The Industry That Was Going to Be Automated Has Automated Some Things and Hired More People to Manage the Automation
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
NYC Tech and AI: The Sector That Keeps Not Dying on Schedule Keeps Hiring
NEW YORK, NY — New York City’s technology sector, which employs approximately 380,000 people and has been warned about its imminent disruption by artificial intelligence at regular intervals for the past four years, has not been disrupted. It has been transformed: certain job categories have shrunk (junior developers doing routine coding tasks, data entry specialists, certain QA roles), other job categories have expanded (AI engineers, machine learning specialists, prompt engineers, AI product managers), and the net employment change has been roughly positive despite the layoffs at major technology companies that have been documented throughout the period.
The AI engineering roles that have expanded in the NYC tech sector are paid at levels that reflect both the scarcity of the relevant skills and the importance of those skills to companies whose competitive position depends on AI implementation. Entry-level AI engineering positions at New York technology companies regularly exceed $180,000 in base salary, with total compensation including equity frequently exceeding $300,000. These numbers are accurate and they exist in a city where a one-bedroom apartment costs $3,000 per month minimum and where they therefore represent genuine comfort rather than extravagance.
The Rest of the Sector
The people who are not AI engineers working in or adjacent to the technology sector are navigating a labor market that has become more uncertain and in some categories less remunerative than it was three years ago. The junior developer whose routine coding tasks have been partially automated has a more difficult job market than the senior engineer who specializes in AI integration. The disruption has been real and unevenly distributed rather than comprehensive. LLMs are powerful and the people who implement them are compensated accordingly; managing the distributional consequences of technological change requires attending to who benefits and at what level. The AI engineers are comfortable. The junior developers are upskilling. The sector continues.