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I think this needs to be addressed on this subreddit. I keep seeing post here that talk about "am I cooked" or "is CS even worth it", these need to stop. If you have to ask this question online, someone is always going to say yes so that they can make you feel more likely to give up to pseudo-boost their chances elsewhere. Here what I have to say as a professional in this space. 1. Have passion and care about what you do. If you are someone who has always been fond of CS as a kid, teen, or even in college, going into it whether it was for money, because it was "cool", sounds "cool", or anything like that but then found a love for it, you will always have an infinitely better chance at opportunities in this space because of your optimism and passion. I feel like sometimes people forget that CS is an overall encompassing skill. You could be an SRE, System Admin, Network Admin, DB Admin, Cloud engineer (SRE kinda), Software Consultant, Kernel engineer, AI/ML engineer, and so. much. more. SWE is not the ONLY path that exists, and it's definitely not for everyone. Kernel engineers are a dying breed. That is a future proof job. Especially with advancements in native containerization technology. AI will probably never have the capabilities to build such a Kernel in probably the next 5-10 years. People aren't just randomly sharing entire kernel code online, and I doubt it's a large subset of that type of code in its training model. SWE is saturated, yes, but its more of a what stack is saturated the most. Most schools are only teaching backend and frontend development. There are going to be infinitely more competition in this space, but as stated above there are more than just SWE. 2. For the "Is CS worth if AI is gong to take my job?" AI isn't going to take your job. You know who is more likely to take your job? Joe Shmoe who graduated from a California school that's across the street from the company you applied to. Yes it's unfair, but logistically it makes more sense. Or some international junior dev they hired to underpay. That does complicate the process for breaking into entry SWE nowadays, but above and beyond that is still a very strong market for junior+ talent. 3. Understand that the market shifted Although the scariest part of this post, it's true. It may never shift back. In a more remote work environment, there will probably be less people at new companies on average. And some of that can be contributed to having no physical office. Renting an office for 4k a month to have 5 people seems like a waste. It may make companies want to hire more to fill the space and now having an office with more people leads to more jobs needed to maintain. But this isn't the only way the market has shifted. Companies are now in control in this job market - not us. Having company loyalty is now more of a thing of the past, unless you are working for a small/medium size company, or the government. And employees may not get that edge back for a longer while. 4. Stop stressing over applications to companies that were prestigiously known to be hard in the first place I don't think many people on this subreddit still remember a time where going to a big company as a NG was somewhat rarer than it is today. I think most of the people on this Reddit are based west coast, so they are more biased but as someone who now lives in the east coast, I think it's fine to go for smaller jobs. I see many posts about applying to over 400 jobs and heard nothing. You need to evaluate whether or not what you are actually applying to would be seen as you being qualified. Do you stand out enough, and learn to gain an edge. Leetcode is not the only way. Lots of jobs don't even use OA's or coding challenges to assess candidates. And hell, I'll say it. Government tech jobs are OK. Notoriously known for being slow, lower paying, and archaic. We trained a generation of people who will refuse to work for the most sound/stable job in the world. A US government tech job! More stable than being a career politician! If more experienced and advanced people stepped into government jobs, they could shape and shift to more agile, better systems, and higher paying, making it more appealing to traditionally private sector workers. This would probably also force companies to be better since they'd be losing talent to work in a very chill, non hostile, WLB environment. But many of the people here will just apply to a job they know will work them 55+ hours a week because they'd rather not be seen dead working for a govt. job... 5. Be comfortable with moving. Whether it's to states like CA, WA, NY, NJ, NC, DC, VA, MD (states with some of the highest paying jobs), don't base your life moves on whether you can make 200K TC as a NG in Cali. 150K in DC could be the same as living in SF or around, after accounting for the "Cali tax" of everything being expensive. There's too many unemployed people in CA trying to break into tech markets in the first place. Don't be a sheep. Many companies are moving from west coast or creating HQ2's in other states or going completely remote. 6. Some ways to stand out in an increasingly competitive market The number one easiest way to stand out to companies nowadays I will say is to seem like you actual enjoy being a dev. You can show this by doing open source projects. Have a library you like, and see a bug, README issue, or something else? Learn to contribute to that open source community. You can get to know community members and even network with them. Even for non programmers, such as linux admins, DBA, networking or Cloud engineers, we fortunately live in a time where all of this can be learned for free. Can even experiment spinning up some demos, recording and/or making a personal portfolio. Don't know where to start? Just ask AI. In a reddit culture that is keen on an algorithm that takes millions of dollars of GPUs to predict the next 10 lines of code that will take their job, use it to get ahead. Edit: This post isn’t for negativity. I’m expressing to other passionate souls some things that will help ease the burden of doomer mentality that runs rampant in this dark forum. Nothing I said is a solution, even though I gave actionable things that could help. I also understand the job market is rough, my post isn’t to convey that everyone will find a job. Just that the one who try hard will. If you are one of the people who is willing to switch majors because you think 2 years of an overall decreased job market opportunity has forever destroyed your chance at landing a job in tech, then do it. It means you never cared about the craft in the first place. It will clear up the real interested people from the cons.