How AI is Changing Entry-Level Tech Jobs (And What New Developers Can Do)

On August 26th, 2025, Stanford University released a report on how generative AI (or AI) is affecting the labor market. It had six key findings, the first being that there were "substantial declines in employment for early-career workers (ages 22-25) in occupations most exposed to AI."

According to the report's findings, software development was listed as one of the most exposed career fields (alongside customer service). So, for now, young entry-level workers should consider gaining tech experience before pursuing their first real technology job.

Younger, Entry-Level Workers vs. Older, Experienced Workers

Stanford's 2025 AI Employment Study: "Canaries in the Coal Mine" (PDF) found that AI could effectively perform tasks usually done by entry-level workers. At the same time, there was "a 6% decline in employment from late 2022 to July 2025 in the most AI-exposed occupations" among that entry-level group.

However, there was "a 6-9% increase [in employment] for older workers" in these same occupations. From this, the report concludes that "declining employment [in] AI-exposed jobs is driving tepid overall employment growth for 22- to 25- year-olds as employment for older workers continues to grow."

The Obvious Things That Entry-Level Workers Can Do

Job opportunities in tech fluctuate; sometimes there are tons of open positions and sometimes there are very few. At the time of this blog post, there are fewer opportunities due to industry-wide layoffs.

As a result, young workers looking for their first tech job should try and gain some experience, at least for now. And if I were a young worker, here's how I would begin:

• Start interning: This is the obvious start, but it bears repeating. Interning at an office while doing tech work is the best way to get your foot in the job market door. And it doesn't need to be a tech company: non-tech sectors such as banking, real estate, and healthcare have tons of software development work that needs to get done.
• Get a GitHub account & start showing your code samples: GitHub is still the best, free way to display and quantify your coding skills. And don't just post the code and walk away from it: put some effort into the README file, explaining what you did and why.
• Start blogging about software development: It may seem like a dated practice in a full-on social media world, but it's still effective. Try. Build. Fail or Be Successful. Then write about it and post it online.

The (Maybe) Not-So-Obvious Things That Entry-Level Workers Can Do

But this list is, I believe, a pretty clear-cut path on what to do. There are some other things that young workers can do that may not be as obvious:

• Take AI seriously: A permeating mantra in the software development world is "AI won't take your job, but a developer using AI will." And while anything can happen, I'm personally starting to see the benefits of coding alongside AI tools. At the time of this post, I've been redesign/recoding this blog with the help of Anthropic's Claude AI tool and really like it. I certainly didn't (and wouldn't) use Claude to write every line of code, but it was a great helper. Generating unit tests, reviewing blog posts to see if they meet WCAG accessibility standards, fixing bugs I couldn't fix after spending 20 minutes trying to fix them. Claude excelled here. And even if you're against using AI in coding, lots of employers doing the hiring are currently for it. So, having knowledge in this arena is a good thing and can only help you in the hiring process.
• Participate in open source: It may be intimidating, but it's worth trying. GitHub has tons of projects looking for help, from writing new classes and subclasses to writing documentation. Go to such projects, see what their backlog tasks are, and see how you can help. And don't let imposter syndrome hold you back: it's OK to not know everything as you move forward.

The Tech Job Market Will (Probably) Change

I mentioned that I'm redoing my blog, and this includes reviewing older posts for potential archiving. I have a lot of old posts that discuss a certain tech subject that was popular at the time.

A lot of tech things I thought would happen didn't. This post may certainly fall into this category someday.

I purposely wrote this post in a way that I hope drives that point home. Mentioning the year it was written, using phrases like "for now" and "at the time of this blog post," etc.

The truth is, no one can predict the long-term effects that AI will have on tech labor. AI could evolve to create more tech jobs than it eliminates across all age ranges... many in tech are optimistic about this.

But it's also true that when it comes to steady employment, we all live in a knowledge-based economy. And we all need to know something this year that we didn't know last year...AI is one of those "somethings."

Conclusion

I firmly believe that the Stanford report's findings (which are well corroborated) mean that you should at least consider following these tips. If for no other reason than they're a best practice regardless of what's going on in the job market.

But while I'm saying "prepare for the worst but hope for the best," be prepared for things to shift. That's just the tech labor world that we live in.