7 ms·

Computer science has one of the highest unemployment rates

77 points by zdgeier 1y ago

zettapwn 1y ago
[flagged]
- astura 1y ago
  Who the fuck is Michael O. Church?
  - wslh 1y ago
    Sometimes it's best to begin with the aftermath: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538
  - JanneVee 1y ago
    The important thing here isn't who he is, but how he was treated when presented the idea that techies are going to loose reputation.
- paxys 1y ago
  It's mainly #1. For 20 years now we've been hearing non-stop about how computer science is this magical major where anyone can sleepwalk out of college into a 150k job. Parents have been pushing their kids into it whether they are interested or not. Colleges have been taking advantage by pushing sub-par programs and boosting graduation rates. The end result is a large number of CS graduates who can't write a for loop in an interview (and will then loudly complain about how the interview process is unfair).
  - coderatlarge 1y ago
    i just spoke with a chem prof who said that a lot of phd students in the degree sign up not because they want to do science but because of the salary bump the degree provides in industry. i guess that is a natural dynamic in our economic/belief system in which all central planning must be inherently bad so we must always pay the on-demand price instead of the bulk price and every mis-timing mistake has to cost a lifetime of being wrong afterwards…
- JanneVee 1y ago
  Do you have a link to the post (or posts) from Michael O. Church? I have a vague recollection of the idea but I would like to reread it with what I know today!
  - zettapwn 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - AlexeyBelov 1y ago
      You're a 9 day old account, why are you terrified? I don't believe this is your first account on HN, so you'll just create a new one.
    - dang 1y ago
      Please stop.
- volemo 1y ago
  > “Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. I believe "learn to code" is a great advice, nonetheless; the skill is highly applicable. The bad idea is thinking that alone will land you a cushy job.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    I'll observe that, at a top-rate tech school I'm pretty familiar with, major + computing is a very prevalent option in a lot of the majors. As an undergrad (pre-PCs), I graduated with one computer programming course in FORTRAN and that was pretty much the only time I touched a computer keyboard undergrad. You can't really do that today in engineering/sciences.
- ghaff 1y ago
  Anecdotally, but talking to a lot of people who really have their ears to the ground, the junior roles thing seems to be very real. It probably isn't just AI--with more senior folks probably more available, why hire juniors--but seems to be pretty pronounced (with probably the corollary that bootcamps are probably a bad idea these days). Which isn't a great trend if real.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    Five years ago, maybe even two years ago, we were hearing a lot about "age discrimination" and how seniors couldn't get hired. Maybe it's just a phase? Or maybe today's juniors are different than the juniors were five years ago. And maybe that's because of AI.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      Both things can be true. It can be tough for juniors and tough for seniors who haven’t kept up and are just trying to cruise. Not that age discrimination isn’t a thing.
- dagw 1y ago
  “Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. Completely disagree. No matter what job you end up with, you will almost certainly be able to do it a bit better if you know how to code. Knowing how to code is basically always a plus when applying for a job. However "just learn to code a little bit, and nothing else" is probably bad advice.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Everyone has finite amounts of ‘shits’ to give (albeit some activities multiply instead of subtract on that front!). If they spend it on coding instead of something else, hopefully it was worth it eh?
- rvz 1y ago
  > 1. Overproduction. Even liberal arts colleges have 15-20% of students majoring in computer science. “Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. "Learn to code" was the scam to address the so-called "skills shortage" BS in programming. Even worse, the skills that was pushed were also the most automatable: HTML, CSS and especially Javascript just to get $250k roles which was the most unsustainable ZIRP era to happen. Now you won't see the influencers screaming about web developer roles given the current massive flush in those who joined because of the $$$ just to rearrange a <div> or adding accessiblity styling for 6 figures.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    "Skills shortage" isn't BS. But minimal front-end learnings aren't the fix.
    - lazide 1y ago
      ‘Skills shortage’ is similar to complaining about STEM shortages. It’s mostly BS. The complaint isn’t about n people not being available, it’s about n people not being available for x low price, or z terrible working conditions. No matter how cheap or how widely available, some folks will still complain because for some folks, even if they had to pay $0, it still would be ‘too much’ if people also demanded human rights. It’s similar to the ‘where have all the good men gone’, or ‘why don’t people want to work anymore?’, etc. complaints.
      - ghaff 1y ago
        STEM is fairly meaningless in an employment context because biology/chemistry/math undergrads are generally in a different category than at least some engineering grads. And it's actually reasonable to think that those engineering grad salary expectations should be roughly in the ballpark of other professionals. They certainly used to be.
- orwin 1y ago
  'learn to code' is a great advice for anybody. If you're a biology major and need to check the world molecules database (forgot the name, sorry), being able to write your own query goes a long way despite the nocode solutions.
- msgodel 1y ago
  I actually think some of big tech cough Apple cough is a decent short right now. I wanted to do it back in December but it's hard to bring yourself to short the largest companies like that.
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    Some of big tech (cough tesla cough) was ripe for shorting for many years now but market will be irrational longer than you stay solvent;)
    - msgodel 1y ago
      Tesla, both the company and the stock, is pretty complicated. I certainly wouldn't short it right now. The problem with many of these tech companies is that they've been so successful abusing their users out that they've quit putting energy into developing their products. HP and Sonos are two good recent examples of how this ends. Tesla doesn't seem to be doing that right now. The big thing you'd be be betting on (long or short) is how successful the robotaxi and optimis will be. I'm not optimistic with either of those (robo taxi seems like it should be practical, it's more about the particular execution) but I also wouldn't be willing to bet against them.
      - spacemadness 1y ago
        There isn’t even a rational argument regarding Tesla stock. Trying to do so is folly. It’s a meme/cult stock.
- wooque 1y ago
  What happened to Michael O. Church? I enjoyed his writings
  - swat535 1y ago
    Here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538
    - spacemadness 1y ago
      He wasn’t wrong.
cs_throwaway 1y ago
CS professor with 15 years experience. The massive boom in computer science enrollment over the last 20 years has been driven mostly by people chasing tech salaries, not by any real interest in computing itself. These students often show up completely unprepared for how difficult CS actually is, and universities have responded by dumbing down their programs to keep everyone happy and enrolled. If this weeds out the people who are just there for the paychecks, it might actually be a relief to get back to teaching students who genuinely want to learn about computing.
- ramesh31 1y ago
  Thank you for saying this because it feels like these people entering the industry in such numbers over the 2010s completely killed what made this job fun in the first place. I call them "ticket completers". Sure they can mechanically perform the minimum requirements of the job, but there is zero interest at all in what is actually being done; just following PM directions to the letter with no further thought. The whole spirit of innovation and curiosity and discovery has been lost, replaced by lifestyle seekers who look at you like an insane person when trying to talk about software in the abstract (ha!). The hackers and nerds will be just fine. They are like gold when we find them now. But if this makes CS "uncool" again, I am all for it.
  - dpflan 1y ago
    > The hackers and nerds will be just fine. They are like gold when we find them now. But if this makes CS "uncool" again, I am all for it. Think about how AI can help students cheat nowadays. You could still cheat previously, but now a CS-degree seeker can have an AI do the entirety of school work for them (with exception of say pen-and-paper tests). Imagine how the quality of new graduates drops with regard to the understanding and abilities you highlight as crucial to being effective in software, and how those that do understand are even more valuable relatively, but perhaps harder to find in the noise.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
bux93 1y ago
The source is here https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:unemployment https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:... I don't read too much into the fact that unemployment for nutrition science is at 0.4% - that doesn't mean those people are all working as nutritionists or even in a job that requires a degree. You can see this clearly in the underemployment rate which is 45%+. Likewise, the top unemployment rate (9.4%) of those with an anthropology major probably doesn't mean all those people are living under a bridge - a fair number of them will be pretty well off, living off their parents and knew going in that their field doesn't hire millions. So what to make of IT grads having high unemployment rates (but low underemployment rates! bottom 5 in those)? I feel some more on-the-ground reporting is needed. The quotes from randos reacting in this article don't really help. "Every kid with a laptop thinks they're the next Zuckerberg, but most can't debug their way out of a paper bag," because debugging (like Zuck!) is computer science, apparently.
- leereeves 1y ago
  > So what to make of IT grads having high unemployment rates (but low underemployment rates! bottom 5 in those)? That's a very important observation. It's much better to be in a field with a 6% unemployment rate than a 60% underemployment rate (like criminal justice, performing arts, and, surprisingly, medical technicians).
dyl000 1y ago
regular people, not really interested in tech chasing 'easy tech salaries' coming up against the fact its a hard industry.
dschuetz 1y ago
20ys ago: you must study CS it's in high demand RN! 10ys ago: don't even apply w/o a master's degree! 2ys ago: sorry we're full! 1 week ago: you must study ML it's in high demand RN!
- mrkramer 1y ago
  It's old news that markets are dynamic.
  - dschuetz 1y ago
    Depends on who you ask. It's news to graduates who find themselves w/o a job and zilions in debt.
felixarba 1y ago
> Every kid with a laptop thinks they're the next Zuckerberg, but most can't debug their way out of a paper bag I feel like I've seen this quote many times over the years. Also, how do they calculate employment rate? If you get a job at McDonald's while having a civil engineering degree or nutrition science, that counts as employed as well, no? Would be good to see how many are actually employed in their field of study
- ghaff 1y ago
  These numbers are all hard to measure. I only more or less worked in my engineering field of study (not CS) for 3 years but, other than going back to grad school for 2, was never underemployed by any serious definition of the term.
- Maro 1y ago
  > If you get a job at McDonald's while having a civil engineering degree That would be under_employment (vs un_employment). Un_employment refers to people actively seeking work but unable to find it, while under_employment encompasses individuals who are working but not fully utilizing their skills or working fewer hours than they would like
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    Bad term. If I get employed as a quantitative trader on Jane Street after completing a philosophy major am I underemployed because I'm not writing papers on ontology? Why do other people get to say what my "full utilization" is without even knowing me? Underemployment as "not working as many hours as you'd like" is the standard definition, and that one actually does seem to respect people's interiority.
    - rwmj 1y ago
      It depends if you want to be a philosopher or not. The surveys do actually ask this question, see questions #93-95 here for example: http://gpiatlantic.org/pdf/communitygpi/communitypart2b.pdf http://gpiatlantic.org/pdf/communitygpi/communitypart2b.pdf (I think you are right to ask if a survey can accurately capture "underemployment", there are many problems with the definition and how to capture the right information to measure it.)
rvz 1y ago
This is nothing (it will get worse) compared to what will happen in 2030. Just look at what is happening in just the last 5 to 6 months since this prediction was made [0]. The definition of "AGI" was hijacked to mean all sorts of things to the companies that operate the AI systems, even conflicting with each other on timeframes and goals. But what really is the true definition of "AGI" is the blueprint inside the WEF's Future of Jobs Report 2025 [1] with the deadline of 2030 including mass layoffs which 40% of employers admittedly anticipate reducing their workforce where AI can automate tasks, as I said before [2] So what AGI actually means is a 10% global unemployment increase by 2030 or 2035 and with all those savings going to the AI companies. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490692 [1] https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/digest/ https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-repo... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42652402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42652402
- Maro 1y ago
  > with all those savings going to the AI companies I'm not even sure those savings will "go" anywhere, they will just stay with the companies. Right now, if I use my $20/mo ChatGPT subscription to automate away my secretary's job ($3,000/mo or whatever), it's not like those $3,000/mo is going to OpenAI. And I don't think in the future they will be able to jack up prices, because foundational LLM models have become a race to the bottom.
  - disqard 1y ago
    Great point! And also an uncomfortable truth: this sort of use (to replace human jobs) will be a net negative on GDP. That secretary will now have to make do with a lot less money, so they'll make fewer/cheaper purchases, etc. However, the "number go up" crowd doesn't give a fuck about the secretaries -- so they will chant "AI! AI! AI!" to juice the stock and make out like bandits, while they still can.
Spooky23 1y ago
It’s a boom/bust profession that has been in a long boom. Many of the big companies that have been on hiring orgies are advertising dependent. Ads are the thing that gets slashed heading into a bad economy, and we’re in an economic mess that is going to get alot worse.
baron816 1y ago
This is inevitable with any boom/bust cycle. Employment in tech just can’t possibly grow exponentially forever.
revskill 1y ago
90% of them are fullstack Node/React devs i think.
vertnerd 1y ago
I left the software engineering field about 17 years ago to become a high school teacher. One of the things I taught was computer science (to high schoolers) and I recall sitting in many meetings of HS CS educators discussing the upcoming critical shortage of workers with CS degrees. I would tell them I left the field because there wasn't much work, and they would look at me like I was crazy. "Something wrong with that guy... He can't find work when there's a CRITICAL SHORTAGE of workers!!"
glimshe 1y ago
If we're around in 2000 and 2009, you've seen this before. Our field has ups and downs and every time we hit the bottom people say it won't come back. It will. We had some cleaning up to do. I was a hiring manager during COVID and the resumes I saw were unbelievable. People with "web" boot camps being considered for 6 figure salaries. People who had absolutely no business being in this field were being hired. It was due to the easy money from low interest rates. This field always had solid salaries but some people were making a million to sit on meetings and integrate frameworks into me-too websites. The hammer is coming down and is unfortunately hitting many good people too. But they will recover while the people who shouldn't be here will move on. Don't get your HVAC repair certification quite yet. Stop complaining about AI and go study it (the hard stuff not ChatGPT for dummies).
- jaybrendansmith 1y ago
  Well put. And this happened back in 2000, and 2009. I had people who I knew from direct experience to be non-technical slackers tell me about their IT Director jobs. I knew it wouldn't last then, and I'm not surprised now. Just get out of your comfort zone and start looking, and if you are in a bad situation don't be cowed. If you are truly technical this is always valued, despite the easy answers from ChatGPT, you must understand what it is telling you to really make use of it.
- ponector 1y ago
  It's not the AI, it's outsourcing who really killing IT jobs. Even from relatively cheap East Europe projects are being moved to India, Vietnam and Philippines.
  - glimshe 1y ago
    I've also been hearing this for 25 years now... Outsourcing also happens in waves.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
juancn 1y ago
There's so many graduates that are not worth the paper their degree is printed on that it's laughable (if it weren't sad). That's a good part of the reason why hiring processes are so long and you need to re-check everything people are supposed to know. Filtering out hundreds of candidates to get a mediocre one at best, thousands to get a really good one. There are job openings, but just having a piece of paper is not enough to get to those. AI tools have made recruiting a miserable experience for everyone involved, there's so much cheating in applicants and you waste so much time filtering those out and sadly, good candidates sometimes get lost in the noise. Networking is what has the highest signal to noise ratio. A good recommendation from someone you trust helps a lot, but it penalizes people just starting their careers and have smaller networks. It's a sad state of affairs.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
"Despite computer science being ranked as number one by the Princeton Review for college majors, the tech industry may not be living up to graduates' expectations. When it came to undergraduate majors with the highest unemployment rates, computer science came in at number seven, even amid its relative popularity. The major saw an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent, just under those top majors like physics and anthropology, which had rates of 7.8 and 9.4 percent respectively. Computer engineering, which at many schools is the same as computer science, had a 7.5 percent unemployment rate, calling into question the job market many computer science graduates are entering. On the other hand, majors like nutrition sciences, construction services and civil engineering had some of the lowest unemployment rates, hovering between 1 percent to as low as 0.4 percent. This data was based on The New York Fed's report, which looked at Census data from 2023 and unemployment rates of recent college graduates." Source: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market (requires Javascript) Data: (no Javascript required) https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactives/data/college-labor-market/college-labor-outcomes-by-major-data.csv https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactive... https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactives/data/college-labor-market/college-labor-unemployment-data.csv https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactive... https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactives/data/college-labor-market/college-labor-underemployment-data.csv https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactive... https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactives/data/college-labor-market/college-labor-wages-data.csv https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactive... Civil Engineering 1.0% Aerospace Engineering 1.4% Mechanical Engineering 1.5% Chemical Engineering 2.0% Electrical Engineering 2.2% General Engineering 2.4% Miscellaneous Engineering 3.4% Computer Science 6.1% Computer Engineering 7.5%
JojoFatsani 1y ago
[flagged]

77 points by zdgeier 1y ago

zettapwn 1y ago

[flagged]

astura 1y ago
Who the fuck is Michael O. Church?
- wslh 1y ago
  Sometimes it's best to begin with the aftermath: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538
- JanneVee 1y ago
  The important thing here isn't who he is, but how he was treated when presented the idea that techies are going to loose reputation.
paxys 1y ago
It's mainly #1. For 20 years now we've been hearing non-stop about how computer science is this magical major where anyone can sleepwalk out of college into a 150k job. Parents have been pushing their kids into it whether they are interested or not. Colleges have been taking advantage by pushing sub-par programs and boosting graduation rates. The end result is a large number of CS graduates who can't write a for loop in an interview (and will then loudly complain about how the interview process is unfair).
- coderatlarge 1y ago
  i just spoke with a chem prof who said that a lot of phd students in the degree sign up not because they want to do science but because of the salary bump the degree provides in industry. i guess that is a natural dynamic in our economic/belief system in which all central planning must be inherently bad so we must always pay the on-demand price instead of the bulk price and every mis-timing mistake has to cost a lifetime of being wrong afterwards…
JanneVee 1y ago
Do you have a link to the post (or posts) from Michael O. Church? I have a vague recollection of the idea but I would like to reread it with what I know today!
- zettapwn 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - AlexeyBelov 1y ago
    You're a 9 day old account, why are you terrified? I don't believe this is your first account on HN, so you'll just create a new one.
  - dang 1y ago
    Please stop.
volemo 1y ago
> “Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. I believe "learn to code" is a great advice, nonetheless; the skill is highly applicable. The bad idea is thinking that alone will land you a cushy job.
- ghaff 1y ago
  I'll observe that, at a top-rate tech school I'm pretty familiar with, major + computing is a very prevalent option in a lot of the majors. As an undergrad (pre-PCs), I graduated with one computer programming course in FORTRAN and that was pretty much the only time I touched a computer keyboard undergrad. You can't really do that today in engineering/sciences.
ghaff 1y ago
Anecdotally, but talking to a lot of people who really have their ears to the ground, the junior roles thing seems to be very real. It probably isn't just AI--with more senior folks probably more available, why hire juniors--but seems to be pretty pronounced (with probably the corollary that bootcamps are probably a bad idea these days). Which isn't a great trend if real.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Five years ago, maybe even two years ago, we were hearing a lot about "age discrimination" and how seniors couldn't get hired. Maybe it's just a phase? Or maybe today's juniors are different than the juniors were five years ago. And maybe that's because of AI.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    Both things can be true. It can be tough for juniors and tough for seniors who haven’t kept up and are just trying to cruise. Not that age discrimination isn’t a thing.
dagw 1y ago
“Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. Completely disagree. No matter what job you end up with, you will almost certainly be able to do it a bit better if you know how to code. Knowing how to code is basically always a plus when applying for a job. However "just learn to code a little bit, and nothing else" is probably bad advice.
- lazide 1y ago
  Everyone has finite amounts of ‘shits’ to give (albeit some activities multiply instead of subtract on that front!). If they spend it on coding instead of something else, hopefully it was worth it eh?
rvz 1y ago
> 1. Overproduction. Even liberal arts colleges have 15-20% of students majoring in computer science. “Learn to code” ceases to be good advice if too many people do. "Learn to code" was the scam to address the so-called "skills shortage" BS in programming. Even worse, the skills that was pushed were also the most automatable: HTML, CSS and especially Javascript just to get $250k roles which was the most unsustainable ZIRP era to happen. Now you won't see the influencers screaming about web developer roles given the current massive flush in those who joined because of the $$$ just to rearrange a <div> or adding accessiblity styling for 6 figures.
- ghaff 1y ago
  "Skills shortage" isn't BS. But minimal front-end learnings aren't the fix.
  - lazide 1y ago
    ‘Skills shortage’ is similar to complaining about STEM shortages. It’s mostly BS. The complaint isn’t about n people not being available, it’s about n people not being available for x low price, or z terrible working conditions. No matter how cheap or how widely available, some folks will still complain because for some folks, even if they had to pay $0, it still would be ‘too much’ if people also demanded human rights. It’s similar to the ‘where have all the good men gone’, or ‘why don’t people want to work anymore?’, etc. complaints.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      STEM is fairly meaningless in an employment context because biology/chemistry/math undergrads are generally in a different category than at least some engineering grads. And it's actually reasonable to think that those engineering grad salary expectations should be roughly in the ballpark of other professionals. They certainly used to be.
orwin 1y ago
'learn to code' is a great advice for anybody. If you're a biology major and need to check the world molecules database (forgot the name, sorry), being able to write your own query goes a long way despite the nocode solutions.
msgodel 1y ago
I actually think some of big tech cough Apple cough is a decent short right now. I wanted to do it back in December but it's hard to bring yourself to short the largest companies like that.
- throwaway290 1y ago
  Some of big tech (cough tesla cough) was ripe for shorting for many years now but market will be irrational longer than you stay solvent;)
  - msgodel 1y ago
    Tesla, both the company and the stock, is pretty complicated. I certainly wouldn't short it right now. The problem with many of these tech companies is that they've been so successful abusing their users out that they've quit putting energy into developing their products. HP and Sonos are two good recent examples of how this ends. Tesla doesn't seem to be doing that right now. The big thing you'd be be betting on (long or short) is how successful the robotaxi and optimis will be. I'm not optimistic with either of those (robo taxi seems like it should be practical, it's more about the particular execution) but I also wouldn't be willing to bet against them.
    - spacemadness 1y ago
      There isn’t even a rational argument regarding Tesla stock. Trying to do so is folly. It’s a meme/cult stock.
wooque 1y ago
What happened to Michael O. Church? I enjoyed his writings
- swat535 1y ago
  Here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538
  - spacemadness 1y ago
    He wasn’t wrong.

cs_throwaway 1y ago

CS professor with 15 years experience. The massive boom in computer science enrollment over the last 20 years has been driven mostly by people chasing tech salaries, not by any real interest in computing itself. These students often show up completely unprepared for how difficult CS actually is, and universities have responded by dumbing down their programs to keep everyone happy and enrolled. If this weeds out the people who are just there for the paychecks, it might actually be a relief to get back to teaching students who genuinely want to learn about computing.

ramesh31 1y ago
Thank you for saying this because it feels like these people entering the industry in such numbers over the 2010s completely killed what made this job fun in the first place. I call them "ticket completers". Sure they can mechanically perform the minimum requirements of the job, but there is zero interest at all in what is actually being done; just following PM directions to the letter with no further thought. The whole spirit of innovation and curiosity and discovery has been lost, replaced by lifestyle seekers who look at you like an insane person when trying to talk about software in the abstract (ha!). The hackers and nerds will be just fine. They are like gold when we find them now. But if this makes CS "uncool" again, I am all for it.
- dpflan 1y ago
  > The hackers and nerds will be just fine. They are like gold when we find them now. But if this makes CS "uncool" again, I am all for it. Think about how AI can help students cheat nowadays. You could still cheat previously, but now a CS-degree seeker can have an AI do the entirety of school work for them (with exception of say pen-and-paper tests). Imagine how the quality of new graduates drops with regard to the understanding and abilities you highlight as crucial to being effective in software, and how those that do understand are even more valuable relatively, but perhaps harder to find in the noise.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

bux93 1y ago

The source is here https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:unemployment https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:... I don't read too much into the fact that unemployment for nutrition science is at 0.4% - that doesn't mean those people are all working as nutritionists or even in a job that requires a degree. You can see this clearly in the underemployment rate which is 45%+. Likewise, the top unemployment rate (9.4%) of those with an anthropology major probably doesn't mean all those people are living under a bridge - a fair number of them will be pretty well off, living off their parents and knew going in that their field doesn't hire millions. So what to make of IT grads having high unemployment rates (but low underemployment rates! bottom 5 in those)? I feel some more on-the-ground reporting is needed. The quotes from randos reacting in this article don't really help. "Every kid with a laptop thinks they're the next Zuckerberg, but most can't debug their way out of a paper bag," because debugging (like Zuck!) is computer science, apparently.

leereeves 1y ago
> So what to make of IT grads having high unemployment rates (but low underemployment rates! bottom 5 in those)? That's a very important observation. It's much better to be in a field with a 6% unemployment rate than a 60% underemployment rate (like criminal justice, performing arts, and, surprisingly, medical technicians).

dyl000 1y ago

regular people, not really interested in tech chasing 'easy tech salaries' coming up against the fact its a hard industry.

dschuetz 1y ago

20ys ago: you must study CS it's in high demand RN! 10ys ago: don't even apply w/o a master's degree! 2ys ago: sorry we're full! 1 week ago: you must study ML it's in high demand RN!

mrkramer 1y ago
It's old news that markets are dynamic.
- dschuetz 1y ago
  Depends on who you ask. It's news to graduates who find themselves w/o a job and zilions in debt.

felixarba 1y ago

> Every kid with a laptop thinks they're the next Zuckerberg, but most can't debug their way out of a paper bag I feel like I've seen this quote many times over the years. Also, how do they calculate employment rate? If you get a job at McDonald's while having a civil engineering degree or nutrition science, that counts as employed as well, no? Would be good to see how many are actually employed in their field of study

ghaff 1y ago
These numbers are all hard to measure. I only more or less worked in my engineering field of study (not CS) for 3 years but, other than going back to grad school for 2, was never underemployed by any serious definition of the term.
Maro 1y ago
> If you get a job at McDonald's while having a civil engineering degree That would be under_employment (vs un_employment). Un_employment refers to people actively seeking work but unable to find it, while under_employment encompasses individuals who are working but not fully utilizing their skills or working fewer hours than they would like
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  Bad term. If I get employed as a quantitative trader on Jane Street after completing a philosophy major am I underemployed because I'm not writing papers on ontology? Why do other people get to say what my "full utilization" is without even knowing me? Underemployment as "not working as many hours as you'd like" is the standard definition, and that one actually does seem to respect people's interiority.
  - rwmj 1y ago
    It depends if you want to be a philosopher or not. The surveys do actually ask this question, see questions #93-95 here for example: http://gpiatlantic.org/pdf/communitygpi/communitypart2b.pdf http://gpiatlantic.org/pdf/communitygpi/communitypart2b.pdf (I think you are right to ask if a survey can accurately capture "underemployment", there are many problems with the definition and how to capture the right information to measure it.)

rvz 1y ago

This is nothing (it will get worse) compared to what will happen in 2030. Just look at what is happening in just the last 5 to 6 months since this prediction was made [0]. The definition of "AGI" was hijacked to mean all sorts of things to the companies that operate the AI systems, even conflicting with each other on timeframes and goals. But what really is the true definition of "AGI" is the blueprint inside the WEF's Future of Jobs Report 2025 [1] with the deadline of 2030 including mass layoffs which 40% of employers admittedly anticipate reducing their workforce where AI can automate tasks, as I said before [2] So what AGI actually means is a 10% global unemployment increase by 2030 or 2035 and with all those savings going to the AI companies. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490692 [1] https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/digest/ https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-repo... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42652402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42652402

Maro 1y ago
> with all those savings going to the AI companies I'm not even sure those savings will "go" anywhere, they will just stay with the companies. Right now, if I use my $20/mo ChatGPT subscription to automate away my secretary's job ($3,000/mo or whatever), it's not like those $3,000/mo is going to OpenAI. And I don't think in the future they will be able to jack up prices, because foundational LLM models have become a race to the bottom.
- disqard 1y ago
  Great point! And also an uncomfortable truth: this sort of use (to replace human jobs) will be a net negative on GDP. That secretary will now have to make do with a lot less money, so they'll make fewer/cheaper purchases, etc. However, the "number go up" crowd doesn't give a fuck about the secretaries -- so they will chant "AI! AI! AI!" to juice the stock and make out like bandits, while they still can.

Spooky23 1y ago

It’s a boom/bust profession that has been in a long boom. Many of the big companies that have been on hiring orgies are advertising dependent. Ads are the thing that gets slashed heading into a bad economy, and we’re in an economic mess that is going to get alot worse.

baron816 1y ago

This is inevitable with any boom/bust cycle. Employment in tech just can’t possibly grow exponentially forever.

revskill 1y ago

90% of them are fullstack Node/React devs i think.

vertnerd 1y ago

I left the software engineering field about 17 years ago to become a high school teacher. One of the things I taught was computer science (to high schoolers) and I recall sitting in many meetings of HS CS educators discussing the upcoming critical shortage of workers with CS degrees. I would tell them I left the field because there wasn't much work, and they would look at me like I was crazy. "Something wrong with that guy... He can't find work when there's a CRITICAL SHORTAGE of workers!!"

glimshe 1y ago

If we're around in 2000 and 2009, you've seen this before. Our field has ups and downs and every time we hit the bottom people say it won't come back. It will. We had some cleaning up to do. I was a hiring manager during COVID and the resumes I saw were unbelievable. People with "web" boot camps being considered for 6 figure salaries. People who had absolutely no business being in this field were being hired. It was due to the easy money from low interest rates. This field always had solid salaries but some people were making a million to sit on meetings and integrate frameworks into me-too websites. The hammer is coming down and is unfortunately hitting many good people too. But they will recover while the people who shouldn't be here will move on. Don't get your HVAC repair certification quite yet. Stop complaining about AI and go study it (the hard stuff not ChatGPT for dummies).

jaybrendansmith 1y ago
Well put. And this happened back in 2000, and 2009. I had people who I knew from direct experience to be non-technical slackers tell me about their IT Director jobs. I knew it wouldn't last then, and I'm not surprised now. Just get out of your comfort zone and start looking, and if you are in a bad situation don't be cowed. If you are truly technical this is always valued, despite the easy answers from ChatGPT, you must understand what it is telling you to really make use of it.
ponector 1y ago
It's not the AI, it's outsourcing who really killing IT jobs. Even from relatively cheap East Europe projects are being moved to India, Vietnam and Philippines.
- glimshe 1y ago
  I've also been hearing this for 25 years now... Outsourcing also happens in waves.

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juancn 1y ago

There's so many graduates that are not worth the paper their degree is printed on that it's laughable (if it weren't sad). That's a good part of the reason why hiring processes are so long and you need to re-check everything people are supposed to know. Filtering out hundreds of candidates to get a mediocre one at best, thousands to get a really good one. There are job openings, but just having a piece of paper is not enough to get to those. AI tools have made recruiting a miserable experience for everyone involved, there's so much cheating in applicants and you waste so much time filtering those out and sadly, good candidates sometimes get lost in the noise. Networking is what has the highest signal to noise ratio. A good recommendation from someone you trust helps a lot, but it penalizes people just starting their careers and have smaller networks. It's a sad state of affairs.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

"Despite computer science being ranked as number one by the Princeton Review for college majors, the tech industry may not be living up to graduates' expectations. When it came to undergraduate majors with the highest unemployment rates, computer science came in at number seven, even amid its relative popularity. The major saw an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent, just under those top majors like physics and anthropology, which had rates of 7.8 and 9.4 percent respectively. Computer engineering, which at many schools is the same as computer science, had a 7.5 percent unemployment rate, calling into question the job market many computer science graduates are entering. On the other hand, majors like nutrition sciences, construction services and civil engineering had some of the lowest unemployment rates, hovering between 1 percent to as low as 0.4 percent. This data was based on The New York Fed's report, which looked at Census data from 2023 and unemployment rates of recent college graduates." Source: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market (requires Javascript) Data: (no Javascript required) https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactives/data/college-labor-market/college-labor-outcomes-by-major-data.csv https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactive... https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactives/data/college-labor-market/college-labor-unemployment-data.csv https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactive... https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactives/data/college-labor-market/college-labor-underemployment-data.csv https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactive... https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactives/data/college-labor-market/college-labor-wages-data.csv https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/research/interactive... Civil Engineering 1.0% Aerospace Engineering 1.4% Mechanical Engineering 1.5% Chemical Engineering 2.0% Electrical Engineering 2.2% General Engineering 2.4% Miscellaneous Engineering 3.4% Computer Science 6.1% Computer Engineering 7.5%

JojoFatsani 1y ago

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