| What if there are several reasons all at once? * Economy is tighter overall. * Covid overhiring followed by firing means fresh graduates face competition from a large cohort of people with a few years of work experience. * Even if it's not necessarily true, if the C-suite _believes_ that AI can replace juniors, that's enough to funnel money away from hiring and into AI investments. When money for hiring is tight, seniors are prioritized. * Like it or not, workforce immigration (such as H-1B) causes displacement. * The number of CS graduates in the US has doubled over the last decade. In Sweden, fresh graduates across a number of fields are having a hard time finding jobs. Many of thosee seem to have either a STEM education affected by a dip in "green" capex/investments, or in "overhead" sectors likely to be tightened in bad times, such as HR specialists. |
Places are still hiring juniors, but now the bar for them is just much much higher, because a large portion of the junior level work (i.e, execution on implementation details), is pretty much 80-90% done by some senior + AI at this point, whether people believe it or not. This was certainly the case at the FAANG I was at.
I don't know why this "COVID overhiring" rhetoric is still a talking point. Covid was over 5 years ago at this point, those "overhires" have already left or have been flushed out from all these layoffs. Are you telling me the "COVID" overhiring resulted in such a huge surplus that, 5-6 years later, they are still on the market?