re: New Survey Shows 75 Percent of Graduating College Students Have Yet to Secure a Job

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In ten years we may be looking back at the dawn of AI like we did the dawn of the internet. It was cool early on but we still had no concept of what it would become.

One of the smartest tech/business people I know is saying if you only interact with a keyboard for your job you should be concerned. You need to touch hardware, be face to face with customers, something beyond just typing ones and zeros in an office because AI can do a lot of that.

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I disagree with this on an area I have expertise: software engineering.

First, this field has had many innovations that would end the need for engineers over its lifetime.

Some thought that high level programming language like C would make this job become one a business person could just enter the logic since you would not need to understand how to directly talk to the hardware. However, what they discovered is abstracting away the need for understanding assembly/machine code increased the need for developers/engineers because it was more cost effective to tackle more complex problems.

When modern integrated development environments brought auto completion/intellisense to the text editor, some swore it would end the need for technical expertise because you didn't have to memorize the entire standard library for your language of choice or have the latest book on hand explaining it to you. However, it just reduced the need for researching these details and increased task velocity.

What being a software engineer really is at its core...what programming really is...is the ability to take requirements and discern how to formalize the process and account for all the edge cases most people don't consider. Large language models cannot reason. They are very good at getting you 90% of the way to the correct solution IF you know what to ask. What I've found to be the best gain from AI enhanced IDEs over the last few years is predicting boilerplate-ish or repetitive tasks and allowing me to fill that in (but verify because sometimes it is dead arse wrong while looking good at a glance) then move on to the more complex logic that solves the business need.

The reason we don't have more software engineers is not going to be solvable by education. I think you have a flexible mind and be able to see a few steps ahead...not just the happy path. Hell, I think that is the problem with a lot of the bad ideas you hear people say in political talk. They never think about the possibility of something going wrong and what you do in that scenario.

Second, the "vibe programming" trope strikes me as speed running to technical debt. As I said above, the aptitude for being a great software engineer is knowing how to breakdown a concept into formal, repeatable process that handles for edge cases and potential faults. Furthermore, the ability to VERIFY what you have made does what it is intended to do. People with little or no technical background essentially have made black box function machines that they do not possess the knowledge to verify functionality nor the skill to fix it on their own. Just because software appears to do what you intend does not mean that it actually is doing what you intend. It may take years for you discover the case where it all comes apart though.

Third, I believe we're seeing some early indications that the exponential advancement of LLMs beginning to slow. There has been news of this cropping up over the last few months coupled with some big companies cutting back on their capex after slamming down hard on AI datacenter build outs in 2022-2024. I do not think that LLMs are the dawn of something akin to the Internet or event the modern capacitive touch smartphone. I do think anyone in a technical field not taking it seriously is only hurting and dating their skills. Even if AI ends up being nothing more than a tool to shite out rote parts of the software development process then you're a fool to be the one "hand writing" a protocol for some well documented Google API, etc that the AI tools can just fill in for you.

This leads me to believe that this story is likely the similar conclusion for all people with true expertise in the field. The AI seems marvelous when you've never written an app in your life and you just saw something run in the xCode simulator that seems to basically be doing what you asked. However, if you been doing this professionally for 2 decades and were coding as far back as a middle schooler like me, then you have a bit more incredulity of the claims made by tech CEOs and investors who need to pump their investments.

Business management?

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Sports management is not completely useless, but the starting pay tends to be very, very low. The people I knew with a SM degree started out working in the ticket office of a professional/minor league sports organization or found entry level work in a university athletic department.

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i work in the outdoor gear industry. one of my clients called me the other day asking if i'd speak with a college kid he's mentoring about working in the industry. i told the kid don't, unless you have a very specific role you can fill. or at least be ready to get paid shite wages until you can work up the chain. everyone thinks it's all red bulls and ski bunnies. it's not. it's no different that making tires, just maybe with some cooler pictures

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I always heard business management was the bottom tier of normal business degrees. Kind of like how the guys who couldn't hack it in engineering majors ended up in construction management.

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And yet, in my current org, if you're a good CM and you make the mistake of venturing too close to us, we're gonna kidnap your arse!!!

The best way to get into athletics departments and front offices is either be a former athlete or have a daddy who worked in an AD or pro FO (or owns the team).

I realize that is myopic because sports management filters down to things like "running the country club golf course" and such but the glory hound positions in that field seem like they're not particularly meritocratic.

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I disagree with this on an area I have expertise: software engineering.

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That's interesting, because that's his background and software engineering was an area he was telling a kid to avoid. Not that there will be no software engineers, but there won't be many and they'll be very high level. He did some fledgling startups out of GT and made a lot of money as they were bought. He was the CTO of one company that was gobbled up by NCR and another that made very successful video games. He's a subject matter expert by any definition, and I realize you may be as well.

It's not my world but his view is very different than yours.

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That's interesting, because that's his background and software engineering was an area he was telling a kid to avoid. Not that there will be no software engineers, but there won't be many and they'll be very high level. He did some fledgling startups out of GT and made a lot of money as they were bought. He was the CTO of one company that was gobbled up by NCR and another that made very successful video games. He's a subject matter expert by any definition, and I realize you may be as well.

It's not my world but his view is very different than yours.

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I think there are other market conditions that are leading to people in my field to A) oversell AI as a labor alternative rather than labor compliment B) see the opportunities for employment as on a permanent decline.

First, I think big US tech has gotten lazy typified by the FAANG companies. There is no smartphone on the immediate horizon. Furthermore, the big tech companies have lost their edge because they're run by the professional managerial class rather than engineers. Jobs may have been one of the best salesmen to ever do it but the man did have engineering chops. Cook is a beancounter. Google use to be ran by PhDs and career engineers. They're now ran by former McKinsey consultants. They are not innovating. They are trying to maximize their market position to strangle out competition and extract rents from anyone who wants to reach people who use their devices and services.

The lack of a clear perpetual growth horizon has caused these companies to shed payroll to maintain good quarterly performance appearances but this is death spiral position potentially. Cutting talent to maintain short term profits could lead to missing out on the innovations that provide for better longterm horizons. However that is exactly how someone with an MBA would think in these situations.

Second, my longterm vision is that AI is yet another tool that abstracts away pedantic and tedious parts of computer programming and allow people to focus on the actual engineering of the solution. This will increase the capacity to complete more complex solutions and paradoxically lead to the need for more software engineers. Maybe I am wrong. However every single tool that has supposedly ended this field has actually just empowered practitioners to do more sophisticated work or operate at greater velocity and create opportunities for new business using this greater degree of sophistication and velocity.

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This was a $13/hr job so very little skill set required, but not one arrived. This was after confirming time and receiving response from all. I mean, if you aren’t going to show, just don’t set the interview.

It’s definitely the generation.

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Thats a complete shite wage.

Welfare recipients make more than that and they dont work at all. Maybe hire some illegals you can pay under the table like all the other "America first" boomers.

A. This isn't a new problem. When I graduated in 2000, I had employers tell me they were looking for entry level jobs (while interviewing at campus) that had 2 years experience. I finally snapped after a few of them and asked the guy bluntly how the hell I was supposed to get two years experience if no one will hire me due to requiring experience. His answer was "you can find an accounting firm and volunteer for a couple years".

B. Another poster said something about the employers being rude. I agree with that. I applied at Southern Company a few years back as I have heard that they are wonderful to get on with. I applied for a job that I wasn't perfect for but I expected them to at least be professional. I called their hiring manager a few weeks after applying (everything was online only) and talked to them about at least sitting down with someone for a few minutes and talking about what I could do to get better experience or a better fit for another role. I got a blanket email about 3 or 4 months later saying I was no longer in consideration for the position. They wouldn't even give me a call and tell me that, it was a form email sent by a email list.

C. These companies hire recruiters that don't know shite about the jobs they are hiring for. The big construction firm I am with had a guy that knew nothing about construction. Every single military kid that applied was going to be the best according to him, he would overpay them and piss off guys that had been there a few years.

So first, the wage isn’t posted and to be honest, that would be a bottom of the barrel starting wage.

That being said, I’d love to hear what you think someone sweeping a warehouse, picking up trash, breaking down boxes and pallets and loading and unloading trucks starting pay should be? $20-$30/hr. Yet y'all would be the first to complain that things are too expensive these days.

Literally a job that their only skill is to follow simple directions.