Berkeley Coding Professor Says Even Grads With 4.0 GPA Can't Find Jobs
Book of Job
A Berkeley computer scientist is raising alarm bells about the state of the labor market for new college graduates struggling to find work.
In a LinkedIn post , UC Berkeley's James O'Brien said that even his students who achieved top-tier grade point averages are failing to find work post-graduation.
"Previously, a Berkeley [computer science] graduate, even if not a top student, would receive multiple appealing job offers in terms of work type, location, salary, and employer," the professor and 2015 Academy Award winner for technological achievement wrote. "However, outstanding students, like those with a 4.0 in-major GPA, are now contacting me worried because they have zero offers."
O'Brien's post was made in response to a recent Wall Street Journal report about the sorry state of the tech hiring sector, which contained a brutal anecdote about one desperate worker who began posting QR codes pointing to his LinkedIn outside the Manhattan headquarters of companies like Facebook and Google.
"Lately, I'm [hearing] similar narratives from students," the professor wrote. "I suspect this trend is irreversible and likely part of the broader trend impacting almost every employment sector."
No Joking Matter
Indeed, earlier this year, the National Association of College and Employers released survey results that found hiring forecasts for new grads were six percent down from 2023.
When it comes to underemployment, or working jobs that one is overqualified for, those numbers were starker: four in ten, or 40 percent, of recent college grads self-reported that they were underemployed in 2024, per the Federal Reserve Bank of New York .
Between mass layoffs across the tech sector — more than 130,000 this year alone per the Layoffs.fyi tracker — and the lowest hiring rate in a decade , things have gotten so bad that people are now making viral jokes about how rough it is out there.
"As an avid job quitter," one X user wrote , "I'm telling yall right now: this is NOT a quitting economy."
Back on LinkedIn, O'Brien expressed his own worries about the state of the job market.
"I hate to say this, but a person starting their degree today may find themself graduating four years from now into a world with very limited employment options," the Berkeley professor wrote. "Add to that the growing number of people losing their employment and it should be crystal clear that a serious problem is on the horizon."
"We should be doing something about it today," O'Brien aptly concluded.
