There's 50% Fewer Young Employees at Tech Companies Now Than Two Years Ago (fortune.com) 129
An anonymous reader shared this report from Fortune:
The percentage of young Gen Z employees between the ages of 21 and 25 has been cut in half at technology companies over the past two years, according to recent data from compensation management software business Pave with workforce data from more than 8,300 companies.
These young workers accounted for 15% of the workforce at large public tech firms in January 2023. By August 2025, they only represented 6.8%. The situation isn't pretty at big private tech companies, either — during that same time period, the proportion of early-career Gen Z employees dwindled from 9.3% to 6.8%. Meanwhile, the average age of a worker at a tech company has risen dramatically over those two and a half years. Between January 2023 and July 2025, the average age of all employees at large public technology businesses rose from 34.3 years to 39.4 years — more than a five year difference. On the private side, the change was less drastic, with the typical age only increasing from 35.1 to 36.6 years old...
"If you're 35 or 40 years old, you're pretty established in your career, you have skills that you know cannot yet be disrupted by AI," Matt Schulman, founder and CEO of Pave, tells Fortune. "There's still a lot of human judgment when you're operating at the more senior level...If you're a 22-year-old that used to be an Excel junkie or something, then that can be disrupted. So it's almost a tale of two cities." Schulman points to a few reasons why tech company workforces are getting older and locking Gen Z out of jobs. One is that big companies — like Salesforce, Meta, and Microsoft — are becoming a lot more efficient thanks to the advent of AI. And despite their soaring trillion-dollar profits, they're cutting employees at the bottom rungs in favor of automation. Entry-level jobs have also dwindled because of AI agents, and stalling promotions across many agencies looking to do more with less. Once technology companies weed out junior roles, occupied by Gen Zers, their workforces are bound to rise in age.
Schulman tells Fortune Gen Z also has an advantage: that tech corporations can see them as fresh talent that "can just break the rules and leverage AI to a much greater degree without the hindrance of years of bias." And Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor for LinkedIn, tells Fortune there's promising tech-industry entry roles in AI ethics, cybersecurity, UX, and product operations. "Building skills through certifications, gig work, and online communities can open doors....
"For Gen Z, the right certifications or micro credentials can outweigh a lack of years on the resume. This helps them stay competitive even when entry level opportunities shrink."
These young workers accounted for 15% of the workforce at large public tech firms in January 2023. By August 2025, they only represented 6.8%. The situation isn't pretty at big private tech companies, either — during that same time period, the proportion of early-career Gen Z employees dwindled from 9.3% to 6.8%. Meanwhile, the average age of a worker at a tech company has risen dramatically over those two and a half years. Between January 2023 and July 2025, the average age of all employees at large public technology businesses rose from 34.3 years to 39.4 years — more than a five year difference. On the private side, the change was less drastic, with the typical age only increasing from 35.1 to 36.6 years old...
"If you're 35 or 40 years old, you're pretty established in your career, you have skills that you know cannot yet be disrupted by AI," Matt Schulman, founder and CEO of Pave, tells Fortune. "There's still a lot of human judgment when you're operating at the more senior level...If you're a 22-year-old that used to be an Excel junkie or something, then that can be disrupted. So it's almost a tale of two cities." Schulman points to a few reasons why tech company workforces are getting older and locking Gen Z out of jobs. One is that big companies — like Salesforce, Meta, and Microsoft — are becoming a lot more efficient thanks to the advent of AI. And despite their soaring trillion-dollar profits, they're cutting employees at the bottom rungs in favor of automation. Entry-level jobs have also dwindled because of AI agents, and stalling promotions across many agencies looking to do more with less. Once technology companies weed out junior roles, occupied by Gen Zers, their workforces are bound to rise in age.
Schulman tells Fortune Gen Z also has an advantage: that tech corporations can see them as fresh talent that "can just break the rules and leverage AI to a much greater degree without the hindrance of years of bias." And Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor for LinkedIn, tells Fortune there's promising tech-industry entry roles in AI ethics, cybersecurity, UX, and product operations. "Building skills through certifications, gig work, and online communities can open doors....
"For Gen Z, the right certifications or micro credentials can outweigh a lack of years on the resume. This helps them stay competitive even when entry level opportunities shrink."
Is it AI? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Gen Z is prioritizing flexible working, job stability and work-life balance—something the tech industry may not be able to offer—so they’re applying to roles in different industries.”
Half the articles are saying that young people are using AI more efficiently than old people. More data is needed before reaching the conclusion stated by the headline.
Re:Is it AI? (Score:5, Insightful)
young people are using AI more efficiently
Frequency should not be conflated with efficiency.
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“The difference is unbelievable” in how a 20-year-old might use ChatGPT versus older generations, Altman said during the Sequoia talk. “It reminds me of, like, when the smartphone came out, and, like, every kid was able to use it super well,” Altman said. “And older people, just like, took, like, three years to figure out how to do basic stuff.”
I don't know the best way to quantify "effective AI use."
Re:Is it AI? (Score:5, Funny)
Like, isn't it already, like, totally clear from that quote? Just use "like" as an interjection a few more times.
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Eloquent oration is a thing of beauty. And he nailed it. Like a fetid sweaty otter languishing in a puddle.
Not the thing for me to read while I'm sipping coffee - now I need a new keyboard dammit!
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Eloquent oration is a thing of beauty. And he nailed it. Like a fetid sweaty otter languishing in a puddle.
No mod points today but thanks for the laugh!
Re:Is it AI? (Score:4, Insightful)
The LLMs are not difficult to use to the extent they work. Altman is trying to market it as the next PC or smartphone revolution, where the young led the way and old fogies that were reluctant to train up were left behind.
LLMs however are more useful for the sorts of thing an inexperienced person can do. Those folks aren't trusted/expected to do the complicated stuff anyway. So while the more advanced people might keep seeing LLM fail most of the time, an entry level person might see it able to do like 75% of the tasks they would be trusted to do.
Re: Is it AI? (Score:3)
The entry level person is ideally given tasks that they can be trusted to do, which are relatively simple. But a LLM can hallucinate a bad response to even a simple request, and it will do so randomly. Therefore it can never be trusted to be reliable.
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Yes, but it's got a more decent chance at a viable result for entry level than advanced. At all levels you have to audit, just the relative likelihood that it will screw up and the amount of correction needed varies. If you ask it to make a function to initialize a set of variables from argv, it'll do that fine and quick, but sometimes screw up a variable or omit something and just need a little amendment.
So when Altman sees two sorts of outcomes, young entry level people that can see significant gains by
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You are an expert? The LLM of your choice writes the boring code while you think about the complicated algorithms.
Indeed, but the ratio of 'boring code' can be pretty low, leading some micromanaging leaders to see lower proportion of LLM generated output from their senior devs and think of them as luddites, no longer able to adapt to 'obviously' better new tech rather than the tech having limited capability in nuanced ways beyond their ability to understand. Some people in my company have taken to generating side slop to pad the metrics so that execs stop asking why the senior devs aren't using enough AI. In the name
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Of course my way of using AI is the best of all, but here is one assessment [yahoo.com]:
“The difference is unbelievable” in how a 20-year-old might use ChatGPT versus older generations, Altman said during the Sequoia talk. “It reminds me of, like, when the smartphone came out, and, like, every kid was able to use it super well,” Altman said. “And older people, just like, took, like, three years to figure out how to do basic stuff.”
I don't know the best way to quantify "effective AI use."
The meme that there'd is an age at which it is no longer possible to figure out those complicated things like smartphones is a core tenet of ageism, a prejudice as repulsive and simply wrong as racism. Sorry Sammy, you too will get older some day, and in your estimation won't be able to figure out the things that the smarter and more capable young people can do immediately.
I hope I'm still alive when Altman suddenly becomes a stupid old person, as he thinks older people are.
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The meme that there'd is an age at which it is no longer possible to figure out those complicated things like smartphones is a core tenet of ageism, a prejudice as repulsive and simply wrong as racism. Sorry Sammy, you too will get older some day, and in your estimation won't be able to figure out the things that the smarter and more capable young people can do immediately.
This is actually far worse because younger people are turning over critical thinking to LLM and given the “hallucination” rate of around 50% on all models it’s shocking. A simple search for density between two materials using chatGPT correctly identified the approximate values but then went on to say the one with the larger volumetric density weighed less given the same shape, literally failing to identify which of two numbers was bigger. Or better yet, someone I know was told by chatGPT
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The meme that there'd is an age at which it is no longer possible to figure out those complicated things like smartphones is a core tenet of ageism, a prejudice as repulsive and simply wrong as racism. Sorry Sammy, you too will get older some day, and in your estimation won't be able to figure out the things that the smarter and more capable young people can do immediately.
This is actually far worse because younger people are turning over critical thinking to LLM and given the “hallucination” rate of around 50% on all models it’s shocking.
Ain't that the truth! The only thing good about those hallucinations is some of them are side splittingly hilarious. Only if you know why, but not if you pass the hallucination along.
From the start of the LLM modeling, it was painfully obvious that AI would soon reference itself, and end up repeating things that are simply untrue, after enough hallucinations take place. In addition, the LLM model has a weakness in that it is not all that hard to poison what it is scraping. Or better yet, someone I know
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And that may be one of the things that young people may know intuitively: Do not use LLM for calculations and do not use them as fact databases. Both the information about the density and the calculation and comparison are not strength of language models.
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And that may be one of the things that young people may know intuitively: Do not use LLM for calculations and do not use them as fact databases. Both the information about the density and the calculation and comparison are not strength of language models.
Given an error rate of 50%, and an inability to reason even the most basic things like simple addition or comparing two numbers and returning which is larger or smaller, they can’t be used for any informative purposes whatsoever. The only thing llm are fit for is taking an existing document template example, and filling it in with ever so slightly different information. Even then it requires a human to proof read. Things like coding are straight out the window, completely useless unless you already
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Oh come on. Not yet another "Nobody uses LLM and LLM can't do anything useful" after we all know that ChatGPT has millions of daily active users who seem to find use cases.
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I hope I'm still alive when Altman suddenly becomes a stupid old person, as he thinks older people are.
Hey, you got half your wish granted already!
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I hope I'm still alive when Altman suddenly becomes a stupid old person, as he thinks older people are.
Hey, you got half your wish granted already!
Yer on a roll here!
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loading up mp3s wasn't enough, i was handbrake'ing into .3pg so i could watch episodes of shit on my tiny flip phone (later a blackberry pearl)
I hear the battle scenes in LOTR are pretty epic on that 2 inch screen.
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Different industries? Good luck with that (Score:3, Insightful)
If you've got some IT related degree its not going to be much use to you applying for some fluffy easy-life by low pay job such as in marketing or sales.
Or I guess they could become "digital nomads", AKA kidults stuck in a permanent gap year earning a pittance doing miscellanious online shit from a hut in Thailand.
Possible some of Gen-Z need a reality check - ie sometimes life is unflxeible, hard and you have to make life sacrifices to get ahead.
Re:Different industries? Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Different industries? Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
If their productivity is that amazing then they're free to start their own company to compete.
Its very easy to waffle about there being more important things in life than money when you're bankrolled by your parents, but those of us who have to pay rent/mortgage and groceries need a job to earn it. When that safety net of mum and dad disappears a lot of Gen-Z are in for a nasty shock.
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So you are of the older generation and wonder why your children are the way they are? They are your children after all. So who is to blame?
I certainly do not wonder. I raised my son differently than the "proper" way. He learned that self esteem is earned by accomplishments, not for tying your shoes. That he had potential, but it took hard work.
He learned that the well meaning people who told him "Find your passion, and nothing can stop you" was a fantasy. Few among us have passion, and most wouldn't want it anyhow. I'm passionate about what I do, and it is a white hot pillar of flame that drives you, not the other way around.
He learned tea
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He learned that the well meaning people who told him "Find your passion, and nothing can stop you" was a fantasy. Few among us have passion, and most wouldn't want it anyhow. I'm passionate about what I do, and it is a white hot pillar of flame that drives you, not the other way around.
Sounds like "find your passion, and nothing can stop you" is correct, then, in your case.
But it is incomplete. You can be passionate about Pokémon, and that would help you succeed in life (probably). You have to find something thst you are passionate about *and* that you are good at doing *and* that has actual value because other people have a need for it.
He learned teamwork from competitive sports, something widely hated by modern people.
That's one way to learn teamwork. I don't think sports are widely hated, though a few of them (e.g. boxing, football) are a good way to end up w
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He learned that the well meaning people who told him "Find your passion, and nothing can stop you" was a fantasy. Few among us have passion, and most wouldn't want it anyhow. I'm passionate about what I do, and it is a white hot pillar of flame that drives you, not the other way around.
Sounds like "find your passion, and nothing can stop you" is correct, then, in your case.
Sure - I can tell you however - that in a generation or two who need "mental health days" to cope with work and life, they would dissolve into a pile of quivering goo if they actually had a passion driven life.
But it is incomplete. You can be passionate about Pokémon, and that would help you succeed in life (probably). You have to find something thst you are passionate about *and* that you are good at doing *and* that has actual value because other people have a need for it.
I think you are conflating obsession with passion. There is a difference. As a person who is passionate about things, in most areas, when my photography is on, I cannot put down the camera. I lose sleep. In my work, I stay as long as needed to produce top quality work - If I have to, I stay up all ni
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I've worked with a lot of people on campus who are enraged at how athletic departments have money.
I don't think they're enraged that the athletic departments have money so much as that the athletic departments are the only things that people support, and that the academic departments are struggling to keep the lights on while the sports teams are building multi-million-dollar stadiums, often paid for by multi-million-dollar contracts from TV networks. At some point, it stops looking like a part of the school and starts looking more like the football or basketball equivalent of a minor league, which is
Re: Different industries? Good luck with that (Score:2)
They think that they can't get money the old fashioned way, by being a reliable employee. And they are right. That never really guaranteed anything, but now there is not even any expectation that it should.
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They think that they can't get money the old fashioned way, by being a reliable employee.
What's the alternative?
Sit on the sofa and watch cat videos on YouTube?
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Jeff Bezos was born to a 17 year old unemployed mother and a 19 year old circle performer father. You'll have to explain how the "rich elite" didn't notice his rise to become one of them.
Or maybe you're just another immature dickhead spouting the tired old communist narrative of "da rich are oppressing us bruvvers!"
I'm not going to pretend a lot of the rich are saints, but neither are they stopping others doing what they did.
Re:Different industries? Good luck with that (Score:4, Informative)
Jeff Bezos was born while his mom was still in high school. Jackie Bezos divorced Jeff's biological dad when Jeff was 17 months old. She later met and married a much more stable guy, a petroleum engineer - and that's who Jeff considers his "father".
In any case, Jeff's parents were able to give him $245K to help start Amazon. They definitely weren't in the Gates / Musk tier of wealthy parents, but they were decently well off and could afford to potentially lose that amount of money.
https://www.seattletimes.com/n... [seattletimes.com]
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"his family was financially comfortable for the time, and his maternal grandfather owned a significant ranch, and his parents provided him with a sizable financial gift to start Amazon"
Fuck off with your billionaire worship.
It’s easy to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you can afford 5 thousand horsepower microturbine engines to fly your ass wherever you want to go.
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My take is quite different. The Gen Z has found out that whatever they do for money, the largest share of their productivity will go to the shareholders of their employers. Hence the Gen Z optimizes their life away from money earned and towards something the shareholders can't get their hands on. Gen Z is the direct product of a shareholder economy.
Sounds like embracing failure. GenZ thinks they've discovered this? Pure solipsism. This is how things have always been. The communistic approach won't work. Get on your grind, work yourself up, or join the minimum wage people, and seek solace in your hatred of those who have more.
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My take is quite different. The Gen Z has found out that whatever they do for money, the largest share of their productivity will go to the shareholders of their employers. Hence the Gen Z optimizes their life away from money earned and towards something the shareholders can't get their hands on. Gen Z is the direct product of a shareholder economy.
Your take might have more legs, if not for the fact that Gen Z is quite an active user and beneficiary of that very same shareholder economy.
Whether it’s through alternative investments like crypto (including creating my-coin investment opportunities), ownership in fractions of single shares of stock, or participating more directly in the market, they represent quite the invested generation that knows how the rich get richer. Gen Z can’t afford real estate, and buying bonds and CDs is a bit out
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whatever they do for money, the largest share of their productivity will go to the shareholders of their employers.
44% of American GDP goes to salaries and wages.
13% is profit.
Rather than sit on the sidelines and whining, young people should be working hard and investing their savings to become part of the owner class.
Re:Different industries? Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
If you've got some IT related degree its not going to be much use to you applying for some fluffy easy-life by low pay job such as in marketing or sales.
Or I guess they could become "digital nomads", AKA kidults stuck in a permanent gap year earning a pittance doing miscellanious online shit from a hut in Thailand.
Possible some of Gen-Z need a reality check - ie sometimes life is unflxeible, hard and you have to make life sacrifices to get ahead.
It is funny - not haha funny - but one of the worst things the younger generations have been taught is that they get their batch, then immediately start out at or near the top. we don't. we never did.
I call it pop culture aspiration. People see Zuckerberg, or Musk, or even Altman to a lesser extent, and believe that is what will happen with them. Meteoric rise to the top. It won't happen, almost certainly. The referenced three are closer to unicorns than anything else. I mean, they were taught since childhood that all they needed to do was find their passion and nothing will get in their way.
It's an unfortunate fact of life that if you want to succeed, you have to be dedicated, start out closer to the bottom, then work your way up. While I never worked for minimum wage, I didn't start out making much. You want to become wealthy? The process hasn't changed for 99.9999999999999 percent of us.
Don't worry about Zuck or Musk. Get on your grind, and do something. If you think that everything is going to be handed to you, that's a path to failure.
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It's really hard to know how much of this is because of AI, and how much of it is because of reduced skills due to COVID era education policies.
Agreed, Asshole Infiltration in I.T is a problem and it seems like Gen Z ... oh you're talking about Artificial Intelligence.
Re:Is it AI? (Score:4, Interesting)
Another that bit us, foreign tech workers on visas deciding it's better to leave the US in the current climate. We had a couple of new hires that were graduating and still on student visas that let them work decide this wasn't the place for them.
Re: Is it AI? (Score:2)
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It's really hard to know how much of this is because of AI, and how much of it is because of reduced skills due to COVID era education policies. Then there is this factor cited in the article:
"Gen Z is prioritizing flexible working, job stability and work-life balance—something the tech industry may not be able to offer—so they’re applying to roles in different industries.”
Half the articles are saying that young people are using AI more efficiently than old people. More data is needed before reaching the conclusion stated by the headline.
Sometimes you have to try to read between the lines.
Trigger alert - I'm speaking some truth to people who think they have power. This'll be at -1 flame bait or troll in a few minutes. One of the first things to point out is the rampant ageism many have. And the completely incorrect idea that someone fresh out of college is superior to the old people who are often claimed as intellectual and technical luddites.
In my present employ, they would dearly love to replace me with a GenZ worker. But the GenZ
Re:Is it AI? (Score:4, Interesting)
it's more fundamental than that. There's misconception on both the employer-side and on the young-employee side.
MBAs and other management see graybeards as expenses rather than seeing them as assets that far outperform their salaries. Management, particular management that did not come through the engineering side of the house, don't understand how much work experience it takes for an engineer to marshal a project from initial concept to successful milestones or conclusion. Young engineers might have the technical acumen, but they don't know how to work in massive, possibly decades-spanning projects, how to work with others, possibly even how to make the compromises needed to keep the project moving.
Young engineers don't understand that it's not just enough to stand something up, it requires real effort and even a bit of humility to push the whole thing through the arduous test process to make sure that it will work properly, handle edge-cases, and not fail at a critical time.
If 'tech' mostly means IT-oriented or what used to call CIS or MIS businesses, unfortunately that sort of thinking went away three+ decades ago, which is why we now have such an overburden of crap software and systems in the computing world. That attitude infected traditional engineering firms around twenty years ago and they started encouraging their experienced engineers to retire, but now they're having to call them back as even higher-paid contractors because the younger engineers don't know how to run projects. It's biting the big firms hard too.
So let me translate the corporate speak (Score:4, Insightful)
The basic problem is when we were kids we got exploited for a few years and then moved into lucrative careers.
If you're under 40 the exploitation never ends. So there is zero company and corporate loyalty.
The big change was when companies started compartmentalizing IT employees. You were no longer a subject matter expert with a lot of required skills that they couldn't afford to lose, they spent a huge amount of time and effort turning everybody into code monkeys whether you wanted to be one or not.
Add to that the overwhelming amounts of Indian H1B Visa holders who simply will not hire americans. We're not supposed to talk about it because the right wing wants cheap labor and the left wing gets freaked out about the prospect of being called racist but the fact of the matter is Indians will not hire Americans unless they are forced to and Indians have all the positions now so they're just not hiring us.
We've all seen it where we have been blocked out of promotions and moving to other teams because those teams are not going to hire Americans.
It's starting to come to a head and we need to do something about it before the fucking dipshit racists take advantage of it again. If the left wing in the center continue to ignore the problem then the right wing will exploit it to win more elections and screw us all over economically.
This is all systemic shit. The other big problem is here in America we blame individuals for systemic problems.
So the problem isn't that insourcing and rampant Visa abuse is destroying the IT job market at a time when there's a huge automation push going on. It's those dastardly gen Z and their laziness that's the problem.
In other words kids these days. Individual problems is all we can ever think about.
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Add to that the overwhelming amounts of Indian H1B Visa holders who simply will not hire americans.
I'd like to see numbers on that. I definitely know Indian immigrants who are willing to hire Americans (and some who aren't).
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Perhaps if AI worked better...routine downturn (Score:4, Interesting)
COVID fucked our economy. Inflation fucked it worse...then there's trump...love him or hate him, you can't argue...the tariff's...they're not working. If you're a fanboy...then they're not working YET...if you're a critic, which I am, they were poorly implemented and will never work without major rethinking. I am personally a fan of reciprocal tariffs...too bad Trump didn't do that...only said he did. Which brings about another key reason the economy is royally fucked. Trump is unpredictable. Now if you're a fan and support his actions, you have to admit, he doesn't communicate his plans and our partners are confused and scrambling. It's really fucking hard to setup complex projects when you can't predict the costs or level of tariffs you'll pay. It's really fucking hard to setup any project with gov involvement if you don't know if you'll get permits or what grants you'll have access to. The trump administration has been the enemy of the global economy. In the minds of his supporters, the USA is leveraging their power for their benefit. For the actual business community...they're trying to get work done and it's impossible...even if you are a fan of his and willing to give in to his every demand...his demands change constantly...this is instability and no one wants to put big money on the line without stability and predictability. That's why businesses pay a premium to setup in the USA vs Argentina.
Finally, tech is out of good ideas....and I say that as only slight hyperbole. Our perpetual tech boom has been brought out by technology advancements that were clearly useful and incremental and had immediate business impact...starting with the internet.
There was a massive boom in the 90s due to every business needing to get connected to the internet and once they're on, establishing a presence and modernizing their old achey client/server apps to new web-based ones....then there were smartphones...now every business needed to figure out a way to use mobile technology. Then there was big data...now every business had new capabilities, which while not applicable for everyone, pushed the economy.
Now we're out of ideas. The only things on the horizon are AI, robotics, and VR...all of which aren't quite there yet. They offer AMAZING potential, but all are decades old technology no one has been able to master. But even then....LLM-based AI can't do any business processes successfully yet. The error rate is too high, so they're fun tools to play with and perhaps someday will change the world, but today's implementations will not.
So then what?...eventually office has internet...every business has a web presence...every business has a mobile presence...every business has leveraged big data....not much growth opportunity for big tech when you're merely maintaining existing apps and business processes.
The rapid tech growth is an anomaly and no really sustainable. Infinite grown is not sustainable. Eventually things stabilize. Look at video games...they're stable..profitable, but stable....same with most industrial spending or food production. Eventually you achieve stability and innovation slows. Eventually markets saturate.
However, that's a depressing reality and a bummer to investors...so let's just say we're laying everyone off because of our AI advancements instead!!!
Re: Perhaps if AI worked better...routine downturn (Score:2)
I've got a great idea. We reform everything around best practice open standards. Unfortunately big tech hates this idea, the focus now is on building walled gardens to trap customers in. They will support standards only enough to lure in suckers.
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Another factor at least locally is that we have a ton of ex-Microsoft, ex-Google, and similar people who are older, very skilled, and now want to work for a more stable companies. They are great even if I have to pay a little more.
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Another factor at least locally is that we have a ton of ex-Microsoft, ex-Google, and similar people who are older, very skilled, and now want to work for a more stable companies.
Oh good point, you probably hit the main issue right here. At least, without further research, it is now my preferred hypothesis.
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It's really hard to know how much of this is because of AI, and how much of it is because of reduced skills due to COVID era education policies.
The chart in the Pave posting only goes back to Feb 2023. It would be really interesting to see how these numbers changed before the effects of AI and pandemic hiring/layoffs.
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There are lots of reports that education quality suffered significantly from COVID, though. So I expect some of the current new graduates have weaker skills because of that.
Time to join unions (Score:5, Interesting)
I've a complicated history here. As a Brit growing up in the 1970s when the unions made life miserable with power cuts and high inflation because of their demands, I was not a fan. Yet by 2000 I was a union representative following my public sector employer's attempt to enforce massive pay cuts on some staff as a result of a 'job evaluation' exercise. I joined at that point. A few years later the existing rep moved to a new job outside the IT section and I got the gig.
On a good day unions can ensure the better operation of the firm. They enable concerns to be transmitted upwards and challenges raised. Unfortunately too often they get too powerful, start to throw their weight around, and do things that are destructive of the firm in the long term. I had opportunities to be obstructive for the sake of it - but resisted. But I did challenge crass behaviour to good effect at times.
The IT industry didn't need unions because the demand for our skills meant that we could easily move on. Now it's getting tougher and firms will be tempted to bully staff because they don't have an easy alternative: 'Unpaid overtime, unpaid on call time, etc. etc. So - given the option - join. Use the power wisely.
I'm retired now - and very grateful I'm not facing this crisis. Best of luck!
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My take on unions is by the time employees are pissed enough to overcome the inertia to form one, the business is already in decline and the damage is done. There is typically a fair amount of abuse that proceeded the formation of a union, so employers only have themselves to blame.
And after that, you can anticipate a fair amount of antagonization by way of the union for past abuses. There is some power for power's sake to be sure, but the difference between a destructive and approachable union is managemen
Re: (Score:2)
I think we should skip the unions and go straight to the riots.
Re: Time to join unions (Score:2)
The riots are how you get change. The unions are how you get something positive from it. You need both for positive change.
Re: Time to join unions (Score:2)
You miss the point (Score:2)
If the unions are acting in the best interests of all the stakeholders in the company, then they will not cause the firm to become uncompetitive. When they do then yes, there is a serious problem.
Re: (Score:3)
And then there is this idiocy, again.
The raison d'être of public sector unions is they have far, far fewer available recourses for violations of the the law by government. Any type of whistleblower protections amount to naught unless there is actual teeth to enforce them. Unions may be an imperfect vehicle here, but no one has suggested another means to cajole government to follow the damn law, and public sector unions have proven time and time again to be the first line of defense against certain type
Well, that's ONE way to look at it (Score:5, Insightful)
The alternative interpretation is - older workers have a more realistic view of what AI actually can and can't do, and thus are more aware that the higher-ups' AI usage goals are full of crap. Gen Z, on the other hand, doesn't know any better.
Re:Well, that's ONE way to look at it (Score:4, Insightful)
" the higher-ups' AI usage goals are full of crap"
Any company thats led by its marketing dept and/or the bean counters and ignores the engineers is doomed to eventual failure/breakup unless its saved by government.
See: Boeing, HP, most US car makers.
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Well, for Gen Z, it's a little more competitive with LLM because they don't have the work experience to be trusted with anything difficult yet, so they get assigned tasks that are more likely LLM fodder.
It's not an advantage really because the more established participants do this as well, use LLM where LLM makes sense. It's just a lower proportion of their assigned responsibilities can be done in an LLM way.
Skills. (Score:5, Funny)
OTOH, if your inexperienced, incompetent, incomprehensible, and/or inconsistent, AI does all of that well and you can be replaced.
Different priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
What if the workforce is dwindling because instead of getting proper jobs GenZ are only interested in pointless jobs like being influencers, streamers, gamers?
ENOUGH with the pseudo-AI stuff (Score:2)
TL;DR - if it can't provide consistent rersults nor be held responsible, "AI" will never replace humans.
E
Long version:
LLMs regurgitate previously spewed stuff (including from other LLMs) which they pretend to analyze.
Unfortunately this analysis yields inconsistent responses, so an LLM's answer to YOU may be different
than its answer to me. Further, sometimes they just create fiction our of nothing, which we RATIONALIZE
and PRETEND is "hallucination."
Software algorithms do not hallucinate. Software algorithm
Re:ENOUGH with the pseudo-AI stuff (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
None of the layers contains random input.
The only point of randomness is the sampling of the likely tokens after all layers are processed. There you can choose not to take the most likely but also other not too unlikely alternatives, what is usually done to generate more than one possible answer.
It is Ai (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, I'm with everyone that the AI stuff is absolute hype, but when I started my career as an engineer, there were so many mundane jobs that grads did. I remember doing PCB layout for test jigs for quite a while - it was mostly pretty braindead, loading in component pinouts and then laying out tracks. But it's a job that needed to be done and in the process, you learnt a lot about the product development process and became integrated into the company.
Those sorts of jobs are either outsourced or automated (i.e. AI) by much improved tools. There are just not as many braindead jobs that you can throw grads at and still get some kind of return from them anymore.
I don't know what the solution to this is. Companies also used to invest in young people (i.e. give them jobs even if they wouldn't make money from them) because out of this they would get their future useful workers. But now neither employees or employers have any loyalty to each other so businesses don't want to make that investment so that their competitor can nab the trained worker.
It seems like tech is just heading towards unpaid internships (or even where the worker has to pay), which have been standard in many industries for quite a while now.
Re: It is Ai (Score:2)
Complete BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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Higher average age is actually a good thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
If career starts at 21 and ends at 65 then ideally the workforce should be roughly uniformly distributed so average age should be like 43.
IT was and still heavily biased and ageism is rampant...
Average 36 or even 39 still favors younger workers... Once it grows past 43 we should worry...
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In a lot of places, the only career ladder is to leave tech behind by 45 to 50 and become management.
Those who cling to tech get stuck with stagnant compensation because they are organizationally considered a dead end.
So at least some of the older half of that age range are out of 'tech roles' but because they are getting more money for doing stupider stuff.
Of course the ageism is a problem, hiring managers wondering what a loser a 55 year old must be if they haven't started reaping some cushy management po
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Of course the ageism is a problem, hiring managers wondering what a loser a 55 year old must be if they haven't started reaping some cushy management position.
Heh. I managed a team for several years. Then I hired a manager to replace me so I could focus full time on technical work. I just got a new job (starting in a month) and one of the things I negotiated, along with an extra week of starting vacation and more money, was assurance that I would not be expected to take a management role. I'm 56.
Fail to mention over hiring (Score:2)
Back in 2022 and 2023 there were a lot of stories about all of the tech company overhiring and how they were beginning to lay people off the extra people they hired that they didn't enough work for. These gloom and Doom AI stories never seem to mention that.
I recall reading about people that were getting full-time paychecks but didn't have any work to do and didn't need to report in at all for months.
Now it's interesting, productivity is increasing. We have AI, but we also have gotten rid of all those ext
Late-stage civilization? (Score:4, Interesting)
Looking around tells me that computer skills are becoming less relevant and closer-to-basic survival skills are becoming more important. Most computer devices are way too complex for most people and true value-add to these devices and their app-space these days is a very rare thing I would argue. It's about a non-retarded digital culture 95%+ of the time and I doubt regular Gen-Z folks are more suitable for this than any other generation besides my type of Gen-X 80ies computer kid who grew up in lockstep with the development and general adoption of microcomputers. That's the reason anyone older or younger than us is often completely out of their depth when doing anything but the simplest tasks on a smartphone or computer.
AFAICT (and some other people too) there is solid indication that key aspects of a high-culture based on digital devices and their educated use is increasingly degrading and has been in the last decade or two. And once that happens you don't need or neither afford too many people sitting at a desk and operating a computer. Wether with AI or not.
Time has changed (Score:2)
Certifications? (Score:2)
Tech employees over 30? (Score:2)
Wow! For a long time now, thirty has been the age when HR sends you off to get your dentures and hip replacements. Magically, this occurs just before your options vest.
LLM produced the headline (Score:2)
There's 50% Fewer
Correctly uses "fewer" but flubs it on "there are"
I'm not real sure it has so much to do with 'AI' (Score:2)
Just anecdotally, where I'm currently working just gave the heave-ho to a couple youngsters, partially because one responded to "this needs done now" with "well, I'm going camping. MAYBE I'll get to it next week". The other seemed to think that labor day weekend started August 15th and ended September 4th, during which time they refused to acknowledge any attempt to contact. When they resurfaced and were told the police were nearly called for a saf
Hiring has been slower. What's news? (Score:2)
Fascinatingly stupid (Score:2)
Where do these idiots think their more experienced workers will come from in, say, 5 years or 10 years?
And then in 10 years (Score:3)
here comes the shocked Pikachu face when these companies can't find competent mid-level software people because industry wide they didn't bother training them.
Just another fine short-term profit driven boondoggle by PE and the tech industry.
It's been two years (Score:2)
Ethics? (Score:2)
there's promising tech-industry entry roles in AI ethics
Is it overly cynical of me to doubt that any job is really promising if it relies on companies caring about ethics?
I feel you, young employees (Score:2)
I also were younger two years ago.
"There's"? (Score:2)
Would you write "There is 50% Fewer Young Employees at Tech Companies Now Than Two Years Ago"?
AI company tells world AI is worth investing in (Score:2)
"At Pave, we're combining real-time compensation data with deep expertise in AI"
No surprise (Score:2)
In my view, COVID affected the education of this group that is now 20-25 years old. I know plenty of young men in this group and a large number are behind where they should have been in their education. The numbers are not a surprise.
Re:WOKE EDUCATION has failed Gen Z. DEI Degrees... (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that “white men are denied places” is not supported by data. White men are still one of the most represented demographics in higher education relative to population size.
Calling people “DEI dead wood” misrepresents diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI is not about lowering standards, but about widening access to opportunities historically denied to certain groups.
The statement that “they use ChatGPT and get high scores for skin colour” makes no logical sense. ChatGPT is a tool available to anyone regardless of race, and schools use plagiarism detection, oral defenses, and in-person exams to prevent misuse.
The complaint that “education has failed smart men” is projection. Education rewards effort, application, and adaptability — not bitterness or a sense of entitlement.
Saying that “schools indoctrinate kids to be woke” is conspiratorial. Schools teach literacy, critical thinking, history, science, and sometimes uncomfortable truths about society. Indoctrination would mean forbidding discussion, not encouraging it.
The claim that graduates are “unemployable” is contradicted by evidence. College graduates still earn more on average and face lower unemployment rates than those without degrees.
Blaming “woke cunts” for the struggles of the AAA gaming industry is absurd. The industry’s problems come from unsustainable budgets, market saturation, and labor exploitation, not diversity initiatives. Scapegoating “wokeness” is just an excuse to ignore corporate mismanagement.
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The claim that “education rewards ethnics with school and college qualifications for doing absolutely nothing” is false. Universities admit students based on grades, test scores, extracurriculars, and sometimes context such as overcoming adversity. Merit remains the central factor.
Except some minorities who are underrepresented get in with less academic merit and others who are over represented get denied with higher merit.
By definition, if you have a limited number of slots and you help a group who have a worse academic record, it means that people not in that group will get cut who wouldn't have gotten cut. The question is whether that means they are denied a good education, or just denied an education at their preferred school. Nobody is guaranteed an education at their preferred school, and it isn't reasonable to expect that everyone who applies and is above a certain threshold will get in, because there are limits in t
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The question is whether that means they are denied a good education, or just denied an education at their preferred school. Nobody is guaranteed an education at their preferred school, and it isn't reasonable to expect that everyone who applies and is above a certain threshold will get in, because there are limits in terms of housing, numbers of professors, etc.
In a zero sum scenario, where pretty much all schools have that policy, those students definitely do not receive as “good” an education because the schools with better funding and reputation become full. The system is no longer a merit based system, though with the nepotism and generational wealth dependence perhaps they never were, but it’s been sold as true.
Then magically make a bunch of housing appear in or around universities, because until you do that, there's gonna be scarcity. That's just reality. Scaling up staffing is doable up to the limits of the classrooms, but once you hit that limit, building more classrooms takes time and money, too. What you want just isn't realistic.
Perhaps not in a pure capitalistic sense, but many countries not only have free student housing, but free college as well. Further,
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The question is whether that means they are denied a good education, or just denied an education at their preferred school. Nobody is guaranteed an education at their preferred school, and it isn't reasonable to expect that everyone who applies and is above a certain threshold will get in, because there are limits in terms of housing, numbers of professors, etc.
In a zero sum scenario, where pretty much all schools have that policy, those students definitely do not receive as “good” an education because the schools with better funding and reputation become full. The system is no longer a merit based system, though with the nepotism and generational wealth dependence perhaps they never were, but it’s been sold as true.
It's still a merit-based system. You're not going to have all candidates that are exactly equal. But yeah, real-world limits do mean that sometimes good people can't get into the top schools.
Then magically make a bunch of housing appear in or around universities, because until you do that, there's gonna be scarcity. That's just reality. Scaling up staffing is doable up to the limits of the classrooms, but once you hit that limit, building more classrooms takes time and money, too. What you want just isn't realistic.
Perhaps not in a pure capitalistic sense, but many countries not only have free student housing, but free college as well.
It doesn't help that we're pretty inefficient at running educational institutions, spending something like one third again more per capita than Germany while still not offering free tuition.
Further, college costs tend to be higher and there isn’t the same incentive to keep costs down with unforgivable student loans so colleges can just build and build unnecessary things and keep getting students to pay. You do realize how limiting education with artificial scarcity or scarcity through incompetence is bad for everyone, right?
I don't know about other institutions, but AFAIK, most public university construction is funded through donations, state and fede
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It's still a merit-based system. You're not going to have all candidates that are exactly equal. But yeah, real-world limits do mean that sometimes good people can't get into the top schools.
This is like saying home loans aren’t race based, but if your black you might not get the home you want. It’s still illegal for obvious reasons, it’s not a credit based system anymore with those caveats.
But I would argue that the scarcity isn't artificial. It is fundamentally stemming from the costs involved.
Colleges get plenty of money from students, the more students the more money. Sure, some things like private donations don’t scale with attendance but with more alums then it’s likely you will get more donations down the road. Some government funding, like for state run sch
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It's still a merit-based system. You're not going to have all candidates that are exactly equal. But yeah, real-world limits do mean that sometimes good people can't get into the top schools.
This is like saying home loans aren’t race based, but if your black you might not get the home you want. It’s still illegal for obvious reasons, it’s not a credit based system anymore with those caveats.
No, it's not. It's like saying home loans aren't race-based, but if the bank in your mostly single-race neighborhood runs out of money to loan, you might have to go to a different bank. There's not a maximum number of students by race. There's a maximum by school.
But I would argue that the scarcity isn't artificial. It is fundamentally stemming from the costs involved.
Colleges get plenty of money from students, the more students the more money. Sure, some things like private donations don’t scale with attendance but with more alums then it’s likely you will get more donations down the road. Some government funding, like for state run schools, actually do scale with attendance.
A lot of institutions are massively funded by endowments, which don't scale with attendance, to the point where most of the cost is paid for by those endowments, and if you doubled the number of students, the costs would *massively* increase so