Learning to code and working hard hasn’t been quite enough to land the coveted tech jobs and six-figure starting salaries that computer science graduates were promised, according to a new report in The New York Times this weekend.
As the industry grapples with layoffs and the rise of artificial intelligence tools that can perform jobs faster, recent grads paint a picture in which they’re applying for hundreds if not thousands of tech positions only to be ghosted and left feeling “gaslit” about their career prospects.
Some of the grads, who had visions of cruising into the tech workforce with skills that were deemed highly coveted, are resorting to jobs in the fast food industry.
“It is difficult to find the motivation to keep applying,” said an Oregon State University grad who has applied for 5,762 tech jobs since graduating in 2023, according to the Times. He’s had 13 job interviews but no full-time job offers.
The Times says the spread of AI is not helping, as tech firms embracing AI coding assistants reduces the need for some companies to hire junior software engineers. Other firms are using AI to automatically scan resumes and reject candidates. Some graduates described feeling caught in an AI “doom loop,” The Times reported.
Another data science graduate told the Times that she received a rejection email three minutes after applying for a job. More companies are using AI to screen candidates and are removing the human element from the process. Seattle-based Humanly unveiled “AI interviewers” last month in which job candidates interact with an AI-generated video interviewer.
“It’s hard to stay motivated when you feel like an algorithm determines whether you get to pay your bills,” the grad told the Times.
While the report does namecheck Amazon and Microsoft for recent layoffs and an embrace of AI tools, and University of Washington students and graduates are among those who replied to questions from the Times, a GeekWire report last month offered a different perspective.
In that story, Amazon was said to have hired more than 100 engineers from the latest graduating class at UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering — an all-time high, according to university data shared with GeekWire. Microsoft, Meta and Google were each hiring more than 20 UW CSE grads, reflecting a strong talent pipeline between the UW and Seattle’s tech industry.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that while the U.S. labor market is cooling, AI can be ruled out — so far — as a culprit in any hiring slowdown. U.S. workers whose jobs involve tasks that AI can do are actually much less likely than other workers to be unemployed, according to an analysis by the Economic Innovation Group.
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- Microsoft study shows jobs most — and least — impacted by generative AI