War of the Machines

When we talk about how AI is gonna end humanity one day — and this imagined date is actually getting closer every time we talk about it — everybody almost instantly thinks about the iconic opening scene of the Terminator movie.

Cold steel skeletons with red glowing eyes; walking on piles of human bones then cracking a skull under their feet.

Yeah… well, it’s not gonna be like that. Sorry. Our end will be much more lame.

If we look around these days in the IT job market we see the chaos already unfolding. Layoffs after layoffs, open source is suffocating under AI slop and if you actually have a SaaS idea, right after launch — if you are lucky not earlier — another 20 copycats emerge from the generative hell.

The very same thing that actually brought us some kind of enhancement, giving us a chance to spend more time on human things instead of busting our ass on writing endless code or designing the n+1th UI layout, the very same thing — that is by the way still advertised as our lord and savior just for 20 bucks a month — is ending small and big businesses. But mostly human livelihoods.

“Claude can make that in five minutes” is the new “my niece can build me a website”, but we know that was never a working solution, except when that particular niece was a literal developer or designer.

Don’t get me wrong. I use AI, a lot. To make my workflow faster, more focused, more outcome oriented. I can work on the parts I’m the best with and enjoy the most, and delegate the shoveling to the machine.

And if we could take out greed from the equation this could solve a lot of IT work related issues, make us more efficient and produce much better products.

I know, I know, that’s not how capitalism works… I know. But not now.

Anyways, the big big but…

What nobody really expected is the backlash of over-automating recruitment. ATS systems were a thing for a long time, but mostly a wonky useless piece of software that was just sitting there and helped out recruiters to forward stuff to appropriate folders.

Today the reality is completely different, or if you insist “completely fucked”.

There is a weird warfare between job seekers and recruiters and on the front line we have machines from both sides.

Actually it’s the same how drone operations are key in modern war. But war is stupid, so… anyway, that’s not the topic today.

The recruiters create stupid long and fluffed job descriptions and their system filters every applicant for an exact match of all the keywords on that description. Everything.

On the other side people strike back and generate a custom CV for each application that contains the exact keywords triggering a good rating, so it might be forwarded to a human being. And then mass apply. To everything.

But the hunger games reached such a peak where you got hundreds of applicants for every open position. Technically spamming the shit out of the system. The ATS can’t do anything really because everybody seems to be a perfect fit. Dropping the bomb on the recruiters who obviously flip their desk and walk out the window.

By the time they would actually see an actually matching candidate — if that person for some magical reason gets endorsed by the automatic system — they are so burned out by the whole process they can’t care anymore.

So both sides are sitting there unhappy, while all the serial-appliers flood every channel. And yes now you can simply use your AI agent to harass recruiters via email, LinkedIn message or even phone calls.

What remains for those who just want to work and not participate in this madness?

Personal connections, ex colleagues, friends, the “I know a guy”.

But how when every week we read about at least one major layoff, and probably there are hundreds not making the news because not widely known companies.

People keeping a low profile, doing their job in silence, not even gonna talk to HR if not mandatory, and not going to raise the question if they could add more manpower to the project, because hey “you have unlimited ChatGPT credits, no need for more people” right?

And at the end, everybody just stands there with a broken system. Without professionals who could actually fix it.

The machine slows down. Stops. Stagnates. Dies.

That’s how it started, not with a skull crushing metal skeleton… we sold our own future to them for some extra profit.