Compsci grads facing recession-like job prospects thanks to AI Thanks to AI, computer science majors are finding themselves in a tougher spot than they might have expected. Jobs are harder to come by, and more graduates are ending up in lower-paying sectors like retail and food service. That’s according to a new working paper by three US Census Bureau economists examining how college …
The graduate with a science degree asks, 'Do you want fries with that?'
The graduate with an engineering degree asks, 'Do you want fries with that?'
The graduate with an accounting degree asks, 'Do you want fries with that?'
The graduate with a liberal arts degree asks, 'Which one of you nerds is going to actually get those fries? CompSci take your break now”
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Maybe i was too harsh just now, but the 'joke' is no joke.
In the tech bro's vision of the future, apparently, a robot asks "do you want fries with that" and all of the other characters cannot afford fries, never mind a burger, and the robot is later decommissioned because nobody is buying fries anymore..
‘There is no profit in making things people cannot afford to buy’.
Attributed to Henry Ford.True today as a hundred years or so ago. Whether it was AI, Offshoring or local jobs going because people are buying a Chinese car from Chery or a Chinese made Washing Machine because corporate America/Europe sold workers our…. (With irony including The Ford Moror Company).
It's an out of date joke. The corporate intent is for few degrees being able to keep anyone out of low-paying menial work with zero-hours contracts. It is a dystopian future writ large.
And I can't see it succeeding.
Hopefully the revolution will be live-streamed.
The Economist had an interesting article recently contrasting the AI-usefulness of such worthies as a CS degree vs a, wait for it, ... Philosophy degree.
And they found, dunno how big the sample was without re-reading the article, that Philosophy majors were in greater demand since they were better placed to fumble through the mumbo-jumbo of quasi-philosophy problems that are related to getting LLMs to behave. Things like really internalizing the - rolling my eyes, yes - Trolley Problem and its ilk. And related stuff like theory of mind.
So they were finding that, dunno if it was undergrad or grad level, which might make a big difference, CS were less likely to have a job offer than Philosophy majors.
> Earlier this year the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published figures showing that American philosophy graduates are more likely to have jobs than their peers who studied computer science. In 2024, the most recent year for which numbers are available, 7% of those who had studied computer science were unemployed, against just 5.1% of philosophers. Many are being snapped up by AI firms themselves.
I wish that was a joke. It was not, though it might have been a good way for the mag to sell copy.
They are hoping that all the philosophers can write their advertising blurbs and statements for the court appearances:
"I put it to the jury, that if you can not prove that there was no teapot in orbit on the night in question then you are, ipso facto, also unable to prove that my client's AI even existed on that same night, let alone was culpable in this matter. For the thoughts of the AI are an illusion, brought about by the ambiguity of our apprehension of its intent. The illusion is complete; it is reality, the reality is illusion and the ambiguity is the only truth. But is the truth, as Hitchcock observes, in the box? No there isn't room, the ambiguity has put on weight. The point is taken, the elk is dead, the beast stops at Swindon, Chabrol stops at nothing, I'm having treatment and La Fontaine can get knotted."[1]
[1] You may be thinking that there was s some confusion here, conflating the roles of the "philosopher" and the "theatre critic", but when we consider that all we can ever know of "reality" is no more than the pacing of the Actors in the Theatre of Our Minds, a crude shadow play cast upon the fire curtain through the filter of our senses, flattening the complexity of existence into a simple sequence of two-dimensional Cartesian Co-ordinates, thus demonstrating the duality of Mind along the x-axis versus the Body along the y[2]
[2] Thank you for your time, gentlemen, I hope this presentation has demonstrated my suitability for the opening in your company and that the value I can bring amply deserves the renumeration. No, no, I can assure you that I have no knowledge of any "Computer Science" (is that even a thing?) and am unable to give you any help regarding whether or not this - "code" did you call it? - is going to work. Anyway, it can't even compile, you've left out a closing brace - what! Curses! Alright, I'll come clean; do want to supersize that?
Gen-X here. Yes, it is an old joke, and there is truth in it.
I too remember wondering how I would ever get a house after graduating college with all the loans I had. In 1994, with a degree in hand, I made $24k/yr and averaged 64 hours per week working in restaurants. Not peaked. Not 'busted my ass one week'. Average for the entire year.
Mid-30's I bought a house. Mid-40's paid it off. Mid-50's headed toward F.I.R.E.
So shall it be with the next generation. I know it looks like despair today, but the decades will pass into prosperity and a distant memory.
Governments have been throwing kids at STEM subjects for years now. Perhaps it was a cunning plan to have someone to fill in for the migrant labour they are now blocking and kicking out.
Caveat: Good skills remain good skills. AI remains a financial bubble iced with toxicity and security issues. There will still be a desperate need for tech skills, providing anyone can afford to pay for them. And there's the rub. AI is covering up a declining retail/consumer economy. That's to say many of the financial figures are being faked by the AI bubble. Rich people are still seeing their stocks doing well and tsunamis of investment are swilling around the AI sector, at least on paper, er, screens. But the rest of the economy is screwed, most companies are retrenching, and parallel to any daft spending on AI (with bugger all RoI), most companies are reducing their overheads, and slimming down.
When companies fear for the economic future, meatbags are first for the chop as they are expensive to employ. And not hiring them is cheaper than getting shot of them. They may hope that they can replace various roles with cheap AI, but the likelihood is that this will not magically make nor save cash (not least because AI works badly and will not be cheap). They may be giving it a go out of desperation. Parallel with the AI bubble is a society approaching a prolonged recession, high interest rates, high inflation, reduced services and general misery, with all the political instability that comes with it.
So there is a mix of negative things happening at the moment, and for varying amounts of each, many short- and even mid-term futures will be grim. But it isn't a simple AI-steals-jobs scenario.
Of course if you are rich, this doesn't matter. You can continue enjoying your fabulous life whilst the rest of us suffer.
I am hoping to maximise my future post-bubble employment prospects by minimising my exposure to AI and thereby AI's exposure to me as far as possible, i.e. no chatbots, no coding 'assistants', no 'smart' speakers etc.
I shall remain unique in my personality and talents, so that in future I will be as valuable as one of those rare books that er, got their spines sliced off to train AI..
Cool, good luck with that. You might be better off making hay while the sunshines so you don't have to work after the bubble bursts...when/if it does, it won't just be AI taken down...it'll be the whole market. You're fucked no matter what if you think you're going to be working after the bubble pops.
We still haven't recovered after the 2008 crash, and that is small beans compared to an AI crash.
To be fair to politicians, not that I like to, they didn't know this would happen, nor can they accurately predict what will happen a few years from now to the same people. STEM subjects used to be pretty good for career stability and compensation, assuming that the people taking them were willing to adopt a scientific mindset and work in it. Even if tech jobs never recover, though I think they will, other areas of STEM aren't seeing the same slump.
First they couldn't graduate with their high school class, then started their college career in various degrees of lockdown, and when they finally graduated they found the major they thought guaranteed them a stable career is already anything but and will almost certainly go away long before they achieve "architect" status and are one of the few humans still programming five years from now. Unless AI kills everyone first.
... wait till they get saddled with the pension obligations us boomers and Xs voted ourselves.
Oh, wait.
Seriously, nothing against old people, I am quickly getting there. But I have 2 kids and our generations are failing the young. On climate, on national debts, on housing.
Yep and the UK retired get triple lock (highest of 2.7%, inflation or wage growth), exemption from limits on savings (even pension credit has a massively reduced taper rate Vs working age social security)
Young folk (and worse young disabled people) are being told the country can't afford to support them the way it supported their forebears, that despite meeting the already incredibly strict criteria that "too many are claiming and sitting idle, disability support MUST be cut or eliminated" and ignoring that disability benefits don't even cover the extra costs of disability (and that's been proven in various studies), that UK disability support rates are already some of the lowest in Europe, that disability payments support disabled people to enter the workforce or stay in work, saving the country a minimum of £2 for every £1 spent, that employers often refuse to even interview disabled people and when they do it's merely to tick the box for audit purposes, that disabled people get treated like a contagion to be avoided at all costs,
What's worse disabled fought like hell for some modicum of rights, the few rights we have are being rolled back and again we are being asked to justify our very existence, being blamed and shamed for health conditions that are not our fault, being singled out as the cause for the ills of the country while wealth is barely taxed, that many of the best off pay little or no tax and scream blue murder when asked to pay their fair share
That is absolutely not what I meant. There are way too many people on disability that don’t deserve to be on it, with online resources advising you how to game the system. They suck up resources from the actually disabled.
That is somewhat of a generational thing but in the opposite direction.
All the pseudo-disabled are even worse because they know they are mooching. They’re just screwing even more future generations.
The triple lock is however on point, esp when benefits are not means-tested.
There are way too many people on disability that don’t deserve to be on it
Indeed. Unfortunately, those of us who do go for PIP nowadays [1] almost all get told that we are not disabled enough to get anything. I'm fairly much housebound without my chair/buggy and, were it not for my wife, would be housebound because I can't manage to get them out of the house without her. I can walk a certain distance with a stick (in the mornings, before the joints have decided that they've moved enough for one day). Thereafter, it's chair or buggy for me. 5 years ago, I was doing 10k steps/day. Now I'm lucky if I get to 1000.
But we all know of people who will lie their way through the PIP evaluation. I've known people on PIP that are far, far more mobile than me without any intellectual disability (other than in the moral or ethical sense). I made the mistake of believing that having had t2 diabetes and arthritis for 30+ years (with a high degree of mobility impairment) would get me PIP.
I was wrong. I scored a 2 on their 'assessment'. Which, nowadays, seems specifically designed to ensure that no new PIP claimants get through to actually getting the benefit.
[1] After I was made redundant I went through it, encouraged by former colleagues who had gone through it and easily got it. I can only conclude that they were economical with the truth.
No it's NOT easy and there are not massive amounts on the fiddle, the DWP admits that the fraud level is minimal (DWP mistakes are far higher and many more are underpaid or refused what they are entitled to)
The assessment is providing the information to allow the decision maker to keep ticking the boxes by describing how it affects you.
People make the mistake of failing to consider if someone without a disability would be affected in the same way.
Example someone with dexterity issues, pain and fatigue is asked about clothing - "oh I just wear what's comfortable" no points compared to "Before i became unwell I was proud of my appearance, however since I became unwell I have reduced range of motion due to the arthritis so I can't do up shirt buttons or smaller zips and trying causes me increased pain which leaves me frustrated, irritable, distressed, depressed, I have limited energy so I have to conserve it to complete other daily living tasks which means I wear items that I only have to pull on or require minimal manipulation and which do not aggravate my chronic pain " - Points scored as you have explained and given examples of the effects on you.
No different to maths exam paper where if you don't put anything or just a figure you get nothing or minimal marks, however if you show your working even if you get stuck or get the wrong answer you get higher marks
I had my PIP assessment while I was lying in bed in such pain that I could not get up. It was followed up by a in-person assessment where to get off the examination bed I had to literally throw my body around to roll it off the bed onto the floor so that I could pull my legs into a position where I could push against gravity to get into an upright position.
I scored zero.
ANYONE could become disabled at ANY point in time
virtually EVERYONE will end up reliant on some form of mobility aid in their life
How about you consider why newspapers hate the disabled so much and cry blue murder over multinational corporations being told to pay their fair share of tax.....
Divide and rule....keep the unwashed fighting amongst themselves.....modern day prolepress....
At 62, I squeak by being a boomer, so my remark is not ageism. I am there myself. It is simply that whole classes of people are pushing public finances beyond their limits and making decisions that will work out badly for future generations.
cough, Brexit, cough
I'm surprised there are that many entry level IT jobs in the US (and UK) to disappear - entry and mid level tech jobs and similar grades of specialist functional roles (eg accounting, HR admin) were enthusiastically being outsourced and offshored in their tens of thousands in the past.
From where we are now, if anybody has something to worry from AI it's "professional services" firms, and the destination countries for offshoring. Although that assumes that the AI bubble doesn't burst, and all this agentic AI bollocks disappears along with many tens of billions of private equity gambler's cash.
On the bright side, the retrenchment in Space X valuations as the gap between investor greed and reality widens already mean that Musk has become the first man on earth to cease being a trillionaire.
Mid-tier has been alright for a while...it's juniors that get hit the hardest by outsourcing...
Outsourcing would be far less of a problem it wasn't for student debt and other associated bullshit that our young people are lumbered with that third world young people aren't saddled with.
The biggest advantage I ever had was choosing not to go to university...it gave me the flexibility to work at lower pay while I was a junior...because I wasn't being robbed every month for student loan payments...it also put me 5 years ahead of my peers...at the time, there was virtually nobody my age in tech (I was 19). I didn't start see large numbers of people my own age until I reached my mid twenties...loads of 25-27 year olds were showing up...and I was training them.
What pissed me off though was that by the time these folks were showing up, I wasn't at their pay grade...a lot of them ranked under me but were being paid more...that fucking sucked. There was one absolute green noob hired, zero experience, dim as fuck...but because he had a degree (in music, not even related to the field) he secured a salary that was £8,000 a year higher than mine, this was confirmed by my manager after I saw the guy had bought himself a new car, something I had been unable to do because my salary was too low for credit ratings companies to acknowledge my existence and 70% of my salary was rent, couldn't even get a car on finance, god knows how much was train fare for my commute but it was high, and this dude was living in a nicer part of London than me, I could barely buy a pint at the weekly team meet up at the pub, while he was buying rounds...and I'd been there 6 years. I know that some of my colleagues stuck around and stewed over it for years, but I just jacked it in when the managers said I had to wait 9 months for my pay reviews and even then they wouldn't guarantee a payrise to match his, and then I fucked off with a load of customers and started my own business, they went bust, I had several former colleagues reach out after a couple of years asking for work. Never looked back...been busy for 20 years, never been out of work since. I'm still not paid amazingly well, but I'm better off than I would otherwise be...I probably earn twice as much as I would if I was full time somewhere...which given tax brackets, doesn't equate to twice the amount in my pocket, but it's a bit higher. I never did buy a new car...I worked out that I didn't need one. I drive a banged up Kia in the rare event that I do need to drive.
As for our musical student, he ended up taking a job at Microsoft, was wildly out of his depth, got fired and last I heard he worked at a B&Q behind a till.
My advice to young people is skip university, but never forget to remind your employers that you know how much you're worth...you may be working for lower pay to secure your job, but constantly remind your employers that you struck a deal with them...never let them think you're stupid...and if you get fucked about, just take the customers...don't worry about being sued, chances are if they're paying you fuck all there's very little chance they have the resources to sue you, especially if you've taken the customers.
Some will say this awful advice...but remember...nothing ventured, nothing gained. Employers give you a job because they need you...if they didn't need you, there would be no job for you...you always have the power to go somewhere else and it costs you nothing...if they lose you, they have to spend money rehiring, retraining and so on...it's a large expense for them...if they can even replace you at all.
I both agree and disagree with that advice. :)
It is excellent advice if you enrol in a University just to get any degree in the vague hope that you will get a better paid and more secure job later. Universities everywhere are full of students that have no real interest in being there which reduces the institution to some glorified and very expensive child minding service for young adults.
For the rarer bird that has a particular passion for a discipline or subject whether that be mathematical physics or occitan poetry, I would advise select an institution that caters to that passion. There might not be great employment prospects for occitan studies but you always have something that make life worthwhile when you're not "slinging coffees" for a crust.
In either case there is always politics "the success of failures."
Fair. Totally agree with studying something out of pure curiosity and interest...that's how I got into tech in the first place as a young teen...it was never a career choice for me, it's just something I was massively interested in and I happened to find a way to get paid to do it...as an added bonus, it turned out to be a very valuable skillset and knowledgebase.
It angers me greatly that there are more people in tech "for the money" than there are actual nerds now...it ruins a lot of projects, budgets and outcomes...I often find myself on the "these guys fucked it, can you fix it for peanuts?" side of things.
On University, I think in order for esoteric studies to truly make sense, universities need to drop the pretense on fixed course length, it's fair, but not in the right way...it's fair in the equalities of outcomes sense not the equality of opportunity sense...basically it penalises the poor and wastes the genuinely intelligent for the increased chance that any bonehead can finish a degree...one of the key factors in my decision was the amount of time I'd have to stick it out...just for a qualification. A self determined pace would be beneficial not just to the students but also the lecturers because they don't have hulking great big time gaps in between covering certain topics...knowledge is always fresh and on the mind...anyway, course length, it should be a cap, not a minimum requirement...especially because a lot of students tend to only have one proper lecture a week, the other 80% of the time is "self study" anyway.
In some ways, I think the fixed course length is a form of "job security" for lecturers...because once a course starts, it must be very difficult to get rid of them, it basically guarantees a few years of work at the very least.
If I'm capable of completing a basic degree in 3 months, I should be able to complete a basic degree in 3 months...that adds an interesting differentiating factor for employers as well when they get the 10,000 graduate applications. The truly intelligent and capable candidates will stand out based on the length of time it took them and the number of degrees they hold....because if you aren't fixed into a specific degree for a fixed amount of time, you can fit more degrees in without having to become a full time academic. The drawback is those wealthy enough to not require a loan or some kind of financial backing that are naturally quite dim will suddenly lose a lot of value. I'm sure a lot of us have met or worked with folks that have qualifications from prestigious universities that turn out to be as thick as pig shit...in a world with flexible course length, these folks will rarely get a look in because regardless of who they know, they can never compete with someone that scored 3 degrees in the time it took them to finish 1.
Right now, most people that hold multiple degrees have usually spent 15-20 years doing fuck all but study. I know a couple of people with multiple PhDs that are like this...they're early 40s, have 2 or 3 PhDs each and they've done literally nothing else...no real world experience at all...haven't a clue how to function in the real world...one of them now works as a health and safety officer for a tyre company and the other one manages a Subway. Between them they have aerospace engineering, biophysics, biochemistry, theoretical physics and sports nutrition...all PhDs from various institutions...neither started applying for proper jobs until they were in their mid 40s...both of them are incredibly weird...right down to the way they write emails...they're like that old guy, Brooks, from The Shawshank Redemption...fully institutionalised...whilst they were in "the system" they were incredibly chill people...relaxed all the time...now that they've run out of road there...they're just stressed all the time.
Your view of university courses doesn't match my experience. If it's based on your choice to eschew that plan and examples like those you've mentioned which would be very unusual, I can see where the picture comes from. Sadly, I think it goes too far to be useful advice.
The question for many is not whether to get a PHD, let alone three of them. Often, having an interest isn't enough to make you good at it. I think CS and IT can be exceptions, but in my experience, I wrote code starting quite early in my childhood, and I think my self-teaching was reasonably successful, but being taught by a university improved that significantly. I've also seen the self-taught programmers who think their code is brilliant even though nobody else can read it, it is vulnerable to basic security problems, and it wastes resources without any reason to do so.
The biggest problem is finding something that a given child likes to do, is good at, and has a career prospect that justifies putting resources into it. Depending on what that is, the resource might be the time and expense of being taught by a university, especially if the paper is also useful, self-teaching, finding someone who will offer an apprenticeship, or finding business for the subset of skills they currently have. A lot of people, in my experience, don't know what to target, which is a problem because if they go to university and don't luck into the answer, then they're a few years later and still don't know what to target. Universities don't cause that, they just don't fix it either. I wish I had an answer; people have asked me for it.
select an institution that caters to that passion.
You've got the agency the wrong way around there. The *applicant* doesn't select what university they go to, the *university* does. I selected three universities that I hoped would nurture my passion, and was turned down by all of them. *THEY* have the agency, not the putative student.
The reality is: hope that you get admitted by an institution that will nurture your passion, but recognise that in the vast vast VAST majority of cases that will not happen. It's like telling kids to aspire to be a professional footballer. Sorry, but within a rounding error, that is NEVER going to happen. Keep your passion to yourself and find something else that will pay the bills.
Not everyone that does a degree is a teenager. As an adult learner, you can pretty much pick where you want if you're willing to pay. Quite a lot of Universities become a lot more flexible with adult learners...there are exceptions of course...but most will be flexible and not apply the same rigorous selection process for older adult learners.
"Keep your passion to yourself and find something else that will pay the bills"
100% agree.
Universities everywhere are full of students that have no real interest in being there
Or, even in my day, their only interest in being there was to live the 'university life'.. AKA sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.
Unless you were doing science or IT of course (we had 60+ hours of lectures, tutorials and labs. One of my friends (doing a Fine Arts and Sculpture degree) was complaining that he had 15 hours of practicals to complete as well as his ten (10!) hours of lectures..)
"we had 60+ hours of lectures, tutorials and labs"
That right there is the problem. For an actual nerd, that is likely enough to fill a weekend.
Tech courses should be permitted to move at the pace of the student, and not the pace of the lecturer / curriculum calendar. Loads of people drop out of tech and STEM courses because of the absolutely awful pace...yes 60 hours sounds like a lot, but it's a forced 60 hours. All of us in the professional world know that once you've messed with some kit for a bit, the time to build something drops dramatically. When was the last time you spent a whole day setting up a network switch for example? Or even two hours.
The curriculum my nephew followed 3-4 years ago at Manchester Uni was roughly equivalent to the content of what used to be a 4 week Microsoft bootcamp...but it was spread out over years...I chose not to go to university because the courses were dated and old fashioned when I was looking around towards the end of the dotcom era, what I was seeing in the real world and what I saw in the course material didn't line up, so I peaced out...if I was a youngster now (as eager as I was back then), I'd be looking at the course material and feeling nothing but pain seeing pretty thin content being stretched out until it's see through over 2-3 years. There is just no need for it.
For over a decade now, countries where tech work is outsourced to have just been putting workers through certification instead of uni to keep up with demand. Sure you get a lot of trash professionals that way, but at least they win business and can compete...in the West we have this hang up about "Further Education" and Uni that makes us wholly uncompetitive with the rest of the world both on cost and available people.
Totally agree. I've had to duck, dive, adapt and survive for 30 years in tech. Tech always changes. It's unlike any other career. It's the only profession I'm aware of where skill rot is a thing...and yet you still hear the same sneering bollocks about "jack of all trades" nonsense. You literally have to be a jack of all trades in tech...having a broad list of skills is usually an indicator of experience in tech...the more specialised a person is, the newer they probably are to tech.
Just this last week, I've optimised a large gaming website to bring their cloud costs down by building them a custom SQL proxy in Rust (based on an existing codebase that I wrote a while ago for someone else), I redesigned a logistics website for a courier company using static HTML, CSS and JS deployed it to Cloudflare and implemented all the relevant SEO...I've deployed a 5G solution with point to point wifi somewhere else and I've completed work on a test harness for tech lab...that involves Virtualbox, Python, PHP, TLS, Apache and transport streams...over the month, it's even more varied...and going out to a year...it's yet more variance...I'm always busy, but rarely do I repeat the same thing twice in a row for two customers.
Over the years I've stood in for CTOs, project leads, developers, network engineers, cybersecurity engineers...I've use my electronics skills extensively...I've built embedded solutions...all kinds of things.
I've even gone off piste occasionally...I had a logistics firm for a while, I've had an import business, a garden furniture business...my missus currently has me looking at vending machines...I've built machine learning tools...
I don't fit any "job title"...my specialism is "fucking nerd".
and yet you still hear the same sneering bollocks about "jack of all trades" nonsense
I've always been happy that I've been a non-specialist. Sure, I've done pretty much everything (coding, infrastructure support, network & firewall support, MS Support, Linux/Unix support, ITIL Expert etc etc) and made less than the people who do specialise.
But the longest I've been out of work since my first job is two weeks. And one of those weeks was by choice. And I haven't had to spend a fortune on training and certification to gain a qualification that becomes useless after two years. Apart from ITIL maybe - but my employer paid for that.
Sure, specialists are useful for a limited time but, unless you belong in a large organisation, most places can't afford to keep narrow specialists as permanent staff.
Took a minute or so to realise that it wasn't time travelling millennials graduating during the period after the 1929 crash.
Presumably "Great Recession" is American for their "Great Fucking Cockup†" alias GFC as it is known in Australia which did manage to avoid a recession.
Even in AU large enterprises are mindless retrenching irreplaceable skills and irretrievably losing institutional knowledge and in most cases before even trying a small AI pilot. Blind faith that AI will provide (one day.) For many enterprises this might ultimately be the start of their death spiral.
I reckon there is more of a future in plumbing or merely a licensed drainer — shit always happens, pipes get blocked and AI isn't going to remove the crap.
† presumably the AI bubble burst will be GFC 2.0 although this time possibly "collapse" more than mere "cockup"
"Learn a trade..."
Still don't see no robots or AI pouring the concrete or building the infrastructure for the next data center.
It is pretty lucrative to be the traveling journeyman with industry certs building out whatever the latest thing is. Take the contract. Build the facility. Move to the next (RV lifestyle?). The contract pays VERY well not to do the job, but to leave when the job is done.
Seriously. Someone in their 20's. Apprenticeship done. Get the RV and chase the next hottest thing. Make WAY more money than someone with a 4-year degree. No college loans to pay back. Live frugal & smart. Invest wisely. Be done by late 40's, early 50's.
I signed up for the 'Everyone should go to college' mantra in the 1980's. Looking back there was an option to hit the trades instead. Could have been lucrative. But hey, I had a good time in college for 4-years, partied with a few co-eds...errr...nevermind.
OldestBrother did that.
Got a Kew Diploma (AKA professional degree in horticulture), became a tree surgeon. Owned his own company, did good work, had lots of very loyal clients, including some London Borough councils. Up until the pandemic, had several very stable work gangs.
As he got too old to be a tree-monkey (and, post Brexit & especially post pandemic when the staff were just not available) he moved sideways into consultancy - advising quite large companies about impacts of building/structure expansion on local trees and landscape. As he said "they are paying me a fortune for this! - he was a tick-box for their insurance and his costs were small compared to the cost of them cutting down a tree with a TPO. Or cutting down a tree that was stabilising a slope..
Now he's fully retired, living off the pension provided by his hard work.
The "working paper" (TFA link) is quite neat imho. Figure 5 (p.24) shows that Deciles 1-6 occupations are mostly okay but most decile 10 ones are right fucked by competition from AI (so-called). Occupations in each "GPT-4 Beta Decile" are detailed in Table A3 (p.56-59).
In Figures 10 and 11 (p.35, 36) we see that "6107: Nursing" (decile 1) and "5301: Criminal Justice and Fire Protection" (decile 2) are fine wrt hiring and salary. "6202: Actuarial Science", "2414: Mechanical Engineering", "1901: Communications", and "2408: Electrical Engineering" look okay too imho (deciles 10, 8, 7, and 10). What really sucks though are "2102: Computer Science" and "2407: Computer Engineering" (both decile 10; see also TFA).
Figure A13 (p.75) is interesting in showing that decile 10 also corresponds to occupations with the highest work-from-home rate ... which probably means what it means in terms of where AI can most readily steal folks' lunches from ...
Maybe, hear me out, it's a totally wild hunch, but what if the "recession like job prospects" were caused by a recession
But who am I to say, it's definitely all to do with AI, there is no recession, none what so ever, you know, even spite of all economic gross dismemberment orange man is doing, and the trillions in losses the biggest companies in the world are having under the guise of "growth", none of that is causing any economic impacts at all, let alone a recession
when did idiocracy become a documentary
