Last month I wrote about how artificial intelligence is coming for white collar jobs. Well I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. And if you’re in IT you might like to think about a new career path.
Once thought a guaranteed path to a secure job and attractive salary, IT workers say they are battling their toughest times yet. One contractor has listed his house and another says he’s on a benefit trying to make ends meet.
When Cameron Harris returned to New Zealand after working overseas as a boat builder, he decided to go into a trade that would see him through future economic storms.
Then 23, he went back to school to study PC engineering, before working his way up to being an IT specialist.
[…] For many years Harris had a successful career providing IT support to big companies and, for the most part, being paid well.
But in recent times, Harris said, there has been a shift to the point the now-40-year-old is living on a benefit and stretching his savings account to afford food and rent each week.
[…] Dan Carson, 42, is in a similar boat. The IT contractor said he’s had no full-time work for almost two years and has listed his house for sale as he can’t afford to service it any more.
“It’s a wasteland and I’m not sure I want to live in NZ any more.”
He said when work first started slowing down, he “wasn’t worried or stressed”.
“I gave myself three to six weeks, then I should have a job, no problem whatsoever.”
But time passed and still no offers came.
“It was very difficult. I got to a point where I was just going to wait it out as long as I could, but I was just going backwards into such a financial hole,” he said.
Although Carson is experienced and has strong references, “It’s not that you’re not good enough to have the job, it’s just impossible to cut through,” he said.
He is now contracting one hour a day for a start-up called Capital Edge, mostly setting up AI contact centres, but there is not enough work to sustain him.
Capital Edge chief executive Kelly Sutherland said the businesses the company provides AI systems to could no longer afford to employ IT people.”
My bet is that they can, it’s just that AI is lot cheaper.
[…] AI agents were now handling about one million customer conversations, according to Al Jazeera.
{…] “I’ve spent a good chunk of my life getting qualifications, and we’ve been told our whole life, ‘study hard, work hard, and life will look after you’, which is not the case,” Harris said.
While that may have worked for Boomers, it sure hasn’t for everybody else.
Waikato University software engineering department Associate Professor Te Taka Keegan (Waikato-Maniapoto, Ngāti Porou and Ngāti Whakaue), said coding in particular had been affected “quite dramatically” by AI.
“[AI is] able to generate really good code.” But there is still a need for programmers, Keegan said.
“I personally think it’s just going to change the focus of the computer science students a little bit.”
How cute.
He said he doesn’t see an issue with AI taking jobs in the industry, because the more AI was involved in all industries, the more need there would be for computer science students to be able to shape that AI and program it.
Yeah sure. Here’s a little secret. Providing you know how to write good prompts, you don’t need to know how to write a single line of code to create good software. As for needing programmers to program, sure, like every programmer is going to be programming AI models.
“I think this is an exciting time to be a computer science student, because there’s so many opportunities opening up.”
Carson agreed there would always have to be humans to train AI, so the jobs would not be wiped out entirely.
Except you don’t need to be a computer science graduate to train AI. In fact I would say that they would make pretty lousy AI trainers.
And, of course, this isn’t all bad news. Just like the internet took away many jobs, it has created far more new jobs and new opportunities.
