I just finished a PhD in stats, and before that, studied computer science. I had planned to go back to industry to do software engineering or be a data scientist afterwards.
However, it seems that in the meantime, vibe coding has taken over the software industry and swallowed most data scientist roles. Few open positions, and the ones that do exist are just pushing a button instead of thinking and solving problems. Is this a correct assessment? Should I try to get back in or just find a new career? I am not too keen on staying in academia either.
The tech industry seeks to introduce complexity to everyday things and disrupt systems to increase prosperity for people at the top. Technology solving problems for wellbeing is far from the ideal use case for companies, non-profits, and universities - and efforts to earnestly do this don’t typically see the light of day.
Join a union or start one if you cannot find one. Figure out if you want to work in a field harming people globally or be a force for change.
If you’re talking about solving problems to enable inequitable wealth for the rich then you probably can move forward, with perseverence. They pay top dollar for skills they tried to eliminate from education.
Looking at job postings and people around me, I am not too much less cynical than you. A lot of gambling, data centers, military tech, police, fossil fuel adjacent etc. companies hiring. Though it used to be realistic to be able to do something morally neutral, and have the job be at least somewhat interesting in a small scale. Like I didn’t think making mobile internet 300mbps instead of 100mbps was solving any real problems 5+ years ago when I did my internship, but I don’t think it was causing too many either.
Its pretty bleak job listings, yeah. I have been lucky to work on some global audience feel-good projects in my life. The power structures and how harmful they are aren’t so different from the other jobs though. Workplace harrassment, stagnating wages, office politics… its been there for decades.
The orgs in question have also fully embraced AI and seeing how much its tearing apart my lifes work, the cumulative good we’ve done… with garbage results, that harm people, is heart-breaking.