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Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn’t Follow [audio]
- benbojangles 1y agoit's been like this for decades, there's been a huge amount of peddling lies and untruths regarding tech jobs and careers.
- Braxton1980 1y agoWhat lie? Some people have tech jobs. If I tell you plumbing is a good industry to get into why would you infer a job is guaranteed?
- kulahan 1y agoIf you say it? I wouldn't infer that. If the president, media, teachers, influencers, the richest people on the planet, and my parents say it? I probably would. I think it's disingenuous to imply this wasn't strongly recommended as the ideal way to get a high paying job straight out of college that only improves over time.
- fluoridation 1y agoEven the way you've phrased it, nothing says a job is guaranteed. The phrases "software engineering careers are currently _the best_ in terms of ROI" and "an aspiring software engineer is not guaranteed to succeed" could currently be simultaneously true.
- kulahan 1y agoYou’re right, but the topic was whether or not it’s implied, and it pretty clearly is.
- OrderlyTiamat 1y agoNot to mention the (arguably almost spiteful) campaigns to tell professionals in other fields to "learn to code" if they lose their job, as though it's a fit for everyone.
- Braxton1980 1y agoHow is it spiteful to offer an alternative?
- Braxton1980 1y ago>only improves over time. Where is this inferred?
- bogwog 1y agoBad for the people who wasted time and money getting the degree, good for the people who can pay lower wages now that supply is so far ahead of demand (at least at the entry level)
- lagniappe 1y agoThe degree in this field is optional.
- klipklop 1y agoConsidering the glut of employees, the minimum hiring bar for entry level is now a masters degree. Why? Because you have a nearly unlimited number of people that can code well, are young and have a masters degree. The person without the degrees is getting their application tossed into the bin at the entry level. There is no reason to consider them (Note, I do not agree with this, but this is the reality). This is very much a situation you can have your cake, and eat it too.
- timw4mail 1y agoThe majority of degree requirements are lazy gatekeeping.
- voxadam 1y agohttps://archive.is/JiTmI https://archive.is/JiTmI
- nerevarthelame 1y agoThis isn't helpful because the submission is for a podcast which is neither paywalled in the original link, nor captured in the archived link.
- oytis 1y agoA transcription would be useful though. A rare case for AI gizmos to be useful, and noone cared to integrate it.
- xnx 1y ago> "We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication" I'm not sure why they're not available immediately. It can't take that long to format and correct Whisper output.
- dredmorbius 1y agoThe podcast media URL would be more useful this case. As it's highly obscured: <https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/pfx.vpixl.com/6qj4J/pscrb.fm/rss/p/nyt.simplecastaudio.com/03d8b493-87fc-4bd1-931f-8a8e9b945d8a/episodes/b3286d9e-03cf-4235-a903-efcfb1d3ccdd/audio/128/default.mp3 https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/pfx.vpixl.com...> (MP3)
- some_guy_nobel 1y agoI know a few people who graduated with a CS degree in the last 2 years who have given up completely, at least in the short-term, on finding tech jobs. A few tried pivoting to tech sales but found difficulties there as well. I also know a few who landed tech jobs. Those with more success were definitely more interested in the subject, and continued coding during the (+6 month) job search, while those who ended up giving up seemed pretty sour on coding from the get go, lamenting their choice of degree. I suspect an H1B decision reduction is a step in the correct direction here, but
- jmclnx 1y ago>I suspect an H1B decision reduction is a step in the correct direction here, but Already being changing. Singapore is now exempt. As more palms are greased, I am sure more exemptions will follow.
- some_guy_nobel 1y agoTrue, it's almost certainly for show and will amount to nothing, as with most things in this/every administration.
- jhanschoo 1y agoI think you are mistaken in this, unless there is news I am not aware of. Chile and Singapore citizens have a H1B1 work visa available to them with similar conditions as the H1B, except for a restriction on intent to immigrate, and a different quota pool; this was instituted by respective bilateral FTAs. The recent news about them is just that the H1B1 is not subject to the recent developments concerning the H1B.
- jmclnx 1y agoYou made me do s search. I do not know about Chile, but this: https://www.visaverge.com/visa/singapore-citizens-exempt-from-100000-h-1b1-fee-us-embassy-confirms/ https://www.visaverge.com/visa/singapore-citizens-exempt-fro... Where I use to work, there were a few people, not many, working there from Singapore. Most were from India and China.
- Legend2440 1y agoThat's life unfortunately, demand goes up and demand goes down. There is no degree that guarantees success, no job that lasts forever, and no guru with the secret to happiness. You've just got to be clever and adaptable and stay on your toes.
- cyanydeez 1y agoyou could always support collective policies to address massive shifts in society. No one in modern society is completely helpless or lone wolf unless they truly want to believe that.
- Legend2440 1y agoNo thanks, actually. I’m pretty happy with the status quo. If jobs were guaranteed regardless of demand, allocation of labor would be less efficient, and we’d all be poorer on average.
- cyanydeez 1y agoThats some binary logic no one suggested.
- bluecheese452 1y agoExactly, if Godzilla were made king of mars, how would we afford umbrellas?
- DengistKhan 1y agoBetter that millions roam the streets starving and homeless than a single person receive a penny they didn't slave themselves out for.
- happytoexplain 1y ago"It's natural" is a lie we tell to shift profit from the masses to the rich. There is nothing uncontrollable about the human behavior we call economics.
- mrguyorama 1y agoThe point was not that Big Tech wanted more programmers because they would have more job postings. The point was that Big Tech wanted more competition in the labor market to drive down programmer wages. As they have demonstrated time and time again, the CFOs at "Big Tech" companies abhor paying programmers what they are worth. They do not care that they make $1 million in profit for your work, they hate that they pay you $300k, and they are willing to do anything (including multiple cases of illegal conspiracy) to pay you less than that. I think hiring is less bleak here on the east coast. Software Developers in most of these large companies are underpriced.
- Legend2440 1y agoEhhh they are paying software developers a good deal more than they are worth in any other industry or country. You’re not going to convince me that $300k is underpriced, that’s doctor/lawyer pay without having to spend 10 years in med school. Dev salaries are a bubble.
- jqpabc123 1y agoSorry, tech is moving to China. It's a cultural thing. The USA never has and probably never will really value technical talent. "Noone gets paid until something gets sold". I heard this mantra over and over again from US business leadership during my technical career. It never occurred to them that nothing gets sold until something gets built. They just took that part for granted.
- hippo22 1y agoI think both engineering and sales take the customer for granted. Engineering often views their role as taking in specs and outputting product with little regard to whether or not the product is actually worth buying. Sales views customers as a resource to exploit rather than an entity to serve. Both sides have gotten so far and lazy from American hegemony that it’s no surprise China has usurped the US.
- fluoridation 1y agoWhen that's true, I don't think that's the fault of either of those divisions. The job of one is to build things, and the job of the other is to sell things, and that's it. Considering and analyzing the customer's needs would probably fall under R&D or market research, and piping those findings into other divisions would have to be the job of leadership. So in other words, if a company is making and selling things nobody wants, it's the fault of the decision makers.
- palmotea 1y ago> Both sides have gotten so far and lazy from American hegemony that it’s no surprise China has usurped the US. China has usurped the US because a handful of businessmen decided to personally make money over several decades by basically exporting capability and know-how for modest short-term profits, and the Chinese government was far-sighted enough to help them and make sure they got the better end of the bargain (over the long term). The lazy and incompetent western worker trope is just BS to justify this destructive enrichment strategy.
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- babblingfish 1y agoThe juxtaposition in the headline implies that A.I. coding tools are the cause of unemployment for new grads. I find this sort of headline to be intentionally misleading. But sadly, A.I. gets clicks. There's no evidence that A.I. coding tools are causative of unemployment. The simpler and more likely explanation is that big tech companies overhired during the pandemic and now are doing layoffs to adjust course. Correlation being presented as causation is lazy reporting. > As the industry embraces A.I. coding tools, computer science graduates say they’re struggling to land tech jobs.
- xnx 1y agoThe story provides multiple explanations for the difficult job market, not just (or even primarily) AI.
- srj 1y agoI've seen zero job loss from AI but substantial job loss to off-shoring. What you said about over-hiring I think is also true, but if you look at headcount numbers they have dropped only marginally. The geographic distribution of that headcount however has shifted in a big way to India, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. The reason is obvious, people in those countries are paid far less (often 1/3 or 1/4) compared to their US counterparts. It seems this rarely gets discussed in the media though. As you said, AI gets more readership attention. I also get the impression people feel there's something culturally offensive about discussing off-shoring.
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- billy99k 1y agoI knew lots of people that got into coding in the early 2000s and couldn't find a job after graduation. Why? They just took the classes and expected a cushy job. I, on the other hand, worked on lots of my own projects and contributed to open source. I had a job lined up after graduation and haven't been out of work since. Most of them got out of tech completely. You can't just expect to follow a list of pre-written steps and then get rich from it. Life has never worked this way, but people continue to expect it.
- some_guy_nobel 1y agoI agree, and have the same experience, minus the date my career started. That said, there's still something to be said for the fact that this is the only field that requires so much outside work, constant upskilling, etc.
- biglyburrito 1y agoTech is absolutely NOT "the only field that requires so much outside work, constant upskilling, etc". A good doctor never stops going to conferences, reading, publishing articles, etc.
- tstrimple 1y agoBut the doctors who never go to conferences and who don't stay up to date on anything are also called Doctor and work in the exact same places. Good luck telling the differences between them as a layman. I agree with you though. And the percentage of "Good Doctors" probably rivals the percentage of "Good Engineers" or "Good Anything" really because care of a craft is not the norm. Doing the bare minimum to avoid getting fired is the median we are exposed to on a daily basis across professions.
- roncesvalles 1y agoSame. I went to a fairly middle-tier CS program, graduated in the mid 2010s. A good chunk of my CS class just never got CS jobs. One is a car salesman, one is a math teacher, one went into academia for linguistics, many went into IT or helpdesk, many work odd jobs or generic white collar jobs. I would guess only about 10-15% of CS grads ever land into the cushy six-figure Bay Area SWE career at well-known companies that people associate with the term "Software Engineer". Becoming a SWE is hard and it was never easy. You needed projects, internships, hundreds of hours invested in interview prep, aggressive networking and, even after all that, excellent luck. It is not something that naturally follows a CS degree. Maybe it does for the kids at the Stanfords and MITs (who, might I remind you, have already won wars to even get there). Not for the average Joe Jr from University of Flyover State.
- sgnelson 1y ago"Learn to weld." (Hint, it's not all it's cracked up to be either.)
- Ekaros 1y agoThere is one fundamental truth. In general employers aim to pay least they can to get work done to sufficient level.
- RickJWagner 1y agoBig Tech? That was Joe Biden, talking to coal miners. https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/476391-biden-tells-coal-miners-to-learn-to-code/ https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/47...
- defrost 1y agoThat's the then POTUS doing his job as the mouthpiece for policy already set in motion by others .. bipartisan others: Retraining programs have received bipartisan support. The U.S. Department of Labor announced a fund of nearly $5 million for working training programs in Appalachia earlier this year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently announced $2 million in funding from the National Dislocated Workers fund, and Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced a fund of more than $1 million from the same fund. The reason the US is circling a divisive k-hole is the readiness of US citizens to immediately throw anything as blame on "the other".
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago"College grads with tech backgrounds - the lottery ticket, or so we thought in American life - are having a harder time getting jobs than biology majors." Sounds about right in terms of importance to society Maybe surveillance, data collection and targeted ads is not a realistic "business model" long term. ZIRP ends, reality hits. Big Tech has to cut costs and employees are a big cost, especially overpaid ones ("tech" employees believed they were assets, now they know the truth) Silicon Valley is betting the farm on "AI". The Hail Mary
- closeparen 1y agoAmerican society’s view of the importance of biomedical research is directly written down in NIH grantmaking and funding levels. It’s not looking good.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago"That's more than twice the unemployment rate among recent biology grads, which is just 3 percent." If uneployment for recent biology grads at 3% is "not looking good" then for recent computer science grads at more than 6% unemployment, things are looking much worse
- Theodores 1y agoAllegedly more people are coding than ever, with thanks to kids having coding on the curriculum. The problem with all engineering is that stuff gets built, and, once it is built, you don't need all the engineers that built it anymore. Things then get into the 'cottage industry phase'. Ecommerce is fascinating in this regard. Being able to sell stuff online was a goldmine at the start, with every business needing to get online to sell their products and services. However, platforms such as Shopify, Etsy and Amazon came along and companies ditched their expensive programmers to use the new SaaS platforms for ecommerce. Video games and anything 3D entered the 'cottage industry phase' a long time ago and the same with social media things, the infrastructure is built and those in the game just play musical chairs going from one gig to another, with relatively few openings for new people. Outsourcing due to globalisation comes into it, why pay for programmers in a Western city when you can move the operation to Eastern Europe or India? Undoubtedly this is a factor, however, there comes a time when everything is consolidated and just built. Compare with the build out of networks in the Nortel days. If you knew how to do things with fibre optic splitters and big boxes with lots of lights on them then everything was golden, whilst the boom lasted. But then everything was built and it entered 'cottage industry phase'.
- kkfx 1y agoThe society still fails to really digitalize, that's will change soon after complete the destruction of our economies tied to an old untenable model.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]