of using freelancers as well. I'm curious to know
| which LLMs you're relying on for which tasks.
| mechagodzilla wrote:
| But it didn't really "replace" anyone in this case - you
| started a new company that might never have existed, and it
| might only be economically viable _because_ you didn't need to
| hire those people. Voila! We have a net increase in employment
| thanks to ChatGPT.
| simonmesmith wrote:
| I think that's a great point. Though now we need to determine
| whether the result is a company that wouldn't otherwise
| exist, or a company that would exist but with lower profit
| margins. Also, would be good to know if this new company can
| undercut competition, which would likely mean that
| competitors had to find similar efficiencies.
| hacoo wrote:
| What no-code tools are you using?
| elfbargpt wrote:
| I am excited about AI / machine learning, and I do think ChatGPT
| is a really cool engineering feat, but in it's current state I
| don't see it displacing too many jobs.
|
| Basically right now it's a _fairly accurate_ assistant that you
| can communicate with via text only. I just don 't know how many
| jobs can be replaced with that.
| simonmesmith wrote:
| I'm curious to know what you've tried it for, and whether
| you've tried GPT-3.5 or GPT-4.
| whateveracct wrote:
| 0 impact
| simonmesmith wrote:
| Any discussion of it at all at your company?
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