Entry Level Tech Jobs are Dead

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Hello everyone and welcome to my newsletter where I discuss real-world skills needed for the top data jobs. 👏

This week I’m discussing the death of entry level tech jobs.  👀

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I’m not a doom and gloom guy. I believe life is cyclical. With that said, I am a data guy and the data on entry level tech roles isn’t good. 😰

Because defining entry level can be nebulous, I headed over to ChatGPT and asked what it thought. Let’s use the definition we found on chat even though it might not be exactly what we have in mind. It’s good enough.

An entry-level job is a position designed for people who are new to a field or industry. It typically requires little to no prior professional experience, making it ideal for:

• Recent graduates (college)

• Career changers

• Interns or apprentices transitioning to full-time roles

Graduates are right to feel anxious about their career prospects. Compared with the situation a decade ago, or even a few years earlier, the job market facing this crop of graduates is grim.

Hiring of new grads by the 15 largest tech companies has fallen by more than 50% since 2019, according to a new report from VC firm SignalFire. While hiring for mid- and senior-level roles rebounded last year following mass layoffs across all levels in 2023, it declined at the entry level. The gap between the overall unemployment level and that of recent college grads recently reached an all-time high, according to census data.

Early in the pandemic, workers had an edge. Tech firms dramatically ramped up hiring, giving unprecedented economic power to workers at all levels, and the broad acceptance of hybrid and remote work widened the pool of potential employers. However, that superheated job market gave way to waves of layoffs across Silicon Valley starting in 2023.

Times have changed, and lean is in, said Heather Doshay, SignalFire’s head of talent. Companies are prioritizing experienced hires over junior talent, and we’re seeing smaller funding rounds, shrinking teams, fewer new grad programs all contributing to this downturn.

Before the pandemic, new grads accounted for 15% of hires at Big Tech companies; now, the figure is 7%. Meanwhile, startups, which used to be a haven for those unable to land gigs at the so-called Magnificent 7, are shrinking in headcount and hiring less entry-level talent.

Since 2021, the average age of technical hires has increased by three years, as companies become increasingly unwilling to invest in training junior talent, according to SignalFire. AI isn’t the only culprit, but it’s a significant one, as Salesforce, Shopify, and other firms have explicitly said they are looking to meet their growth needs with code rather than humans.

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James O’Brien, a computer science professor at UC Berkeley who advises startups said Right now, the only type of employee anybody’s interested in hiring is a relatively heavyweight senior person who is very technical, O’Brien said. Previously, startups would typically hire one senior person and two or three early-career coders to assist, he said.

Companies ask, Why hire an undergraduate when AI is cheaper and quicker? said O’Brien, adding that while AI-generated code isn’t top-tier, neither is code written by new grads. The key difference, he said, is that the iterative process to make AI code better takes minutes, while a junior coder might need days for the same task.

Forget the job ladder — even the step stool is being snatched away. This season, internships in tech attracted roughly 2.5 times as many applications as they do in the average year, according to Glassdoor. Data science and software engineering internships are more than six times more competitive than average.

It’s rough out there. The only entry level data role is the data analyst and it’s becoming very competitive because smart learners know it’s a gateway role to the data engineering role or to an opportunity in machine learning engineering. The only truly entry level role in IT is the help-desk role. Many new graduates think it’s beneath them. However, as IT becomes more and more saturated and Ai begins to consume more entry level roles, especially entry level programming roles, many of you aren’t going to have a choice.

Many of my students know they want to end up in data role. Therefore, focusing on the entry level data analyst role is a good idea even if it doesn’t lead to a job. If you need to resort to a help-desk role, you’ll be that much more employable than other candidates. Data skills are much harder to attain than installing Outlook and setting up VPN connections.

If you can get past the certifications for the data analytics role, then the company knows the help-desk role will be easy for you. That’s bad and good. We just talked about the good side, what about the bad? The bad side is they know what you really want and that you won’t be at that help-desk for very long once you get your feet in the door.

What is one thing you can do to gain an edge? Know more than the next person. During the tech interview, wow them with your technical acumen. 

Thanks for reading and have a great day.

Here’s how you get ahead right now. 👏

The entry level data analyst role has three core skills.

• SQL Server (Relational Database)

• PowerBi (Interface Tool)

• Fabric (Cloud)

I’ve created the courses, study guides and a GPT for preparing for this role. All you need to do is follow directions.

STEP 1: Take the Transact-SQL course. Download the must know interview questions for data roles study guide and fill it in. (Included in the course) Download and install the GPT and learn all the top SQL interview questions. A GPT is a model I created that is part of ChatGPT to help you ace the SQL Server interview. (Included in the course)

STEP 2: Learn PowerBI. Take the PowerBI course. Study the exam cram guides included in the course for PL-300. Use the interview prep sheet for acing the interview. Attain PL-300. That’s the PowerBI certification. I know it works because almost every one of my students has passed the exam on the first try.

STEP 3: Learn Fabric. It’s Microsoft new data centric cloud ecosystem. Take my Fabric course and pass DP-600. That’s the Fabric certification. Yes, I’ve included the cheat sheet for that certification also.

Read my additional resource from my archived newsletters. Use this resume if you’re an entry level applicant. Read this to understand and prepare for the technical interview.

🥳 Here’s a code to receive $20 off the first month. Yep, that means the first month is only $30 dollars. This price includes all the courses, the study guides, the GPT and the exam crams.

CODE: MEMDAY25

Take control of your future. Nobody else is going to. If you don’t fail often you are doing something wrong. 👏