The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the number of software engineer job openings has fallen roughly 70% from the peak of the 2022 hiring boom, as detailed in an earlier MSI article on how AI is fueling tech layoffs. MSI previously reported.
For software developers and the broader cohort of tech workers who rode the pandemic-era hiring wave, the mood has shifted from confidence to caution.
Christopher Pack, 27, earned a master’s degree in computer science in 2022 and immediately landed a software job in California’s Bay Area at a time when hiring was booming. Four years later, he told the Journal he has grown wary about his future. “I feel like I got on the last plane out of Vietnam,” he said, adding that he does not think he can “plan for a normal-length career, at least in this field.” He said he lives frugally, setting aside 65% of his after-tax income so he can become financially independent and, if he loses his software job, have enough money to buy a house in a cheaper part of the country and “still be OK to coast into retirement.”
The Labor Department reported that employment in the information sector, which includes some tech jobs, declined by 332,000, or 11%, between its November 2022 peak and May. Between February 2020 and February 2023, the number of people working in computer-systems design and related jobs increased by 11%, according to the Labor Department.
Michael Waxman, 39, entered the job market during the 2007-09 financial crisis, making $14 an hour as an entry-level software developer in the Phoenix area. By 2021, he and his wife, who teaches veterinary medicine online, sold their homes in Phoenix and Indiana and bought a catamaran that became a remote office. Early this year, an HR meeting invite popped up on Waxman’s calendar as he was docked in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was being laid off, and he said he was not surprised — he had been teaching AI agents to do much of his work.
“I am coding myself out of a job,” he said he would joke. “It’s like the farm hands and when tractors came into town,” he said of the current job market, where he is still on his boat looking for contract work.
Noah Neustadt, a 37-year-old user-experience designer based in Montreal, said he spends his spare time browsing farmland listings in British Columbia and Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula. When he started worrying that AI would erase his and millions of other jobs, he asked his AI chatbot what might be a good place to live off the land. The chatbot suggested the Pacific Northwest.
“It has the most fresh water,” Neustadt said. “It’s not too hot, not too cold.” He said he is not ready to make the move yet. He plans to stay in his current job, which pays him around $120,000 annually, for as long as he can, and he and his wife are making bigger payments on their home mortgage.
Undergraduate enrollment in four-year computer and information science degrees fell by 8.1% last fall from the previous year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, a sharp reversal from the 10.4% growth recorded in 2022.