For many decades a computer science degree meant job security, high salary and different employer perks. Sometimes students even before graduation were fished out by companies for junior roles. The IT job market was so thin that the US started "importing" a lot of specialists from Asia and Eastern Europe. Just after the Covid pandemic ended, something weird and unexpected happened. Many big companies, such as Microsoft, Oracle, Google and Meta started massive layoffs. At the same time various AI models were released and started being used by companies. The last nail in the IT job market coffin was the amount of new graduates that US schools graduated into a very crippled IT job market.
Why the massive layoffs in the first place? During covid, the US economy suddenly changed to a work from home model. The usage of various software that made living and working at home without leaving for days increased drastically and many companies started unprecedented hiring campaigns. The boom suddenly ended when people realized that the Covid pandemic is over and that going outside and doing things the "old-fashioned way" makes more sense. The companies realized that they do not need those thousands of "extra workers" they hired, and with the prediction of slower economic growth they started reducing their workforce. Over 100,000 IT workers lost jobs in 2025.
At the same time the A.I. miracle happened. A.I. made it possible to create software faster, more or less semi-eliminating the need for junior programmers. If a piece of boilerplate code is already on the Internet, the A.I. can copy it and spit it out for a programmer in a few seconds. That, in theory, gives the impression that productivity increases and eliminates the need for junior roles. Almost all software companies started using AI code editors such as Cursor or GitHub Copilot. Although the "on paper" productivity increased, new issues with code security, limited testing, and unpredictable app behavior arose. In the beginning, that did not alarm many companies and they continued the AI over programmer preference business model.
The third reason for IT job challenges that we have these days is the amount of new computer science graduates. In less than a decade the graduating students with computer science degrees more than doubled. With the laid off experienced programmers taking sometimes even junior level jobs and AI improved code creation, many of the newly graduated professionals are left without a job.
It seems that computer science and tech employment dips are kind of cyclical. The dot-com bust of the 2000's and Great Recession 2008-2009 kind of predicted this 2020-2025 IT job volatility. Although AI changed how we write code, it did not replace engineers but more expanded their capabilities. Hopefully, we will emerge from all of this stronger and more productive.
Deividas Strole - navigating the world of AI
Top comments (0)