7 ms·

Goodbye, Six-Figure Tech Jobs. Young Coders Seek Work at Fast-Food Joints

81 points by Physkal 1y ago

pityJuke 1y ago
I dread to think what my opportunities would have looked like had I entered the industry even 1 year later. All the sympathies to these people.
jdhn 1y ago
They should have talked with UX professionals. The situation is just as, if not more dire in the UX community.
- mgh2 1y ago
  How is that so?
the_real_cher 1y ago
I hate when 'the media' blames offshoring and outsourcing on A.I. Microsoft just laid off thousands and yet are still hiring thousands of H1Bs. Just one example. The majority of Adobes jobs on their career page are for foreign workers. A.I. is misdirection
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  "Let the bears pay the bear tax. I pay the Homer tax!"
- fakedang 1y ago
  And somehow morons downvote you for speaking the truth. My friends in India are all doing swimmingly well with the extremely huge increase in offshoring jobs to India. While in the 2000s it was tech support and in the 2010s it was auxiliary tech workers, today it's actual engineers, UX designers, product guys, even HR and admin functions. Turns out, everything can be sent off to India and LatAm, except for sales and department heads. While previously companies would hire right away from IITs to ship them to the US, today they're content with keeping them in India and letting them work remotely. The impact of AI in corporate jobs is actually very minimal, but the use of it as a smokescreen for downsizing is uncountable.
  - gregorygoc 1y ago
    Good old “the capital has no nationality”. Yeah, sure. Offshore everything, keep a bunch of stooges as “head of the heads” in the U.S. and one day wake up with entire know how transferred to wherevere-was-cheaper-at-the-time.
  - only-one1701 1y ago
    Bingo. This, plus Section 174, are the real stories re: job depression.
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  >laid off thousands and yet are still hiring thousands of H1Bs http://www.h1bdata.info http://www.h1bdata.info It shocked me to learn my midsized Southern city (<0.5M MSA) has 1762 H1B jobs, ostensibly because there aren't any qualified Americans; the most common complaint I hear from my peers is that "there aren't enough tech jobs here" when the reality is over 1% of our workforce is underpaid H1Bs, primarily tech field. I don't think its hateful to want your healthy society's workforce to be made up of citizens, whatever those criteria be determined. >A.I. is misdirection It is playing a most useful role for idiots.
  - the_real_cher 1y ago
    More like 20% of the workforce. 66% in silicon valley
  - assword 1y ago
    [dead]
- blargey 1y ago
  It would certainly be ironic if offshoring in knowledge work is accelerating just as the consequences of offshoring in manufacturing are coming to a head (well, the social and political visibility of the consequences, anyway). Whether it's offshoring or AI-shoring, people's expectations for the long-term effects on the workforce and industry know-how sound interchangeable anyway.
- apparent 1y ago
  I agree that both topics should be mentioned. But is AI not the main cause here? Basically, companies no longer see the same value prop in hiring highly-paid college grads with CS degrees. What has changed is AI — not their appetite for H1Bs. Maybe AI makes their H1Bs more effective, or maybe it makes their foreign workers in low-cost jurisdictions more effective. Either way, it's AI that's changing the calculus on whether a Georgetown grad who worked her but off to get in, and to graduate with a CS degree, has lots of highly-paid prospects.
  - the_real_cher 1y ago
    A.I. should be reducing non-citizens jobs as much as citizens but we're not seeing a corresponding drop in H1B's.
xtajv 1y ago
I dream that LLMs will be the disaster that finally convinces the software engineering field that code isn't so "soft" after all, and that software engineering should be licensed, bonded, and insured. Every single other engineering field has gone through it. "Regulations are written in blood".
- gregorygoc 1y ago
  Blood has been spilled. 737 MAX happened and it didn’t change the industry, so nothing will.
  - BlackjackCF 1y ago
    Sadly, I’m not sure things change when blood is spilled. Only when a DRASTIC amount of money is lost. Multiple times.
    - FortuneSheer 1y ago
      History has sadly proved you right imo. Don't think it'll change anytime soon either.
    - em3rgent0rdr 1y ago
      Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs there has been several major bugs, e.g. in 2012 Knight Capital Says Trading Glitch Cost It $440 Million, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 which lasted up to 4 days and affected 55 million people and resulted in almost 100 deaths.
  - icegreentea2 1y ago
    There isn't a single unified software industry. 737 MAX problems happened in a software engineering and software development context embedded within one of the nominally most rigorously regulated industries that already exist. MCAS failures was not a failure of software per se, but a clear system engineering and management failure, and a failure of all engineers involved, including ones that actually are licensed. If nothing else, MCAS shows the limits of regulation, particularly in the failure mode of regulatory capture (FAA delegated too much power back to Boeing).
trenchpilgrim 1y ago
> “The unfortunate thing right now, specifically for recent college grads, is those positions that are most likely to be automated are the entry-level positions that they would be seeking,” said Matthew Martin, U.S. senior economist at Oxford Economics, a forecasting firm. This matches my experience. About 90% of the coding tasks I would have assigned to a junior in years past, I can get done for a fraction of the price at a similar quality and in 1/3rd the time by a tool like Claude Code. The only reason I have to hire a junior would be to develop them into a senior over 3-5 years, and companies are far too shortsided to think about that training pipeline. A good senior engineer still does things the tools can't- in particular, non-programming tasks like planning, persuading, and accountability. I fear that there will be a crisis in these skills as the current seniors retire/change industries in the coming years.
- trod1234 1y ago
  Its pretty clear there will be a crisis in these skills from just a structural point of view. Career development is a sequential pipeline that sieves people. If you've as an industry blocked the pipeline saying we don't need these people, time passes and those people who had to invest to get to that point abandon the bad investments, and you get no new people coming in. People leave such industry because of burnout, and aging/retirement/death. The dynamics created are one of a deflationary sieve where the front-loaded cost savings becomes a back-ended cost sink. Tthe demand and related cost of the professionals is recognized at a point where there is great need but they can't be found at any cost. In system's engineering we call this Hysteresis whipsaws, Mises might call this the first early stages of the Economic Calculation Problem.
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  AI is an entropy machine for everything it touches. Will be interesting to see what happens when all industries get rid of the junior-senior pipeline.
  - nerfellicat 1y ago
    Much like trying to fight global warming by running a bunch of open refrigerators.
mgh2 1y ago
https://archive.is/1ayVl https://archive.is/1ayVl
- AquilaFasciata 1y ago
  Note: Many libraries have NYT codes for 24-72hrs. Like the San Fransisco Public Library. https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/166904 https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/166904
pjmlp 1y ago
I keep telling it is going to be like all those cities living out of factory work, until the day they got automated. However people keep rejoicing their use of Claude without looking into the future. Those cool agents that close tickets on their own, eventually will have an error rate lower than humans. How many architects does a project need?
neuralkoi 1y ago
Society rewards you if you can give it what it needs, and I guess one of the things society wants right now is Chipotle. One aspect of college is that it's supposed to teach you how to be a better thinker. One could make the argument that someone who graduated through college should have developed the critical thinking skills required to teach themselves another skill that IS in demand. What do you tell new grads who can't find a job to do? Learn plumbing, heating/AC, or electrical work? Start a small business?
- PlattypusRex 1y ago
  Why would someone go to college and then abandon their degree to learn a trade? The whole point of college is to get a desk job and to avoid manual labor. Plumbers have to literally scoop poop out with their hands once in a while.
  - abbadadda 1y ago
    > The whole point of college* is to get a desk job and to avoid manual labor. * most colleges
  - harvey9 1y ago
    So do surgeons once in a while
  - neuralkoi 1y ago
    > Why would someone go to college and then abandon their degree to learn a trade? Because they can't find a job in the area they studied.
ChiMan 1y ago
AI performs best in non-deterministic environments where highly extensive if slightly imperfect (or even hallucinatory) knowledge works just fine. When mapped onto today’s jobs, the fit feels less natural for high-level engineering than for “looser” tasks that would do well to be armed with wider knowledge. In other words, it seems like AI—or AI-armed humans—are more squarely aimed at executives.
- pfannkuchen 1y ago
  Delegating executive decision making to what is essentially an automated form of Reddit and stack overflow seems like it could possibly lead to bad results.
  - ChiMan 1y ago
    The point is not to delegate. It’s to augment.
  - only-one1701 1y ago
    Serious question: do you not think these very executives are relying HEAVILY on ChatGPT etc right now?
    - AquilaFasciata 1y ago
      No, they rely on "consultants."
    - pfannkuchen 1y ago
      For me, LLMs have been a very useful interface to tutorials for ramping up on new areas. That’s about it, IME so far. I suppose the executive equivalent would be as an interface to business books, case studies, etc. With all the variance in such a high dimensional space, probably higher dimensional than starter tier tech projects in an area, I can’t imagine that it would actually be very useful when the long run results are considered. What do you think they’re being used for right now?
toastercat 1y ago
> “It is difficult to find the motivation to keep applying,” said Mr. Taylor, adding that he was now building personal software projects to show prospective employers. I know it's common advice for students and newly grads to do this, but in my experience, employers do not care about personal software projects or open-source contributions unless the work is aligned with their product. That, or you built something that is easily lucrative. Otherwise, they do not care, they do not care, they do not care. If your goal is personal enrichment, by all means, but don't kill yourself on a personal project with the intention of impressing an employer.
- chrisnight 1y ago
  As a new grad in this job market who got 2 offers (1 FAANG), I heavily disagree. My projects (specifically my toy operating system) got me my offers. Projects are just about the only thing you can add to your resume to show competence. Everyone has a degree, and no one has work experience. Not only did my projects show that I have completed semi-relevant work in something considered relatively complex, which presumably got me past resume screenings (confirmed by my hiring manager), my projects also gave a prime talking point in interviews that let me showcase my domain knowledge and way that I work. (Consider cliche interview questions like “what is the biggest challenge you’ve faced”, and how they relate to your projects) This is especially beneficial if you’re being interviewed by other engineers, and you can geek out over a project. Being human and enjoyable, while demonstrating technical competence, is a great interview winner. Ofc I have limited experience, but small samples can add up if other evidence corroborates with it.
  - toastercat 1y ago
    This is nice to hear and congrats, but I'd be willing to wager that your project didn't get you your offers; your interview performance got you your offers. Yes, your project gave you something interesting to talk about, and of course, invaluable experience building an operating system. But that isn't enough, and it never has been when it comes to obtaining employment. The ROI is simply bad compared to grinding LeetCode/NeetCode/Cracking The Coding Interview and learning how to game the interview process. This should be every new grad's priority if they are interested in employment. It's even worse than just having gone to a highly reputable university, ideally with a pipeline to FAANG companies.
HumblyTossed 1y ago
Something has to come to a head soon. High paying jobs can't disappear if everything is going to continue to cost an arm and two legs. We're either going to have to pick up pitchforks or we're going to complacent ourselves into multi-generational family living. I hope the former. I'm sick of the money funnel pointing in the wrong direction.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  Those are both effectively the same thing. The cure for high prices is high prices. Peasant's revolt etc.
Barrin92 1y ago
Sorry but am I the only one skeptical of this narrative? There is no way in hell a Purdue grad cannot at least land a lame IT role at a healthcare provider, the public sector or in the military. The government is turning 21 year olds from prestigious universities with technical degrees away? Maybe goodbye to six figure tech jobs at fancy company X, just take the high five figure tech job where you'll have to write a lot of boring C# but at least you're getting paid
- nickm12 1y ago
  I find these types of articles from the Times very frustrating. Most of this article is filled with sad anecdotes, but no indication of how those people were chosen. Were they the biggest sob stories found that fit the narrative? Even the data in article is presented in a useless way. CS grads unemployment rates are compared to biology and art history grads (why those in particular?) I don't doubt that it is much harder to get big salary entry-level work in programming these days. My guess is this is due to a combination of high interest rates / lower investments, flattening business curves, and AI, but the article doesn't try to make a causal case. It just puts forth a bunch of anecdotes sprinkled with a few facts and leaves the reader to infer the causes.
  - herewulf 1y ago
    It's not a good article for relying on so much anecdata and making little overt analysis. The (3rd party) unemployment numbers do not lie though and the comparison to art and history majors is due to the fact that these degrees (at the bachelor level) usually do not lead to good job prospects, except maybe in roles unrelated to those fields where there is in fact no advantage whatsoever versus another degree.
    - nickm12 1y ago
      The article compared to biology and art history. It's my impression that art history doesn't lead to good job prospects, but is it actually true? A good article would provide support for that choice rather than rely on stereotypes in the reader's head. Or better yet, compare to the median using some data set
tom_m 1y ago
I don't know, start with a lower salary. I did. Ok, that was like nearly 20 years ago, but it was in Manhattan. It wasn't cheap. Stop trying to work at stupid FAANG companies. I can't understand why anyone would want to work at those places. You learn nothing because there's too many people. On the other side of the fence, the pressure cooker startups adopting those insane 12 hour 6 work day weeks are also bad. So I get it, there's not much left...but expecting six figures for your first job is crazy.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  I think the issue is that the application process isn't justified by the salary.
- MattGaiser 1y ago
  Is this possible? As if AI is replacing junior devs, they can't work for little enough when the subscription is $40 a month.
- AquilaFasciata 1y ago
  It's difficult to find one that pays $50-60,000.
theanonymousone 1y ago
Calling them "coders" is probably part of the problem.
herewulf 1y ago
The part of the article that talks about tech leaders encouraging young people to "code" and pursue CS degrees, combined with fabled "six-figure" salaries is reminiscent to me of the Dot-com Bubble. All sorts of people were being encouraged to study "computers" (even my dear, technically inept wife). When the bubble burst, there were just no jobs for young people who were in it solely for the money, not the passion. I have to wonder if the job market is again oversaturated with these people. Even within the article's anecdotes: > Ms. Mishra, the Purdue graduate, did not get the burrito-making gig at Chipotle. But her side hustle as a beauty influencer on TikTok, she said, helped her realize that she was more enthusiastic about tech marketing and sales than software engineering. [emphasis mine] Sounds like she was headed down the wrong path to begin with. How many others are like this who have just been riding a hype wave? Nevertheless, I will say that learning to code is still a useful skill for anyone, even in a future saturated with AI.

81 points by Physkal 1y ago

I dread to think what my opportunities would have looked like had I entered the industry even 1 year later. All the sympathies to these people.

jdhn 1y ago

They should have talked with UX professionals. The situation is just as, if not more dire in the UX community.

mgh2 1y ago
How is that so?

the_real_cher 1y ago

I hate when 'the media' blames offshoring and outsourcing on A.I. Microsoft just laid off thousands and yet are still hiring thousands of H1Bs. Just one example. The majority of Adobes jobs on their career page are for foreign workers. A.I. is misdirection

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
"Let the bears pay the bear tax. I pay the Homer tax!"
fakedang 1y ago
And somehow morons downvote you for speaking the truth. My friends in India are all doing swimmingly well with the extremely huge increase in offshoring jobs to India. While in the 2000s it was tech support and in the 2010s it was auxiliary tech workers, today it's actual engineers, UX designers, product guys, even HR and admin functions. Turns out, everything can be sent off to India and LatAm, except for sales and department heads. While previously companies would hire right away from IITs to ship them to the US, today they're content with keeping them in India and letting them work remotely. The impact of AI in corporate jobs is actually very minimal, but the use of it as a smokescreen for downsizing is uncountable.
- gregorygoc 1y ago
  Good old “the capital has no nationality”. Yeah, sure. Offshore everything, keep a bunch of stooges as “head of the heads” in the U.S. and one day wake up with entire know how transferred to wherevere-was-cheaper-at-the-time.
- only-one1701 1y ago
  Bingo. This, plus Section 174, are the real stories re: job depression.
ProllyInfamous 1y ago
>laid off thousands and yet are still hiring thousands of H1Bs http://www.h1bdata.info http://www.h1bdata.info It shocked me to learn my midsized Southern city (<0.5M MSA) has 1762 H1B jobs, ostensibly because there aren't any qualified Americans; the most common complaint I hear from my peers is that "there aren't enough tech jobs here" when the reality is over 1% of our workforce is underpaid H1Bs, primarily tech field. I don't think its hateful to want your healthy society's workforce to be made up of citizens, whatever those criteria be determined. >A.I. is misdirection It is playing a most useful role for idiots.
- the_real_cher 1y ago
  More like 20% of the workforce. 66% in silicon valley
- assword 1y ago
  [dead]
blargey 1y ago
It would certainly be ironic if offshoring in knowledge work is accelerating just as the consequences of offshoring in manufacturing are coming to a head (well, the social and political visibility of the consequences, anyway). Whether it's offshoring or AI-shoring, people's expectations for the long-term effects on the workforce and industry know-how sound interchangeable anyway.
apparent 1y ago
I agree that both topics should be mentioned. But is AI not the main cause here? Basically, companies no longer see the same value prop in hiring highly-paid college grads with CS degrees. What has changed is AI — not their appetite for H1Bs. Maybe AI makes their H1Bs more effective, or maybe it makes their foreign workers in low-cost jurisdictions more effective. Either way, it's AI that's changing the calculus on whether a Georgetown grad who worked her but off to get in, and to graduate with a CS degree, has lots of highly-paid prospects.
- the_real_cher 1y ago
  A.I. should be reducing non-citizens jobs as much as citizens but we're not seeing a corresponding drop in H1B's.

xtajv 1y ago

I dream that LLMs will be the disaster that finally convinces the software engineering field that code isn't so "soft" after all, and that software engineering should be licensed, bonded, and insured. Every single other engineering field has gone through it. "Regulations are written in blood".

gregorygoc 1y ago
Blood has been spilled. 737 MAX happened and it didn’t change the industry, so nothing will.
- BlackjackCF 1y ago
  Sadly, I’m not sure things change when blood is spilled. Only when a DRASTIC amount of money is lost. Multiple times.
  - FortuneSheer 1y ago
    History has sadly proved you right imo. Don't think it'll change anytime soon either.
  - em3rgent0rdr 1y ago
    Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs there has been several major bugs, e.g. in 2012 Knight Capital Says Trading Glitch Cost It $440 Million, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 which lasted up to 4 days and affected 55 million people and resulted in almost 100 deaths.
- icegreentea2 1y ago
  There isn't a single unified software industry. 737 MAX problems happened in a software engineering and software development context embedded within one of the nominally most rigorously regulated industries that already exist. MCAS failures was not a failure of software per se, but a clear system engineering and management failure, and a failure of all engineers involved, including ones that actually are licensed. If nothing else, MCAS shows the limits of regulation, particularly in the failure mode of regulatory capture (FAA delegated too much power back to Boeing).

trenchpilgrim 1y ago

> “The unfortunate thing right now, specifically for recent college grads, is those positions that are most likely to be automated are the entry-level positions that they would be seeking,” said Matthew Martin, U.S. senior economist at Oxford Economics, a forecasting firm. This matches my experience. About 90% of the coding tasks I would have assigned to a junior in years past, I can get done for a fraction of the price at a similar quality and in 1/3rd the time by a tool like Claude Code. The only reason I have to hire a junior would be to develop them into a senior over 3-5 years, and companies are far too shortsided to think about that training pipeline. A good senior engineer still does things the tools can't- in particular, non-programming tasks like planning, persuading, and accountability. I fear that there will be a crisis in these skills as the current seniors retire/change industries in the coming years.

trod1234 1y ago
Its pretty clear there will be a crisis in these skills from just a structural point of view. Career development is a sequential pipeline that sieves people. If you've as an industry blocked the pipeline saying we don't need these people, time passes and those people who had to invest to get to that point abandon the bad investments, and you get no new people coming in. People leave such industry because of burnout, and aging/retirement/death. The dynamics created are one of a deflationary sieve where the front-loaded cost savings becomes a back-ended cost sink. Tthe demand and related cost of the professionals is recognized at a point where there is great need but they can't be found at any cost. In system's engineering we call this Hysteresis whipsaws, Mises might call this the first early stages of the Economic Calculation Problem.
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
AI is an entropy machine for everything it touches. Will be interesting to see what happens when all industries get rid of the junior-senior pipeline.
- nerfellicat 1y ago
  Much like trying to fight global warming by running a bunch of open refrigerators.

mgh2 1y ago

https://archive.is/1ayVl https://archive.is/1ayVl

AquilaFasciata 1y ago
Note: Many libraries have NYT codes for 24-72hrs. Like the San Fransisco Public Library. https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/166904 https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/166904

pjmlp 1y ago

I keep telling it is going to be like all those cities living out of factory work, until the day they got automated. However people keep rejoicing their use of Claude without looking into the future. Those cool agents that close tickets on their own, eventually will have an error rate lower than humans. How many architects does a project need?

neuralkoi 1y ago

Society rewards you if you can give it what it needs, and I guess one of the things society wants right now is Chipotle. One aspect of college is that it's supposed to teach you how to be a better thinker. One could make the argument that someone who graduated through college should have developed the critical thinking skills required to teach themselves another skill that IS in demand. What do you tell new grads who can't find a job to do? Learn plumbing, heating/AC, or electrical work? Start a small business?

PlattypusRex 1y ago
Why would someone go to college and then abandon their degree to learn a trade? The whole point of college is to get a desk job and to avoid manual labor. Plumbers have to literally scoop poop out with their hands once in a while.
- abbadadda 1y ago
  > The whole point of college* is to get a desk job and to avoid manual labor. * most colleges
- harvey9 1y ago
  So do surgeons once in a while
- neuralkoi 1y ago
  > Why would someone go to college and then abandon their degree to learn a trade? Because they can't find a job in the area they studied.

ChiMan 1y ago

AI performs best in non-deterministic environments where highly extensive if slightly imperfect (or even hallucinatory) knowledge works just fine. When mapped onto today’s jobs, the fit feels less natural for high-level engineering than for “looser” tasks that would do well to be armed with wider knowledge. In other words, it seems like AI—or AI-armed humans—are more squarely aimed at executives.

pfannkuchen 1y ago
Delegating executive decision making to what is essentially an automated form of Reddit and stack overflow seems like it could possibly lead to bad results.
- ChiMan 1y ago
  The point is not to delegate. It’s to augment.
- only-one1701 1y ago
  Serious question: do you not think these very executives are relying HEAVILY on ChatGPT etc right now?
  - AquilaFasciata 1y ago
    No, they rely on "consultants."
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    For me, LLMs have been a very useful interface to tutorials for ramping up on new areas. That’s about it, IME so far. I suppose the executive equivalent would be as an interface to business books, case studies, etc. With all the variance in such a high dimensional space, probably higher dimensional than starter tier tech projects in an area, I can’t imagine that it would actually be very useful when the long run results are considered. What do you think they’re being used for right now?

toastercat 1y ago

> “It is difficult to find the motivation to keep applying,” said Mr. Taylor, adding that he was now building personal software projects to show prospective employers. I know it's common advice for students and newly grads to do this, but in my experience, employers do not care about personal software projects or open-source contributions unless the work is aligned with their product. That, or you built something that is easily lucrative. Otherwise, they do not care, they do not care, they do not care. If your goal is personal enrichment, by all means, but don't kill yourself on a personal project with the intention of impressing an employer.

chrisnight 1y ago
As a new grad in this job market who got 2 offers (1 FAANG), I heavily disagree. My projects (specifically my toy operating system) got me my offers. Projects are just about the only thing you can add to your resume to show competence. Everyone has a degree, and no one has work experience. Not only did my projects show that I have completed semi-relevant work in something considered relatively complex, which presumably got me past resume screenings (confirmed by my hiring manager), my projects also gave a prime talking point in interviews that let me showcase my domain knowledge and way that I work. (Consider cliche interview questions like “what is the biggest challenge you’ve faced”, and how they relate to your projects) This is especially beneficial if you’re being interviewed by other engineers, and you can geek out over a project. Being human and enjoyable, while demonstrating technical competence, is a great interview winner. Ofc I have limited experience, but small samples can add up if other evidence corroborates with it.
- toastercat 1y ago
  This is nice to hear and congrats, but I'd be willing to wager that your project didn't get you your offers; your interview performance got you your offers. Yes, your project gave you something interesting to talk about, and of course, invaluable experience building an operating system. But that isn't enough, and it never has been when it comes to obtaining employment. The ROI is simply bad compared to grinding LeetCode/NeetCode/Cracking The Coding Interview and learning how to game the interview process. This should be every new grad's priority if they are interested in employment. It's even worse than just having gone to a highly reputable university, ideally with a pipeline to FAANG companies.

HumblyTossed 1y ago

Something has to come to a head soon. High paying jobs can't disappear if everything is going to continue to cost an arm and two legs. We're either going to have to pick up pitchforks or we're going to complacent ourselves into multi-generational family living. I hope the former. I'm sick of the money funnel pointing in the wrong direction.

mathiaspoint 1y ago
Those are both effectively the same thing. The cure for high prices is high prices. Peasant's revolt etc.

Barrin92 1y ago

Sorry but am I the only one skeptical of this narrative? There is no way in hell a Purdue grad cannot at least land a lame IT role at a healthcare provider, the public sector or in the military. The government is turning 21 year olds from prestigious universities with technical degrees away? Maybe goodbye to six figure tech jobs at fancy company X, just take the high five figure tech job where you'll have to write a lot of boring C# but at least you're getting paid

nickm12 1y ago
I find these types of articles from the Times very frustrating. Most of this article is filled with sad anecdotes, but no indication of how those people were chosen. Were they the biggest sob stories found that fit the narrative? Even the data in article is presented in a useless way. CS grads unemployment rates are compared to biology and art history grads (why those in particular?) I don't doubt that it is much harder to get big salary entry-level work in programming these days. My guess is this is due to a combination of high interest rates / lower investments, flattening business curves, and AI, but the article doesn't try to make a causal case. It just puts forth a bunch of anecdotes sprinkled with a few facts and leaves the reader to infer the causes.
- herewulf 1y ago
  It's not a good article for relying on so much anecdata and making little overt analysis. The (3rd party) unemployment numbers do not lie though and the comparison to art and history majors is due to the fact that these degrees (at the bachelor level) usually do not lead to good job prospects, except maybe in roles unrelated to those fields where there is in fact no advantage whatsoever versus another degree.
  - nickm12 1y ago
    The article compared to biology and art history. It's my impression that art history doesn't lead to good job prospects, but is it actually true? A good article would provide support for that choice rather than rely on stereotypes in the reader's head. Or better yet, compare to the median using some data set

tom_m 1y ago

I don't know, start with a lower salary. I did. Ok, that was like nearly 20 years ago, but it was in Manhattan. It wasn't cheap. Stop trying to work at stupid FAANG companies. I can't understand why anyone would want to work at those places. You learn nothing because there's too many people. On the other side of the fence, the pressure cooker startups adopting those insane 12 hour 6 work day weeks are also bad. So I get it, there's not much left...but expecting six figures for your first job is crazy.

mathiaspoint 1y ago
I think the issue is that the application process isn't justified by the salary.
MattGaiser 1y ago
Is this possible? As if AI is replacing junior devs, they can't work for little enough when the subscription is $40 a month.
AquilaFasciata 1y ago
It's difficult to find one that pays $50-60,000.

theanonymousone 1y ago

Calling them "coders" is probably part of the problem.

herewulf 1y ago

The part of the article that talks about tech leaders encouraging young people to "code" and pursue CS degrees, combined with fabled "six-figure" salaries is reminiscent to me of the Dot-com Bubble. All sorts of people were being encouraged to study "computers" (even my dear, technically inept wife). When the bubble burst, there were just no jobs for young people who were in it solely for the money, not the passion. I have to wonder if the job market is again oversaturated with these people. Even within the article's anecdotes: > Ms. Mishra, the Purdue graduate, did not get the burrito-making gig at Chipotle. But her side hustle as a beauty influencer on TikTok, she said, helped her realize that she was more enthusiastic about tech marketing and sales than software engineering. [emphasis mine] Sounds like she was headed down the wrong path to begin with. How many others are like this who have just been riding a hype wave? Nevertheless, I will say that learning to code is still a useful skill for anyone, even in a future saturated with AI.