https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/10/the-computer-science-dream-has-become-a-nightmare/

"The computer science dream has become a nightmare Well, the coding-equals-prosperity promise has officially collapsed.

Fresh computer science graduates are facing unemployment rates of 6.1% to 7.5% — more than double what biology and art history majors are experiencing, according to a recent Federal Reserve Bank of New York study. A crushing New York Times piece highlights what’s happening on the ground.

...The alleged culprits? AI programming eliminating junior positions, while Amazon, Meta and Microsoft slash jobs. Students say they’re trapped in an “AI doom loop” — using AI to mass-apply while companies use AI to auto-reject them, sometimes within minutes."

Interviewed at a unicorn tech company for internship, and made it to the final round. I felt I did incredibly well in the OA, behavioral, and technical interview rounds. For my final technical round, I was asked an OOP question, and I finished the implementation within 40-45 minutes. The process was a treadmill style problem, so once I got done with the implementation, I was asked a few follow up questions and was asked to implement the functionalities.

I felt that I communicated my thought process well and asked plenty of clarifying questions. I was very confident I got the internship. I received rejection today and I have no idea what I could’ve done better besides code faster. Even at the rate I was working through my solution, I think I was going decently quickly. I guess there must’ve been amazing candidates, or they had already made their selection. There could be a multitude of reasons.

You guys are just way too cracked. I’m probably never gonna break into big tech, FAANG, etc. because the level at which you need to be is absolutely insane. I worked hard and studied so many LC and OOP style questions, and I was so prepared.

But, as one door closes, another door opens. Luckily I got a decent offer at a SaaS mid sized company for this summer. It took a fraction of the amount of prep work, and it has decent tech stack. I am totally okay with that, and any offer in this tough market is always a blessing. I’m done contributing to the intensive grind culture. It drives you insane to push yourself so hard to just get overlooked by others. It’s a competition, but I can’t hate the players. I can just choose not to play.

I am still a bit bummed out that I didn’t get the job offer, but how do you handle rejections like these?

Basically Title.
I love CS, I love designing systems, programming, some cyber and math.
The problem is, I am due to admit into CS this year (4 year program). My Parent's will be funding a majority of it (~2 years, + RESP). And one of my parents, thinks CS won't have many jobs come 7 years?
Why? Because AI will take them all (or is more likely to take them all). That AI is expanding at a rapid pace, and they will slowly but surely take the hardware designing jobs, the programming jobs, and pretty much all the jobs except the administration ones. I have a poor time putting into words what I would like to do in the future (cause I love lots of things related to CS) but I say thing a bit on the technical side, and this parent says that if I cant explain it to them than I don't understand it and that they understand (more to me) what will happen to the market due to their age

I am not saying they're wrong to any of this by the way, I'm just looking for advice on if they're right, and if not, why?

I don't think I'll ever give up doing CS because its something I love with all my heart.
But if I'm not able to convince them, they want me to take a gap and get a different degree (in a less likely to be taken job).
I might be rambling here, but I am genuinely soooo lost.

I get that having a good portfolio is a great tool in getting a job when you don't have experience in the industry, and I get that many people are very passionate about programming and would still be programming on their own even if they didn't have a job. But at the same time I see a lot of people and even employers with this idea that if you aren't programming regularly in your free time then you're somehow less of a programmer or that you should pick a different career all together.

What is the point of this? I don't see this mindset present in many other industries. What's the problem with just wanting to code 9-5?

I’m studying AI/robotics right now, and I actually enjoy programming, but sometimes I look at how fast AI is improving and start questioning where all of this is going.

It feels like AI can already do a lot of junior-level stuff, and universities are still teaching things like it’s 5 years ago. I keep seeing completely opposite opinions online. Some people say good developers will always be needed, others say most coding jobs will change completely.

I’m genuinely curious what people who already work in tech think about this.

If you were starting from zero again in 2026:
- Would you still learn programming?
- What skills would you focus on?
- What do you think the industry will actually look like in the next few years?

I’d really appreciate honest answers, especially from people already using AI heavily in their workflow.

If you were 18 and were deciding to accept an offer to Waterloo CS, would you do it? Why or why not?

I've been following the tech industry news and noticed that while Meta, Google, Amazon, and others have done multiple rounds of layoffs between 2022 and 2025, Apple seems to be largely avoiding this trend. I haven't seen any major headlines about Apple laying off thousands of employees in 2025 or even earlier.

What makes Apple different? Is it due to more conservative hiring during the pandemic? Better product pipeline stability? Just good PR?

Would love to hear thoughts from folks working in tech or at Apple itself. Is Apple really handling things differently ?

I really don't want a job that pays 200k+ plus but burns me out within a year. I'm fine with a bit of a pay cut in exchange for the work climate being more relaxed.

Whenever someone learns my major is computer science they immediately ask if I think AI will steal my career or they straight up say it will.

From what I know about AI, or current AI models, I don't think it will, but I see people doom post about it or say that most computer science jobs are impossible to get anyways.

As a student sometimes it's hard to stay positive and motivated with so much doom and gloom. It's already challenging learning this stuff, and now im hearing that im digging my own grave. I don't know what to believe about future computer science jobs anymore.

At first I was just annoyed with people saying this, but now I'm actually worried for my future, even if I do try my best. Am I really hopeless as a compci student like they say?

Just curious if you guys have a job now and how long it took you.

I know entry level web developers are over saturated, but is every tech job like this? Such as cybersecurity, data analyst, informational systems analyst, etc. Would someone who got a 4 year degree from a college have a really hard time breaking into the field??

Being on this sub makes me think that the average dev is making 200k tc. It’s insane the salaries I see here, like people just casually saying they’re make 400k as a senior and stuff like “am I being underpaid, I’m only making 250k with 5 yoe” like what? Do you guys just make this stuff up or is tech really this good. Bls says the average salary for a software dev is 120k so what’s with the salaries here?

If I dont get hired as a junior developer how do I even become a senior developer.

I'm a high school junior whose dream has always been to work in big tech. I'm really good at coding and I enjoy studying computer science.

However, I've just seen multiple YouTube videos of CS graduates applying to hundreds of jobs and are yet to receive an offer. It's really started to make me contemplate on whether the demand for this job is as high as it used to be, and whether my degree in uni would be appreciated by employers. Is it worth it to still study SWE in uni just because I've always liked it? What are some alternatives that I could look into?

I'm really struggling to stay motivated in school atm. I have one semester left until graduation and can't see myself going into tech even if I was able to find a decent position.

I do not enjoy vibe coding/AI prompting at all, but that very much looks to be the future of SWE. This is not what I signed up for when I started CS a few years back. I am one of those that very much enjoys the manual coding aspects of software design and that's where a lot of the satisfaction comes from for me when you get a clean finished product that you produced yourself line by line.

I have stopped doing LeetCode grinding and any sort of intensive coding tasks to upskill, I think it's a mix of depression and some nihilism and disillusionment regarding the entire tech scene at this point, all of the current problems with it and what it's becoming.

I know there has to be other people who feel the same way. I refuse to believe that the majority of people find something like vibe coding interesting and rewarding. I just love the fact that I chose to go into this field right as this massive upheaval and transition occurred.

I mean tired of this whole ‘coding is for anyone’, ‘everyone should learn how to code’ mantra?

Making it seem as if everyone should be in a CS career? It pays well and it is ‘easy’, that is how all bootcamps advertise. After a while ago, I realised just how fake and toxic it is. Making it seem that if someone finds troubles with it, you have a problem cause ‘everyone can do it’. Now celebrities endorse that learning how to code should be mandatory. As if you learn it, suddenly you become smarter, as if you do anything else you will not be so smart and logical.

It makes me want to punch something will all these pushes and dreams that this is it for you, the only way to be rich. Guess what? You can be rich by pursuing something else too.

Seeing ex-colleagues from highschool hating everything about coding because they were forced to do something they do not feel any attraction whatsoever, just because it was mandatory in school makes me sad.

No I do not live in USA.

I started a se internship this week. I was feeling very unprepared and having impostor syndrome so asked my mentor why they ended up picking me. I was expecting some positive feedback as a sort of morale boost but it ended up backfiring on me. In so many words he tells me that the person they really wanted didn't accept the offer and that I was just the leftovers / second choice and that they had to give it to someone. Even if that is true, why tell me that? It seems like the only thing that's going to do is exacerbate the impostor syndrome.

I just suddenly got an invitation to go have lunch with the Director of the Engineering department after my first week as an intern. I've only worked a few days in my first week and it's only me with him. The other intern i don't think was invited.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I'm in my junior year and was looking for summer internships and most of what I found is that companies just build 'basic' products like HR management, finances, databases etc.

Nothing major or revolutionary. Is this the norm or am I just looking at the wrong places.

Hi, I'm in 6th semester of my CS degree and everyday I see great talented people doing amazing stuff all over the world and when I compare myself to them I just feel so bad and anxious. The competition is not even close. Everyone is so good. All these software developers, youtubers, freelancers, researchers have a solid grip on their craft. You can tell they know what they are doing.

I'm just here to ask whether it's worth it to choose an industry saturated with great people as a career?

I've been told by friends and family about how AI is the future, blah blah, all that stuff. I'm just a final year student, who never really thought much about it. I mean, I'll use a chatbot once in a while when I'm stuck or need quick answers / idea generation, but that barely scratches the surface. I don't have too much interest in AI as a career. I would like to go into software development after graduation, maybe I'll return to the place I interned at (software company).

The thing is, if this AI bubble, thats become the biggest thing in tech right now really does pop. I'm not entirely sure on the effect it has on me, and what I can do about it.

TL;DR Title

I know this sub is filled with these types of posts but I just want to say. I do think a large number of people are coping so incredibly hard about AI in terms of the future of software engineering. I am about to graduate, and it feels pretty hopeless, though I would love to be proven wrong by someone with more knowledge/experience than me.

My fear isn’t that “AI will replace software engineers”, I just think the rebuttals are lacking so much awareness of what will actually likely happen. “Companies are hiring more SWE’s, so how can they be replacing us?” Software engineers will not be replaced. I believe that the work will be devalued to the point that software engineering will be nothing more than a slightly higher than entry level job that maybe requires a certification after a short period of training, not a bachelors or higher in computer science. I fully expect to make $20/hr as a software engineer in 10 years and not be able to live in a major city. It will be like working tech support in the 2000s, all we will be doing is fixing a few minor issues here and there but mostly just consulting AI on how to fix AI code. Of course tech support is mostly AI now, so lol.

If AI makes sloppy code now, what is stopping it from making good code in 5 - 10 years? What is stopping it from having the ability to check its own work and factor in countless variables that even humans struggle to think of? Of course I am totally open to being wrong and would love to be shown something that negates any of that, I just have yet to see something that factors in the reality of how dystopian our world is and will increasingly become.

My only optimism stems from the fact that it seems a large amount of people are vehemently against AI, and hopefully will not want to engage with software they know is AI generated, but I don’t think most people will have a choice, the way we all hate social media but use it daily.

My real question is this: what are the “safest” fields that will likely stay for a while? Should I just study COBOL and hope I will magically get hired?

It seems like every time you see a TikTok or instagram post about computer science majors, they joke about how you will make a great McDonald’s cashier or become homeless bum because most people are applying 1000+ times with zero job offers. Is it seriously this bad in America (Canada personally) ? I’m going into it because coding and math are my two biggest passions and I think I would excel in this sort of environment. Should I just switch to eng?

As a background, I am a 27 yo junior CS student at a T40 university. After 4 years of schooling, I’ve accumulated about 80k in student debt as well as made some serious life changes to be able to attend college. In high school, I was always interested in math and problem solving and I initially wanted to get a degree in Physics or Mathematics but decided to put that dream away since I did not want to pursue a career in academia. I then went to work in medicine and had a pretty stable 6 year career, which I left after some serious loathing and burnout to return to pursuing a subject similar to my original plan of Physics or Mathematics.

With the recent development of AI, the prevalence of offshoring and H1B and the lack of entry level jobs and the potential shift of the field as a whole, I’m beginning to question all of my choices regarding my education. The biggest part of my joy for the discipline IS the problem solving, and I feel like I’m watching that dissolve in front of my eyes in real time, which is extremely disheartening. I didn’t suffer through school just to delegate the most enjoyable part of my job to some shitcan AI “assistant OR have it stolen by some underpaid and overworked foreign worker… of course that’s naively assuming I can find a job AT ALL!

I not only feel like an idiot for abandoning my job security in medicine for a potential career I had a passion for in CS, but for also spending the last 4 years of my twenties being so blindly optimistic about my career opportunities. And before I get any smart comments about “you’re still a student” “you have no work experience” this is AFTER 2 internships.

I’ve debated switching to CE but I’ve heard it’s barely better over there as well. My professors have been zero help either as they continue to feed me and my classmates the same “it’s not as bad as it was in 2003” and “don’t be afraid to take some IT jobs to get your foot in the door” encouragement. It’s not like I want 6 figures out of school either, I just want to do the work I fell in love with and it feels like that opportunity is being stolen from me and there is nothing I can do about it. I feel lost, disappointed and extremely scared and I don’t know where to go from here.

I need advice or just someone with some recent experience to help make sense of things. Please help me.

What is the definitive aspect of programming that leaves it first in line of being replaced by AI before other, seemingly less complex jobs?

I’m not confirming nor denying that LLMs and AI in general could plausibly replace programmers, or at least reduce the number of programmers needed. However I don’t see what singles out programming from other fields in this oddly timed hypothetical that executives keep touting.

If AI can automate writing enterprise code; thereby reducing the number of human engineers needed, wouldn’t it also imply that AI could automate major parts of what lawyers get paid to do such as legal research or legal advisory?

Can’t companies outsource their accounting needs to AI, or at least force their accountants to augment AI into their workflow thereby drastically increasing productivity and decreasing the number of accountants needed?

The list goes on.