i distinctly remember a decade+ ago when all the creative jobs started going out the window being told to “learn to code”
"Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1% and 7.5% respectively ...
That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3%"
And now that tech companies have quietly pushed to flood the market with STEM grads, they can pay them less.
Now they want us in the fields.
It feels like yesterday
whoopsie!
I’m still angry about being advised to take German in high school. They also advised me to turn down early admission to NYU, which I stupidly did.
Yes, that would have been the sober, realistic center-left Dems and the entire GOP.
I got into web developemnt 10 years ago, at that time it was basically a guaranteed job and it was hard to imagine that that would ever change. Things have indeed changed a lot...
No you don't, you KNOW. We all know what they said. The same way we KNOW they said and still say don't have kids.
I was thinking exactly that as I read this article earlier today.....
TinyScrews™ for everyone!
Tim “Kowtow” Apple just promised Trump to pimp America with factories.
I was told anything non-computer was for shite — then those grads started teaching their LLM replacements
Reminds me of the early 2000s when the internet was just beginning and new grads were making big salaries for work in the internet. That eventually bombed out. Feel like AI is following that path. Our society will not survive with this wealth inequality happening.
Hell back in like 2011 Obama was trumpeting his plan to retrain teachers as programmers to beat the recession
It's like they said, "Learn to code" – the ultimate career advice for the 21st century: "Hey, your passion project is dying, but hey, you can code for less!"
If they can write code, and they’re even the least bit creative, they can do film and TV CGI.
Every series or movie uses CGI now, not just superheroes and starships. It’s a growing job market.
If only they were just owners of under-water mortgages on McMansions, we ‘d let them walk away debt-free and maybe even trillions in bailout money. Instead Student loans are bankruptcy-proof lifelong debt our banks and government can’t afford to discharge.
I paid my plumber $110 for what amounted to 90 seconds of work. This isn’t a complaint - he’s a great guy and does outstanding work. I’m just lamenting my life choices out loud 🤣
My daughter is about to graduate with a degree in Biology and another in Fine Arts. Some family members have voiced skepticism in her ability to find work. Guess what, suckers, it's called Pivot. In this job market, she won't be locked in. She can literally do whatever she wants.
You are right. That has been the received wisdom for some time
Well, supposedly they were marketing “STEM”, but I always thought it odd that the science and mathematics were left out, as well as engineering other than EE/CS
This is what happens when education is only considered "job training" and not a way for students to discover what they are interested in or excel at, or to become a well-rounded human being.
my favorite was the dichotomy of "coding is really challenging and I am Very Smart for being a compsci major" at the same time as "WV coal miners should just learn to code, those dummies"
They pushed "learn to code" because software engineers commanded high salaries. They knew that demand for those coders would go up and unless they flooded the market with talent, they'd have to pay more
And now they've succeeded! Like medieval clerks, their skills have been made common.
They do this to any job with high demand to make it seem like it's not in high demand.
What I'm hearing is that AI has already platued and work quality in India is sub-par.
There is still significant room for growth in coding.
You know what doesn’t go out of style? Liberal arts.
“Learn to code” was not advice being given for the benefit of the recipient, but for the adviser. “Learn to X do X becomes oversaturated and cheap” is the advice employers give so they have a constant stream of replacements to underpay and abuse.
AI really is going to take or is taking entry level coding jobs.
This was something told to my graduating class nearly 20 years ago - go into CS! Learn to code and the money will roll in!
"Learn to code" always drives me crazy. Software is a very different kind of work. Most people think it's a lot of mechanical grunt work but it's actually FAR more creative. If you "learn to code" but don't LOVE to code you will burn out in 5 years guaranteed. It's not at all like the trades.
It’s like when they tell college kids in debt “you should have learned a trade instead LOL” Fucker, you’re the one who told me to go to college in the first place, now you’re saying I should’ve gotten a trade instead?! MAKE UP YOUR GODDAMN MIND!!!
As someone who was in a community college CS program in the last 3 years, I feel like there's a story at the intersection of this oversaturation and the advent of "vibe coding" where some institutions were raking in big money to crank out huge numbers of absolutely hopeless codemonkeys.
Favorite Joe Biden quote:
"Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”
And now it’s “shoulda learned a trade instead of going to college”. Those jobs are high paying jobs with good benefits because of unions. Once they break the unions and flood the market it will be back to “whelp, shoulda got an education”
its a R&D tax law change via Trump's 2017 tax law changes...and yes it was fixed in the BBB but will not be in place until a year from now....changes R&D cost of software dev back to full 100% tax credit...
I believe the truth is that creatives will rarely become wealthy, but will never be replaced.
A decade ago? I graduated 3 years ago from a DC university and this was very much still the norm
My daughter’s HS (in the SF Bay/Silicon Valley) literally cancelled her literature pathway because only 3 kids were in it and pushed STEM on all of them. She had to chose science! I fought the school and they wouldn’t budge
Told with malignant glee, in fact.
Just four years ago the UK government ran a series of ads like that, which were much derided.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Culture secretary distanced himself from widely mocked poster amid job losses in arts
Code camps for kids was the future!!!!
Learn to conserve. Like my great uncle said who grew up in the depression said everything in moderation. He lived to 104 living at home.
I'm sure my doing radio production is going to be phased out by AI, but that product will be utterly generic garbage. Maybe acceptable to corporate hacks, but garbage nevertheless. Sorry coders.
I’m old & was told this too!!! Creative jobs may not be much more plentiful, but usually we’re more well-rounded people.
now you just need to know how to type "Lois family guy big tits" and you can master the technology of the future
In other words, pick your major based on your interests and passions. Don’t chase jobs.
much like the push for more STEM jobs, it almost feels like these pushes are ways of generating a surplus of labor to then depress wages
Oh yes in uk especially
I have an aunt who's been telling me since about 1997 that I should get a library science degree, because any second now aaaaall the librarians are going to retire.
Some decades before that, the key to an excellent job was to learn to touch type. AI writes software now. You can tell that's true whenever you interact with an AI powered support chatbot. Maybe some get answers, but I spend my time trying to get to a real human. Every. Damn. Time.
Learn to mine. Like for raw material. That's the goal. Maybe if you can get a good job, you'll be soldering chips for an Xbox or some shit. But probably not because robots. That's the goal for a republicunts United States
I kept looking for that to be an Onion headline…….
My computer science degree becoming a rugpull is so on brand for America
LBJ had this wacky idea about creating a society with enough of a safety net that children could follow their interests and still have comfortable AND meaningful lives as adults.
Weird, it’s almost like the economy continually changes.
every american jobs headline is like “hey remember that thing capitalists pushed on you? turns out it was a crock of shit”
It’s been ongoing for FAR longer than a decade+ and we can call it by its name: Class Warfare
Industrialization and automation were prioritized before any concerns about retraining were addressed waaay back in the 1920s for ex.
I'm older, and I remember when I was getting my degree in math with an "option" in computer sciences, b/c there was no actual degree offered in Computer Science. Had a great career developing code in the 70s thru early 2000s.
Yep, they pushed coding even as employers stated they needed people with “soft skills.”
Yep, and it was said so sneeringly.
Which trickled down to grade school aged kids focusing on stem stem stem. All sorts of stem after school programs sprouted up. The arts? Not a peep in most cases and next to no funding.
open.substack.com/pub/davidcau...
A recent set of articles have cued off of some new New York Fed data to declare computer science a dead discipline.
It’s still good advice. Look in the same survey at underemployment and see that many other majors have MUCH higher underemployment numbers, showing that your chances of landing a professional job in your field is much higher for engineers and comp sci than most other majors.
At this same time, the Silicon Valley set would have told you---if you asked---that they were not encouraging their own children to learn to code. "That will be obsolete," they said at the time.
They were still saying that 2 months ago when everyone pointed out that GenAI can’t actually do their jobs.
Switch needs a bait
The North remembers. Really bleak to think about what’s next for working people if there are no jobs and no UBI.
Even if AI lives up to its promise, it doesn't eliminate coding, just how it's done. Constructing prompts for an AI to build a complex software application is something that will require training. It's really like coding, but at a higher level of abstraction.
Even today I'm being told to learn the latest and greatest software packages.
First, supervisors won't need programmers because AI will let them ask in plain language what they need
Then managers won't need supervisors because there is no one to supervise.
“Learn to read”
Kismet is a m'fer
Civil or Mechanical engineering are noble degrees.
The thing that fucks me up is I liked programming. The problem space and the process were fun and interesting to me. Then this "learn to code" push happened and a ton of people with zero interest in the work, just the money, hopped on and depressed wages as capitalists planned for.
I worked for 18 years straight as a software engineer. Now I am staring down the barrel of minimum wage.
This is probably happening under the hope that vibe coding might replace coders... then the penny drops and there's a re-hiring frenzy. It's becoming a bit predictable....
I've even been seeing this with traditional engineering degrees like chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering. It's because the manufacturing sector is deeply suspicious of the current policies in the US, for many obvious reasons.
ppl don't talk about the massive inequality in the job sector.
ppl w/GEDs, HS diplomas or community college degrees have had to compete for low-paying jobs w/over-educated, over-experienced, over-qualified ppl for DECADES in this country.
...but "if you want medicaid, get a fucking job!"
“Learn to crack safes”
They just did the MBA glut again. Ten years from now they'll come up with some new fad profession, declare it to be the most important job of the future, and the cycle will begin again.
Critical thinking, ability to write, public speaking, and work with teams. Make these your goals. Explore new paths and find one that excites your mind. Don't listen to the culture. Follow your heart. Let your joy shine in your work. You'll succeed.
Yeah there’s a lot of high paying copywriting jobs to “train AI” but yeah, I’m not going to do that.
I was told research jobs would always be there (spoiler, without federal funding, there is no research). I love being mid career and stuck in a field that might not exist in a few years
The coders coded themselves out of work.
They were told that so the market would be squished and salaries/rates would drop into the basement. It worked.
👀
Hilarious that coder monkeys probably can be replaced by AI, but the weird lady who can tell you the names of every famous artist that gave themselves arsenic poisoning can absolutely not be. 😂
Also, she's way more fun at parties and knows far too much about Victorian Era sex toys.
I love her. 🤩
Did the exponential growth finally stop? Can the software industry start doing actual software engineering now? (That requires learning from history)
"Learn to code" should've been the mantra 40 years ago. Now it's either AI or starve.
Learn to code switch
Economics 101 teaches the pork cycle, it hits every time when there's "just do this, graduates will always be hired" over some time :D
Yes. 20 years ago, too. Ugh.
there are more people now than there will ever be jobs again
many saw this coming.
there was no one to tell it to, that would matter. nothing to be done about it, it seems.
