For the Class of 2026, breaking into tech means studying a brand new playbook

It’s commencement season throughout Washington, and laptop science college students throughout the nation are strolling into one of many hardest job markets for tech lately.

More than 117,000 tech staff have been laid off in 2026 as of Wednesday, in line with monitoring web site Layoffs.fyi. In the previous 12 months alone, Amazon has lower greater than 5,000 jobs in Washington state. Microsoft has eradicated greater than 15,000 positions globally, together with hundreds domestically. Meta disclosed almost 1,400 cuts throughout its Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond workplaces. And Oracle has slashed near 500 jobs within the state.

Federal labor projections nonetheless stay bullish. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tasks software program developer roles to develop 15% by way of 2034, far outpacing the nationwide common. The disconnect has left new graduates caught within the center, getting into a area that also wants them, however not wants them the best way it used to.

Katherine Palevich, a latest graduate of the University of Washington’s (UW) laptop science program, resides that pressure. Next month, she begins as a software program engineer at Apple. She ought to really feel relieved. Instead, she’s anxious.

“Is my own new grad position secure?” Palevich mentioned. “Sometimes I’ve heard people’s offers get rescinded, and I get sad for them because you work so hard to get that offer.”

Entry-level tech jobs disappearing

Albert Squires, managing director of know-how at Fuel Talent, a Bellevue-based recruiting agency, mentioned the issue isn’t that hiring has stopped. Instead, entry-level jobs that new graduates as soon as relied on are vanishing.

“Historically, an entry-level engineer would come in and help with testing, start learning the systems, start doing some documentation, start doing some basic bug fixing to just really learn the ecosystem,” Squires mentioned. “Today, AI can do all of that for you.”

Squires mentioned groups that when required 15 engineers are shrinking to 5, with senior engineers managing AI brokers that deal with a lot of the work. Wall Street Journal information helps the shift: entry-level tech postings have fallen to 7.5% of the sector, whereas senior-level postings have climbed to 43%.

Joshua Tran, who is ready to start a grasp’s program at UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, mentioned the velocity of change is what rattles him most.

“At the beginning of the year, it felt like AI could do some things that we were doing in our jobs,” Tran mentioned. “By the end of the year, it looked like it could do everything that an average computer science grad could do in a software engineering role. And, that year-long timeline is off-putting.”

On campus, college students describe a level that feels basically completely different than it did only a few years in the past.

“I feel like the computer science degree is becoming more like a pre-med type of path where the bar is very high,” Ishan Sinha, a senior on the Allen School, mentioned. “The bar is now to the point where you just have to be exceptional.”

AI reward met with boos

Sinha mentioned a rising variety of professors are pushing college students to construct with AI within the classroom. That stress has spilled into commencement ceremonies nationwide, the place graduation audio system praising AI have been met with boos.

Squires mentioned the frustration is legit. But his message is blunt.

“This is where tech is right now, and it’s only going faster,” he mentioned. “Get on board, or you’re going to be left behind.”

Palevich is spending her months earlier than Apple educating herself to work with AI brokers and looking for the road between utilizing the instruments and understanding what’s beneath.

“Large language models [LLMs] are just really big autocomplete machines,” she mentioned. “My hope is that software engineers are still very much needed, and it’s more that their direction to these AI agents will be the future of what software engineering looks like.”

Dan Grossman, a professor and vice director at UW’s Allen School, mentioned the narrative of a collapse in tech hiring doesn’t match the information he sees. Last 12 months, 370 Allen School graduates took software program engineering jobs — probably the most within the college’s historical past. He estimates 75% to 80% of latest graduates landed roles inside months of ending.

“I’ve been asked a lot of times over the last year why the sky is falling, and I keep saying as loudly and clearly as I can — it’s not falling,” Grossman mentioned. “Companies are figuring out how to change in this AI moment, but they’re not shrinking.”

Read extra of Aaron Granillo’s tales right here.

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