Khoury News
Khoury co-op partners see strong demand for recent CS grads in the age of AI
Amid speculation about the effect of AI on tech employment, some companies aren't scaling back their employment. Instead, they're putting AI in the hands of their young talent to unleash unprecedented productivity.
Every forward leap in automation raises questions about which jobs will stay, which ones will adapt, and which ones will vanish. What sets the AI boom apart is that the jobs it stands to disrupt are those of the programmers who designed AI in the first place.
As tech companies come to terms with their fast-evolving reality, Khoury News sat down with three companies that have made a habit of hiring university-produced tech talent in the beginning stages of their careers, including Northeastern co-ops and recent graduates.
“Most of our hires are early-career employees or from college campuses, as opposed to [more established] professionals,” says Ron Pierre, Dell Technologies’ campus program manager. “I don’t see the students being affected right now at Dell because we’re increasing early-career hiring.”
Pierre says he’s looking for computer science, data science, electrical engineering, and computer engineering students, and that many of the students who set themselves apart through Dell’s specialty programs — like STEM Aspire — go on to internships or full-time positions. These hires are expected to use AI to accelerate their job tasks.
By the numbers
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1,855
Khoury tech co-ops in the past year
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864
unique co-op employers in the past year
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95%
of Khoury graduates work at least one co-op during their time at Northeastern
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96%
of these graduates are employed in the tech sector or in graduate school within nine months of graduation
They aren’t the only ones.
“We’re still hiring,” adds Bryan Ash, who began at HubSpot as a Northeastern co-op in 2012 and now serves as a director of engineering at the company. “It’s not like AI is taking our jobs; it’s making us way more productive. So you have to lean into the tools, learn how to use them, and understand best practices.”
Engineers who do that can unlock not just heightened productivity, but also an expanded role.
“Every engineer can now be the technical lead for their own small team,” Ash explains. “It’s about identifying the problem, breaking it down into technical chunks, and delegating them to different AI agents.”
That said, these employers don’t want AI to replace foundational knowledge. Nor do they want engineers to get so lost in AI-driven problem solving that they forget what the problems actually are and why they need to be solved. Joe Kaming-Thanassi is a former co-op and current front-end software engineer at Notability, and he notes that while AI is taking care of the more straightforward, well-defined asks that previously fell to junior engineers, those engineers still need to be higher-level thinkers.
“AI will write code, but you have to give it a strong definition of what you want it to do from an architectural level,” he says. “As important as it is to be AI literate, it’s still important to know how to write code by hand and to understand the code AI writes.”
READ: How Khoury co-ops helped improve Notability, Ginger Labs’ best-selling app
Because AI coding tools are so new, Ash says, new capabilities are arriving every month, so HubSpot’s recent college graduates are learning at the same time as long-tenured veterans. New employees can jump onto teams and projects right away, bite off as much as they can chew, and tackle their teams’ problems. Kaming-Thanassi cites a similar experience at Notability, noting that new hires can often choose their projects and that some wind up shipping code in their first week on the job.
And as they do, these new graduates are bringing more than just skills and expertise.
“They’re bringing in new ideas,” Pierre observes. “These new hires are the future of this company, the future in general. They are so intellectual. There are certain things I learn from them. We all learn from each other, no matter how many years of experience we’ve got.”
“To have diverse teams, you need diversity in ideas, tenures, backgrounds, and perspectives,” Ash adds. “Part of that is having a healthy mix of folks so they can think about things in a holistic way. An emerging talent pipeline is a great way to bring in fresh perspectives.”
Those fresh perspectives often find their way into the company’s projects and products.
“I might be experienced in one area but someone else can bring new ideas from another project or company, ideas that we aren’t familiar with. They can teach us and be taught,” Kaming-Thanassi says. “Our strength is in diversity of opinion and knowledge. It helps us build better, more interesting things that appeal to — and can be used by — all different types of people.”
But in an era when AI has endowed computer scientists with abilities that would have been considered superpowers a decade ago, how can soon-to-graduate students set themselves apart? Kaming-Thanassi emphasizes the importance of verbal and written communication skills, whether that’s instructing an AI or explaining complex ideas to colleagues. For his part, Ash values the hard-to-teach beginner’s mindset and technical curiosity.
“You don’t need a bunch of side projects to look attractive to employers, but you do need to play with technology, work on a team, and get hands-on experience in addition to the theory,” he says. “Find time to play with these tools and understand what they can and can’t do.”
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