In the short and medium term, it is unlikely that coding jobs will be completely eliminated. But as AI coding assistants become more sophisticated, the productivity of developers will continue to increase, meaning fewer jobs in total. One of the initial impacts is that the first step onto the corporate ladder is disappearing as basic tasks are increasingly automated. Big tech and other corporations are focusing on experienced candidates while slashing the hiring of new graduates [1].

Expert coders who graduated from top universities struggle to find even a fast food job at McDonald’s, let alone an entry level corporate role. In an article in the New York Times, some complained of being "gaslit" by the IT industry which promised good jobs to those who learned to code. As recent Purdue graduate Manasi Mishra explained, "The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary". The reality was different as the only company that called her for an interview was Chipotle, a restaurant that specialises in burritos.

Some might dismiss these complaints believing there is always a job for top talent. A recent report by venture capital firm SignalFire on hiring by top US tech firms (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Tesla) found that even highly credentialed graduates struggled to find roles. Hiring had dropped to half what it was in 2022 [2].

Although we have focused on the US due to it being the centre of the global IT industry, and often a predictor of global trends, the situation is also bad in Australia and especially New Zealand. Both countries have a long history of lack of investment in new graduates. Training local graduates is a last resort for many companies. Job and Skills Australia released a report in August 2025 which focused on how generative AI will transform the labour market. The report predicts that programmers are one of the occupations that are going to be particularly badly hit, "The five occupations (3-digit ANZSCO level) which would lose the most employment in 2050 relative to the base case are General clerks, Receptionists, Accounting clerks and bookkeepers, Sales, Marketing and public relations professionals, and Business and systems analysts, and programmers" [3].

While there will be an ongoing need for people who understand code, requirements, cybersecurity, business logic, and how to design system architecture, the total head count will likely reduce considerably.

Surprisingly, many students decide to enrol in a computer science degree despite having no real experience in computer science or coding. While experience is not strictly necessary as computer science degrees often assume no prior knowledge, having no experience raises two important issues. Firstly, how interested are you really in computer science if you never thought to explore it yourself? Secondly, how do you know you will even like it?

Related to the previous section, evidence suggests that first year computer science subjects are associated with high failure rates at many universities. While the grade distributions aren’t always available, 2023 and 2024 data released by the University of Auckland reveals that first year computer science units like COMPSCI 101 (Principles of Programming), COMPSCI 120 (Mathematics for Computer Science), and COMPSCI 130 (Introduction to Software Fundamentals) have relatively low pass rates in the 60% - 70% range depending on the year / semester. In fact, COMPSCI 101 and 130 have the lowest pass rates among first year courses.

Even those who pass the first year often struggle with second year courses in areas such as Algorithms & Data Structures or Theory of Computation. For instance, the University of Auckland course COMPSCI 220 : Algorithms and Data Structures has a pass rate in the high 70s. While not terrible, already a big chunk of the people that attempted computer science have been eliminated by the first year courses. Taking the first and second year failure rates together, it seems like the subject has a relatively high attrition rate.

Although Australian universities don’t typically release their grade distributions, browse on social media and you will find many people struggling with courses such as Monash’s FIT2004 Algorithms & Datastructures or FIT2014 Theory of Computation. That doesn’t mean these courses should be watered down, or students shouldn’t study computer science, just that it can sometimes be more challenging than expected.

A large number of students who have grown up playing video games have thoughts along the lines of "I enjoy playing games, so I’ll also enjoy making them" and study computer science for this reason. It may or may not be true that they will enjoy making them, but there are two big issues. Firstly, the industry isn’t that large in Australia and New Zealand, and it is highly volatile in terms of the number of jobs available at any given time. Whole game studios will sometimes just close. Secondly, the game industry is notorious for long hours and poor work-life balance. Crunch culture has become normalised.

Another thing to watch out for is that there are a lot of places around offering degrees or diplomas specifically in game design, game programming, or related areas. Do careful research before going down this road as these courses are often poor quality. What experience do the tutors have? More often than not, they have no substantive commercial experience in game development. Their whole portfolio is a couple of indie games. Studying one of these game-oriented degrees is likely a case of over-specialising early in your education.

View any industry claims about current or future skills shortages with scepticism. Skills shortages, such that they might exist, are usually very short-term and almost never at the level of recent graduates. Industry groups have a long history of making claims of shortages motivated by the desire to drive down wage costs, not only through increasing the number of local graduates but also through changes to immigration policy.

If there aren’t enough flights in a busy holiday season, the price goes up. If there aren’t enough hotel rooms for a big event like the Olympics, the price goes through the roof. If everyone wants a GPU to mine cryptocurrency then GPU prices go up. But in the labour market, despite decades of claims of massive shortages in computer science and other STEM disciplines, wage growth remains subdued.

Given companies have been claiming dire skills shortages in IT for at least three decades, you would expect that wages would be at the top of the list when comparing graduates across fields of study. Instead, they are on par or below other skilled technical and professional fields. Claims about current and future skills shortages just don’t stand up to scrutiny. The evidence presented for skills shortages, and repeated by a credulous media, is normally based on various employer surveys. From a corporate perspective, skills shortage means there isn’t an abundance of candidates with a certain set of skills at a given wage level they feel like paying. There might be workers at other firms, or in a different city, but they can’t attract them because they are unwilling to increase the wage on offer.

Even in the US, supposedly the country most struggling with a deficit of workers, the shortage is an illusion. A 2013 paper by the Economic Policy Institute found no evidence of a shortage and concludes that the US has a sufficient supply of workers. Approximately half of computer science graduates don’t enter the IT workforce because they either can’t find a job in the field, or because there are better opportunities elsewhere. In addition, real wages haven’t increased since the late 1990s [4].

The paper points out that up until about 2001 the IT labour market worked as expected. Growing demand for workers was reflected in rising wages, which in turn attracted more students to study IT related fields. Since then, the number of IT work visa holders has grown dramatically, yet wages are stagnant or even declining. In other words, IT work visa holders are used as a way to lower wages. The paper concludes, "Immigration policies that facilitate large flows of guestworkers will supply labor at wages that are too low to induce significant increases in supply from the domestic workforce" [4].

Norman Matloff, a long time critic of IT industry hiring practices, concluded that the primary goal in hiring foreign workers is to lower labour costs and to obtain employees who are unable to change jobs easily due to the conditions associated with their visas [5].

In areas like software engineering and programming, many workers exit the industry by the time they reach their mid 30s. This isn’t because their skills are out of date, since workers commonly devote many hours of their spare time to learning the latest technologies. Rather, it is due to the fact that younger workers, including those on work visas, are simply cheaper. Instead of paying the prevailing wage for a worker with that level of experience, companies choose to save by hiring less experienced workers. With an abundant supply of cheaper workers, there simply is no need to hire older workers. This means that older workers are forced to retrain and look for a different career, perhaps only a third of the way through their working life.

A 2024 report from Deloitte Australia highlighted issues with age diversity in the IT industry [6]. This occurs at both ends of the age range, with the share of tech workers aged under 25 actually decreasing. The report cites 2021 census data which shows that in 2011 10% of the workforce was aged under 25, but that has now fallen to 6%. This is hard to explain by applicants lacking the formal education requirements for the roles, since the professional services industry, which has similar requirements, has 8% of workers aged under 25. The report attempts to explain this by saying more needs to be done to promote the tech industry to youth, but an equally plausible explanation is that employers are less willing to take on new graduates and that there is an oversupply of graduates. Companies prefer to hire workers with several years experience. Even so-called entry level jobs often require 1 to 2 years of experience.

Discrimination against older workers has also long been part of the IT industry both in New Zealand and Australia as well as in international markets like the US. Those aged over 55 make up 14% of the ICT workforce in Australia compared to 20% of the workforce as a whole [6]. The tired argument that this reflects that IT is a new industry doesn’t really make sense, considering businesses started using computers in the 1960s, with the personal computer becoming ubiquitous in the 1980s.

Another common argument is that some specific technology is so new that older workers couldn’t possibly be up to date with the technology and its potential. Hence, it is natural that there aren’t many older workers. But the obvious assumption underlying this argument is that older workers can’t learn something new. Keep in mind that the workers we are talking about are experienced IT workers, not random people off the street.

Big Tech has long been notorious for favouring younger workers. Some of this may be an inherent bias, but it is also because younger workers can be hired for less than older workers with similar levels of expertise. Although the data is a bit out of date, a 2013 New York Times article discussed the median age of workers at large technology companies in the US based on data from Payscale and found that out of 32 tech companies looked at, just six had a median age greater than 35 years old [7]. Eight companies had a median employee age younger than 30. A gender bias also seems to exist with women making up less than 30 percent of the work force.

In a study on perceptions of age in tech it was found that in Silicon Valley a person is perceived as either young or old with the dividing line occurring at around 35. Those over 35 are expected to be managers, and those over 50 find it impossible to get hired at all [8]. Workers over 35 are expected to have trouble keeping up with fast evolving tech, and not be able to come up with new ideas. A related issue is that tech companies expect workers to dedicate their lives to the company and work long hours. For those who want to combine careers with a meaningful family life, this becomes an issue. Older workers are perceived as slower, less interested in work, and more involved in their family lives.

Australian and New Zealand tech companies all think of themselves as being on par with the top Silicon Valley companies. However, they typically lack the benefits like high salary and onsite amenities, but have many of the same drawbacks such as ageism. In some industries age is associated with experience and wisdom, whereas in the tech industry, workers are viewed as lacking energy and being too expensive.

Traditionally, employers would take some responsibility for ensuring their employees have the skills needed. This often occurred through various forms of internal and on-the-job training. More recently, employers have adopted a philosophy where it is someone else’s job, such as the education sector, to deliver fully trained employees. This can cause a disconnect where the university has a view that it should be teaching foundational materials and mostly theoretical content, whereas employers are looking for vocational training and job-ready graduates.

Most people planning to study computer science have little objective information to make a decision about career paths. Sometimes they might do a search on popular job sites such as Seek and notice that there are plenty of jobs available. The problem with this is that there is not a one to one correspondence between advertisements on Seek and an actual vacancy. A single vacancy might be sent out to multiple recruitment agencies or not exist at all.

Why do recruitment agencies post so many fake job advertisements? One reason is to build a candidate database. By having a pool of candidates already screened and in their database, when an actual vacancy arrives, they are able to reach out to those candidates and fill the vacancy quickly. Perhaps even beating rival agencies to fill the position. Obviously, they don’t want a stale database, so they are always posting job advertisements even when no job exists. Some less scrupulous recruiters will even spam the curriculum vitaes they have collected to companies hoping to place a candidate and earn a commission. Job sites often offer a fixed price for up to a certain number of advertisements, so there is no extra cost to post more advertisements.

Similarly, there are some companies that are always hiring but not actually hiring. This can occur when they have no pressing need to hire someone, or even the budget, but believe they should always keep an eye out for top talent. Unfortunately, their requirements for top talent are so unrealistic, especially considering the salary they are paying, that nobody ever gets hired.

There are other reasons for fake advertisements, such as testing the market for salary expectations, gauging the number of available workers, or even finding out what rival companies are up to. Also, there might be a requirement that every vacancy has to be externally advertised, even though an internal candidate is already lined up for the role. Keep an eye out for straight-up fraud / identity theft. This is where scammers run job advertisements to harvest data which can then be used for committing crimes. In short, seeing a large number of job advertisements on job sites isn’t a sign of a healthy job market, or an accurate way to gauge the number of roles available.

Another big issue is that the supposed salaries attached to many positions aren’t the actual salaries. They are used as bait to reel in candidates for the recruiters database, or to pitch them an alternate job at a lower rate.

One aspect of the recruitment process that is almost unique to the tech industry is asking candidates to complete large sample projects. A 2024 article by Lauren Goode highlighted the over-the-top recruitment processes that have become normalised. Candidates are sometimes asked to complete a 12-hour take-home assignment, or even one that requires days to complete, as well as round after round of interviews [9].

In addition to the possibility of large take-home assignments, expect to be asked to complete tricky algorithm & data structure type coding problems on a whiteboard during the interview. There are a large number of books and other resources devoted to helping candidates to prepare for coding interviews. If you want to be competitive, plan on constantly drilling these types of problems.

Some students get hung up on which one of these to choose. In practical terms, the degrees are essentially equivalent in the job market. This means you should take a look at the programme offered by the university and choose which one you think looks more appealing. Don’t fall into the trap that software engineering is a better degree, or that the extra year will make all the difference. If you study computer science, and what to do an extra year, there are often options like an honours degree.

The IT industry has been badly impacted by off-shoring of jobs and now AI. Some students who might have otherwise studied a STEM course are instead choosing to study degrees in business, law, or healthcare. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t study computer science, but go into the degree with your eyes open. Don’t pursue it based on the outdated idea that it is an easy road to riches.

Future roles will need a broader range of skills, not just computer science but a detailed understanding of the business environment. One possibility, if you are committed to computer science, is to consider a double degree. While a double degree is no guarantee of getting a job, understanding both the technical and business aspects of a problem could be helpful in a competitive job market.

[1] “AI is gutting the next generation of talent: In tech, job openings for new grads have already been halved.” https://fortune.com/2025/08/15/ai-gutting-next-generation-of-talent/ .

[2] “The SignalFire State of Talent Report - 2025.” https://www.signalfire.com/blog/signalfire-state-of-talent-report-2025 .

[3] Job and S. Australia, Our Gen AI Transition: Implications for Work and Skills. Job and Skills Australia, 2025.

[4] H. Salzman, D. Kuehn, and B. L. Lowell, “Guestworkers in the high-skill US labor market: An analysis of supply, employment, and wage trends,” Report, 2013.

[5] N. Matloff, “Immigration and the tech industry: As a labour shortage remedy, for innovation, or for cost savings?,” Migration Letters, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 210–227, 2013.

[6] Deloitte, ACS Australia’s Digital Pulse 2024. Deloitte, 2024.

[7] “Technology Workers Are Young (Really Young).” https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/technology-workers-are-young-really-young/?_r=0 .

[8] A. Rosales and J. Svensson, “Perceptions of age in contemporary tech,” Nordicom Review, 2021, 42 (1), 2021.

[9] L. Goode, “Why Tech Job Interviews Became Such a Nightmare,” Wired, 2024.