What I often see missing from conversations about jobs and AI from well meaning people who are rightly skeptical towards AI hype is that AI does not need to be able to do the complete job a of a whole human in order to kill jobs. It needs to make some people more productive in an industry that isn’t growing fast enough. The people that get more productive get to do the work of others who are let go or not hired. And it can definitely make some people more productive in certain areas and tasks. Whether that’s sustainable in various ways over the long term is a different question, one that many (or most) businesses are not concerned with.

Yeah I’m a CS dropout and worked for startups for 10 years and now nobody is biting. Starting to think I need a career change because I can’t see things improving any time soon now that AI is out of the bag.

I graduated in 2022 with an MSc ComSci and have been without a job since new year. I think my ghost rate on applications have been around 60-70%. And let’s not even talk about how few job posts there are in the first place…

The few I do hear from replies “what an amazing resume! We have though decided to continue with other applicants.” Number of first interviews: 1. Number of second interviews: 0. Number of applications: I lost count.

Damn. You’re from Denmark right?

Yes, but I’m also looking in some other EU countries. With the freedom of movement it is not much harder to move to another city in EU than internally in Denmark.

Yeah, all the tech jobs dried up where I’m at. If one pops up it is a help desk position.

When I applied to one those help desk position the hr person asked me why are you applying to a job underneath you?

I have 10 years working as a Software Engineer that did mostly ETL tasks

i would just exclude that experience from my resume for these types of jobs, or reduce it.

At work they haven’t hired since 2022.

You really need to move into leadership or project management roles or do something to distinguish yourself like also studying applied math so that you can do data science. There have, for a very long time, been far too many CompSci/ComEng graduates out there. The market is saturated.

If I was willing to do that then I would have done so years ago, the calculus hasn’t really changed. If I’m going to do that then I might as well do literally anything else I don’t enjoy.

So business as usual and no changes?

Not sure where I said no changes, I literally said in my first comment that I’m looking at other careers. Just because I don’t like your suggestion doesn’t mean I’m doing “business as usual”.

If I was willing to do that then I would have done so years ago

This is what I was responding to. It came across as very defeatist.

Lol so you think it’s defeatist to have a hard no for 1 specific position? There are so many other things to do in life than be a manager. If you think saying hard no to 1 position is equivalent to rejecting any change in strategy then idk what to tell you. You’re the one coming across as condescending by trying to mischaracterize my preference against being a manager as saying I won’t try anything different, and that’s kinda lame.

Yeah man. You come across as a bit unstable. You came in on the attack when my original comment was not directed at you specifically. Whatever is going on here is really a you thing. You might spend some time figuring out why. Chill.

Yeah umm I’m not the one who’s very transparently looking for an excuse to scold others on what they’re doing wrong. You made that pretty clear when you rushed to aggressively and condescendingly assume that I was unwilling to do anything different. Anyone who reads your comment can see that you were so eager to talk down to someone about what they’re doing wrong that you completely ignored the fact that I clearly stated I was exploring basically any other career. Then when it became obvious that you had made an incorrect assumption, you rushed to switch your narrative to being about the “vibes” of my comment being defeatist - something you’re entirely making up in your own interpretation.

Own up to it dude. It’s embarrassing.

Yeah we’re done, not reading your screed.

I am an IT director and tried to share my knowledge and experience. You’ve got heavy angry tankie energy. There are far too many things to worry about than an insecure idiot on the Internet. Have a block and seriously, stop and chill.

Classic, comes in hot being condescending based on incorrect assumptions then runs away when their self righteous shit isn’t being put up with.

‘just become a ceo bro’

it’s so easy. just start your own company with 500K of startup capital!

Very odd. You can move into management. You can learn project management. You can do SOMETHING that makes you stand out from others. Not sure why you went with such an example.

Not everyone can move infinitely upwards.

you realize that, right? only a select few people get those positions.

most people do not have the skills, talent, or drive to attain these things, nor should they. most people will cap out in their career in their 30s/40s. and most people will never even be middle management.

because that’s how numbers work. for each project there is one lead, and several people below them.

Truly it is far harder to get into CompSci than it is to get into management. I am speaking as an IT Director. And I am not suggesting that everyone can do these things, the point is that people need to diversify their skills and do something that sets them apart from the typical profile. Notably, I keep seeing conversations about age discrimination in other threads and am convinced that it is in great part because many people don’t find ways to keep growing.

Love how much the goalposts keep moving. It used to be enough for one person to work in a warehouse to buy a house and fund an entire family

Where did I move goalposts? I’m giving the same advice I give to my students. Make your profile different than every other CS grad.

Honestly, its just a boom/bust cycle out of the pandemic. They overhired in 2021/2022. Hang in there, it’ll sort itself out.

this actually outside of that, AI just put a wrench in the works, i dont think cs had a good outlook since 10 years already.

Honestly, you are right it didn’t. CS majors get way less work than Software Engineers where I live. CS is mostly academic and not practical. Maybe different elsewhere, but not a golden ticket. I don’t like working with compsci grads because they don’t know how to make stuff. They don’t know best practices or how to make reusable code and features. Software engineers on the other hand, actually useful contributors.

Nevertheless, Software engineering, just like other engineering fields, way way way over saturated. Mechanical and electrical engineers in places like Toronto are just working Starbucks. You gotta be top of class or there’s nothing for you.

This is not limited to CompSci graduates and gets worse the older you get.

It’s also not limited to CompSci.

theguardian.com/…/over-50s-reveal-trying-to-get-a…

If that’s the article I think it is, it’s almost all entirely charity/NGO work, and it also excludes analysis of the current job market which could be hitting younger workers the same.

I definitely think ageism is a real factor, 100%, but pointing to a series of anecdotes inside one industry is about the worst possible way to demonstrate it.

it’s not

Recent research by the Centre for Ageing Better found that the number of people between 50 and state pension age having difficulty finding work was 918,000 – akin to the number of young people not in education, employment or training – at the end of last year, the highest since 2020. The count was 2.9 million when including those with long-term health conditions and caring responsibilities.

COmpsci, is probably the worst of the stem majors, aside from physics which has higher rate of Unemployment. biotech/bio(not health) was always bad because of how limited they hire for most of the jobs.

For the compsci industries at least, it’s a productivity boost with moderate to extreme consequences in the middle to long term.

Not that that is a problem for CEO’s and companies that work quarter to quarter, but it will be a problem in 5-10 years when they have no senior workers to pick up/fix the problems that LLM’s introduce.

Or for the particularly dim-witted few in the short term who throw money at a problem they don’t understand while ignoring the people they are paying to advise them, thinking they can remove the “unpredictable” human element.

Unless, of course, the LLM’s improve so much in the runway each company has left, so as to eliminate these issues, i think it unlikely, but we’ll see.

And it doesn’t even have to make anyone more productive, it just has to convince leadership they can get by with less in the short term.

Yes, that’s true also.

Millennials: Boomers had it so easy, they could buy a house for $20k when they were 25

Gen Z: Millennials had it so easy, they could get a job paying more then $20k when they were 25

Almost like there’s trend there.

starting salary for a college grad is 50K+ now.

What a broadly untrue statement, the kind an idiot or troll would make.

I’m sorry you feel broke dude, but the fact is the average starting salary for a college grad is 56K in 2025.

Google it. It has multiple sources.

Or keep being angry and telling the world how it’s stupid and wrong and your feelings are right.

Just because broke people exist doesn’t mean lots of people aren’t doing well. The irony is the average college grad is butthurt because they expect a salary for 80K+. Which is why they are so ‘unhappy’ with it.

The statement is so broad it’s useless, go fuck yourself with a knife.

gen alpha. gen z had it so easy. they could get a hit of smack for just one blowjob.

Huh. It’s almost like the problem has always been the economy and the people who influence it, and not what people studied.

no bro, it’s because you’re stupid and majored in comp sci. should have majored in healthcare services!

funny thing is everyone i know who… made a legit effort in college and in life in general has done well. it’s the people who… just kind of showed up and expected to be rewarded that struggled and continue to struggle economically.

and that is regardless of economic conditions. it is the economy but it’s also personal habits and expectations. my own brother has been unemployed for over 5 years now, and what he won’t accept that is it’s his attitude that makes him unemployable. he’s so prideful he would rather be unemployed than ‘take a job that is below me’. had multiple offers are smaller companies for less pay and just refused to take them.

his industry has been shrinking for over a decade too, and he also refused to try another industry…

Agreed. The sort of people who just want the paper rather than growth get left behind. Those who focus on growth will continue to grow.

tell me more about my co-workers who refuse to learn new things… and wonder why they are getting 'left behind by AI" or whatever…

Considering the downvotes, I think I hit a nerve.

AI and Climate Change. Two existential threats to humanity that we have proven to be entirely incapable of responsibly addressing.

Gonna be a dark future.

Title clowning on Liberal Arts, but that’s one of the best educations to have in an Ai dominated job market… or any competitive job market.

I’d think plumbing, electrical might be even better. 😄

Its up to you, but trades have very little flexibility. If the job market changes or dries up, you can transfer very little without going out and getting a new trade.

Yes but if those job markets have dried up, pretty much every market will have also.

While those will be the last bastion. Not many people want to do them for many reasons, like running wire in an attic in the summer–you can put a gun to my head and I’m still not going up there (I do my own house repairs, but it’s winter only).

Honestly I wish I just went to retail after moving back to family. My body’s fubar. And I fixed espresso machines; which is a combination of plumbing and electrical. So far 0/5 trainees. They all end up making mistakes, breaking stuff with the hold my beer method, and give up after a few days.

Funny you say that, I’d have never left retail if the pay was decent. I used to be comouter technician back in the late 2000s and early 2010s. I loved that job. I did not want any other job. I certainly don’t like my current software job more than that job.

That’s kind of what happened to me. At first it was great, pay was not too bad, I was teaching myself new things, it was really pretty good. Then a decade later, it’s just work to why am I even doing this.

I think the last three years I’ve been working solo, had a co-worker briefly but he needed something more consistent.

So from going back 6 years ago, having three co-workers and going to just me by myself, it started to feel like solitary confinement and I slowly started to hate it. The base pay didn’t change; I’ve been not paid and ripped off too many times, customers suck but at least I shut down a few businesses that way. Then came the complaints about, I would charge $150 for a trip charge and $100 an hour after that. Which is actually reasonable because of all the work before hand, billing, ordering parts, driving, vehicle wear and fuel (I’d have to charge $250 for a trip now because of the all the expenses), tools, etc. And well the decade of experience. Not to mention fixing shit in a restaurant is a crappy work environment and the restaurant owners are the most annoying, entitled, cry babies. So I stopped doing service calls. And just did the $30 an hour, 1099, at the shop for whoever wants to bring their stuff in to get fixed.

I liked the work that I did but not the rest of it and the constant nagging from my ex-friend/boss (learned why you don’t work with friends). It’s like the whole business was set up around me and it just felt worse and worse. So yeah I recently quit and I’m hoping to get a job at a pet store while being a career college student. It makes me happy that there was maybe 10K of lost sales. A family member died, I got sick from the lettuce fun, and then I was told I’m a lazy drunk, get out of bed and go to work, and the kicker “was she really that important to you.” So I just said fuck it, I’m done.

When I worked in retail, it wasn’t bad. I was surrounded by pretty girls… some of which I dated, and well some that I had to smack away with a fly swatter. They let me do whatever I wanted there so it was good, got a 50% raise in a year and a position created just for me that paid as much as a supervisor. Interacted with all sorts of people, it was nice. I’ll tell you, I have to get reacquainted with society. The last three-four years of only seeing an average of two people a day messed me up. I struggle going to the grocery store for longer than ten minutes.

Sorry for the long rant, but I just figured I’d share that I get what you mean.

and the kicker “was she really that important to you.”

LMAO was she?

My grandma.

Grandmas tend to be important.

Yeah. And I don’t have much family to begin with. And also kinda shit to hear that when you’ve been friends with someone for over a decade.

not necessarily as a major although Im not even sure you can do it as a major. Most science including computer where in LAS in my experience.

Most Arts and Sciences are liberal arts. But yeah, you can still get general education in lots of places and it’ll usually be under the liberal arts umbrella.

yes, but it’s systematically undervalued because stupid people don’t understand how powerful soft skills are and think all that matter is hard skills.

but statistically most liberal art grads do very well later in life, even if they don’t make as much starting out.

It’s because people who can risk pursuing a liberal arts degree are already well off

they aren’t. but keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel superior.

Like half of the stem majors are foreign born rich kids. Just look at the tuition charged.

yeah but they are majoring in STEM so they are automatically hard working and good people or something.

and lets not… acknowledge how many people in STEM… have liberal arts degrees… which is a lot.

that’s because only rich people can waste their time on a degree like that

give stats for success rates account for low starting wealth

what is ‘success’? starting salary, or mid-career, or late career?

regardless of what you major in, or your job skills you have, the biggest predictor of success is your parents wealth. no major, no college, nothing can overcome that element.

the poor kids with STEM degrees are the ones slinging coffee, not the rich ones. because they don’t have the social connections, and the unpaid internships and the social skills to get them hired by all the hiring managers who are upper middle class people whose primary concern in hiring is social fit above all else. brogrammers only hire other brogrammers. woke brogrammers, only higher other woke brogrammers, etc. and poor college kids have no idea what any of that shit is because they are worrying about their food budget and their summer job slinging ice cream will be enough to cover next semesters books and fees.

frankly, I’ve never met a STEM person who wasn’t from a upper middle class family, though a lot of them tell you they are ‘poor’ because their dad own drove a Lexus, not a Mercedes. Everyone I knew who went into STEM was way richer than my family. and they are totally convinced though their grew up in rags because they shopped at Abercomrbie and not Vineyard vines. And if I say ‘hey well i grew up shopping at TJ Maxx’ they tell me to go fuck myself for being a poor piece of shit.

My mom did well but was modest and didn’t have a huge house and never spent money on things we didn’t need. She was frugal with spending and showed how to stack coupons. We used to get 500$ worth of clothes for like 180$.

Tj Maxx and Marshall’s were my shit!!! You could find the coolest stuff on the clearance rack.

I didn’t grow up super poor but we didn’t live like stereotypical rich people either.

hamiltonproject.org/…/major-decisions-what-gradua…

• For the median bachelor’s degree graduate, cumulative lifetime earnings for workers across majors range from $770,000 (early childhood education) to $2.28 million (aerospace engineering). This is a slightly larger range than in the original analysis, driven by gains in aerospace engineering.

• It is still true that majors that emphasize quantitative reasoning tend to have graduates with the highest lifetime earnings. The five highest-earning majors (at the median) are all in engineering fields: aerospace, followed by energy and extraction, chemical and biological, computer, and electrical.

Who cares, let them sleep on the value of the degree. ;)

“allow me to explain this quarters earnings in interpretive dance.”

That would unironically be a more entertaining and useful presentation than pretty much any all-hands keynote delivered by the C-suite that I’ve ever seen in my career

Should have gotten a useful degree. Enjoy those student loans, leeches.

Liberal arts? My philosophy degree prepared me for my software engineer job in today’s world better than any hard science.

Doubt

Set theory, formal logic, foundations of mathematics, I mean it’s not unrelated.

My advanced logic professor has us writing programs in Turing Machine 4 dot tape syntax that my poor TAs had to read. They had to actually step through the program to see if it succeeded since there were multiple possible successful solutions.

havnt they been facing that already for like a decade, only AI made what little jobs out there impossible to find now. almost everyone i met with a CS had like no jobs , 1+year of searching pre-covid. and thier lack of employment rate seems almost as bad as physics.

Probably depends on the location. I’m in Toronto, Canada and pre-pandemic anything that moved got a job, even without a degree. That continued till 2022-23 till the mass layoffs started. In a broadar sense however this is similar to the outsourcing wave in the late 2000s to mid 2010s. For many who graduated after 2015 it is a new experience.