Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins/Futurism. Source: Getty Images
It is almost impossible for graduates of some top universities to find new jobs in software engineering.
New reporting by Los Angeles Times Describes the difficulty recent graduates have in finding entry-level jobs – even those with degrees from prestigious institutions like Stanford University.
“Stanford computer science graduates are struggling to find entry-level jobs at most major technology companies,” said Stanford bioengineering professor Jan Liphart. LA Times“I think it’s crazy,” A Stanford student, who spoke anonymously to the newspaper, said that “there’s definitely a very depressing atmosphere on campus,”
As the newspaper describes it, a prevalent view among those at both ends of the software hiring pipeline is that for every ten programmers, companies now need only two, plus a large language model (LLM).
“AI can now code better than the average junior developer coming out of the best schools out there,” Amr Awadalla, CEO of Palo Alto-based AI startup Vectara, told the newspaper. “We don’t need junior developers anymore.”
To deal with the difficulty in finding entry-level jobs at what you might think of as elite universities, recent graduates are taking jobs with companies they once considered beneath them, as the paper notes. Others are taking the longer route, either by founding their own startup to compete for a share of venture capital or by signing on for a graduate degree to strengthen their resume.
Yet as CompSci graduates struggle to find jobs in this strange new world, research shows that AI isn’t ready to take the technological hot seat. A study earlier this year found that when software developers use AI tools to code, it actually slows them down by 19 percent. That result was the exact opposite of the predictions of economics experts, machine learning experts, and even the developers themselves – in short, the dominant narrative pushed by both AI boosters and AI doomsayers.
There is also a strange contradiction going on between the ground reality and the data coming from the labor market.
one more research report Investment company Vanguard found that the top 100 occupations most exposed to automation by AI are actually outperforming the rest of the labor market in terms of wages. And Job growth. “This suggests that existing AI systems are generally increasing worker productivity and shifting workers’ tasks toward higher-value activities,” the report said.
The fact that this shift in productivity is not translating into prosperity for more people suggests that the blame falls not on AI, but on the economic system that regulates its use. As a technology analyst Morton Rand-Hendrickson explains“AI cannot replace people, but it can produce short-term financial gains at the cost of long-term skills and knowledge loss.”
Rand-Henriksen adds, “That’s what we’re seeing here and that’s what we should be concerned about.” “AI in all its forms can be a tool to enhance our capabilities, but it requires leaders and an economic environment that values human work and human profit over growing shareholder profits. AI is the increasingly copycat canary in the coal mine of capitalism. If we don’t act now to make room for ourselves, not only the air but the space will run out.”
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