Natasha Singer

I've been investigating switching out of this field.

And he's thinking about if he cannot design software, what other careers are there where he could design things and that would be meaningful for him?

I took some really, really great architecture classes in undergrad.

And so he's thinking about maybe going to graduate school in architecture so that he can build things, which is the thing that he feels he's good at, he's talented, and he cares about.

And I think it might be a good time to pick up a secondary skill, whether that's through grad school program or even just starting an internship in a completely different field.

So I think the answer is both yes and no.

I think that computer science majors who graduated this year and last year are going to have a particularly hard time because many of them have not yet learned to use the AI coding tools that big tech companies now want software developers and software engineers to use.

So it's certainly conceivable that five years from now, when college computer science departments are teaching kids both the fundamentals of computer programming and then how to use these new coding tools, that computer science majors will be much more employable.

But I also think in the long term, it's really hard to know.

I think...

that this is completely true.

And also, I think it's sort of the moral of the story.

I'm working on a book right now about the decade-long push for computer science and now AI in schools.

And one of the things I've learned from doing historical research is that this is a pattern of the tech industry of pushing school reforms.

And it's always the latest hyped thing that's urgent for schools to teach.

And schools respond.

And we want schools to respond because we want kids to be able to use the technology of the day and we want kids to be able to learn the subjects that are the most important of the day and that help them navigate their worlds and get jobs.

But at the same time...

Tech companies have outsized influence in schools.

And we have bowed to tech industry education agendas in school without a lot of public discussion or independent scrutiny.