An article by Somnath Singh published in Level Up Coding entitled “The Era of High-Paying Tech Jobs is Over” convinces me that an assumption made in “A Solution to Affordable Housing” was incorrect. That assumption was discussed in Chapter 4 – Business Owners – Victimized and Ignored. I assumed that the solutions offered would be most valuable for tech companies forced to pay rapidly increasing salaries to their current tech employees. The tech layoffs just starting to expand in 2023 were assumed to be unwise because those same employees would be needed again at the same or increased salaries as tech industry conditions improve. That was a bad assumption as shown by the fact that in 2023, over 400,000 people in tech lost their jobs. Over 44,000 terminations occurred in January 2024 in 211 tech companies and getting rehired is becoming increasingly difficult for those terminated. Mr. Singh’s article explains why a huge shift involving the arrival of AI is causing a sharp turn in tech history. I am convinced he is right and I was wrong in assuming the current tech workforce to be a prime target for the solution offered in my book.
The days of universities producing hireable grads with the required coding skills has been changed by the ascent of open source and global collaboration. Self-taught coders can now bypass traditional education. Coding is no longer an elite skill. The pandemic showed many companies they could operate remotely and that opened the door to the pool of world talent. In 2023 AI reached a point where it was recognized as changing the whole trajectory of software development. AI will allow anyone with expertise in a specific domain to create software solutions for that domain. The next step already underway is that human language itself is becoming the new protocol. Tech companies will be able to easily hire a coder or simply use ChatGPT to do the job. That will allow a small fraction of current employees to do the work of people who are laid off. That is the bad news now unfolding for graduates with Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Computer and Information Sciences earned since 2000 and newcomers graduating now.
Today, AI specialist engineers and researchers are in short supply and some are commanding huge salaries. This is the new elite workforce emerging in the tech industry. A network model that involves using more contracted workers instead of full-time employees will replace centralized teams of coders because the work will be able to be broken up into smaller pieces. The era of high-paying tech jobs of the type that flourished in the last quarter century will be over. This sharp turn in tech history will generate a huge increase in tech company profits as evidenced by the many multi-billion dollar AI investments underway by tech companies and early successes like Nvidia.
More profits combined with far fewer and more highly paid employees opens up a new challenge for the solution offered in my book. I believe it redirects early adoption efforts to companies that are building their business strategy around work that is stable in time – workers who perform jobs that won’t be greatly affected by AI, where long term affordable housing can be the key to employee recruitment and retention and payroll stability for employers. It is likely the new members of the emerging AI elite will earn wages that will leave them without an affordable housing problem. This fortunate group can choose to either participate in the luxury home speculation discussed in Chapter 8 or take on the role of employer in employer/employee partnerships for the benefit of their support staff.