Since there are gift links on the page to the article, I will also share a few of the comments on the NY Times site. They come from individuals who identify themselves as construction workers, architects, and engineers:
@Ronda Kaysen these issues are endemic to our industry as our struggles track general society. We aren’t in construction because we’re “winning,” it’s because we struggle socially, with substances, learning disabilities, academics, culturally as an underclass, financially, psychogicially, . Contractors are being treated more and more like unskilled commodities; the apprenticeship model of training has crumbled away; and private equity and “professional” management just siphons off any loose dollar that could feed our families. We used to start and own our businesses; now we are simply wage-laborers who have no control over the business, job-flow, assignments, etc. Job sites are staffed too lean, no one knows when the jobs are going to happen and how long (financing puts jobs on holds where we just wait for weeks for work), and so every day is “Am I going to work?Or do I just hide down at the bar and wait until closing time?” (post currently has 433 recommending)
@Ronda Kaysen I am not a taper, but I’m an engineer that designs buildings in the building construction industry. I can confirm that, since the pandemic, we have been asked to do much more, much faster, with fewer staff. The quote in this article about being behind on the job the first day working on it is spot on. That is how nearly every job feels to me these days. For designs of a new high rise building, for jobs that we used to have 18 months to design, we are now given maybe 9-12 months. We are also asked to focus on many more jobs simultaneously than we used to be. One engineer might be designing or overseeing construction on 50 small to medium sized jobs at a time when he was asked to work on only 15 or so before the pandemic. Most engineers are salaried, so many are asked to work 50-60+ hours per week to make it work with no resulting increase in pay. I have been in the industry 15 years and I’ve been trying to find a way out, but it has been next to impossible with two young kids and a mortgage. (post currently has 330 recommending)
@Ronda Kaysen, thank you for writing this article. This is a highly stressful and highly physical job. As someone who is in the field it makes me so angry when people just say “join a trade” without knowing what a trade means. Our household spent years up every day at 4:30am. It has since switched to 5:30am assuming we are only working dayshift. Schedules aren’t fixed. We had parents threaten to call for a welfare check after they couldn’t reach us because we were at work. A partner who clocked 100hrs in a single week. Standing in the pouring rain to get a project done for a community where some of those community members threw bottles filled with urine at us. Where people leaned out of their cars and called us losers. Where after working through a pandemic, my child in daycare because I was an essential worker, a father pointed at me and told his son “that is what happens if you don’t work hard in school”. I’m an engineer. I went to one of the top schools in the country. I can push it aside but if I hadn’t it would be crushing. I am literally building the things others use to make their life better and this is how they treat us. This job becomes increasingly more difficult as you age. Our population is aging. At the same time the state and the fed are rolling back things that protect workers. Minings worse… ya have you looked at the exemptions made for that industry. (post currently has 167 recommending)
@April My response is to everyone on this thread. I’m an architect in NYC and everything that has been said is accurate, from architects and engineers to workers the margins are thin, pressure great, there is no time, and the complexity and project requirements increase. (post currently has 61 recommending)
I don’t know if this is specific to my community but suddenly my NextDoor page is posting all kinds of job openings. And not the usual pet sitting/nanny type things but jobs for engineering positions through our town, office managers, IT specialists, etc….
It depend on what type of construction. For example, as pictured below, there is an especially high rate of injury and death for roofers. It’s also quite high for less experienced construction “helpers.” However, general construction is a small fraction of these sub-categories, and well below anything pictured in the chart below.
That chart is missing a job with a 8,888 fatal injury rate per 100,000 in the job (not including deaths from natural causes), although with a small sample size (the number of people who have ever done the job is far less than 100,000).
Interesting list - like new home buyer specialist (wouldn’t have thought) but I have a friend who works for DR Horton and LOVES IT - and gets paid well. Captured audience but still on commission.
Founder was another interesting / odd one. It’s not really a job per se - or job duty.
I wonder, with the Venezuela situation, if we’re going to have a spike on petroleum engineers upcoming.
Agree. The article lists “Top Roles Transitioned From” for each job implying previous significant(?) career experience. For example, it takes years to become a competent “Full Stack Engineer,” one of the transition roles listed for AI Engineer.
The AI market is beating a path to our son’s door, but he is seven years from his BS/EE, has earned an MS/CS, and is an AI architect with significant AI/ML development/team lead experience in Army Cyber. An undergrad CS or other STEM degree would not be competitive for a true AI engineering position or the other types of AI roles he can step into. But it is true that he will most likely land in San Francisco or New York when he leaves the Army (not sure what’s going on in Dallas).
Yes, I don’t know which of these are options for new college grads. Is private sector pausing hiring of new college grads, replacing with AI agents, software automation of entry level data manipulation tasks?
And here’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me: if companies stop hiring new or inexperienced graduates and giving them time to grow, where are experienced professionals supposed to come from in the future?
If there’s no pipeline of entry-level employees, and no mentorship and years spent building skills the expertise isn’t developed.
So is the weak job market we’re seeing now simply a reaction to an uncertain economy? Are employers being short-sighted and optimizing only for the near term? Or do they genuinely believe AI will advance enough that, 8–10 years from now, they won’t need the same level of experienced human talent at all?
If that is the assumption and if it’s wrong, today’s hiring freeze could turn into tomorrow’s talent crisis.
The companies represented in my circle of friends have not paused hiring of new grads. All are continuing on with their internships and leadership development programs.
Each employer, looking at its own self interest in minimizing the education and training expense on itself* by not hiring at the entry level, will contribute to the overall shrinking of the pipeline from entry level to experienced. Consider the prisoner’s dilemma.
*Similar can be said for employers expecting higher levels of education and training from job applicants (paid for by the applicants and/or the government), rather than hiring and doing on-the-job training (that would be an expense to the employer).
We have annual targets but everything is managed on a 30 day cycle. It’s all about the month.
I imagine many sales organizations are the same. We live in a 30 day world.
Your point is fair and in 5-10 years when they face it, it will be new management and then they’ll have an uh oh moment. But they seem to manage for today, I’m guessing in many cases.
When your bonus is tied to quarterly profits, and you’re only going to be in your position for a few more years, what does that matter? That’s going to be somebody else’s problem.
(Not my attitude, but certainly a widespread one.)
Based on all post-grad outcomes survey or similar I have seen, this hasn’t happened. The overwhelming majority of grads are still finding jobs, and the portion of those jobs that are relevant to major is not greatly different from pre-AI years. I don’t doubt there are anecdotal examples of specific companies that are hiring fewer new grads and instead increasing usage of AI, but it’s far from universal. New grads that are not hired by the companies listed in these specific anecdotes for the most part are being hired at other companies where they gain experience.
S21 graduated college in December (finance major.) He accepted a job in December, had been sending lots of resumes all through the fall, it was stressful for sure. He was also far into the hiring process for a 2 yr finance rotation program at a large pharma company when he accepted the offer he received in Dec from another company.
Since the new year though, he is getting a lot of messages thru Handshake from good companies for various training programs, e.g., Chubb, Morgan Stanley. And other good opportunities in consulting. I worry that he is thinking he maybe shouldn’t have taken the job he was offered (it is a good job at a large company, pay is at the median for finance major undergrads), but it’s difficult to reject an offer when you don’t know when/if the next one is coming!
Always remember that the first job is not permanent. If he can establish himself as a rising star, he can get promoted quickly and then he can either stay and move up or find another opportunity somewhere else. As I said before, the key is to find advocates that will take your career to the next level.
