So say our sources, who warn job cuts, outsourcing risk depriving biz of seasoned technical talent
IBM's plan to replace thousands of roles with AI presently looks more like outsourcing jobs to India, at the expense of organizational competency.Our sources have asked not to be identified to protect their ongoing relationships with Big Blue. Suffice to say they were or are employed as senior technologists in business units that span multiple locations and were privy to company communications: These are not views from the narrow entrance to a single cubicle.
"With AI tools writing that code for us ... why pay for senior-level staff when you can promote a youngster who doesn't really know any better at a much lower price?" he said."Plus, once you have a seasoned programmer write code that is by law the company's IP and it is fed into an AI library, it basically learns it and the author is no longer needed."The truth is that Watsonx isn’t even available to employees.
Big Blue’s developers have little experience with other code assistants, or even ChatGPT, thanks to an internal ban on using externally sourced LLMs, Blake added. He rated IBM developers’ knowledge of LLMs as likely “substantially less than at other major tech firms.”Yet by getting rid of experienced technical staff, IBM is making itself dependent on the very technology that eludes it.
Blake pointed to Stack Overflow's developer survey data to support the contention that the average age of software developers is rising and the proportion of those with junior-level experience is shrinking. That's"If it weren't for LLMs, there would be a serious lack of programmers in the next five years as Gen Xers started retiring," said Blake."I had planned on coding 'til the day I died, but now I think I’ll be talking to LLMs primarily instead.
"Since then they have not hired anyone," said Casey, noting that six years went by without a US-based full-time engineer being hired."But they continued to cut staff yearly. Even as management begged them that we couldn't lose any more people."
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