CSCareerQuestions

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.