[alephnerd]

> a paid internship at a civic-consulting firm, years of volunteering at environmental-defense organizations, experience working on farms and in parks as well as in offices, a close-to-perfect GPA, strong letters of recommendation

> He would do anything—filing paperwork, digging trenches—to build his dream career protecting California’s wildlife and public lands

> He applied to 200 jobs. He got rejected 200 times. Actually, he clarified, he “didn’t get rejected 200 times.” A lot of businesses never responded

I'm not sure this has anything to do with AI.

It's hard enough to land an environmental non-profit, state, or federal environmental job. It is doubly difficult to do so when both the Federal [0] and State [1] government are slashing hiring across the board.

This article is just "AI washing" austerity measures and offshoring that is occuring in the US.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_m...

[1] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/california-governor-ai...

[huitzitziltzin]

Agree that these are very very hard industries in which to secure employment.

At the least the anecdote is not that informative about the effects of AI, given the details.

[alephnerd]

Both Harris and Martine's anecdotes provide little evidence about AI being linked to their hiring issues.

The author is just conjecturing that AI has had an impact on their job markets, when both are primarily targeting government and government adjacent roles when state and federal governments are in the process of slashing funding.