Growing up near Silicon Valley, Manasi Mishra remembers seeing tech executives on social media urging students to study computer programming.

在硅谷附近长大的马纳西·米什拉记得在社交媒体上看到科技企业的高管曾呼吁学生去学编程。

“The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary,” Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.

“当年的说法是，只要学会编程，努力拿到计算机专业的学位，起薪就能六位数，”这位来自加州圣拉蒙的21岁女孩回忆道。

Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer.

这些金光闪闪的行业承诺曾激励米什拉在小学时就建了她的第一个网站，高中选了编程课，大学攻计算机专业。但经历一整年求职与实习碰壁后，5月从普渡大学毕业时，她还未收到任何录用通知。

“I just graduated with a computer science degree, and the only company that has called me for an interview is Chipotle,” Ms. Mishra said in a get-ready-with-me TikTok video this summer that has since racked up more than 147,000 views.

“我手握计算机学位，唯一给我打电话面试的只有墨西哥快餐店Chipotle，”米什拉在今年夏天发布的一条“跟我一起准备(get-ready-with-me)”的TikTok视频中说道。该视频播放量已突破14.7万次。

Since the early 2010s, a parade of billionaires, tech executives and even U.S. presidents has urged young people to learn coding, arguing that the tech skills would help bolster students’ job prospects as well as the economy. Tech companies promised computer science graduates high salaries and all manner of perks.

2010年代初开始，许多亿万富豪、科技高管乃至美国总统都曾鼓励年轻人学习编程，宣称技术能力既能提升就业前景又可提振经济。科技公司也曾向计算机专业的毕业生许诺高薪和各类福利。

“Typically their starting salary is more than $100,000,” plus $15,000 hiring bonuses and stock grants worth $50,000, Brad Smith, a top Microsoft executive, said in 2012 as he kicked off a company campaign to get more high schools to teach computing.

“起薪通常超过10万美元，”外加1.5万美元的签约奖金和价值5万美元的股票，微软高管布拉德·史密斯在2012年推动公司的中学计算机教育计划时宣称道。

The financial incentives, plus the chance to work on popular apps, quickly fed a boom in computer science education, the study of computer programming and processes like algorithms. Last year, the number of undergraduates majoring in the field topped 170,000 in the United States — more than double the number in 2014, according to the Computing Research Association, a nonprofit that gathers data annually from about 200 universities.

这些经济激励叠加开发热门应用的机遇迅速推动了计算机编程及算法等方法的教育。据非营利组织计算机研究协会的数据，去年全美计算机本科专业人数突破17万，较2014年翻了一番多。该机构每年从约200所高校采集数据。

But now, the spread of A.I. programming tools, which can quickly generate thousands of lines of computer code — combined with layoffs at companies like Amazon, Intel, Meta and Microsoft — is dimming prospects in a field that tech leaders promoted for years as a golden career ticket. The turnabout is derailing the employment dreams of many new computing grads and sending them scrambling for other work.

但如今，能快速写出成千上万行计算机代码的人工智能编程工具愈发普及，再加上亚马逊、英特尔、Meta和微软等公司的裁员潮，这个被科技领袖们多年来推崇为黄金职业入场券的领域变得前景黯淡。这种转变打乱了许多刚毕业的计算机专业学生的就业梦想，迫使他们转而寻找其他工作。

Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3 percent.

纽约联邦储备银行的一份报告显示，在22至27岁的大学毕业生中，计算机科学和计算机工程专业毕业生面临着较高的失业率，分别为6.1%和7.5%。这一比例是刚毕业的生物学和艺术史专业学生失业率的两倍多，后者的失业率仅为3%。

“I’m very concerned,” said Jeff Forbes, a former program director for computer science education and workforce development at the National Science Foundation. “Computer science students who graduated three or four years ago would have been fighting off offers from top firms — and now that same student would be struggling to get a job from anyone.”

“我非常担心，”曾任美国国家科学基金会计算机科学教育和劳动力发展项目主任的杰夫·福布斯说。“三四年前毕业的计算机科学学生还能收到顶尖公司的一堆邀请，应接不暇，而现在，同样水平的学生却很难在任何地方找到工作。”

In response to questions from The New York Times, more than 150 college students and recent graduates — from state schools including the universities of Maryland, Texas and Washington, as well as private universities like Cornell and Stanford — shared their experiences. Some said they had applied to hundreds, and in several cases thousands, of tech jobs at companies, nonprofits and government agencies.

在回应《纽约时报》的提问时，来自马里兰大学、得克萨斯大学、华盛顿大学等州立学校，以及康奈尔大学、斯坦福大学等私立大学的150多名大学生和应届毕业生分享了他们的经历。一些人说，他们已经向公司、非营利组织和政府机构提交了几百甚至几千份科技类工作申请。

The process can be arduous, with tech companies asking candidates to complete online coding assessments and, for those who do well, live coding tests and interviews. But many computing graduates said their monthslong job quests often ended in intense disappointment or worse: companies ghosting them.

这个过程可能十分艰难，科技公司会要求求职者完成在线编程评估，表现好的人还会面临现场编程测试和面试。但许多计算机专业毕业生表示，他们长达数月的求职往往以极度失望告终，甚至更糟：公司直接不再回复。

Some faulted the tech industry, saying they felt “gaslit” about their career prospects. Others described their job search experiences as “bleak,” “disheartening” or “soul-crushing.”

一些人指责科技行业，称自己感到职业前景“暗淡”。还有人将求职经历描述为“惨淡”“令人沮丧”或“令人崩溃”。

Among them was Zach Taylor, 25, who enrolled as a computer science major at Oregon State University in 2019 partly because he had loved programming video games in high school. Tech industry jobs seemed plentiful at the time.

25岁的扎克·泰勒就是其中之一。他2019年进入俄勒冈州立大学主修计算机科学，部分原因是他高中时就喜欢编写电子游戏程序。当时科技行业的工作似乎很多。

Since graduating in 2023, however, Mr. Taylor said, he has applied for 5,762 tech jobs. His diligence has resulted in 13 job interviews but no full-time job offers.

然而，泰勒说，自2023年毕业以来，他已经申请了5762份科技类工作。他的努力换来了13次面试机会，却没有一份全职工作。

The job search has been one of “the most demoralizing experiences I have ever had to go through,” he added.

他还说，这次求职是“我经历过的最令人泄气的事情之一”。

Computing graduates are feeling particularly squeezed because tech firms are embracing A.I. coding assistants, reducing the need for some companies to hire junior software engineers. The trend is evident in downtown San Francisco, where billboard ads for A.I. tools like CodeRabbit promise to debug code faster and better than humans.

计算机专业毕业生如今倍感压力，因为科技公司正在广泛使用人工智能编程助手，这降低了一些公司对初级软件工程师的招聘需求。这一趋势在旧金山市中心显而易见，那里的广告牌上，像CodeRabbit这样的人工智能工具宣传自己能比人类更快、更好地调试代码。

“The unfortunate thing right now, specifically for recent college grads, is those positions that are most likely to be automated are the entry-level positions that they would be seeking,” said Matthew Martin, U.S. senior economist at Oxford Economics, a forecasting firm.

“目前不幸的是，特别是对于刚毕业的大学生来说，最有可能被自动化取代的岗位，正是他们想要申请的入门级职位，”预测机构牛津经济研究院的美国高级经济学家马修·马丁说。

Tracy Camp, the executive director of the Computing Research Association, said new computer science graduates might be particularly hard hit this year because many universities were just now starting to train students on A.I. coding tools, the newest skills sought by tech companies.

计算机研究协会执行董事特雷西·坎普表示，今年刚毕业的计算机科学专业学生可能会受到特别沉重的打击，因为许多大学才刚刚开始培养学生使用人工智能编程工具的能力，而这正是科技公司目前渴求的最新技能。

Some graduates described feeling caught in an A.I. “doom loop.” Many job seekers now use specialized A.I. tools like Simplify to tailor their résumés to specific jobs and autofill application forms, enabling them to quickly apply to many jobs. At the same time, companies inundated with applicants are using A.I. systems to automatically scan résumés and reject candidates.

一些毕业生表示，自己仿佛陷入了人工智能的“厄运怪圈”。许多求职者现在使用像Simplify这样的专业人工智能工具来根据特定工作定制简历，并自动填写申请表，这样他们就能快速申请很多工作。与此同时，被大量求职者淹没的公司则使用人工智能系统自动扫描简历，并筛选掉候选人。

To try to stand out, Audrey Roller, a recent data science graduate from Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said she highlighted her human skills, like creativity, on her job applications, which she writes herself, unassisted by chatbots. But after she recently applied for a job, she said, a rejection email arrived three minutes later.

刚从马萨诸塞州伍斯特市克拉克大学毕业的数据科学专业学生奥黛丽·罗勒说，为了脱颖而出，她在求职申请中突出自己的人际技能，比如创造力，而且她的申请都是自己写的，没有借助人工智能聊天机器人。但她说，最近有一次，她在申请工作后，三分钟内就收到了拒绝邮件。

“Some companies are using A.I. to screen candidates and removing the human aspect,” Ms. Roller, 22, said. “It’s hard to stay motivated when you feel like an algorithm determines whether you get to pay your bills.”

“有些公司用人工智能来筛选候选人，省去了人为环节，”22岁的罗勒说，“当你意识到自己的生计将由算法决定时，真的很难保持积极性。”

Recent graduates looking for government tech jobs also report increased hurdles.

寻找政府科技类工作的应届毕业生也表示遇到了更多阻碍。

Jamie Spoeri, who graduated this year from Georgetown University, said she majored in computing because she loved the logical approach to problem-solving. During college, she also learned about the environmental impacts of A.I. and grew interested in tech policy.

杰米·斯波里今年从乔治敦大学毕业，她说自己主修计算机是因为喜欢用逻辑方法解决问题。大学期间，她还了解到人工智能对环境的影响，并对科技政策产生了兴趣。

Last summer, she had an internship at the National Science Foundation where she worked on national security and technology issues, like the supply of critical minerals. She has since applied for more than 200 government, industry and nonprofit jobs, she said.

去年夏天，她在国家科学基金会实习，从事国家安全和技术相关工作，比如关键矿产的供应问题。她说，从那以后，她申请了200多份政府、企业和非营利组织的工作。

But recent government cutbacks and hiring freezes have made getting federal jobs difficult, she said, while A.I. coding tools have made getting entry-level software jobs at companies harder.

但她说，最近政府的削减开支和招聘冻结让获得联邦政府工作变得困难，而人工智能编程工具也令获得公司的入门级软件工作变得更难了。

“It’s demoralizing to lose out on opportunities because of A.I.,” said Ms. Spoeri, 22, who grew up in Chicago. “But I think, if we can adapt and rise to the challenge, it can also open up new opportunities.”

“因为人工智能而错失机会，这让人很泄气，”22岁、在芝加哥长大的斯波里说。“但我认为，如果我们能适应并迎接挑战，人工智能也能带来新的机会。”

Prominent computing education boosters are now pivoting to A.I. President Trump, who in 2017 directed federal funding toward computer science in schools, recently unveiled a national A.I. action plan that includes channeling more students into A.I. jobs.

著名的计算机教育推动者们现在正转向人工智能领域。特朗普总统在2017年曾指示将联邦资金投入学校的计算机科学教育，最近他公布了一项全国人工智能行动计划，其中包括让更多学生进入人工智能相关工作领域。

Microsoft, a major computing education sponsor, recently said it would provide $4 billion in technology and funding for A.I. training for students and workers. Last month, Mr. Smith, Microsoft’s president, said the company was also assessing how A.I. was changing computer science education.

作为计算机教育的主要赞助者，微软最近表示将提供价值40亿美元的技术和资金，用于学生和工人的人工智能培训。上个月，微软总裁史密斯表示，公司也在评估人工智能如何改变计算机科学教育。