It’s so disingenuous and absurd to claim this is a AI problem. It’s an over saturation of qualified individuals in a field, problem. These companies and executives are just using AI as a cover story to hide the fact that the industry is not growing fast enough to employ the number of skilled professionals in the field. This was the point of the whole “learn to code” talking points. Executives and shareholders wanted an over-saturation in the field so as to push down wages and reduce the bargaining power of employees.
This situation kind of hammers home the importance of a robust social safety net, strong unions, minimum wages that keep up with inflation, and maintaining an affordable cost of living. There being a saturation in one job market should not doom people to poverty conditions. Even a job at chipotle should pay well enough to live comfortably on, and workers there should have enough bargaining power to ensure decent treatment.
Like, we need to act collectively to ensure stability and prosperity. There is no path that someone can take individually to ensure these things, no escape hatch to prosperity for “hard workers”. “Learning to code” and “Get a CS degree” seemed like a straight forward answer, but here we are.
The other side is that the mass layoffs of the last year mean that there are plenty of experienced people to hire over new grads. I can’t imagine any company right now taking on the cost and risk of training up entry level folks when they can hire a 10+ yr senior in that role who’s been job hunting for 5 months, for the same or a little more than the entry level salary.
5? I know some in the industry who have been out for 30 months. Talented and experienced, as well.
That sucks, that’s way beyond what anyone I’ve met has been out for. They’re either very specialized, in an area that requires in-person work (and they’re not nearby to anyone), or there’s something that’s red-flagging them.
Infrastructure orchestration with kubes and mgmtConfig from bazel for Ai, and he can build it up like that if he was airlifted into the jungle with a laptop and a Google DC truck. BSc, BEng, MSc, in 6 years via our military officer programme; which means he could probably plan and mount a strong defence of his architecture on a whiteboard with markers or in the mud with troopies. Whip-smart, this one guy. Resume with all the FAANGs on them.
We have been consistently baffled; like, does he want a real wage, or did he broil the neighbour and eat a leftover leg during the interview?
It sounds like he’s an Operations/SRE specialist, but his quals seem like he’d be overqualified for most Ops/SRE roles unless it’s a director or VP. Especially with the shift to devops, he might need to shift domains or grow out of pure Ops work. It’s going to be nearly impossible to hire into an Architect or Director role unless he already has that on his resume.
Its hard because I wouldn’t envy any new tech job seekers out there. From what I can see there aren’t any entry level jobs in the field that being said I don’t know what degree I would suggest that would have a good future career out of. I went into Data Science 8 years ago because it was going to be the high paying job of the future. I wouldn’t recommend that now because there are no entry level jobs and those that exist are usually filled quickly
