AI, CPD and the Minimum Viable Human

The jobs market is full of talent, says Niall Kitson, and employers want to see as little of it as possible

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Image: Tim Gouw via Pexels

I’d like to expand on a point from my last column about the reconfiguring of the jobs market for software engineers. I argued that mass redundancies had created a three-tier talent pool: a top tier of generational talent hoarded by MNCs, a fat middle of skilled developers bolstered by the return of thousands of laid-off developers, and a shrinking entry level.

Just when I thought I was about to get accused of ‘AI doomerism’ HTMX CEO Yaroslav Lapin (@JLarky) painted this even more depressing picture in a post on X:

In the next 10 years we will have what used to be programming jobs split clearly into three roles:

• highly specialized manual coders who output 10x better quality code than any model
• “normal” developers who are augmenting themselves with AI to do most of day to day software development (normal best practices apply, 99% of code is reviewed and understood by human)
• “slop wranglers” who are building everything with AI and using AI to keep slop spinning with AI review, AI monitoring, AI project management and AI ideation

Under Lapin’s model a career looks something like this: degree-level qualification > use AI for everything > get a ‘normal’ job where you’ll finally get to practice what you trained for. You’ll also notice above that project ideation and management fall under the ‘slop wrangler’ purview, but that’s an argument for another day.

It occurred to me that both visions overlook the importance of something complimentary to industry expertise: ongoing professional development through programmes and certifications.

Competitive salary aside, one of the tech sector’s great value adds is an emphasis on continuing professional development (CPD) as delivered by bodies like ICS and Technology Ireland ICT Skillnet. Any successful career is a function of timing and a skillset cultivated by access to outside expertise. It’s not cheap but the return on investment makes it worth the effort. The word ‘invest’ is doing a lot of work in that last sentence, because ‘investing’ is not what Big Tech wants right now. The zeitgeist is all about ‘efficiency’, lowering operational expenditure, and any other way you want to describe firing thousands of engineers to free up money to invest in a technology that might restore levels of productivity last seen before said firings.

I’m tying Lapin’s view to CPD as discussion circles about the rantionale for Oracle’s decision to let go as many as 30,000 employees from across its business. Conventional wisdom of ‘last in, first out’ did not apply as many senior staff members with stock options were let go, possibly selected by algorithm. To add insult to injury, according to Official Layoff on X, Oracle is rehiring 8,000 of those staff as contractors, doing the same job for less money and no benefits. No health insurance, no gym membership, and you can be sure, no CPD.

So what happens when you remove CPD? I would argue this leads us to the rise of a new kind of tech worker: the Minimum Viable Human – a short-term contractor with just the right kind of expertise to solve a problem, whose output will be fed into a company AI model and never needed again. The idea of training your replacement becomes a testament to a job well done. Heck, it might even get you a new contract so you can keep your place in the ‘fat middle’.

The jobs market of the future won’t demand excellence. Having just enough education to perform will be the ideal.

By the way, warehouses are getting firebombed and public representatives are being attacked over their support for data centres in the US. I’m sure there’s no link whatsoever.

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