AI Job Panic Debunked: Why Tech Giants Are Hiring More Humans Than Ever

The Real Story Behind AI and Jobs

I've seen some silly predictions about the future of work lately. If you're worried about AI destroying jobs, take a quick trip through Anthropic's careers page. It's one of my favorite spots on the internet right now.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is among the loudest voices warning that AI could erase many white-collar jobs. He's been especially outspoken about coding, given Anthropic's Claude Code is so powerful.

A successful editor once told me to focus on what people and companies do, not what they say. So let's look at the jobs Anthropic is trying to fill right now.

Top of the list: software engineering roles. The AI company with the most effective coding-automation machine on earth is looking to hire more than 100 coding experts.

This job posting stood out to me. Anthropic is hiring an iOS developer to build mobile apps. I thought you could just vibe-code apps these days? Apparently not.

Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, was asked about this recently. If this AI tool is writing most or all of Anthropic's code these days, why is the company still hiring so many software developers?

"Someone has to prompt the Claudes, talk to customers, coordinate with other teams, decide what to build next," Cherny replied on X. "Engineering is changing and great engineers are more important than ever."

Let that sink in. Software development is probably the job that is most disrupted by AI. Models have gotten good at coding because it's relatively easy to evaluate good versus bad outputs. That's because the code either works, or it doesn't, when deployed. This creates clear yes/no signals that are really valuable for training and fine-tuning new AI models.

So if Anthropic is still hiring more than 100 software engineers, then other types of jobs that are less impacted by AI should probably endure as well.

Proving my point, Anthropic has 32 finance jobs open, along with 33 in marketing, 16 in legal, and more than 100 in sales.

I'm not just telling you this to make you feel better. When extreme AI job predictions are made, it leads to dumb ideas such as banning data center construction.

So, take a breath. AI is just a (powerful) tool to help humans get more work done. I'll leave you with final thoughts on this topic from Jensen Huang (who, by the way, is hiring humans like crazy).

In a recent interview, he argued that fears of mass job destruction often confuse the "tasks" involved in a job with the broader "purpose" of the role. AI, in his view, changes how tasks get done, but the purpose remains the same. And that means, the technology probably won't destroy jobs and could even increase demand for the people responsible for outcomes at work.