For the Class of 2026, breaking into tech means learning a new playbook

It’s graduation season across Washington, and computer science students across the country are walking into one of the toughest job markets for tech in recent years.

More than 117,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026 as of Wednesday, according to tracking site Layoffs.fyi. In the past year alone, Amazon has cut more than 5,000 jobs in Washington state. Microsoft has eliminated more than 15,000 positions globally, including thousands locally. Meta disclosed nearly 1,400 cuts across its Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond offices. And Oracle has slashed close to 500 jobs in the state.

Federal labor projections still remain bullish. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects software developer roles to grow 15% through 2034, far outpacing the national average. The disconnect has left new graduates caught in the middle, entering a field that still needs them, but no longer needs them the way it used to.

Katherine Palevich, a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s (UW) computer science program, is living that tension. Next month, she starts as a software engineer at Apple. She should feel relieved. Instead, she’s anxious.

“Is my own new grad position secure?” Palevich said. “Sometimes I’ve heard people’s offers get rescinded, and I get sad for them because you work so hard to get that offer.”

Entry-level tech jobs disappearing

Albert Squires, managing director of technology at Fuel Talent, a Bellevue-based recruiting firm, said the problem isn’t that hiring has stopped. Instead, entry-level jobs that new graduates once relied on are vanishing.

“Historically, an entry-level engineer would come in and help with testing, start learning the systems, start doing some documentation, start doing some basic bug fixing to just really learn the ecosystem,” Squires said. “Today, AI can do all of that for you.”

Squires said teams that once required 15 engineers are shrinking to five, with senior engineers managing AI agents that handle much of the work. Wall Street Journal data supports the shift: entry-level tech postings have fallen to 7.5% of the sector, while senior-level postings have climbed to 43%.

Joshua Tran, who is set to begin a master’s program at UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, said the speed of change is what rattles him most.

“At the beginning of the year, it felt like AI could do some things that we were doing in our jobs,” Tran said. “By the end of the year, it looked like it could do everything that an average computer science grad could do in a software engineering role. And, that year-long timeline is off-putting.”

On campus, students describe a degree that feels fundamentally different than it did just a few years ago.

“I feel like the computer science degree is becoming more like a pre-med type of path where the bar is very high,” Ishan Sinha, a senior at the Allen School, said. “The bar is now to the point where you just have to be exceptional.”

AI praise met with boos

Sinha said a growing number of professors are pushing students to build with AI in the classroom. That pressure has spilled into graduation ceremonies nationwide, where commencement speakers praising AI have been met with boos.

Squires said the frustration is legitimate. But his message is blunt.

“This is where tech is right now, and it’s only going faster,” he said. “Get on board, or you’re going to be left behind.”

Palevich is spending her months before Apple teaching herself to work with AI agents and trying to find the line between using the tools and understanding what’s underneath.

“Large language models [LLMs] are just really big autocomplete machines,” she said. “My hope is that software engineers are still very much needed, and it’s more that their direction to these AI agents will be the future of what software engineering looks like.”

Dan Grossman, a professor and vice director at UW’s Allen School, said the narrative of a collapse in tech hiring doesn’t match the data he sees. Last year, 370 Allen School graduates took software engineering jobs — the most in the school’s history. He estimates 75% to 80% of recent graduates landed roles within months of finishing.

“I’ve been asked a lot of times over the last year why the sky is falling, and I keep saying as loudly and clearly as I can — it’s not falling,” Grossman said. “Companies are figuring out how to change in this AI moment, but they’re not shrinking.”

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