Entry-Level Tech Workers Confront an AI-Fueled Jobpocalypse (restofworld.org)
- Reference: 0180384967
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/12/14/2030215/entry-level-tech-workers-confront-an-ai-fueled-jobpocalypse
- Source link: https://restofworld.org/2025/engineering-graduates-ai-job-losses/
One student at a high-ranking engineering college in India tells them that among his 400 classmates, "fewer than 25% have secured job offers... there's a sense of panic on the campus."
> Students at engineering colleges in India, China, Dubai, and Kenya are facing a "jobpocalypse" as artificial intelligence replaces humans in entry-level roles. Tasks once assigned to fresh graduates, such as debugging, testing, and routine software maintenance, are now increasingly automated. Over the last three years, the number of fresh graduates hired by big tech companies globally [2]has declined by more than 50% , according to a report published by SignalFire, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Even though hiring rebounded slightly in 2024, only 7% of new hires were recent graduates. As many as 37% of managers said they'd rather use AI than hire a Gen Z employee...
>
> Indian IT services companies have reduced entry-level roles by 20%-25% thanks to automation and AI, consulting firm EY said in a report last month. Job platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Eures noted a [3]35% decline in junior tech positions across major EU countries during 2024...
>
> "Five years ago, there was a real war for [coders and developers]. There was bidding to hire," and 90% of the hires were for off-the-shelf technical roles, or positions that utilize ready-made technology products rather than requiring in-house development, said Vahid Haghzare, director at IT hiring firm Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment in Dubai. Since the rise of AI, "it has dropped dramatically," he said. "I don't even think it's touching 5%. It's almost completely vanished." The company headhunts workers from multiple countries including China, Singapore, and the U.K... The current system, where a student commits three to five years to learn computer science and then looks for a job, is "not sustainable," Haghzare said. Students are "falling down a hole, and they don't know how to get out of it."
[1] https://restofworld.org/2025/engineering-graduates-ai-job-losses/
[2] https://www.signalfire.com/blog/signalfire-state-of-talent-report-2025
[3] https://talentup.io/blog/why-entry-level-jobs-in-europe-are-becoming-harder-to-find-in-2025/
Wait a minute (Score:1)
I thought AI was going to create more jobs? Why, just the other day there was an article on this site which claimed that using AI in x-ray imaging grew the demand for radiologists.
Re: (Score:1)
>> I thought AI was going to create more jobs?
> They lied. Go figure.
You have to claim that your new technology is going to create eleventy gazillion new jobs, otherwise nobody will buy into your bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
>>> I thought AI was going to create more jobs?
>> They lied. Go figure.
> You have to claim that your new technology is going to create eleventy gazillion new jobs, otherwise nobody will buy into your bullshit.
To be fair, that strategy works on tons of people. Some will even aggressively oppose anybody that points out facts. Was nicely observable here as well.
Re: (Score:1)
In some isolated cases like that it might, and we've also had someone comment that the AI push is actually a free-labor ponzi scheme, since it will eventually take warehouses full of low-paid sweatshop workers to help wrangle the AI responses into something presentable for any large amount of labor where the quality of the work actually directly influences customer perceptions, so in the long run overall it might increase total jobs available albeit at a lower average pay for them, but those sweet high-paid
Re: (Score:1)
The US of AI in x-ray imaging did grow the demand for radiologists That's accurate. That doesn't that AI will necessarily grow jobs in general, or even if it does that AI creating more jobs will not cause enough disruptions that it will take time to shakeout. It is possible for example that a lot of jobs which are being lost to AI now will be temporary as corporations realize more the limits of the technology. It is also possible that what we're seeing now in terms of job losses will become more extreme as
Re: Wait a minute (Score:2)
We really need to start making distinctions in what type of AI is being discussed. I can't imagine computer vision is driving much of the reduced Indian work force here. It's going to be the LLM stuff.
Ideal opportunities! (Score:2)
For criminal organizations and terrorists to hire tech expertise. Will be interesting to see how much damage this "optimization" does in the end and how much it will cost.
AI makes for a real convenient excuse but, (Score:2)
I don't buy this excuse. You can't count on it to debug anything, because it has no idea what is correct and what isn't. If you tell it that you want your gloves to have five fingers, maybe it will manage that, or maybe it will tell you that gloves have six fingers and make up a reference for that fact. Maybe it will apologize after making a run of two-fingered gloves, but that won't stop it from repeating the error.
Re: (Score:2)
"it will tell you that gloves have six fingers"
Count Rugen's right glove had six fingers.
Re: AI makes for a real convenient excuse but, (Score:1)
Butcher gloves have only 3 or 4 fingers
Re: AI makes for a real convenient excuse but, (Score:2)
AI is pretty decent at generating tests for stated conditions. Once you have that, "what is correct" is well-defined.
Related links (Score:2)
Among the "Related links" appearing on this stories page: " [1]New Junior Developers Can't Actual Code." [slashdot.org]
No more fake-it-till-you-make-it eye-tee jerbs.
Also, what will India do? There aren't going to be positions for the hoards of $60k/year visa slaves and their "masters" degrees. There won't even be work for the remote ones: the language models are just as good, if not better, at copypasta "consultant" work as the remote Indians.
[1] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/02/17/1317210/new-junior-developers-cant-actually-code?sdsrc=popbyskidbtmprev
Companies like the blame AI for layoffs (Score:2)
But only because they hate to admit that business isn't good.
All of their competitors already used the AI excuse already, so if they admit to what the real problem is, they'll stand out. Markets reward optimism, not honesty.
[1]https://apnews.com/article/ksh... [apnews.com]
[1] https://apnews.com/article/kshaped-economy-spending-income-inequality-dfa59144ecb2e1b674242666e28ff556
World War III (Score:3)
25% unemployment got us World War II. AI is going to cause at least that much. If you think there are going to be new jobs sit down and try to list them. You can't. The economy can't adapt this fast.
The reason I bring it up is there is a lot of old people who think they are going to get away from this mess unscathed. So they think they can sit back and watch everything collapse around them.
It's painfully obvious billionaires have had enough of capitalism. But socialism is absolutely not on the table. So with capitalism collapsing and socialism not an option what now?
And we better figure it out fast because the billionaires already have their solution which is techno feudal dystopia.
Good luck getting medical Care in that collapsing economy and civilization. The pills keeping you alive or going to become unavailable. You'll be lucky if you have food and enough heating oil to get through a winter
So ... (Score:2)
> Students at engineering colleges in India, China, Dubai, and Kenya are facing a "jobpocalypse" as artificial intelligence replaces humans in entry-level roles.
So ... super cheap code monkeys are being replaced by LLMs?
There really isn't any other way to read that.
As predicted (Score:2)
When everyone was talking about AI gutting jobs, is it safe to say that future is now here? The only answer is that if you have a CS degree you're probably smart enough to get a job pretty much anywhere else but it doesn't look good for CS lecturers when the ROI suddenly turns to crap
Re:As predicted (Score:4, Interesting)
> When everyone was talking about AI gutting jobs, is it safe to say that future is now here?
I don't think so. LLM-type AI with cheap mainstream availability may well be a very temporary thing. First, they still do not have any business model that would even remotely justify the expenses. Second, LLMs cannot perform on professional level and cannot perform any task that requires insight. Third, the training-data piracy mau well kill the whole thing. Hence some niche applications for small special-purpose LLMs may remain, but that will likely be it.
On the other hand, some types of jobs may still get "gutted", even with that limited usefulness.
Re: As predicted (Score:3)
I would say AI surprises me with its insight sometimes. Ask it for suggestions and you will often get good ones, with tradeoffs, pros and cons.
What it can't do is: requirements gathering, prioritizing, political wrangling, and managing expectations or scheduling.
Re: (Score:3)
They may surprise you, but these are not insights the LLM had. These are insights other people had and the LLM essentially only found them by insightless statistical pattern matching.
Re: (Score:2)
> I would say AI surprises me with its insight sometimes. Ask it for suggestions and you will often get good ones, with tradeoffs, pros and cons.
> What it can't do is: requirements gathering, prioritizing, political wrangling, and managing expectations or scheduling.
I could say the same about a rubberduck
Re: (Score:3)
It may be temporary (I doubt it), but it's not "very temporary" as the same thing has been reported for months with pretty steadily increasing urgency.
OTOH, the AIs clearly aren't good enough to replace programmers, or probably even coders. So what's currently happening is probably jobs being redesigned to use an AI where it makes sense. Expect LOTS of failures in this redesign, but it will be the successes that shape the future...unless the AIs get a LOT better. (Currently they don't understand the prob
Re: (Score:2)
Very temporary in a strategic sense. Obviously.
AI doesn't need a business model (Score:2)
It's not a product it's capital. It's not something they sell even to businesses it's something you own and use for your own purposes. AKA capital.
AI exists to solve the problem of paying wages. Because of that it doesn't need to be profitable it just needs to serve the needs of the people who own it, billionaires.
I think this is a difficult idea for people to wrap their heads around because what's happening here is capitalism is going away and since we all grew up being told that capitalism is immu
Re: (Score:2)
> I don't think so. LLM-type AI [...] First, they still do not have
You're not answering the question "When everyone was talking about AI gutting jobs, is it safe to say that future is now here?".
You're answering the question "Is it a good idea, is it feasible to let AI gut jobs?".
Your answer does not take into account that the people doing the job-gutting may not have the understanding-of-function you have.
The future is here.
Re: (Score:2)
If you think being a CS RCG is bad, try being a 55 year old coder who spent the last 30 years honing the craft, only to be laid off into a market where those skills are just no longer needed at all.