Natasha Singer

And the top two were call center workers and software engineers.

Wow.

So somewhere around 2012, we see a kind of increase in prominent tech executives saying,

We have to teach computer science in high schools.

We have to teach kids to learn how to code because these are the jobs of the future.

These are high-paying jobs.

You will, if you major in computer science in college, right out of college, get a $100,000 job with a $15,000 hiring bonus and maybe stock grants of $50,000 that these jobs would cost.

set you up for life.

They would be interesting, high paying.

Plus, you know, you'd get to change the world.

And so there was what I would say is kind of a magic beans jobs narrative that the tech industry campaigned on.

And you saw big companies like Google and Microsoft and nonprofit education groups funded by them lobbying to get more computer science in schools, developing their own company branded computer science lessons and teaching teachers to teach them.

Computer science is interesting and important, but it came with this promise of learn to code and you'll be rich and powerful.

You'll be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah, yeah.

And that was part of what we believed culturally.

Coming up... There are many people whose identities are wrapped up in their jobs.

And I think we're in the beginning of a profound shift about what work is and how AI tools will affect it and what kinds of jobs are going to go away.

Stick around.

One is that if you went to a top school like Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, it was always much easier for many kids to get jobs at Microsoft or Google because you were at a top computer science school.