ACM CareerNews for Tuesday, May 5, 2026
ACM CareerNews is intended as an objective career news digest for busy IT professionals. Views expressed are not necessarily those of ACM. To send comments, please write to [email protected]
Volume 22, Issue 9, May 5, 2026
The New Reality of Tech Careers
Dice Insights, April 29
The traditional path for a tech career has transformed, leaving many professionals scrambling to adapt. Job changes are no longer driven primarily by opportunity, but by risk management. Tech professionals are moving between jobs more frequently, but with less confidence that those moves will lead to better outcomes. What was once a signal of career momentum is increasingly becoming a response to uncertainty, as tighter hiring conditions, ongoing layoffs and shifting role expectations reshape the market.
According to some career experts, entry-level tech hiring has collapsed, and employers have become extremely selective. In years past, job seekers could take a 12-week tech bootcamp and land a highly paid software engineering role. That is no longer the case. To survive in the current job market, employees need to be incredibly well-rounded, continuously learning new skills as technology advances, while simultaneously maintaining a strong network and fostering the soft, human skills that AI cannot replicate.
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IT Still Has a Lot to Offer Despite Uncertainties
CIO.com, April 28
A mere eight years since coding was declared an essential skill to be taught in every school, the current thinking is that computer programming jobs are highly vulnerable to AI. But it does not have to be that way. IT remains a valuable, highly-compensated occupation that is very much still in demand. However, workers within the IT sector must persistently and patiently construct barriers to professional obsolescence if they hope to advance in their careers.
Workers within the tech industry has long harbored the belief that a certain skill set or certification will create a moat protecting employability. However, skills, particularly technical skills, are subject to rapid obsolescence. What lasts and what is perhaps your strongest career strength are your relationships. Quite simply, the most successful IT professionals are adept at socializing. The people making hiring, firing, and compensation decisions are not particularly interested in the specific skill sets you bring to the table. Instead, they are obsessed with the benefits those skill sets deliver. This is what you will need to communicate to others.
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How to Get Hired in the AI Era
Towards Data Science, May 1
Listings for junior-level iT jobs still exist, but the process of getting hired appears to be getting more difficult. Applications go into a void and even candidates with strong CVs may not get a response. According to a recent report, junior-level roles in AI-exposed occupations are showing a real, statistically significant drop in entry rates for workers aged 22–25. People are just not getting hired in the first place, no matter how much effort they put into the process. As a result, job seekers should learn what hiring managers are looking for, so that they can optimize for those factors.
Arguably, the most underrated skill in the modern job market is the ability to take responsibility for tasks getting done in the workplace. Hiring managers are especially looking for situations where candidates have assumed responsibility when they did not need to. This might sound vague, but it is simple: when something is on your to-do list, everyone knows that you will find the resources to get it done. The reason this skill is so valuable now is because AI handles the task layer fairly well. What it cannot do is own a thread of work end-to-end across humans, systems, and ambiguity. That is the gap that is getting more valuable and if you become known for closing loops, you become an attractive candidate in a way that does not depend on which framework or technology is hot this year.
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US Tech Sector Lost Jobs in March, Stalling Growth
Computerworld, April 6
Despite signs earlier this year of a potential recovery, the U.S. tech labor market continues to show evidence of weakness. The U.S. tech sector lost 15,000 jobs in March even though the overall U.S. economy saw 178,000 jobs gained across all sectors. As a result, the unemployment rate for tech workers now stands at 3.9%. That is still below the national unemployment rate of 4.3%, but the two rates appear to be converging.
Most of the jobs lost in March were in the custom software services and systems design occupation category, which shed 13,200 positions. Overall, about 118,000 tech jobs were lost across IT and non-IT sectors. That is up from the number of cuts in February, but not as high as a year ago. Removing the wave of federal layoffs announced in February and March of last year, job cut announcements in 2026 are closely following the pattern of 2025. Last year, it was government, retail, and technology. This year, it is technology, transportation, and healthcare.
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Candidates Are Hitting Back at Employers Using AI Interviews
Tech Radar, May 1
Many businesses are now using AI in job interviews, but often are not disclosing the fact the technology is being used to screen candidates. A study from Greenhouse surveying nearly 3,000 candidates in the UK found half (47%) of UK job seekers have now been interviewed by an AI as part of the recruitment process. However the vast majority of candidates (82%) say they were never clearly told upfront that AI would be evaluating them, and one in four (24%) said they only found this out once the interview had started.
Candidates are increasingly rejecting companies using AI in their interviews, with Greenhouse finding 30% of UK candidates saying they have already walked away from a hiring process because it included an AI interview, and another 19% say they would. The biggest triggers for UK candidates walking away from the process include pre-recorded video interviews scored by AI with no human present (25%), companies failing to disclose how AI would be used (24%), and AI monitoring during the process (24%). More than one in four (27%) also reported they felt some form of age bias from AI evaluations, and 17% flagged race or ethnicity bias.
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Is Career Agency the Next Frontier in Employee Development?
HR Dive, April 28
Traditional career development is not keeping up with ever-evolving workforce needs. The old rules simply do not apply as they did before, and that has fundamentally changed approaches to recruitment, hiring, and engagement. As a result, HR professionals need to shift their approach. Instead of encouraging workers to own their career development, they should embrace other approaches. For example, the concept of career agency, in which HR professionals work alongside job candidates to help them find new positions, may be more aligned with current hiring conditions.
Career agency means urging workers to embrace uncertainty, to experiment, and to make data-informed choices as they navigate a market characterized by increasing skills volatility, technological advances and changing job roles. Career agency, however, is not a solo job, and requires help from organizations and leaders. To create a culture that supports career agency, organizations need to focus on awareness, access and action. Awareness means giving workers more information and insight about what is going on in the organization and what the strategy, priorities and emerging skill needs are. Leaders need to be really candid with feedback about performance and skill gaps, and individuals need to be a lot more reflective in understanding their strengths and their opportunities.
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College Students Are Changing Course in Search of AI-Proof Majors
AP News, April 27
Approximately 70% of college students see AI as a threat to their future job prospects. Many students have a fear that entry-level jobs will be taken by AI, especially as core skills such as coding and statistical analysis are being increasingly automated. As a result, some students are pivoting to AI-proof majors. Others are building skills, such as critical thinking and communication, that cannot yet be replicated by AI.
College students are now seeking majors that teach human skills. The uncertainty about the current hiring environment appears most concentrated among those pursuing degrees in technology and vocational areas of study, where students feel a need to develop expertise in AI but also fear being replaced by it. A recent poll found the vast majority of Americans believe it is very or somewhat important for college and university students to be taught how to use AI. That is because AI is getting adopted in technology-related fields at higher rates.
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Gen Z Rethinks Careers as Entry-Level Hiring Falls 6%
Outsource Accelerator, April 24
Young Generation Z workers are taking matters into their own hands when it comes to finding new tech job opportunities. This approach is reshaping early-career pathways and hinting at a broader shift in the future of work. This change comes as entry-level hiring slipped 6% year over year. The decline signals a tightening job market for workers just out of school, though it is less severe than the 10% drop in mid-level hiring over the same period.
Side hustles and self-made portfolios are on the rise. About 21% of younger workers have started a business or side hustle to kickstart their careers, while another 22% are building apps, websites or personal projects to showcase their skills. The findings suggest that for many in Gen Z, career-building no longer begins with a hiring manager but with a laptop and an idea. That do-it-yourself energy reflects a workplace increasingly shaped by digital tools, remote collaboration and independent work. As automation and artificial intelligence (AI) reshape entry-level tasks, young workers appear to be leaning into portfolio-style careers that emphasize visible, transferable skills over job titles. An additional 32% of Gen Z respondents said they are taking roles outside their fields in order to build in-demand skills.
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What Will Be the Fate of the American Programmer?
Blog@CACM, May 1
Amidst significant layoffs in Silicon Valley, there is increasing concern about the future of the computer science profession. This time around, the concern is not international competition from overseas. Instead, it is due to the rise of AI and other technologies that are capable of coding and other technical skills. With that in mind, there are several possible recommendations for solving this problem, including more efficient software engineering practices, and the adoption of new developer technologies.
In terms of more efficient software engineering practices, sometimes a methodology can make sense on paper, but not in the workplace. In short, the methodology may lead to higher production over the short-term, but not greater efficiency over the long-term. As a result, it can be helpful to think about alternative development methodologies. This can sometimes lead to methodology wars, as developers and organizations try to figure out which is the best, most efficient methodology. In doing so, it is helpful to adopt a flexible approach. It is also important to embrace techniques to improve software metrics, software quality, and software re-use.
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How AI Is Changing Programming Language Usage
Communications of the ACM, April 27
While much attention regarding AI has been focused on developers using it to code, the impact of AI on software development goes far beyond code creation tools. Programmers creating an AI app or systems take this into account when deciding which programming language to use for a project. In many ways, getting language models to do what you want is similar to programming in that it requires precision and algorithmic reasoning. But their main selling point, that you can control them through natural language, requires programmers to exercise skills more often associated with English majors. That means clear writing will be an increasingly important skill for people developing applications that use AI.
Programming language popularity shifts over time, sometimes even month to month. To track trends, organizations often survey software developers to see which languages they are using. Over the past few years, AI has added a new wrinkle to tracking the use of programming languages. Because programmers are using private conversations with LLMs instead of searching on Stack Exchange, and AI coding assistants reduce the need to ask questions, there are fewer public expressions of programming languages to track popularity. AI has also impacted the popularity of languages through consolidation. Popular languages are getting more popular, and unpopular languages are becoming less popular. Right now, Python is by far the most popular language for programming AI.
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