Could ChatGPT Cause a Shortage of Tech Workers?
Companies may well cost-cut themselves into a corner.
Everyone is speculating about the impact of AI on tech workers. At this point, experts and the general public are divided on whether AI will cause job losses or job gains overall. I think it’s useful to look back at previous waves of innovation and look at how they impacted both workers and companies.
The Rise and Fall of COBOL
Up until the 1980s, COBOL was the language of choice for large mainframe systems, especially financial systems. As other languages like Java started gaining popularity, new programmers stopped learning COBOL. This was in part because developer culture very much encourages chasing whatever is new and shiny, but also developers have to prioritize developing skills that will make money over ones that don’t appear to have much of a future.
The thing is, many of those mainframe systems are still out there, so COBOL developers are in high demand now. Do the math — someone who was working in the 80s is likely retired or not far from retirement. If companies and agencies are going to rewrite these old systems into something that can be maintained by programmers that will still be working in 10 or 15 years, they’ll need people who can both do COBOL and some other, newer language. Where are these people…
