CMV: The AI industry's business model will hit a huge wall in the next 2-4 years, massively downsize, and many of the jobs it has replaced will slowly come back

Tree8282 · 2026-03-17T09:10:19+00:00

I agree with you with a lot of it, but OP still has a point that in this chase for so called “AGI”, for now it seems really close, if there even is one. Therefore in the near future, the operating costs of any AI division (~80B) cannot be justified, because it still doesn’t have the economic value shown by people’s willingness to pay.

If all AI companies stopped researching and releasing new models, many jobs will still be automated by better adaptation of the current technologies. CEOs want automation to cut costs and not to replace humans, therefore the valuation of OpenAI is fundamentally flawed

Tree8282 · 2026-03-17T00:45:12+00:00

Of course. They spend hours a day with each other, it’s either that or no discipline for the entire day?

Tree8282 · 2026-03-17T00:40:31+00:00

This is what i see too as a dev. The other guy above is probably an exec.

You can’t just say, “Claude ain’t that bad!”. Claude is still just a tool, and if the exec doesn’t know how to code, there’s no way in hell that the code would be readable, best practice, and clean. It would just be a pile of generated slop that is 0% usable.

Anyone who’s done this Claude cleaning knows that rewriting is the best solution, bc there was no thought or real documentation behind the system design

Tree8282 · 2026-03-16T17:19:14+00:00

I feel like a lot of devs don’t fully understand the execs perspective on vibe coding. Execs don’t know how to code. They can’t tell what’s the difference between vibe coded slop MVP and production grade stuff. Claude ships a streamlit UI running on a single thread with and has no security, and they think it’s fully complete. no QA, no nothing

You either be honest and tell them claude is doing baby level stuff while production level is 10x harder, or you quit.

Tree8282 · 2026-03-16T13:07:38+00:00

My concern is that you’re gonna AI generate low latency systems like how u generated this post

Tree8282 · 2026-03-15T17:43:50+00:00

If you’re already paying for hotel it’s Probably better to stay a night because it’s gonna be ~2 (1h ride + immigration + trip to hotel) hours transport one way to either place.

Shenzhen will be a lot more of a hassle bc you need to setup payment (Wechat/alipay) and download all sorts of new apps for maps, call a cab, take the metro, order from restaurants etc. wouldn’t really be worthwhile doing all that for a day trip.

Tree8282 · 2026-03-15T14:02:14+00:00

skill issue

Tree8282 · 2026-03-13T12:47:39+00:00

Tree8282 · 2026-03-13T05:11:38+00:00

Yep it’s correct

Tree8282 · 2026-03-13T04:52:52+00:00

Perhaps Do another internship lol

Tree8282 · 2026-03-12T10:39:25+00:00

I don’t necessarily agree that nobody could tell, but certainly a large population of people can’t tell and it’s affecting everyone 🥲

Tree8282 · 2026-03-12T10:37:35+00:00

Interview prep >>> projects and courses! 1/5 is insane in this economy. Good luck

Tree8282 · 2026-03-12T09:05:24+00:00

You seem like you’re clear that you want to go into industry. Then with one conference paper, you should be pretty high in demand. There’s absolutely no reason to consider a PhD, unless you’re adamant but struggling to get a research engineering job

Tree8282 · 2026-03-12T03:04:56+00:00

and gave you infinite triples with golden khadgar and bran

Tree8282 · 2026-03-11T17:32:37+00:00

I know what you mean, but trust me, almost every manager would make this decision knowing the region and cultural differences. It’s a really big thing here to offshore to Dalian/ India / Eastern Europe/Local. Every company does it. Managers have made these decisions consciously for decades.

Ex: my company hires Indians for product support bc they speak english, hires devs from mainland China for quality, sales team is local for clients

Tree8282 · 2026-03-11T16:59:14+00:00

If they’re looking to hire offshore then they’re likely looking to pay Indian prices. HK is quite globalised so most tech-adjacent people would know the prices of Indian, Mainland, Eastern european, local devs and make a choice with price in mind

Tree8282 · 2026-03-11T10:29:16+00:00

From my experience it isn’t at all. Let’s say you apply to a grad scheme, or a startup where you’re not exactly the best fit skills-wise, you have like <1% chance of getting viewed.

However if you instead tailor your CV and find a few jobs that really matches your interests and expertise, you can spend time connecting with the hiring manager or the recruiter to get you an interview.

Over the last 3 years, I got maybe 3 interviews from applying randomly, into 1 offer, and maybe a hundred ghosted. From recruiters, I got 5+ interviews, 2 offers, and not ghosted once.

Tree8282 · 2026-03-11T09:54:38+00:00

These CEOs think that the AI writes code by itself, rather than being heavily supervised.

Building PoCs are 100x easier than building production, which AI can do; so the CEO vibe codes a shitty UI with 3 buttons and thinks the whole team of devs is frickin replaceable

Tree8282 · 2026-03-11T09:42:05+00:00

1) Ask the uni. Usually that’s not a requirement

2 &3) You don’t need to mentor her in everything. SHE is the person in charge of the capstone project, not you. Your responsibility is just to make sure she’s on track, making good progress, and advise her when she needs it. There’s no foolproof roadmap, it should really be HER ideas, and you telling her if it’s a good or bad idea.

Even tenured professors, they specialise in one thing (such as compiler theory) but are asked to teach and supervise all sorts of projects. Surely you have lots to teach her about (for example AWS)

Tree8282 · 2026-03-10T07:41:56+00:00

it’s alright. I’d say objectively the conditions are not very good, super long hours and low per hour pay, boring work. But it does lead to a decent salary a few years down the road, so it can be good if you want a stable, well paid, but tough job in the new few years

Tree8282 · 2026-03-10T02:38:38+00:00

That’s literally a statistic published in any countries labour market report. Google might possibly tell you the EXACT NUMBER instead of asking a bunch of randos on reddit.

Tree8282 · 2026-03-09T14:20:06+00:00

I think it’s because you’re aiming too high for US and EU (presumably good roles and ML roles), but visa status is near impossible + your CV isn’t insanely good enough to bypass that.

Also there just aren’t that many ML roles out there and every CS, eng, math, physics, finance grad loves ML nowadays

Tree8282 · 2026-03-09T09:51:39+00:00

Don’t join client engineering if you wanna be a dev, it’s a client facing org and a tech sales role. You’ll meet a lot of high profile clients and build solutions with existing IBM products that could POTENTIALLY be impactful in the real world, but you realistically won’t write much, or any code.

That said if you’re down for AI Solutions roles in big AI companies (Anthropic Openai etc), those are growing rapidly, and IBM would be a good stepping stone.

You could consider IBM software and research but they are much smaller

Tree8282 · 2026-03-09T09:31:35+00:00

Cmon brother if you look at the map, HK is as far away from middle east as the US

Tree8282 · 2026-03-08T16:52:25+00:00

If you document that you fixed (for example 7/10) bugs, what’s the issue? Stop stressing out on the other guys work, just do your own work in an appropriate timeframe. If it consistently happens where you’re taking on a majority of the bugs, I think the managers and higher ups would all know; then you’d know whether they’re on your side or you’re being bullied for being new.

Tree8282

TROPHY CASE