[testing1235]

I'm currently a senior in university (Dual CS and Computer Engineering), and I can say that it looks unbelievably grim in the Computer Science side of things.

In my classes there is hardly anyone that has been able to get their hands on an internship, and even the professors have started their classes with monologues about "I don't even know why you show up, none of you will have jobs after graduation, good luck out there." (quote from my DS professor) A lot of my peers are looking to move out of the US and look for jobs elsewhere, or perhaps jump straight into graduate school to ride it out.

On the Computer Engineering side, the faculty seems a lot happier, and the students also seem to be better off. But I don't think this will last however, I have noticed a steady decline in the businesses that have been searching for Computer Engineering in our career fairs. When I enrolled there were about two dozen "Computer Engineering Wanted" posters at the fair, and the last one in Feb 2025 I only counted one.

I'm honestly thinking that if this continues I'll be looking at the military, right now I'm trying to work on side projects in the meantime.

[coderjames]

My department at the place I work is actively hiring Software Engineers. We have nine open requisitions for any seniority level and are regularly conducting interviews, but the new-grad candidates this year have been... disappointing.

I've conducted two phone screens this month and asked each candidate to implement FizzBuzz in their language of choice after giving them an explanation of the problem. Both took more than ten minutes to write out a solution and we don't even require them to run it; I'll excuse trivial syntax errors in an interview setting if I can tell what you meant.

When CS students can't write a basic for loop and use the modulo operator without relying on AI, I weep for their generation.

[testing1235]

I also tutor students in the entry level C++ and Python courses (which are taken during your first two semesters as a CS student), and I must agree that a large cohort of my class is only able to program if they have ChatGPT/Claude open on one half of their screen. I'm not sure how to solve this either, unless we want to start doing in person "interview" styled questions as an exam on a locked down computer.

I honestly think that doing an in person fake technical interview with a few easy Leetcode questions at the end of your education would be a good way to weed out those that have failed to even learn the basics of the trade.

[orzig]

I’ll second this, and we had enough resumes to only interview those with a relevant Master’s degree. I was shocked and I still don’t have a full explanation. I don’t doubt that it’s also hard out there, but on the hiring side we also did far more interviews than we wanted. (And yes the salary is >>100k, full remote, benefits etc)

[xboxnolifes]

> When CS students can't write a basic for loop and use the modulo operator without relying on AI, I weep for their generation.

I feel like this doesn't get said enough, but I'm almost certain your issue is happening during filtering prior to even getting to the interview stage. Companies are straight up choosing (the wrong) applicants to interview, the applicant fails the interview, the company does not move forward with them, and then the companies does not go back and and consider the people they originally filtered out.

I know companies get swamped with tons of applications, and filtering is basically an impossible problem since anyone can make their resume look good, but every applicant that applied can't be that bad.

Bad applicant filtering at the first step is hurting both companies and applicants.

[calderwoodra]

2 data points and you're drawing a conclusion about an entire graduating class? For all we know, you might be experiencing a reality that you're company isn't able to attract great young talent.

[klipklop]

FizzBuzz was always a great filter. Even in the pre-LLM days. Many people can code for years and never once use the modulo operator. Solving the problem gets a lot more clunky without it and they get rejected.

[lispisok]

When I was in school in the early 2010s I was working in a professor's lab and overheard conversations that the administration was telling profs/TAs to pass kids who profs/TA's thought should have failed. I've since seen the required coursework to graduate become less rigorous. There were students I worked with personally I graduated with who were very bad. I'm sure there still great students who care about learning but I cannot imagine how bad the average student is with ChatGPT being able to do student's assignments.

[ikiris]

Are you offering enough pay that competent people would want to work there?

[NoGravitas]

My experience is that this problem significantly predates AI. Not that AI won't make it worse, but pre-2020 the majority of entry level developer applicants I interviewed could not write a basic for loop in their choice of language, never mind the modulo operator.

[pchristensen]

There's setting expectations, but saying "none of you will have jobs after graduation" feels criminally cynical and counter productive, especially coming from a teacher.

[rezmason]

What do y'all think of this one?

In 2009, in the midst of the financial crisis, one of my commencement speakers (and the recipient of an honorary doctorate) was Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express. I don't remember his exact words, but his message to the graduating class was, we have a different perspective on the world and different values— thriftier ones, necessarily— and if we stay true to them, the world will reflect them when we succeed.

"Maybe instead of having a car, like your parents' generation, your first big purchase may be a bike. Times change." Something like that.

Four days later, he laid off four thousand workers from AmEx, just a smidge more people than the graduating class.

Edit: according to Wikipedia, that year he took home $16.6 million.

[bruce511]

I'll roll back the clock somewhat to 1992 when I graduated. A different time, but also a challenging one. (As with all reminiscing context matters, and those elsewhere likely have a different history. )

I graduated into a world without internet (we had it at university, hosted on Unix and Vax machines, but it wasn't available commercially. ) People who had computers were running DOS. Most businesses had no computers at all.

So the job market was both good and bad. We graduated with skills that were hard to find. But we graduated into a world where big companies had computers, small companies had paper.

So huge market opportunity, but also huge challenges. We'd either graduate into big business (banking, insurance, etc) or start something new.

I joined a person doing custom software development. We'd sell both the need, the software, and usually the hardware. ) When we didn't have work we'd work on our own stuff, eventually switching from custom development to products.

We had to bootstrap, there was no investment money in our neck of the woods.

I won't pretend the job market is the same (or even vaguely similar) now, but it seems to me that opportunities for self-employment still exist. Software is still something you can build with basically zero capital.

Ultimately a job is just someone else finding a way to add value to society. Software us one of the few ways you can do that yourself, skipping the employer.

95% of people see "a job" as the goal. I get that. My own kids are like that (zero interest in starting something new.) But there are opportunities for the other 5%. Yes, it's lot more than just coding, and yes it's a lot more risky, but the opportunities are there.

As for me, I'm closing in on retirement, but at the same time building a new (not tech) business from scratch, because there's still value I can add, and a niche I can service.

I say this all to encourage current students. You can see the world as "done" or you can see it as an infant just waiting for you to come and add your unique value. And in 35 year's time feel free to encourage the next generation with your story.

[theGnuMe]

This is the correct philosophy.

[jlack]

At my company, we have increasingly been experiencing interns reneging on their offers. Students will accept multiple offers and then bail on the one they don't want last minute which prevents us from replacing them with someone else. We bring in hundreds of interns every summer and the reneg rate is approaching 20%. It sucks because it prevents people from getting an internship(and us getting the intern).

[rightbyte]

Low trust society. Due to how recruiting works nowadays I guess what they are doing is rational. Do they fear their main choice of employer bailing on their offer?

[s1mplicissimus]

It sounds like they are using a smart strategy for their outcome optimization: Not putting all eggs in one basket, or staking all hopes on one employer. You do the same by accepting a bigger pool of applicants than you plan to hire - so what makes you feel entitled to a privileged position in such negotiations?

[AI_beffr]

there is certainly no shortage of tech capital flowing right now... where is the corresponding burst in hiring? is this economic or AI?