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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15400 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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The kids aren't alright (continued)

This college graduation season, many commencement speakers are extolling AI, then getting boo'd by the students. Most notably Eric Shmidt, in University of Arizona, after telling students to "deal with it"; also less recognized speakers in smaller universities (like MTSU and UCF).

Glendale Community College received additional boos because it used an AI tool to read students' names, which messed up.

In contrast, Steve Wozniak told students they "all have AI — actual intelligence" to applause.

This reflects multiple overlapping problems:

  • Age gap: Partly because of TFR collapse, old people have more resources, and are catered to more by politicians (who also are usually old themselves)
    • The graduates are Gen Z, the speakers are old (Eric Shmidt is a baby boomer)
  • Wealth gap: The white-collar job market (at least certain fields, like tech and art) is struggling, while top white-collar employing businesses are doing fine
    • The graduates are white-collar employees, the speakers are CEOs
  • AI favorability gap: AI has the potential to make the wealth gap worse and college more useless, to an extent it's already doing so
    • The graduates are against AI (believing it's contributing to their problems), the speakers are in favor
  • Collapsing college
    • College tuition has increased to absurd levels
    • College has become easier, evidenced by grade inflation and more attendees
    • College has become less personal, because there are more attendees
    • AI makes cheating much easier
    • College has become less helpful towards getting a better job, because there are more attendees, and grade inflation & cheating have caused employers to less value accreditations and GPA

Tech students are particularly affected: many were told that if they went to college, they'd be practically guaranteed an easy, high-paying job, like their older peers; but today they graduate to a bad job market. Meanwhile, the companies they planned to join are posting record profits. AI has invalidated some of their learned skills, and moreover, has the potential to worsen the job market and wealth gap.

Although it's not just tech. Liberal arts students have worse job prospects (although some of theirs were never good), and seem to be more against AI. Law and accounting are apparently being impacted, because AI automates their entry-level jobs.

In summary, the speakers have a completely different perspective due to their age, AI outlook, and wealth; and students aren't happy to see their college which has failed them do it one last time, by appointing an out-of-touch speaker (or using AI to flub announcing their names).

Where to go from here?

Undergraduate education is deeply flawed. I think (not an uncommon position): students should only go to college if for graduate education (which is also flawed but for different reasons, and has purpose until ASI or a suitable alternative). Otherwise, they can learn degree skills in high school or on-the-job training: probably a free unpaid internship, which (as long as it demands real skills, not cheap labor) would be an improvement over paying for college; or pursue a trade. But first, employers must no longer prioritize (let alone require) college degrees; I believe this is happening in some fields, but slowly. In the meantime, more students should and will attend cheap online degree mills, possibly alongside an internship (to graduate with job experience and a better resume).

As for AI...I don't really know. It has some great use-cases, and the potential to strictly improve standards of living (why do something that AI can automate?); it and/or another revolutionary advancement is probably necessary to mitigate climate change and TFR collapse. But it also causes some problems, and has the potential to create global catastrophe. Regardless, I don't expect I or the graduates can influence its evolution or effects. For those reasons, I'm not really optimistic or pessimistic about it. At least I'm aware enough not to extol it to college graduates.

How bad is the new grad job market, really? There's been a few high profile layoffs in tech companies, but a lot of those companies had insanely over exuberant hiring during the pandemic (and let me tell you, they hired some absolute howlers). That seems like a much better explanation for layoffs than the AI washing coming out of the C suite as a sop to investors.

Why are they booing the boomer? Well, the left hates AI, and college students are pretty left. Do we need to go any deeper?

Yeah I read that Meta has more employees now even post-layoffs than they did pre-covid. Enormous hiring followed by moderate cuts.

I'm hearing the media (always cynical outrage) is worse than reality, but it's still bad.

Most graphs I've seen look like this (Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States): a bump rising 2020-2022 falling 2022-2024, with current levels around 2020 levels, not rising nor falling. The problem is, there are many more computer science graduates than in 2020. AI probably hasn't diluted the job market (at least yet), but the massive rise in computer science graduates has.

There's also a separate issue: hiring is broken, so talented applicants can't get jobs even though there's demand for them. AI makes formerly common benchmarks (like LeetCode) easy to cheat, but even before AI, employers didn't know how to evaluate candidates: ironically, they don't seem to understand what the job they're hiring for actually requires, because many resume screens and interviews have completely unnecessary requirements.

Or the problem may not be lack of employment, but tech companies becoming bureaucratic nightmares which don't make anything fun or beneficial to society, while evaluating employees on stupid criteria (like how much AI tokens they use) and constantly threatening layoffs. Ludicity is a blogger with stories like "I Accidentally Saved Half A Million Dollars"; although his experience is only from 2023-2024, and maybe unusual, because he had no problem getting hired.

The problem is, there are many more computer science graduates than in 2020.

Sure, but this should be visible in unemployment/underemployment figures and there's nothing there.

There's also a separate issue: hiring is broken, so talented applicants can't get jobs even though there's demand for them. AI makes formerly common benchmarks (like LeetCode) easy to cheat, but even before AI, employers didn't know how to evaluate candidates: ironically, they don't seem to understand what the job they're hiring for actually requires, because many resume screens and interviews have completely unnecessary requirements.

This is a major pain in the ass (recruiters are also, as a rule, retarded). I don't know if AI makes it worse though.

"How would you approach this problem?" in a 10 min interview seems like a fine hiring screen. AI or no AI, being able to ask the right kinds of questions and work out the right initial approaches seems like the best mark of a good candidate. AI is still slow enough I doubt they can type and read answers off GPT quickly enough, and having done lots of projects using AI or not using AI should give them the experience needed to answer at the high level.

There's also a separate issue: hiring is broken, so talented applicants can't get jobs even though there's demand for them. AI makes formerly common benchmarks (like LeetCode) easy to cheat, but even before AI, employers didn't know how to evaluate candidates: ironically, they don't seem to understand what the job they're hiring for actually requires, because many resume screens and interviews have completely unnecessary requirements.

I think this might be because their jobs as hirers are just old people UBI. There are 19 year old HBD posters who could do a better job.

You seem to be advocating for committing federal crimes. "HBD posters" hiring criteria is illegal. You can't Family Guy "okay/not okay" meme test candidates.

It could be done race-blind, although it would produce the HBD predicted race gaps when done correctly. In tech this would primarily decrease Indian employment a massive amount.

The 19 year old HBD posters would get the company in hot water with the EEOC.

I don't think most HR and managers (the ones doing hiring, not the CEO) are old. But I do suspect their jobs are mostly useless, many aren't good at them (but stay because their boss/CEO doesn't know better), and companies could get by with much less of them and possibly AI.

I don't necessarily care if they're fired, and I have sympathy for them. But it would certainly be better for employees if companies simplified long interview processes and replaced them with (paid) probation, and I think it would be better for employers (since probation is a better metric, and many talented employees will simply abandon convoluted hiring process).

I'm going to pushback a bit at least on tech employment and present this data analysis posted on /r/cscareerquestions yesterday. Bolded mine:

From the data, several distinct periods can be identified:

Following the early 1990s recession and during the Clinton admin. economic and internet boom, tech employment increased exponentially at a 12% annual rate, peaking at 1.358 million in March 2001. It then collapsed in the dot-com bubble, up to an 18% downturn at its worst, and only recovered to the same level 6 years later, on March 2007. However, the market returned to growth in under 3 years.

The 2008 global financial crisis actually had only a limited impact on tech employment, since tech continued to boom during this time. From June 2009 to the pandemic in February 2020, tech employment increased in a remarkably stable and rapid linear growth pattern of around 80k per year.

The disruption caused by the pandemic was incredibly brief. It caused a net change of -70k, but by June 2020, hiring restarted at the fastest pace in history, around 130k per year. Having been a high schooler in this period, I definitely remember how insane the hype was around tech.

Hiring finally began to plateau beginning in May 2022. Total employment peaked at 2.483 million in March 2023. Ever since then, it has changed at a net rate of -42k a year.

The current slump is characterized by being less severe compared to the massive displacement of the dot-com bubble, which was much worse in percentage terms.

However, the current slump is also very protracted. This is the longest contiguous period of declining tech employment in the 36 years of data. That probably explains why this slump feels worse than anything in history. Even if it is not as intense as the dot-com bubble was, it is already longer, and it also followed the most rapid period of hiring in the history of tech.

It seems obvious that 2021-2022 overhiring has contributed to a disproportionately large glut of CS majors who had been expecting that 130k/yr employment growth rate when the market has actually suddenly shifted to -42k/yr, a gap in expectations of 172k.

This can be seen by the recent shifts in CS major enrollment. We can see enrollment as a rough 3-4 year lagging indicator for the sentiment of the candidate pool (since the data I have only tracks the employee pool, not how many people are applying for those positions). It started to drop rapidly this year.

So there is definitely a downturn in tech employment. And because tech ate the world, there are reverberations outward.

FRED source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ces6054150001

That's an interesting fact, but I don't see why it wouldn't show up in unemployment/underemployment figures. If fewer people are going into CS when there's a glut of workers and unemployment is stable... Seems everything is working as intended?

I think you're right, that AI is not the cause of the tech layoffs, but rather overhiring in the tech sector over the past decade.

But the tech execs themselves are clearly telling us no, it's definitely AI replacing all the workers, so... I mean, if they want to make a case to the commies for their own guillotining, who are we to stop them?

They don't want to admit they overhired. That's a failure in leadership. Blaming AI is putting a positive spin on things.

I think it's more that the tech industry feels that normal growth is unacceptable and that the massive growth of the 80s and 90s is what's to be expected. They can't come to grips with being a mature, boring industry that makes incremental advancements; there aren't any 25-year-old multimillionaires who made their fortune starting a construction machinery company out of their bedroom. So when the industry starts contracting, it can't be because their growth projections were overoptimistic, but because they're actually doing a lot better! Their products are so advanced that they don't need employees anymore, and your job is next, even if they don't know what that job is. I don't think it's a coincidence that LLM hype coincides with tech employment peaking.

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