4d ago

Connor Myers: As if graduating weren’t daunting enough, now students like me face a jobs market devastated by AI

www.theguardian.com As if graduating weren’t daunting enough, now students like me face a jobs market devastated by AI | Connor Myers

With big accountancy and finance firms turning to tech rather than graduates, even those with ‘useful’ degrees find their prospects diminished, says student Connor Myers

United Kingdom @feddit.uk

www.theguardian.com /commentisfree/2025/jul/06/graduation-students-jobs-market-ai-accountancy-finance

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29 comments

Many firms are now slashing their number of new hires.
Yes. This sucks.
The main cause of this is artificial intelligence
Unlikely.
The main cause for a chill in hiring tends to be uncertainty about the future. And we know that folks are feeling high uncertainty about the future, right now. (Gestures broadly at current headlines in general and "Not The Onion", in particular.)
Historically, uncertainty about the future is particularly high when the people have low confidence that existing and new laws will be applied in a predictable manner.
I'll leave exactly what changed on that front as a thought exercise.
AI is interesting, but it is not the primary cause of the chill in hiring new graduates.
- AI just gives executives an excuse to layoff their staff without spooking their investors.
- My company transitioned to using contractors for low experienced new hires. Our only reqs being approved by management are 10+ YOE.
  Sorry kids, time to apply to a few more places.
- ill hazard a guess, just like 10 years ago when thier hiring was already pretty bad, listings implies FULLY trained applicants are required and or h1b visa holders, they dont want to waste money to train people from the ground up, they expect you to have years of experience by the time of graduation.
- Agreed, and unfortunately articles like this are food for CEOs to do more under the guise of AI. "See, it works!"
- I was looking for this comment. This is it—not AI.

Remember the meme about everyone could have a 32 hour work week and three-day weekends (and a productivity boost) but the billionaires are opposed?
Well everyone could have post-scarcity communism but the billionaires are opposed.

just need to change your name to "AI" and suddenly every company will want you
More lifehacks next time
- Make sure you don't put "Al" by mistake though. You'll only get offers to be part of "bodyguard/long-lost pal" collaborations with people called Betty.
  
  but why am I soft in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard!

The idea of a world driven by robots empowered by AI methods, is really great. It gives freedom to everyone with almost no costs. Just doesn't work so well with a capitalistic society as the one we currently have.
Such uses demand a non-capitalistic socio-economic system. Like some form of communism.

Don't sell your self short like that. I've been working since 2003 in engineering and I wouldn't trust anything that came out of an AI without confirming it with someone with a degree.
Additionally, think of AI as a librarian with photographic memory. It will never ask the right questions. Additionally its memory is influenced by what it has read and its not photographic is mixographic...it will remix any text you give it. Best it can do is not misspell words. Otherwise you can't trust anything it returns.
You on the other hand can do all sorts of knowledge gathering, inferring, etc and make knowledge based decisions rather than text based decisions.
- I wouldn't trust anything that came out of an AI without confirming it with someone with a degree.
  That's because you care. Most of these companies don't. I think they've made that abundantly clear. But they are learning quickly.
  
  Someone will have to. At our company we still have the glass seiling. But I'm pretty sure everyone knows that new people are pretty much useless so we have to grow them into someone useful. If they leave it hurts all the way up corporate. Try different companies and see if you can find one that cares. In my experience big companies really truly suck much. But they are stable for you to keep helping them. Small companies are stable and full of emotional problems. But that's my kind of people.
- The problem is you are working in engineering and understand the limitations. The decision makers at corporate don't care, they see bonuses based on short term cost savings.

Who could have seen this coming!

Unpopular opinion: Younger hires are garbage workers. Entitled. Cannot accept criticism. Quit the moment things get too hard. Incompetent. Argumentative with supervisors. On phones too much. And late all of the damned time.
Now add shitty workers with CEO’s cutting billionaires and AI and yep, job market sucks.
- It reeks of shitty boss. I've heard the same bullshit from old folks 20 years ago that couldn't use their computers to save their live.
  When everyone's an asshole, the common factor is you.
- I think the younger generation might be the first one that can't buy into the bullshit society sells you at the labor market.
  
  That's can be true and it is ok.
  But from the "don't buy the bullshit" to "be a decent worker" there is a very big difference.
  
  And that’s why the younger generation is overwhelmingly underemployed and overwhelmingly voted for Trump further supporting my belief in their lack of quality judgement.
- Social contract has been broken, why should they keep abiding by the terms?
- Okay, bro.

graduating is not daunting. not by any stretch. in fact, that's the point where life peaks. everything after is a steep downhill ride.
yes, ai adoption has turned that downhill run into a cliff. but if someone thinks graduation is even remotely daunting, then they would struggle even in the most non-ai of worlds.
- Graduation is the peak of life...? In what metric is that supposed to be the case? Number of graduations per year?
  
  I don't have a degree, so I never peaked 🥳
- Did you read the article, or is this just a hot take on the headline

29 comments