90% of code farmers believe that it is difficult to find a job, and college students should also adjust their career plans
New Zhiyuan reports
Edit: Run: I'm sleepy
Unexpectedly, the first migrant workers affected by AI were programmers. A recent career survey of more than 10,000 programmers by foreign media showed that 90% of programmers believe that it has become more difficult to find a job now.
Seemingly overnight, programmers will not be able to find their jobs?
A survey of 9,388 engineers conducted by Motherboard and Blind shows that artificial intelligence will lead to a decrease in the number of programmers recruited.
Nearly 90% of programmers surveyed said it was harder to find a job now than it was before the pandemic, with 66% saying it was "much more difficult"!
Only 6% of people in the survey believe that if they leave their jobs now, they can find another job with a comparable salary.
In stark contrast, 32% are "not at all confident" about finding a job that pays well!
Not long ago, Christopher Pissarides, a Nobel Prize economist specializing in the labor market, even said that because of the development of AI technology, most STEM students will not be able to find jobs in the future.
In his opinion, the AI technologies and products that AI engineers are developing today are reducing the demand for labor in this industry.
AI engineers may sow "seeds of self-destruction" by developing AI technologies that will eventually replace the jobs of those who develop them in the future.
Just like law school graduates, half of whom are always catching the other half, are also dealing with computers, AI engineers are on fire, and it is becoming more and more difficult for ordinary programmers to find jobs.
Has the era of "transcoding" all professions changed?
For most of the 21st century, software engineering was considered one of the most stable and decent jobs in the volatile and unpredictable job market around the world.
However, as the overall decline of the industry and the challenges posed by artificial intelligence become more apparent, the industry's job security and comfort are beginning to be threatened, and competition for software jobs has become more intense.
"It's incredibly competitive," said Joe Forzano, an unemployed software engineer who has worked at mental health start-up Alma and private equity giant Blackstone.
Since losing his job in March, Forzano has applied for more than 250 jobs. He went through a series of interviews in each of his six job search sessions, with six to eight rounds of interviews each, but ultimately failed to get hired.
"It's so hard," he sighed.
According to a December survey conducted by Blind, an anonymous communication platform for programmers similar to Maimai in the United States, Forzano's situation is actually quite common.
Among them, nearly 90% of software engineers believe that finding a job is much more difficult now than before the pandemic, and 66% of them say that it has increased significantly.
About 80% of respondents believe that the job market has become more competitive in the past year.
Only 6% of software engineers believe they are "very confident" that they will be able to find a job that is comparable to their current total compensation if they lose their job today, compared to 32% who say they are "not at all".
According to data provided by Layoffs.fyi, a tech industry career tracking website, more than 400,000 layoffs have been made in the tech sector between 2022 and 2023.
Still, looking at the layoffs within the industry, software engineers seem to be safer than their colleagues in non-technical roles.
A recent workplace analysis showed that tech companies have cut their hiring teams in half, compared to just 10% in engineering.
At Salesforce, the risk of layoffs for engineers is only a quarter of that in marketing and sales, a trend that is also reflected in other tech companies such as Dell and Zoom, according to Bloomberg.
However, software engineers began to express their concerns frequently online.
In December, an Amazon employee published a lengthy post on the anonymous employee platform Blind, complaining that "the job market is extremely bad" and that he was struggling to even get an interview.
This shift is in stark contrast to previous megatrends.
Over the past 20 years, they have gained unprecedented popularity due to the job security offered by computer science degrees and programming training courses.
According to reports, Google's junior software engineers earn close to $200,000 a year and enjoy a generous benefits package. And software engineer positions are always in short supply, and even if you leave, it's easy to find another job.
In the early 2010s, while an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, Forzano decided to choose computer science as his major.
Although the degree saddled him with a $180,000 loan, he thought it was a surefire investment.
"An Ivy League engineering degree is definitely a worthwhile investment" that will make his future career never worry.
At the beginning of his career, everything seemed to be developing according to his ideas.
Recruiters threw him an olive branch, and he easily moved from one job to another, and was soon promoted to department manager.
The industry is so stable that whenever people from other industries express concerns about their job prospects online, the phrase "learn to code and go" becomes a slightly ironic response.
However, since the start of the pandemic, the economic outlook has been bleak, hiring has dropped dramatically, and software engineers have not been able to find jobs that they used to think would be commonplace.
"It's very competitive. "The face of the industry has completely changed. When he recalls his decision to choose computer science as a major as an undergraduate, he admits that he was a little "naïve" about what he thought at the time.
Recently, as artificial intelligence technology continues to make breakthroughs by leaps and bounds, it seems that the work of programmers is undergoing a sea change.
AI programs that allow users to write code in natural language or autocomplete code were among the first AI tools to win the market.
Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, said last year that AI-powered programming tools have reduced the time it takes engineers to complete coding by 6%.
As stock prices fall, many investors are putting pressure on big tech companies like Google to reduce their headcount and tighten their budgets.
Even if AI doesn't directly lead to layoffs, it's part of a company's plan to "reduce costs and increase efficiency" during the economic downturn.
In the age of artificial intelligence, Kelli María Korducki wrote in the September issue of The Atlantic: "Computer science is no longer a safe choice for a profession. 」
Matt Welsh, a former professor of computer science at Harvard University and now an entrepreneur, told the magazine that because AI is able to perform software engineering jobs to a large extent, this could lead to a decline in job security and pay for most people in the software industry, except for the best talent.
Even in December, software engineers weren't too worried about AI making their jobs redundant.
In a survey on workplace social platforms, only 28% said they were "very" or "somewhat" worried, while 72% said they were "not" or "not at all" worried.
However, software engineers seem to be too conservative about AI's encroachment on their jobs.
More than 60% of respondents believe that their companies will definitely reduce the number of hires in the future due to the continuous development of AI technology.
Forzano has not remained silent about the difficulties he has encountered, and he live-streamed his search for a new job on social media.
Doing so, he said, made him feel like he wasn't fighting alone, as other tech workers expressed similar frustrations.
Most of them think that they have far exceeded the requirements of the position, but it is still difficult to get the opportunity to get an interview.
"We're all wondering, what the hell is going on?"
What about students?
If developers who are already in the middle of their careers need to worry about the impact that AI and automation can have on their jobs, the challenges for students in schools are even greater.
They haven't even officially started their careers before they have to adjust their career plans and expectations because of the upcoming technological revolution.
"I'm really worried about a student going through an undergraduate education in computer science and getting a degree into the industry...... What does their future hold," said Timothy Richards, a professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Professor Richards and his colleagues not only had to think about whether learning coding skills was still valuable, but they also found that even teaching students programming skills was becoming more difficult.
Chatbots like ChatGPT are able to handle some of the basic tasks in an introductory course, such as debugging code.
Some students may develop the habit of using ChatGPT to cheat on a regular basis, and after completing their studies and receiving their diplomas, they don't really have the skills they need to work independently.
Now, Richards has begun to adapt the way he teaches it—having students in introductory programming use AI like math students use calculators, asking them to explicitly inform them of the specific instructions entered into the AI and explain their thought process.
At present, it seems that the "learning to code" craze may have cooled down, but it does not mean that technicians will be obsolete.
On the contrary, the change brought about by AI indicates that choosing a major is not as important as "understanding the conceptual thinking of how technology can help us solve problems".
The next Silicon Valley giant could be founded either by humanities graduates who don't know how to code, or by computer science graduates who are highly capable of programming.
After all, the field has never been as simple as learning Python and C++ tricks, it's all about identifying patterns and putting them together.
From this point of view, the future development of higher education may be hidden in areas that cannot be reached by machines.
AI excels at advanced reasoning and skills that are generally considered to be related to cognitive abilities (such as playing chess), but is clumsy in basic skills.
The curiosity-driven instincts that spark human creativity are not only here to be in the world of AI, but have become more important than ever.
Fortunately, there are many ways for students to develop these abilities.
Resources:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5y37j/thousands-of-software-engineers-say-the-job-market-is-getting-much-worse