AI Backlash, Layoffs & the Power of Community

0:00[Music] Live from the Orpheum Theater in Vancouver. It's the Cloud Summit Vive Lounge with your host Kris Krüg. Hey, what's up internet? This is Kris Krüg. I'm here with Bibi Souza. How's it going? It's going great. I'm just having a blast here. Thanks for making a few minutes. I know we have to keep this short. Bibi's hosting Cloud Summit here at WebSummit in Vancouver at the Orpheum Theater. Oh my gosh, what a cool event it is. I'm super excited just seeing everybody's faces. It makes me really happy. people that are coming out to learn about cloud and just you know network. It makes me happy. I'm all about community. So you are and that actually is right where we're going. So

0:37here's what I want from you. You've been hosting these events VanJS and you're organizing community cloud summit and you've really been putting a lot of juice into the community and you've been doing it with a regular rhythm month after month for a while now over a year. What are you seeing? What's like going on out there? What's on people's minds both individuals and companies job seekers and and entrepreneurs? like give me the lay of the land. So, I see a lot of fear, a lot of people unemployed, a lot of layoffs, including myself. And I think there's a bit of a shift in terms of the sentiment about AI. So, a few months ago, everyone was so excited and just

1:15like jazzed about AI. Now, I feel like we're starting to feel the the negative wave. The rubber hits the road. Yes. Exactly. And so people are starting to get laid off. They're starting to get replaced. And so there's a lot of questions and fears. Where is this going? Nobody knows, right? And so, but that's just my sentiment right now.

1:36Do you got any sense of like what we can offer these folks? Like folks who are feeling fearful, folks who are seeing their careers change, like what's your what's your perspective on like what do we do about this kind of, you know? I would say where I see this going and how we can help people navigate this is providing guidance and a bit of mentorship. So there's a lot of people now that sort of like reject AI. They don't use it at all. They're like this is not for me, whatever. Right? I think if we can give them a a bit of like a framework on how to use tools to get ahead, maybe that would diminish the fear a

2:14little bit. I'm shocked to hear you say this. I'm I'm honestly shocked. I my my intuition told me that as time passes people are warming up to it. But you're telling me no, you actually think there might be a little bit of a backlash taking place. And then I guess even one more counterintuitive thing visav hearing what you have to say is like I thought software people JavaScript people were really starting to get hip to like this is powerful and I need to integrate it and like I have to skill myself up because it just feels like in the last 6 months it's impacts in software development have been more profound than almost anywhere else. Yes,

2:48absolutely. I think there's two types of people. That's my sense. There's people like me who kind of reject AI and don't really like using it. I have reasons and I've used extensively, but I just have reasons not to use it anymore as much. I still do. And then there's the fanatics, the people that are, oh my god, everything AI. And honestly, I'm a bit jealous. I wish I was that jazzed up about AI. I just feel like after being laid off, the sentiment is not the best. So I'm in the group that is kind of like uh this is not the best. We have to control roll it out slowly making sure people are you know

3:27pivoting into different careers that we have a lifeboat for everybody when the we build a lifeboat along the same time. I mean that's part of the thing like kind of but we're building the boat as we go and some people are just drowning. Yeah. And so like how do we catch up as a society? I think it's a bigger discussion right it's not just localized to BC it's the whole world. How do you adjust? There's so many hands. There's 8 million people. But if AI can replace 80%, what are we supposed to do?

3:54Farmers? I would love that, but like I need to prepare, if you know what I mean. So, when you're re-evaluating your relationship with AI, what's the areas you've kicked it out of? And which are the areas that you're still allowing it to hang out in? Yeah. So, low-level coding, I still use it. Anything that's more complex, I don't let it touch because it does sometimes create unintended consequences. Oh, yeah. It can touch files that it's not supposed to. It can refactor things that I didn't ask it to. So when it's something more complex, I feel like it's not there yet.

4:23Maybe it's my prompting. I've completely changed my perspective on vibe coding or my approach, I should say. At first, I was having to build me all sorts of and I was just like trying to speak into existence what I wanted. Now I'm trying to speak into existence testing and evaluation frameworks that allow the thing to write code on its own that only gets deployed if it passes all this other stuff. And so I'm trying to like better I was trying to do it in the traditional way before and now I'm just doing it in the AI adapted way I guess or something. But I'm still experimenting in that zone. Nice. What else is on your mind? I got to let you

4:53go. Yes. What else is on my mind? Community. Community. If you don't if you're not part of a community like Chris's or mine, you have to find it. Especially if you're an immigrant, find it. The power of community networking is what will get you ahead. Yeah, we got together during all this stuff. I guess it's like the best thing we got is each other. You know, we don't know where the world's going, but we'll at least go there together. Exactly. So, that's my takeaway. Cool. Thanks for joining us, KK with Bibi. Over and out from Cloud Summit Vancouver.

5:23Thanks, Pixel Wizard. Yeah.