Computer Science Jobs

[mariolanteri]

The New York Times have just published this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs-students.html

I just would like to know your thoghts about it.

Cheers

[Meatball]

I am not super into the Us job market. But generally speaking, we are in a form of recession, which implies many companies aren’t hiring. But this can be seen in other sectors as well (at least where I live).

Thereby, I think things can improve, and so far, AI can mostly code (and not that trustworthy code), I have not seen it succeed in hardware development yet, for example. It is very hard to predict how ai will evolve and how the job market will react to that. For example, if we start to let ai write most of our server infrastructure, that combined with ever-increasing cyber threats could mean that cybersecurity gets a boost while the web developer experience a drop.

I am currently studying computer science and engineering. And I have had some classmates say: “I only study this because of the money”. And I always think for myself that: “you are doing this for the wrong reasons”. I believe that the computer science industry will be in the coming years fast-changing and if you don’t adapt you will have problems. And I think people who actually don’t like what they are doing and have an interest in the area will have problems. And I also believe that these insanely high-paying jobs could disappear, at least for new graduates.

Something also worth mentioning is that most cs/cse students don’t opt for working for the university. Which, for many other areas of study, is more common (a big part is that universities pay way less).

[SleeplessByte]

My thoughts are that this is biased us-centric clickbait that you probably want to ignore completely.

Here are some related and counter-point articles. I did not check the sources. I did not check the quality of the posts for each one, but the point is that “here is some anecdotal data that in one of the most inequal western societies we see a specific trend that we’re going to attribute to something hip right now despite hiring and firing and freeze cycle happens every few years in US-tech”.

• is the AI bubble bursting: Tech stocks tumble as investors flee — is the AI bubble finally about to burst? - The Economic Times
• Is The AI Bubble Bursting? Lessons From The Dot-Com Era
• GitHub's CEO: Hiring Junior Engineers Is Important - Business Insider
• Amazon Cloud Chief: Replacing Junior Staff With AI Is 'Dumbest' Idea - Business Insider

Also, please do not forget that paying someone 165k a year to produce mediocre output at best just because “that’s where the US market is at” is absolutely ridiculous. I worked in Silicon Valley for just shy of 5 years, as engineer, tech-lead and CTO, hiring new grads wanting 120-200k a year, not being able to execute the most mundane programming tasks. Is that anecdotal? Yes, absolutely. Did they end up getting 120k+ jobs at other firms? Also yes. Are they worth that? Depends who you ask (ask me!, the answer is a resolute no).

So yeah.

[FFFF-0000h]

@SleeplessByte

Are they worth that? Depends who you ask (ask me!, the answer is a resolute no).

So yeah.

What’s your pass mark for one who’s worthy of such?

Who is one who is worthy to you?
If I may.

[SleeplessByte]

It’s not worthy vs unworthy, it’s if the bubble that is US tech salary makes sense. I was in it for years and lived there and the people aren’t smarter or better at their job.

That said, if I had 120k to spend on a person, they need to be techsavy, be able to say no. Have nuance. Show prior work…

[FFFF-0000h]

Well said.
Thanks for responding. I appreciate it.

[duduor1]

@Meatball

I am not super into the Us job market. But generally speaking, we are in a form of recession, which implies many companies aren’t hiring. But this can be seen in other sectors as well (at least where I live).

Thereby, I think things can improve, and so far, AI can mostly code (and not that trustworthy code), I have not seen it succeed in hardware development yet, for example. It is very hard to predict how ai will evolve and how the job market will react to that. For example, if we start to let ai write most of our server infrastructure, that combined with ever-increasing cyber threats could mean that cybersecurity gets a boost while the web developer experience a drop.

I am currently studying computer science and engineering. And I have had some classmates say: “I only study this because of the money”. And I always think for myself that: “you are doing this for the wrong reasons”. I believe that the computer science industry will be in the coming years fast-changing and if you don’t adapt you will have problems. And I think people who actually don’t like what they are doing and have an interest in the area will have problems. And I also believe that these insanely high-paying jobs could disappear, at least for new graduates.

Another angle to this is that the tooling landscape itself is changing faster than the job market can realistically adjust. A lot of what used to be “core engineering work” is getting abstracted into frameworks, APIs, and orchestration layers, which shifts demand rather than simply removing it.

For example, as systems become more AI-assisted and distributed, the complexity often moves from writing code to coordinating systems, models, and infrastructure across different environments. That’s where understanding standards and interoperability layers becomes more important than just raw implementation skills.

In that context, technologies like integrate mcp are interesting because they point toward a future where multiple tools, agents, and services need a shared protocol for communication rather than isolated stacks. That kind of shift is likely to redefine which skills are actually valuable long-term.

Something also worth mentioning is that most cs/cse students don’t opt for working for the university. Which, for many other areas of study, is more common (a big part is that universities pay way less).

You’re pointing at a few different trends that are worth separating a bit, because they don’t all move in the same direction.

On the job market side, what often gets described as “recession-like” in tech is usually more of a correction after years of over-hiring in specific areas rather than a uniform contraction. Some sectors slow down sharply, while others (security, infra, applied AI, embedded systems, etc.) still stay relatively active. So it ends up feeling uneven rather than purely down or up.

On AI and development work, your observation is fair — current models are much stronger in software patterns than in hardware or systems-level engineering, where constraints are physical, not just logical. Even in software, though, the impact is less about replacing entire roles and more about shifting the baseline expectations of productivity. That tends to compress entry-level tasks first, which is where a lot of concern comes from.

Your point about motivation in CS is also important. People who enter purely for salary often underestimate how quickly the field changes. The “stable high-paying CS job” idea is already less reliable than it was a decade ago, and adaptability is becoming more important than specialization in a single stack or toolset.

That said, I wouldn’t necessarily assume high-paying roles for new grads will just disappear. They’re more likely to become more unevenly distributed — fewer generic roles, more demand for people who can handle ambiguity, systems thinking, and cross-domain problems.