Natasha Singer

Like some of the hiring criteria, you have to pass these coding tests.

They're looking for students who have done side coding projects and built their own software.

And some of those criteria are more easily met by middle and upper class students who have money and time than lower income students who have to work full time jobs during school.

Mm hmm.

And so it has always been hard for certain students to get hired by big tech companies.

So that's one of the major factors.

Other factors that have come up more recently is that tech companies overhired during the pandemic, and now some are shedding jobs.

We also saw that some of the big tech companies over the last couple of years, like Amazon and Microsoft, have increased the number of foreign workers they hired.

because they can be paid less in some cases than Americans.

And recently, the Trump administration actually tried to limit the visas that go to these workers, in part to address this.

Exactly.

So there's the visa issue already.

And then AI comes along and that changes a number of things.

First of all, big tech companies have changed priorities.

They want to invest more in building these huge data centers that they need to run AI services.

And that means less is going to go to humans on the workforce.

So they're cutting back on that.

And then the AI itself is beginning to replace workers.

We saw Salesforce announce they're laying off thousands of customer service workers because AI can do some of those jobs, but also in software engineering itself.

Yeah.