I think one big problem is that job postings these days are either for 1) super-specific skills, which necessitate years of industry experience (or academic res

I think one big problem is that job postings these days are either for 1) super-specific skills, which necessitate years of industry experience (or academic research, in a few cases), or 2) experienced all-purpose programmers (to save money over hiring several niche experts). To use a personal illustration, at my old job I had a group composed of about 85 programmers, 15 QA, 5 devops and 5 DBAs, with a few miscellaneous non-tech people (PMs, analysts, etc). In that situation I was perfectly satisfied hiring junior folks with only 0-3 years of experience but a good head on their shoulders and a desire to learn, because there was enough slack in the larger org to make up for temporary slowdowns resulting from training & general learnings. In my current role, I have a team of a half dozen, 4 of whom are skilled analyst/PM types. If I want to build something, I either have to outsource or hire one of two of the very best "full stack" developers that I can trust to throw anything from front end design to web + mobile dev + data structures & reporting/analysis on the backend. As a result, I'm almost always searching for people with 10 years of industry experience who have spent all that time learning & practicing a diverse set of skills. I think one thing that'll cause disappearance of low end jobs is the upcoming/increasing automation of business processes using click & drag workflow platforms (and better leaner ERPs & CRMs). My previous employer has about 200 IT people just keeping Oracle running, and another 150 or so working on manufacturing software. I think the majority of those kinds of jobs in big enterprise are going to disappear in the next 10 years... and that's A LOT of jobs. Fortunately, one of the triggers will be retirement of boomers, so it'll be a more natural progression than massive layoffs would be.