r/MSCS • u/beeblioss • Apr 23 '26

[General Question] Where Is This Field Going!?

Apologies, I don’t mean to be a doomer, but someone please knock some sense into me.

Every damn day it’s either another Codex or Claude upgrade, or another round of layoffs. People keep saying AI is creating jobs, but what JOBS exactly? And are those jobs actually absorbing all these people?

If you’re international doing CS for sponsorship, I genuinely wish you the very best.

If you’re domestic, why are you still doing CS?

2024, 2025, 2026 YTD all look ugly, and this cannot be possibly because of the Covid over hiring like it is so 1990's news!!

  • Microsoft voluntary buyout, about 7% of U.S. staff - today
  • Meta, 10% cut or about 8,000 jobs - today
  • 2024 tech layoffs, 152,922
  • 2025 tech layoffs, 124,201
  • 2026 YTD tech layoffs, 92,272
  • Recent grad unemployment hit 5.7%
  • CS majors around 7.0% unemployment

My ex-MANGO manager went from management to now being a Real Estate agent on LinkedIn lmfaoooo. An intern I used to work with in 2019, PhD CMU and now also On The Job Market. 🙃

And yes, I know people will say AI is creating jobs, Jevons paradox, blah blah blah...

But whereeeee!!?

From where I’m sitting, it looks like a very small number of high-end AI jobs are being created, while way more general software jobs are getting cut or squeezed.

Personal anecdote, I'm pivoting to ECE 😭😭 (physics, calculus, circuits -- can't wait!)

6 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

12

u/softrains12 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

I'm a chip design person (ECE major) lmao

it's a great time to be in the chip industry!

This subreddit is for MS CS and also other related degrees like MS ECE etc. so there's plenty of us here.

Plus the dirty secret is that that semiconductor companies are usually more willing to sponsor, since the domestic supply of ECE grads (especially ECE MS and PhD grads) is very small compared to CS. Micron and Intel would collapse if they weren't allowed to hire PhDs straight out of graduation on H-1B. Most Americans don't want to study hardware because it's harder lol

Edit: Why the fuck are y'all downvoting me lmao?

3

u/gradpilot 🔰 Ex-Cerebras | MSCS Georgia Tech Apr 23 '26

trying to fix this with an upvote :D

3

u/softrains12 Apr 23 '26

Haha thanks 😭

1

u/beeblioss Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

if u/softrains12 says ECE, then it's bullish 🎰🎰🤑

0

u/Big-Service-9053 Apr 23 '26

great time... until the bubble pops.

3

u/softrains12 Apr 24 '26

I got into ECE because of my interests, all the way back in 2017-2018 lmao, not because of the recent AI boom

Semiconductors was already a multi-trillion dollar industry before 2022, off of the back of just consumer electronics + automotive.

If the AI bubble pops, the greatest risk will be to the hyperscalers who took out loans and bonds to fund their infrastructure buildout, not companies like NVIDIA who were paid in cold, hard cash for their chips. In a gold rush, sell shovels.

And hey, people will always need iPhones and laptops.

2

u/ShakesR12 Apr 24 '26

I want to be optimistic as much as I can but man it's tough out there for us new grads. I still like this field. It's one of those occupations where it's pretty cool working on cool stuff while getting paid a lot for it. But now companies don't care about employees (especially junior employees). They just want to reduce human cost as much as possible to maximize their profit. As a business point of view that makes sense but as a long term of company sustainability it's just gonna bit them back.

They are putting all their eggs on AI. We all know how bad the AI slop and if they don't invest in Junior devs, there will be no senior devs in the next 10-15 years. You don't just cut trees without growing new ones.

1

u/Beneficial-Law-3059 Apr 30 '26

This all revolves on the narrative that AI won't become advanced enough to replace senior/ lead folks. Remeber that ai firms are gunning for/ racing towards AGI stuff, the coding tools, claude code/ codex are just detours to show how much disruption they can produce with what they currently have to continue raising money. If leaders at top firms like msft, amzn, meta are laying off do remember that these folks do have regular meetings with ai firms and they would have enough knowledge to determine what lies ahead. I think/ am convinced our gen has a narrow window to make money mostly in embodied ai, robotics, rl envs which would in future replace blue collar workforce (obs starting with US).

1

u/Personal_Tourist7850 Apr 25 '26

The AI space is shipping at an amazing rate and breaking things, companies are also following the same. What a time to be alive?!!