AI New Grads and the Job Market

November 2022, my freshman year of college, in between my intro to DSA class and my asian philosophy class, I came across a website that was going to change my college experience as I knew it. Saying that out loud makes it seem a little dramatic, but without a doubt the landscape of education has changed drastically since the popularization of Generative AI. Fast forward to April of 2025, I had just been assigned my group for the final project for one of my machine learning classes, which was taught in r. As I sit down next to the one of the guys I'm grouped with, I catch a glimpse of his laptop screen, showing in large text, download r studio.

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My first reaction was honestly awe. How had this guy gotten as far into the class as he had without downloading the holy grail of IDEs for R? maybe he'd been using something else? As the project progressed however, It became clear to me that he didn't know anything. The idea of a college student cheating through a class, unfortunate as it may be, is not novel, But AI Has enabled academic disonesty on a scale that (to the best of my knowledge), even the faculty is completely unaware of.

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It would be difficult to say anything that has not yet been said about the impact of AI on higher education and society in general, but this phenomenon presents an opporunity for CS Students that may be the most valuable they recieve in college.

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Examining the job market, there looks to be two conflicting trends emerging. From Senior Devs, complaints about lack of talent in recent graduating classes are rampant. It appears to be harder than ever to pick out talent from the waves of new engineers graduating every year. Yet the story we hear from students and recent grads is that the job market is unforgiving, and finding an opportunity to break into the field with an entry level job is a herculean task.

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From 2015 to ~ 2022, tech jobs seemed otherworldly compared to other job fields. Great pay, opportunities for advancement, agency at work, and any number of employee benefits that made working for a FAANG company look more like a glorified college campus than a job. It should be no surprise then that my generation flocked to working in the tech sector. It looked like fun. Getting into tech used to be something that was downstream of genuine interest. People loved hacking on computers, and the free market agreed that it was a valuable skill.

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What we end up with from recent grads is a twofold problem, both parts of which compound on the other. Tech is now easier than ever to get into, (see: vibe coding), and the people who get into it often don't have the passion that leads somebody to grow and learn more about their field. I am firmly of the opinion that regardless of where AI takes us in the future, talented developers, at least for the forseeable future, will continue to be in demand. AI, as well as other changes in the tech labor market, have popularized the strategy of sending of hundreds of "fire and forget" job applications, often times with resumes that do not match required skill sets, leading recruiters to be overwhelmed with applications, necessitating automated screening systems that further incentivise the "fire and forget" strategy of applying to jobs.

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As non-profound as it may sound, the key is to make yourself to stand out. The difference now, is that it is arguably easier than ever, from a talent perspective. People who have genuine passion for Computer Science will naturally have an advantage over those who are chasing the 2022 hype, with Scrooge McDuck-esque dollar signs in their eyes, who only got into the field because of the lifestyles they saw from tech workers of that time.

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Anybody who has been through a Computer Science curriculum in recent years will agree, the average state school student is nowhere near equipped enough to thrive in the ever-changing tech world, and although that may be a failure of the university system, an effect of the continually growing education system (which desperately needs reform), It also presents an opportinity to those who have genuine interest in the field, and may prove to be benificial for them in the long term.

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Hey! If you somehow came across this page and made it down to the bottom, thanks for reading my first ever blog post. I'm no writer, so try not to judge my prose too harshly. If you disagree with me, or have anything you'd like to add, don't hesitate to reach out to me on X.com, (link in the bottom right.)

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Cheers, L2