Graduates at some of the top universities are finding it nearly impossible to find new jobs in software engineering.
New reporting by the Los Angeles Times details the trouble recent graduates are having finding entry level jobs — even those with degrees from vaunted institutions like Stanford University.
“Stanford computer science graduates are struggling to find entry-level jobs” with the most prominent tech companies, Stanford bioengineering professor Jan Liphardt told the LA Times. “I think that’s crazy.” One Stanford student, who spoke to the paper anonymously, said that “there’s definitely a very dreary mood on campus.”
As the newspaper describes it, a prevailing idea among those at either end of the software hiring pipeline is that for every ten programmers, companies now only need two, plus a large language model (LLM).
“The AI now can code better than the average junior developer that comes out of the best schools out there,” Amr Awadallah, CEO of Palo Alto-based AI startup Vectara, bragged to the paper. “We don’t need the junior developers anymore.”
To cope with the difficulty in finding entry-level jobs, recent graduates from what you’d think of as elite universities are taking jobs with companies they might once have perceived as beneath them, the paper notes. Others are going the long route, either by founding their own startups to compete for a piece of the venture capital pie or by signing on for graduate degrees to bolster their resumes.
Yet as compsci grads struggle to find jobs in this strange new world, research suggests AI isn’t technically ready to take the hot seat. One study from earlier this year found that when software developers use AI tools to code, it actually makes them 19 percent slower. That result was the complete opposite of forecasts by economics experts, machine learning experts, and even the developers themselves — in short, the dominant narrative pushed by both AI boosters and AI doomers.
There’s also a strange contradiction playing out between the reality on the ground and the data coming out of the labor market.
Another research report by the investment company Vanguard found that the top 100 occupations most exposed to automation by AI are in reality outperforming the rest of the labor market, both in terms of wage and job growth. “This suggests that current AI systems are generally enhancing worker productivity and shifting workers’ tasks toward higher-value activities,” reads the report.
The fact that this productivity shift isn’t translating into prosperity for more people suggests that blame doesn’t fall on AI itself, but on the economic system governing its use. As technology analyst Morten Rand-Hendriksen explains, “AI can’t replace people, but it can create short-term financial gain at the cost of long-term skill- and knowledge loss.”
“That’s what we’re seeing here, and that’s what should worry us,” Rand-Henriksen continues. “AI in all its forms can be a tool to extend our capabilities, but that requires leaders and an economic environment that values human work and human gains over increasing shareholder profits. AI is an exponentially replicating canary in the coalmine of capitalism. If we don’t act now to make room for ourselves, not only the air but the space will run out.”
More on labor: Google CEO Says We’re All Going to Have to Suffer Through It as AI Puts Society Through the Woodchipper
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