Approximately 10,000 employees and founders at OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Nvidia have each accumulated over $20 million in wealth as AI compresses traditional tech employment disruption cycles for software engineers
Engineers anticipate shifting to higher abstraction layers within one year.
ironically think it’ll be a sad time for ai researchers this year. they are first in the hotpath of RSI and probably the market for them will shrink or at least their pricing power will be reduced as this generation of models commoditizes the skills that made them rare
(for the moderate to good ones. the world class ones will see their leverage increased 100-1000x, but probably a tiny set of superstars)
roon@tszzlironically think it’ll be a sad time for ai researchers this year. they are first in the hotpath of RSI and probably the market for them will shrink or at least their pricing power will be reduced as this generation of models commoditizes the skills that made them rare
@infoxiao Its gemini mainly, rest are reasonably good with expert users.
Xiao Ma@infoxiao"No, LLMs themselves cannot do this yet."
#94Sholto Douglas@_SHOLTODOUGLAS10/10 no notes
Vlad Feinberg@FeinbergVladHow to land a job at a frontier lab https://vladfeinberg.com/2026/05/10/how-to-land-a-job-at-a-frontier-lab.html
@tszzl It's the golden age of asking questions. Perhaps the best of time for research too.
roon@tszzlironically think it’ll be a sad time for ai researchers this year. they are first in the hotpath of RSI and probably the market for them will shrink or at least their pricing power will be reduced as this generation of models commoditizes the skills that made them rare
#214swyx🛬 SFO@SWYXthis seems quite doable in the space of a single 2-3 hour workshop — any brave soul want to try to livecode this for people as a learning exercise?
Vlad Feinberg@FeinbergVladHow to land a job at a frontier lab https://vladfeinberg.com/2026/05/10/how-to-land-a-job-at-a-frontier-lab.html
#214swyx🛬 SFO@SWYXvolunteer here https://ai.engineer/cfp !
swyx🛬 SFO@swyxthis seems quite doable in the space of a single 2-3 hour workshop — any brave soul want to try to livecode this for people as a learning exercise?
#241Aidan Clark@_AIDAN_CLARK_The core advice of "get good at an in-demand skill which is new enough not everyone will know it" is great -- it's what I did inadvertently (knowing Tensorflow) -- but I cannot for the life of me endorse "give up all your weekends and become a work machine".
Vlad Feinberg@FeinbergVladHow to land a job at a frontier lab https://vladfeinberg.com/2026/05/10/how-to-land-a-job-at-a-frontier-lab.html
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Aidan Clark@_aidan_clark_The core advice of "get good at an in-demand skill which is new enough not everyone will know it" is great -- it's what I did inadvertently (knowing Tensorflow) -- but I cannot for the life of me endorse "give up all your weekends and become a work machine".
@Suhail @tszzl You mean like… after they’re done and lost influence?
Suhail@Suhail@tszzl Will build deep empathy for the rest of humanity which is net positive. But 100%.
#437Xiao Ma@INFOXIAO"No, LLMs themselves cannot do this yet."
Vlad Feinberg@FeinbergVladHow to land a job at a frontier lab https://vladfeinberg.com/2026/05/10/how-to-land-a-job-at-a-frontier-lab.html
#488kache@YACINEMTBIt's a very strange place to be working in tech. You can have your entire career about to disappear in front of you and yet you maintain a sense of calm. The truth is working in tech was never stable it always changed every couple of years. The only constant has change
eigenrobot@eigenrobotAI is not currently good enough to cause me to lose my job but i expect ive got maybe a year to figure out how to move up several abstraction layers some of which may not even exist yet this is going to get weird because idk how people starting careers will even begin
#488kache@YACINEMTBJust probably going to be a lot less do nothing work at fang jobs. But I never like those anyways.
kache@yacineMTBIt's a very strange place to be working in tech. You can have your entire career about to disappear in front of you and yet you maintain a sense of calm. The truth is working in tech was never stable it always changed every couple of years. The only constant has change
#488kache@YACINEMTB4/10 of my breakthroughs have come from a conversation I've had with an AI researcher friend of mine. I just take vague memories of our conversations together and put it into GPT 5.5 Codex and out the other end I get breakthroughs
I think humans are going to stay useful
roon@tszzlironically think it’ll be a sad time for ai researchers this year. they are first in the hotpath of RSI and probably the market for them will shrink or at least their pricing power will be reduced as this generation of models commoditizes the skills that made them rare
#488kache@YACINEMTBA lot of open quote prestigious close quote machine learning research is indistinguishable from react.js slop
kache@yacineMTB4/10 of my breakthroughs have come from a conversation I've had with an AI researcher friend of mine. I just take vague memories of our conversations together and put it into GPT 5.5 Codex and out the other end I get breakthroughs I think humans are going to stay useful
#488kache@YACINEMTBAnd man the prestigious stuff for me at least is the stupid f****** ideas like hey why don't you just add a little bit of the God state as an auxiliary loss. It's so stupid of course it would work
kache@yacineMTBA lot of open quote prestigious close quote machine learning research is indistinguishable from react.js slop
@andersonbcdefg AI researchers when working on AI that automates other jobs: 😎🚀 AI researchers when working on AI that automates AI research: hello human resources??l
Ben (no treats)@andersonbcdefgML researchers who thought they were escaping the permanent underclass by joining an organization whose explicit goal is to automate ML research
#631Suhail@SUHAIL@tszzl Will build deep empathy for the rest of humanity which is net positive. But 100%.
roon@tszzlironically think it’ll be a sad time for ai researchers this year. they are first in the hotpath of RSI and probably the market for them will shrink or at least their pricing power will be reduced as this generation of models commoditizes the skills that made them rare
#839Beff (e/acc)@BEFFJEZOSThis batch of AI researchers will be the SF landlords forever
roon@tszzlironically think it’ll be a sad time for ai researchers this year. they are first in the hotpath of RSI and probably the market for them will shrink or at least their pricing power will be reduced as this generation of models commoditizes the skills that made them rare
#982Ben (no treats)@ANDERSONBCDEFGML researchers who thought they were escaping the permanent underclass by joining an organization whose explicit goal is to automate ML research
roon@tszzlironically think it’ll be a sad time for ai researchers this year. they are first in the hotpath of RSI and probably the market for them will shrink or at least their pricing power will be reduced as this generation of models commoditizes the skills that made them rare
@tszzl weirdly it seems like AI researchers might be automated before SWEs. perhaps not what I would have expected a few years ago
roon@tszzlironically think it’ll be a sad time for ai researchers this year. they are first in the hotpath of RSI and probably the market for them will shrink or at least their pricing power will be reduced as this generation of models commoditizes the skills that made them rare
#1361akbir.@AKBIRKHANit’s fitting we should taste the emotional discomfort of obsolescence first
roon@tszzlironically think it’ll be a sad time for ai researchers this year. they are first in the hotpath of RSI and probably the market for them will shrink or at least their pricing power will be reduced as this generation of models commoditizes the skills that made them rare
#1856Vlad Feinberg@FEINBERGVLADHow to land a job at a frontier lab
Deedy@deedydasThe vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation). Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there. Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI. As a result, 1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb. Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more. 2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future). Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire" 3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed. Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies. 4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either. No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money." I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here. Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success". Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.