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Abraham Rubio has wanted to be a software engineer since childhood.
On the gaming platform Minecraft, he loved tinkering with “mods,” or alterations to video games created by fans that change elements like a character’s appearance. Eventually, he wasn’t content with just discovering new mods — he wanted to build his own.
That early passion led him to study coding at Bloomfield College of Montclair State University in New Jersey, graduating with a degree in computer science and game programming in May.
But finding a software development job has proven challenging. Rubio has applied for 20 roles since graduation. He’s yet to receive an offer.
“I go on LinkedIn almost every day, just scrolling, trying to see what opportunities are out there,” he said, adding that he hasn’t “really heard anything back from most companies.”
For years — as Silicon Valley boomed and all kinds of companies invested in new tech capabilities — computer science degrees, or even certificates from coding bootcamps, seemed like a golden ticket to a sustainable, well-paying job in a fast-paced industry. But in recent years, job openings have become more competitive and harder to come by.
Employment for recent graduates in computer science and math jobs has declined by 8% since 2022, Oxford Economics found in a May report. Postings for software development roles on the job site Indeed fell 71% between February 2022 to August 2025, according to Indeed data shared by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
With the tech world racing to make artificial intelligence advancements, some new grads say it feels like an especially exciting time to enter the industry. However, AI is also enabling companies to automate some parts of the coding and software development process, reducing the need for human workers, especially in entry-level roles.
While tech giants’ valuations continue to soar, many have undergone multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years as they push to accomplish more work with fewer people, a trend that has only been accelerated by AI. Microsoft, for example, became the second company to reach a $4 trillion valuation last month. That was only weeks after saying it would lay off 9,000 employees in its third round of cuts in recent months. CEO Satya Nadella said in April that as much as 30% of Microsoft’s code was being written by AI.
“Tech jobs are good, but I will say, the job market right now makes it seem that it’s almost impossible to get one,” said Julio Rodriguez, who graduated last year from Elms College in Massachusetts. He said it took him more than 150 applications before he got a data engineer job earlier this summer.
“And then when you get one, you’re also scared of the many layoffs that many companies are having,” he added.
CNN spoke with half a dozen job seekers about how they’re navigating the job market, educators training the industry’s next generation of engineers as well as current coders and tech leaders about whether computer science degrees could become obsolete.
Nick Vinokour had a dream job lined up after he graduated in December from the University of Michigan with a computer science degree — he had been hired as a strategic projects lead at data labeling startup Scale AI. He was set to start in August.
“I was super excited, it was a great opportunity,” Vinokour said.
But after Meta invested $14.3 billion into Scale AI in June, acquiring its CEO, Vinokour got an email saying his offer was being rescinded amid a corporate restructuring.
Now, he’s still on the hunt for a job.
While Vinokour largely believes the state of the economy and stiff competition among recent computer science graduates are to blame for the tough job market, the role of AI has certainly crossed his mind.
AI coding tools such as Microsoft’s Copilot and Anysphere’s Cursor are like “a big tidal wave that’s looming to change what the role of a junior engineer is,” he said. (A Scale spokesperson acknowledged that some employees were laid off or had offers rescinded in July, but said Scale is now aggressively hiring for positions across the company.)
Some recent computer science grads have turned to TikTok to share frustrations around the current tech job market. A TikTok user named Lili, who goes by @queenofslack on the app, posted a video last month discouraging other students from studying computer science due to her own difficult job hunt.
“I think the investment, the difficulty of (computer science) is not worth the instability of the job,” she said. “If you’re really just being motivated by a paycheck and by a cushy job, I can’t say that I would recommend.”
Of the more than 250 comments on the video, dozens were from fellow computer science graduates or students expressing similar concerns about their career path.
College graduates, broadly, are struggling. A May report from Oxford Economics found that the unemployment rate for recent grads is now greater than the national average. But for job seekers in tech, the data is especially troubling.
The New York Fed now pegs the unemployment rate for recent computer science and computer engineering graduates (6.1% and 7.5%, respectively) higher than that for people who studied art history (3%), English (4.9%) and performing arts (2.7%).
Recent grads told CNN that they don’t think AI will do away with software engineering jobs entirely. As Brianne Ford, who graduated from the State University of New York at New Paltz in May, put it: “Code always needs maintaining.”
But there are fears that the technology will usurp opportunities for people looking to break into the field.
For entry-level jobs, “they want us to have tons of internships or tons of projects and when you’re in school, you don’t really get as much of a chance,” Ford said. “Me, personally, I worked as a resident advisor to help pay for school.”
Vinokour said job seekers his age are in a “pickle” — wanting to take part in the AI boom, but competing against more experienced developers for jobs, especially as some companies slow down or change their hiring plans.
“It’s this very weird middle ground that’s exciting because (the industry is) on the precipice of this insane technology. But … it’s harder for a junior engineer to be hired,” Vinokour said.
Or as Rubio puts it: “It feels like I’m competing with AI to just try to get my foot in the door.”
Some are now reconsidering whether software engineering is truly a viable career path.
“I’m pretty pessimistic right now,” said Danny Stalmakov, a Germany-based software developer who graduated with his master’s degree in computer science in 2022.
Stalmakov, who said he’s submitted hundreds of applications over six months, has been told by recruiters that there are simply too many applicants for each role. But he also sees the benefit of AI, which now handles 80% of his development work.
“While the productivity boost is incredible, it’s also concerning — companies that used to need five developers might only need three now,” he said.
“The AI impact on coding made me genuinely unsure about my future in software development, and I really don’t know what my next move will be if the market stays like this,” Stalmakov added.
Educators teaching coding and computer science are having to pivot their curriculum to prepare students for a rapidly evolving job market.
Magdalena Balazinska, director of the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, said the hiring slowdown is not just because AI is taking coding work. Tech companies are also right-sizing after a Covid-era hiring spree and need to spend wisely amid multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure investments.
Balazinska said it’s not all doom and gloom — more than half of the school’s approximately 675 graduates from the 2024-25 school year have already found full-time jobs at companies including Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google.
Nonetheless, the school is evolving for the AI era, she said. It’s rolling out a new “AI-assisted software development” course this fall, where students will learn about modern software engineering practices and the role of AI as a tool for that work.
Some advanced classes will also allow students to use generative AI, “which is enabling faculty members to raise the level of difficulty and complexity of the projects,” Balazinska said.
But introductory courses will still prohibit using AI for classwork — so students learn the basics without relying too much on the technology.
“Our philosophy has always been that computer science is a field that advances faster than any other field, so preparing students to advance with the field is the most important thing we can do,” Balazinska said.
“There will be jobs for those who learn the latest advances in computing and those with excellent skills and knowledge,” she said.
It’s not just universities that are changing their approach. Coding bootcamps — specialized schools often catering to career switchers or students looking to pursue careers in tech without a four-year degree — have adapted, too.
The idea of landing a lucrative six-figure salary without a traditional degree, combined with an increased hiring demand from the tech industry, led to a boom in enrollment at these bootcamps throughout the 2010s. But Daniele Grassi, CEO of tech bootcamp General Assembly, said he’s noticed a shift over the past couple of years in the types of customers coming to his school.
While General Assembly primarily attracted aspiring software engineers for much of its 14-year existence, the school is now also garnering interest from C-level executives, human resource managers and sales professionals interested in developing their AI skills.
As a result, General Assembly has begun creating programs specifically designed to help workers across all tiers of a company —from entry level to the board of directors, whether the roles are technical or not — gain new AI skills, according to Grassi.
“Six months ago, or nine months ago … we realized that every role is disrupted,” Grassi told CNN.
General Assembly has incorporated AI skills teachings into its programming across disciplines, said Jeffrey Bergin, the school’s chief learning officer, so that everything it offers “now has an AI element.” The school offers courses in data analytics, user experience design, data science and information technology in addition to software engineering.
Bergin said the school wants “to make sure folks have what they need, both in being able to apply those skills and to take those skills into job interviews and into employers, and have those really resonate.”
Tech leaders say they’ll still need young people with computer science degrees, even if there are fewer jobs to go around.
“The thing people study is computer science, which is a lot more than code. It’s understanding how these systems work,” Deepak Singh, vice president of developer agents and experiences at Amazon Web Services, told CNN. “The critical thinking part doesn’t change. You still need to be able to think, you need to be creative. I actually think it becomes more important because you have more time” to be creative with AI doing the grunt work.
Still, that may be cold comfort to new grads, given Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s recent warning that the company will need fewer human workers in the future as AI takes on more tasks.
Beyond big tech, many AI startups are also focused on growing with the smallest teams possible.
“The AI boom isn’t following the patterns of past tech cycles,” Kyle Holm, vice president of the compensation advisory group at consulting firm Sequoia, wrote in a blog post last month. “The traditional model of high-growth companies expanding headcount, investing in people teams, and broadly distributing equity isn’t playing out the same way this time.”
David Barajas, who has been working as a full-time software engineer for more than a decade, said he would feel “intimated” by the rise of AI tools in coding if he were a junior engineer.
But overall, he’s of the mindset that AI will change the job rather than wipe it out completely — as long as aspiring engineers embrace it, that is.
“AI won’t replace you as an engineer,” Barajas said. “An engineer with AI will replace you as an engineer.”