The computer science bubble is bursting
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@Steve-Miller will love this.
“It’s so counterintuitive,” Molly Kinder, a Brookings Institution fellow who studies AI’s effect on the economy, told me. “This was supposed to be the job of the future. The way to stay ahead of technology was to go to college and get coding skills.” But the days of “Learn to code” might be coming to an end. If the numbers are any indication, we might have passed peak computer science.
Chris Gropp, a doctoral student at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, has spent eight months searching for a job. He triple-majored in computer science, math, and computational science at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and has completed the coursework for a computer-science Ph.D. He would prefer to work instead of finishing his degree, but he has found it almost impossible to secure a job. He knows of only two people who recently pulled it off. One sent personalized cover letters for 40 different roles and set up meetings with people at the companies. The other submitted 600 applications. “We’re in an AI revolution, and I am a specialist in the kind of AI that we’re doing the revolution with, and I can’t find anything,” Gropp told me. “I found myself a month or two ago considering, Do I just take a break from this thing that I’ve been training for for most of my life and go be an apprentice electrician?”Atlantic:
It’s official. I’m obsolete. I mean I have been for a while but this is the final nail in the coffin.
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Looked up this "Chris Gropp" in LinkedIn and Google Schola. About half a dozen publications, except for one paper published in 2024 that tangentially relates to AI, the rest are in cloud/parallel computing and big data published in 2019 or earlier, suggesting these are work done while Gropp was in Clemson. Also did a quick patent search and found no patent or patent application that credits Gropp as an inventor. I wish him well.
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If a guy with his credentials can’t find work there’s something more going on. Rose Hulman is a top school.
A top school teaching unmarketable skills, apparently.
He should look in to refrigeration tech.
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I think it more likely he cannot find the job he wants. I think technical writers are probably in more jeopardy than computer scientists and developers. I get several solicitations a week.
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I find it hard to recommend this profession that I chose back in 1981-82. Back then it was the wild west and while I have done well, I could have done a lot better financially. I did not want to move my family around and I did not want to do corporate consulting very long, as it kept me away from my family. I had to balance it. I settled in on local small to medium sized business that could afford custom software and IT infrastructure. I still work in IT of course and I am now finding that the last chapter will most likely consist of maintaining and improving where needed, legacy systems in the small to medium business market. Exactly where I started. lol
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Yeah, but you had a really good run in this industry, as did I. I’m not making quite the hourly I did full time, but at 2.5 years with this client I’m loving it. Keeps me involved, my mind challenged and I get more respect for my work ethic than I ever did anywhere else.
