“I gave up,” bluntly stated Ella Zaugg-James, 20, computer science and business combined major at Northeastern when asked about the tech recession’s effect on her co-op search. Zaugg-James has found a new passion for management while working as a project manager at Wayfair. She began applying last spring and soon after, she decided Computer Science would be a skill on her resume instead of her career. The truth is she is not alone; there are many other students who faced these tumultuous changes in the beginning of their professional careers due to the difficulty of finding and keeping a tech job in the current market.
Computer Science students and other tech majors have faced a continuum of struggles surrounding applications, job offers and layoffs. In the past year, the tech sector has fallen into a recession with the technology sector index reaching its lowest over the past three years between July 2022 and July 2023. In response to this recession, over eighteen thousand employees at Amazon, twelve thousand employees at Google, eleven thousand at Facebook and ten thousand at Microsoft were laid off to compensate for the economic decline. All of these companies were known to be desirable to many Northeastern students, but now these mass layoffs are critically affecting those goals.
Abby Johnson, third year computer science and computer engineering combined major, is now looking for her second co-op, and she fears the state of the market: “I can tell there are fewer postings. Overall, I think the recession made it feel like you had less job security, which is scary in a major where that wasn’t really seen as an issue.” She details the stress of less jobs being posted to NUworks. This has made the process of getting a co-op frustrating because the system is designed specially to make job applications easier for students. Also computer science is, in part, a popular major because of the job security it used to offer, and the once satisfying promise of the field has experienced a sudden decline.
Nicholas Mamisashvili, 20, Computer Science major at Northeastern is also experiencing stress over only a few postings being listed with many candidates competing for each job. He says, “It’s much more difficult to get a co-op because the amount of people searching is the same, but now there is much less space available. Especially if you don’t have work experience, it can be tough to get someone to reach out.” The shock factor of the recession has frozen students in an uncomfortable position of being ambitious and capable but unable to capitalize on that drive due to a lack of opportunity. Another Computer Science student, Aauysh Turakhia, 20, brings up a different perspective: “Overall, standards have risen, which is a good thing for the market to produce better engineers, but also puts a lot more stress on younger students.” Turakhia makes a great point that students are feeling the extra pressure, especially during college, because it is a time when you are supposed to have the flexibility to figure out where exactly you want to be.
As Zaugg-James’ story proves, there is a silver lining to this recession storm cloud. One student who found something positive in their co-op trials is Elissa Alarmani, 20, Computer Science and Business combined major at Northeastern. She received and accepted an offer as a software engineer, however, five days before her start date, her manager laid off her position. Alarmani applied frantically and accepted another co-op at the Broad Institute. Alarmani explains this positive twist: “I’ve always wanted to go into the intersection of technology and biology/genetics, and my passions have always been in nonprofit work. I ended up doing exactly that which I am super grateful for and got to just see how strong I can be.” While the recession has been destructive for many, many resilient students are doing their best to turn these experiences into skill sets and advantages.
I am not an Economics or Computer Science major, so I’m not qualified to make predictions on how the recession could change in the future or even to analyze how the recession began. However, as a writer, I can tell the stories of those who have been affected by this event. At the very least, I hope these stories help other students who are dealing with the collateral damage of the tech recession feel a little less alone in the challenge of applying for, accepting and completing a co-op.