Brittany Luce

And according to the Federal Reserve's data released last year, the unemployment rate for computer science grads was double that of art history majors in 2023.

But this all has me thinking, how did we get here?

And if a cushy position in tech isn't the quote unquote good job anymore, what is?

I'm joined by Raya Jetta, tech culture reporter for the San Francisco Standard.

Thanks for having us.

And Natasha Singer, technology reporter for the New York Times and author of the upcoming book, Coding Kids, Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools.

Thanks so much for having us.

Hello, hello.

I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

We got to talk about what's going on with tech jobs.

There have been a lot of layoffs in the past few years.

Tech companies are getting leaner and leaner.

What's behind these layoffs?

Like, is it AI or is it something else?

Part of what we wanted to talk about here was the culture story of this.

For years, when journalists got laid off, for example, the advice a lot of us received was, you know, learn to code.

Like it's this kind of this golden ticket, you know, like beyond that comment being kind of rude.

I think it speaks to the perception of tech jobs being good jobs, of the tech industry having more of a future than more humanities focused jobs.

Where did that perception come from and how have things changed?

You know, you mentioned that like new grads trying to get into tech are not getting hired, at least not the same way that they were before.