Posted on 01/08/2026 2:11:30 PM PST by nickcarraway
Simply having a computer-science degree isn't enough as AI replaces low-level coders
"The computer science graduates that are going to be successful now are going to be people that understand how software comes together holistically" - Andrew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk
A degree in computer science once carried the promise of stable work, high pay, and a certain level of social status. Now, many entry-level workers are struggling to find jobs.
One problem is that the allure of well-paying programming jobs at flashy technology companies made computer science such a popular field that the hiring market is now oversaturated. Another issue is that artificial-intelligence tools have proven capable of handling the grunt work of coding, thereby minimizing the need for low-level workers.
But that doesn't mean students should give up on their programming dreams altogether. So says Andrew Anagnost, the CEO of Autodesk (ADSK), a $62 billion software company focused on the manufacturing and engineering sectors. Rather, it's about getting the kind of diverse education that will be relevant for the jobs that do exist in the technology industry.
"The computer-science graduates who are going to be successful now are going to be people who understand how software comes together holistically," Anagnost told MarketWatch.
What that means is that programmers need to have "as much savvy about how human-computer interaction works" as they have raw coding skills, because entry-level coding is no longer in high demand, he added. Workers need to have empathy and design know-how.
"The roles of a product designer and a lead engineer are going to merge in many software companies," Anagnost said. "You're going to have people building user interfaces and code at the same time, so that's going to be a new future job for CS majors."
So how do you get there? Anagnost recommends
(Excerpt) Read more at morningstar.com ...
It’s kind of like what happened when Excel came along, a lot of End-User tasks that required IT were no longer necessary, as they could just accomplish the tasks using Excel.
AI is similar. It will just become a part of most office jobs, and IT Staffs will be a fraction of what they were.
A lot of people have observed that young people today, in general, absolutely suck at learning and taking feedback. They already know everything and they do not appreciate any hint that they may be less than perfect.
I'm frequently appalled at how few developers and UX designers actually use their products or think deeply about how real people use them. Things that should be intuitive and easy are arcane and complex. I have to frequently turn to Grok to ask "How do I use this thing? What is this feature? What does it do?"
Spotify gets more powerful all the time, but the UI has become incomprehensible in many ways. And the UI on my iPhone is very different than the UI on the web.
So many companies are inserting useless junk and clutter up front that you have to dismiss before you can use the app. It's receptive junk that I just don't want to see. It seems to be part of their incessant "monetization" efforts, even for paid "premium" subscribers.
It's like when you call a company for help with something and every 45 seconds their damned IVR says "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line. Due to heavier than usual call volume, our response may be delayed." while making you listen to execrable noise they call "music."
Always start from the premise that the best interface is no interface.
The FR site is a good example of this. It’s basic, but it works.
I have an issue with this take-away. The CEO is demanding that new entries in the field instantly pick up where mid-level and senior engineers leave off - user interface design is an art, rather than an exact science.
As a senior engineer in the aerospace industry, it aggravates me whenever a company makes major changes to its interfaces with its products. I have used certain shortcuts in various programs for years, then a (usually young) interface designer decides that the old way is obsolete, and everyone should do it “this new way”!
Now, the former shortcut available from the keyboard is buried in seven different layers of menus, under a heading that makes sense only to the youthful designer.
If they would keep backward compatibility, it might make things a bit better. But they don’t - they want you to be dependent on their specific at-the-moment implementation!
/Rant
“It’s basic, but it works.”
Yes, but still full of weird UI quirks. You’d go to your profile to change your personal tagline, right? Nope, just change it on a post.
If you change it, you must have to hit “Save” to commit it to memory, right? No, it auto-saves.
And your personal profile info is distributed in two different places.
Yet, it is clean, simple, and fast...plus NO CLUTTER! The newspaper web sites are the very worse. 90% of the content is covered with crap you don’t want and the crap moves around to always obscure the content. Fortunately, the “Reader” function in Safari gets rid of most of it and the Brave browser is even better at that.
As a broad comment, which may not be applicable to all environments --
Some companies have decided that middle management is a pointless waste of time. Why have some guy be a "team lead" and manage 10 people? A Senior Regional Manager can manage 100 people with a snazzy spreadsheet. And those entry level jobs? A lot of that is just button pushing and you can have AI do that just as well.
So the number of entry level jobs? Much less.
The number of middle jobs? Much less.
If you get your foot in the door with an entry level job, can you move up? Well, you may be part of a team of 100 and they all want to move up to that Senior Regional Manager job. He has to die or retire for it to open up. And then the odds are 99-to-1 that you won't be chosen. So your entry level job may be a dead end. That's your job for life.
The corporate ladder isn't what it used to be.
AI the new DEI Idiot
Learn to weld.
For anyone who has used AI (myself included), you quickly see that it is a tool that has to be used properly. Maybe in the future it will replace jobs, but at this point its equal parts laughable and scary if you let it go on its own. It helps with things that office workers do - like improving a document that a person wrote first. But a person needs to be involved.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services Data Hub of EMPLOYERS OF H-1Bs. 405,569 total approvals in 2025, 226,873 in 2009.
Note that the state codes include :
AA - Armed Forces Americas
AE - Armed Forces Europe
AP - Armed Forces Pacific
GU - Guam
MP - Marianas Protectorate
PR - Puerto Rico
VI - U.S. Virgin Islands
XX - Outside of U.S./Error flag
https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employer-data-hub
If the market is oversaturated (which is an unnecessary use of words since saturation is an end state and you can’t saturate more than completely) but if it is, why do we need H1B programmers from other countries?
‘You’re going to have people building user interfaces”
PLEASE STOP. There is NO NEED to reboot the UI every release. CAD companies LOVE doing this. Every damned release they move icons around, change the icons, move the command bars and they always say “streamlined user interface.” BS. Just leave it alone. As an example. It once use to take one key stroke of click for “LINE.” Then they made it so you had to “Create” (next click) “Line.” Then some dumb designer decided it would sound way more cool to “MAKE” a line.
(I use Autodesk products professionally and have going back 30 years. They make good stuff but GEESH. I don’t need a new icon to take advantage of the bloat in windows 11)
I agree with you completely. Case in point: MS Windows.
They basically had a perfect UI in Windows 7, but it’s been completely bowdlerized since then.
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