Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 188 posts

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#161

Post by foxyv »

dver wrote: post #32

It's brutal, my son with a CS degree hasn't been able to get to single live interview ina year. A couple of screens has been it. I've reached out to my network, and the reply is always we're not hiring any juniors.

It took me about 2 years out of college to get a job in my field. This was back in 2014-2015. This is just kind of how it goes nowadays. The trick is to make sure you don't stop learning while you are job hunting. I pretended that I would never get a job and my only hope was to build my own products so I spent my time learning how to build my own stuff and maybe sell it. Meanwhile, my resume started having more and more skills.

Things are changing, so I can't make any guarantees. But don't get too discouraged. Pay attention to what is in demand like Python, PySpark, and PyTorch. Make sure that the next time it rains soup your son has a bucket.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#162

Post by suriyaG »

MSKJ wrote: post #118
suriyaG wrote: post #8

this is a super non-popular take on HN. but the entry-level job market has always been tough. with AI, outside the big tech world, it is hard to justify hiring entry level engineers as the time to train them ( 1 year+ ) to be productive enough is such a drag on the seniors, when the agents deliver things more care and more edge cases.

I (and everyone else) had to take an ethics course in college to get my engineering degree, I think the course should include the value of coaching and passing on knowledge to the next generation. Even from a profit stand point, we need to invest in the entry levels to get mid- senior levels

a course cannot align wrongly incentivized entities.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#163

Post by commandlinefan »

jiaosdjf wrote: post #93
1970-01-01 wrote: post #31

When do we declare this status-quo? It was expected for several years, and new data is just piling up with the same conclusions from the last study.

Robots will be the real status-quo changer. Information/office jobs have never really felt real to society, we are all living in a bubble of corporate daycare. Half the jobs being replaced are jobs that didn't exist a decade or two ago that the average person on the street doesn't even know exist. The rest of society unfortunately have to work "real" jobs where they have to turn up early to do things like stocking, c…

I remember when I was in 2nd grade or so (so, around 1982 or so), our teacher read us a passage from a book predicting the future: "and in the future, robots will do all the work so that people don't have to!" Even at 8 years old, I could see the problem with that: who decides who gets to live in the big house at the top of the hill and who has to live where I live?

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#164

Post by commandlinefan »

jdw64 wrote: post #3

I wish there were studies on when this situation will normalize. Will the lost jobs ever come back? Or not?

And if they don't, what then? What does a post-job society look like? I'm skeptical of communism, but I'm skeptical because it doesn't work in a society where some people need to do something (like raise crops) but aren't incentivized to do so. But if there's actually nothing humans need to do? The question is, will we reach logical conclusions peacefully or violently?

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#165

Post by whatshisface »

Marsymars wrote: post #157
whatshisface wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not seeing the reason why typical engineers can't vibecode. Non-coders can vibecode. I have read hundreds of posts claiming that senior engineers can vibecode but not a single one saying that juniors cannot.

I'm not saying they can't, but rather that with the time seniors then spend cleaning up their tricky bugs, architectural problems, etc. the seniors could have just done the work themselves.

In a cost sensitive business, nobody cleans up the architectural problems today - no change for vibe coders except upward.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#167

Post by bpavuk »

theredsix wrote: post #86
bpavuk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself a high-quality junior, rivaling my senior industry peers on flexibility, systems thinking, low-level engineering, and understanding of user experience. yet all I found this year was a place I got fired from 2 weeks after getting hired. the reason? I called Claude Code "a decent search engine" on a meeting. perhaps I would have been fired anyway because the heatwave was building in Ukraine and I had…

If you're getting fired in 2 weeks, it's likely not because of a single comment.

this was literally the reason pointed out in chat. devs liked how I worked, had zero questions on review, and that's despite me seeing their tech stack second time in my entire life

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#168

Post by bpavuk »

harvey9 wrote: post #102
bpavuk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself a high-quality junior, rivaling my senior industry peers on flexibility, systems thinking, low-level engineering, and understanding of user experience. yet all I found this year was a place I got fired from 2 weeks after getting hired. the reason? I called Claude Code "a decent search engine" on a meeting. perhaps I would have been fired anyway because the heatwave was building in Ukraine and I had…

Some percentage of engineering is actually people and politics. The more power (or alternative options) you have, the more you can speak your mind. But if you need the job then argue your case just to the boss, discreetly.

well, yeah, now I understand that. whoever has the money dictates the kind of 1984 you are going to have

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#169

Post by asdfman123 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #108
asdfman123 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the AI transition is different than old technological changes in that you don't really have to learn anything. You don't have to memorize keywords and new concepts like you'd have to for, say, a new JavaScript framework. If you don't know something about AI, you can just ask it and it will tell you. Basically the only hard part for old people is getting USED to using AI. Some haven't, but it only takes a few week…

Yeah that's my feeling about it. I don't code much these days so have not used AI very much in that respect, so for me it's basically a superpowered search agent that can formulate relevant answers based on the details I provide, without the "why do you want to do that" or "tell us what you're really trying to achieve" that you'd so often get on tech forums. But if I had to use AI for coding I don't think that it wou…

Yep, that's been my experience of it.

Fun note though, my work these days often involves telling AI to solve a problem and me asking it why it wants to do something a certain way.

It often has to patiently explain something like why the bazel rules need to be modified to accomplish my ends goals, and has to reiterate key concepts about a part of the codebase I'm unfamiliar with these days.

Really the only reason I'm there is to make sure it makes the changes as clean and efficient as possible, without unnecessary complexity that's hard to read.

Re: AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds

#170

Post by johnnyanmac »

randycupertino wrote: post #98
33e wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this? Is it partly influenced by the fact that LinkedIn etc suck?

I think it's trust. If you worked with someone and you know they are awesome and you are running a team you want to hire people who are known entities that you know will hit their deliverables, do a great job and won't be weird or cause friction with cross functional teams. Also of course there's always politics to navigate. I had a candidate I loved for my team who made it through 8 rounds and panel interview with s…

>The interesting thing is people recommend "networking" and people think it's like... meeting people at industry events or reaching out to linkedin connections but that's not really how I see networking working in real life.

I say the are three levels of "networking", and peeling back the layers helps to understand why the term can become so nebulous

1. "Associative" networking where you reach out to people at your old school and work but people you otherwise never met nor worked alongside. They vouch based on what they see and know about your associations. They might refer, but often can't do much about the process but poke at the machine.

2. "familial" networking where you reach out to friends/colleagues you have worked with and can personally vouch on your behalf. They might be able to help churn a bit, but are ultimately still beholden to the process.

3. "Influential" Networking where you do either #1 or #2 but your network evolves into leadership, management, and founders. People who have the ability to actually hire you. Often cutting through the HR cruft itself.

3) is what you want, but fundamentally isn't different from 1) and 2), except in who you know. You invest in 1) and 2) in hopes that they become 3) farther down the line, but for a new grad that investment will take a very long time to occur. Reaching directly out to 3) is hard for many reasons (some professors being an exception. Hence why certain schools can be so impactful), so it's often not an option at the new grad level, since you lack any real leverage to bring to the table. If you have the ability to contact them at all.

Post reply on HN