Why does getting a job in tech suck right now? (Is it AI?!?)
Why does getting a job in tech suck right now? (Is it AI?!?)
A lot of new CS grads have been noting that is really hard to get a job. I’ve personally been contacted by a couple people, including outside of Twitter, about the difficulty of finding a job…
A lot of new CS grads have been noting that is really hard to get a job. I’ve personally been contacted by a couple people, including outside of Twitter, about the difficulty of finding a job. I’m sure if you’re reading this that you’ve heard some stories, too.
Here I will attempt to provide some insights as to what is going on. Basically, a massive confluence of factors has contributed to it being harder to get a job in tech, both on the demand and supply side of the market. I will cover all of these factors below.
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It’s not just computer science majors either, but related majors have also surged in popularity. Basically, computer science majors have peaked in total and have near-peaked in proportion; when including CS-adjacent majors they are at an all-time peak in both totals and proportions; and humanities majors are at all-time proportional lows.
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It should be clear when we talk about why getting a tech job is harder, we are not talking about there being some sort of tech recession; the numbers do not back that narrative up. When we talk about getting a tech job being harder, we’re talking about a higher difficulty of finding tech jobs specifically for new CS grads, which is not something that can be observed in the BLS employment data. (Anecdotally, the market still seems good for experienced software developers.)
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People talk about AI in hiring like it is replacing engineers’ jobs. That is not happening right now, it simply is not and anyone saying that is bullshitting you. I also think it probably won’t happen for an incredibly long time (probably well after you retire, if ever), and I’ll explain why later.
Companies just laid off thousands of people. Not looking to hire anytime soon.
It's actually picking up a bit now, at least anecdotally
Yeah but it's mostly specialized positions. If you got a certification with a high demand you'll be alright.
This isn't actually accurate - the layoffs were performative to boost their stock prices... most of those big tech firms are still aggressively hiring people.
I wonder if it's more to get rid of bad employees. In most Western countries it's really hard to fire people that are just a bit crap, or even very crap. If you have big layoffs then the bar is much much lower so you can get rid of them all at once. It also sends a very strong message to people to not take their jobs for granted.
I dunno; I haven't actually been involved in layoffs yet fortunately.
Ooh, this is a particularly good point:
Tools that make coding easier make coding more accessible to more people; they make coders more productive, and like magic, this means somehow more of them exist and more of them get hired to do more things.
Thisis what Python did to the job market.
Fuck 'four spaces' straight to hell, but even I will admit Python is a good tool and has allowed more people to make good software.
AI's long term impact will be the same, after the hype train bullshit dies down.
Also with highlighting:
Even if I’m right and that a lot of this money is being wasted (they are right), my rant doesn’t change the reality of the ground situation today. VCs have always dumped their money into burning fire pits with the hopes that the companies that 10x offset the returns of the companies that fail. The difference in 2024 is that this money doomed to incineration trickles down to data centers in Virginia, not to fresh-out-of-college CS majors.
"Rightsizing" makes stock prices go up. I'm trying to find my first position in tech, but every position is advertising for 3+ years experience. Guess I'll have to work for pennies on Fiverr.
Also worth highlighting:
We’ve been through this hype cycle before with machine learning. Companies claimed to rely on super sophisticated machine learning and data science internally, when like 90%+ of these companies were at best exaggerating and at worst lying about not only impact but even the implementations themselves.
Not only is AI not replacing you today, the fantastical bull case of AI achieving sentience and building everything for you is nowhere in sight. It is not. Nobody knows how to achieve this! Anyone who says they know is lying! ASI has been 3 months away for the last 3 years, always based on bullshit rumors about some cryptic message an OpenAI employee said which ended up being a nothingburger. People who say ASI or AGI is around the corner are lying to you. Recent (last 3-4 years) developments in LLMs are impressive as is, you don’t need to lie about it. [2]