I can understand this. When I studied CS at UMD College Park in the early 2000s, it wasn't that much of a pop-culture a glamorous field yet. So most of the kids

I can understand this. When I studied CS at UMD College Park in the early 2000s, it wasn't that much of a pop-culture a glamorous field yet. So most of the kids doing it were actually interested in programming and algorithms etc. And jobs, opportunities, and job offers were aplenty. But now that we've had nearly 20 years of FAANG companies growing into the stratosphere, surrounded by software and smartphones and the riches that world has brought, I can understand that it just attracts people that want the money. And there's nothing wrong with that in general (if you view college as a training program for jobs). But I would also guess that part of requests for job references might also come with ––– in the past 3 years you've seen a saturation of talent (via boot camps and CS degrees) but now AI is going to reduce the number of developers a company needs. So for the first time in my professional career, it isn't drop dead simple to get a job in software dev. I remember 15 years ago how much developers used to disparage recruiters because we didn't need them to find jobs, and the power dynamic was quite imbalanced. I never did even though I did have the occasional funny interaction ("do you have 15 years of C#?" type nonsense). But I always predicted there would be a day where all of us needed recruiters. So that day is here now. So I think it has to be VERY hard to be a college grad heading to a white collar job nowadays, CS or not, due to the hugely changing winds with AI.