By Konrad Putzier
After Christopher Pack earned a master's degree in computer science in 2022, he immediately landed a software job in California's Bay Area. Hiring was booming. His tech degree felt foolproof.
Four years later, the 27-year-old has grown much more wary about his future.
"I feel like I got on the last plane out of Vietnam," Pack said, even though he has managed to hold on to his job. "I don't think I can plan for a normal-length career, at least in this field."
Pack is grappling with an unusual feeling for software engineers and related tech workers: vulnerability. Coming out of the pandemic, such workers were easily landing jobs while raking in enviable six-figure salaries, generous perks and lax remote-work rules. "Learn to code" was the mantra for young strivers. Between February 2020 and February 2023, the number of people working in computer-systems design and related jobs increased by 11%, according to the Labor Department.
Tech workers have since come to grips with a confluence of challenges: big companies shedding staff after years of aggressive hiring, a pullback from generous work-from-home allowances, and, most recently, the dizzying rise of AI that is being trained to code.
Software developers are on the front lines of these changes. Job openings for software developers through late May are down about 70% from the 2022 peak, although they have improved slightly from a low last spring, according to jobs site Indeed. These postings are also significantly below pre-Covid levels, even as overall job postings across all industries are up slightly since early 2020.
While the AI boom is creating opportunities for experienced developers who can help steer and debug the massive outputs of AI coding platforms, there are still many software engineers with decadeslong careers who are seeing their options dwindle. Entry-level candidates are having a tougher-time landing jobs. AI-related layoffs, including thousands recently at Meta, have rattled tech workers at large.
Pack, the recent grad, said he lives frugally, setting aside 65% of his after-tax income so that he can become financially independent. If he loses his software job, he wants to have enough money to buy a house in a cheaper part of the country and "still be OK to coast into retirement, " even in a worst-case scenario where he can only find low-wage work.
The Labor Department said employment in the information sector, which includes some tech jobs, has declined by 332,000, or 11%, between its November 2022 peak and May.
Some tech workers say they are now looking to switch careers into fields they think are less at risk from automation. Others are hoarding cash in preparation for a layoff they consider inevitable, or placing risky bets on the stock market to get rich before their job and salary evaporates.
Undergraduate enrollment in four-year computer- and information-science degrees fell by 8.1% last fall from the previous year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, a sharp reversal from the 10.4% growth recorded in 2022.
Even more-experienced coders are grappling with a rapid shift to newfound uncertainty.
Michael Waxman, 39, entered the job market in the 2007-09 financial crisis, making $14 an hour as an entry-level software developer in the Phoenix area. By 2021, he and his wife, who teaches veterinary medicine online, sold their homes in Phoenix and Indiana. They bought a $365,000 catamaran that became a remote office and their home in the Bahamas and Central America.
Early this year, an HR-meeting invite popped up on Waxman's calendar as he was docked in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was getting laid off, and he wasn't surprised -- he had been teaching AI agents to do much of his work.
"I am coding myself out of a job," the 39-year-old would joke. His prediction had finally come true.
He's still on his boat, looking for contract work in a job market where competition is stiff when new jobs pop up. "It's like the farm hands and when tractors came into town," Waxman said.
It's not just software developers. Other tech workers are also worried. Noah Neustadt, a Montreal-based user-experience designer for a U.S. software company, spends his spare time browsing farmland listings in British Columbia and Washington state's Olympic Peninsula.
When the 37-year-old started worrying that AI would erase his and millions of other jobs and trigger both an economic and social crisis, he asked his AI chatbot a question: What might be a good place with a temperate climate to live off the land and be self-sufficient? The chatbot suggested the Pacific Northwest.
"It has the most fresh water," Neustadt said. "It's not too hot, not too cold."
Neustadt said he isn't ready to make the move just yet. He plans to stay in his current job, which pays him around $120,000 annually, for as long as he can. He and his wife, who works in enterprise sales for an AI company, have two young children. They are making bigger payments on their home mortgage to pay it off sooner.
"I'm a firm believer that we're not far away from my career coming to a premature end," he said.
Write to Konrad Putzier at konrad.putzier@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 14, 2026 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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