ACM CareerNews for Tuesday, June 10, 2025
ACM CareerNews is intended as an objective career news digest for busy IT professionals. Views expressed are not necessarily those of ACM. To send comments, please write to [email protected]
Volume 21, Issue 11, June 10, 2025
The Hottest Jobs in IT
CIO.com, June 3
In 2025, demand for IT talent remains strong across core roles. In fact, experts predict that the need for essential IT positions will continue to grow. Businesses face stiff competition for top talent in areas such as software engineering, cybersecurity, and data management. IT roles involved in fueling AI transformations are in particularly high demand. With that in mind, the article provides a look at the IT positions that leaders say are driving business value and innovation in 2025, translating to higher demand and higher pay.
As organizations integrate AI into day-to-day operations, the demand for data engineers has increased dramatically. Companies across every industry are looking for data experts who can help take their AI initiatives to the next level. The demand is growing fast because every organization needs people who understand its data, its strengths, its weaknesses, and how to get better data. They also need people who can analyze the output of AI to make sure that it is doing what they want and helping them to meet their goals. Cybersecurity specialist is another role that is growing rapidly in popularity. Escalating cyberattacks have led to a steep rise in hiring for related roles, including systems security managers and information security analysts. AI-driven attacks are part of the reason security roles are some of the most lucrative jobs you can have in 2025. With security threats growing more sophisticated, companies are expanding their hiring of ethical hackers and penetration testers. The global cybersecurity skills shortage represents a significant risk to many organizations, especially in areas such as cloud security and ethical hacking where hands-on experience remains difficult to find.
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Unlocking the Hidden Tech Job Market
Dice Insights, May 23
Some of the most promising opportunities in the tech industry are hidden to job candidates. A significant portion of tech hires, particularly within startups and smaller companies, occur through internal referrals, connections forged with alumni, informal networking, and proactive outreach, bypassing the traditional job posting process entirely. This hidden job market represents a substantial segment of hiring activity. It is also a challenge for tech professionals trying to land a new job. This is especially the case for recent graduates who may not be familiar with alternative job-hunting approaches.
There are several reasons why the hidden job market flourishes. For one, the pace of tech hiring is often rapid. To circumvent the time-consuming task of filtering through many thousands of unsolicited applications, hiring managers frequently turn to individuals they already know or those recommended by trusted sources. Consequently, many positions are filled before they are ever publicly advertised. Gaining access to this hidden job market is not a matter of chance. Instead, it is about strategically knowing where to look and how to establish meaningful connections.
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New Companies With New Jobs Will Come from AI
Tech.co, May 30
According to billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, AI technology is poised to create more companies and more jobs than it erases. Modern iterations of AI are not the first technology to create stress over future employment. In fact, automation has long been a threat to the career market, with innovations essentially designed to take over human jobs. From this perspective, generative AI is no different. It is, though, evolving at break-neck speeds with minimal regulations, which could lead to some serious questions in the near future.
In a recent social media post, Mark Cuban gave his opinion on the AI-job replacement debate, stating that the technology is poised to improve the overall job market, rather than hamper it in the long run. New companies with new jobs will come from AI and increase total employment. Cuban made this point after noting that the job market has seen similar changes that many warned might lead to the loss of jobs. Unlike many of the CEOs and business owners in the tech industry that have been flip-flopping and pivoting on their AI strategy, Mark Cuban has been quite consistent when it comes to his opinion on the technology. In fact, because Cuban is so outspoken on social media, there is a huge body of content that points to his belief that AI is not only the future of the business world, but that it will actually improve the economy for everyone, including adding new jobs to the market. In his view, generative AI will be the greatest growth and productivity engine ever.
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AI Will Change Recruiting in the Next 6 Months
HR Dive, May 27
As artificial intelligence tools continue to transform talent acquisition, companies and job seekers alike will increasingly need to embrace AI technology. While the pace of change in AI can feel overwhelming, there should be more transparency soon about how best to use it during the job search. Over the next six months, companies will be expected to communicate a clearer stance on AI use during the application process and issue formal statements about what they allow. Employers will also ask candidates to verify their AI use during hiring.
Employers will likely use more tests to catch the improper use of AI during the hiring process. This could include on-site interviews, embedded commands in job descriptions, or video verification during online interviews. Beyond that, there will be more rigor in the interview process, such as skills assessments, open-ended questions and video uploads. These tactics can reduce application volume and keep less qualified or less motivated people from applying. In turn, companies will likely use more AI tools for initial screening and identification of high-potential candidates. Employers will also assess the AI skills of candidates, potentially asking them to build solutions with AI as part of a skills assessment. Although most job seekers use AI for basic help, some may use it to forge documents, create fake resumes and evade applicant filters. Companies can combat this by using AI in screening platforms to verify documents and candidate identities.
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How to Go From Ghosted to Multiple Offers in Your Job Search
Fast Company, May 29
Even for talented job seekers, it can feel like they are often submitting application after application into a black hole. Weeks turn into months. The silence is deafening. Each passing day without a response chips away at your confidence, your bank account, and your sense of professional identity. The good news is that there are several tried-and-true strategies for standing out no matter the market conditions.
Whether you have just gotten laid off or have already been job searching for months, your self-esteem probably is not the strongest. You may be feeling bitter, angry, and doubtful of your professional value. Being in that kind of mindset while trying to find a job won’t allow you to show up as your best self. This is true even if you have been a very successful leader in the past. Thus, it can be helpful to start every job search with a simple but powerful exercise: documenting significant achievements from your career. This includes not just responsibilities, but also actual metrics and results, problems solved, and value delivered. You should be willing to dig deep to detail what you do really well, and what gets you fired up. It can also be helpful to think about how colleagues and clients would describe working with you. As a result, your confidence is likely to start to return. You can do this with a career coach, your partner, a best friend, or even a colleague who knows you well.
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AI Interviewers May Be Alienating Applicants
CIO Dive, June 5
The days of landing a face-to-face interview with a human for your dream job may be coming to a close. Anecdotal evidence is building that organizations are now using AI during the interview process, and that means you will likely be talking to a bot, not a person, in the future. Across the internet, people are posting viral videos of what it feels like to be communicating with an AI-powered avatar during an interview. Unforeseen problems can often arise, such as questions that glitch out and questions that have no obvious way to answer them.
Unfortunately, taking the human element out of the hiring process has consequences. In response to the flood of viral videos across the internet documenting the deficiencies of AI-powered interviews, many are now responding that the same phenomenon has already happened to them. Some of the most-liked comments on these videos provide insight into how job seekers and people more broadly are feeling about the intrusion of artificial intelligence into parts of the recruitment process that normally belong to HR professionals or hiring managers. They typically view it as disrespectful to the applicants. Some decry it as the worst corporate move ever. The emerging consensus is that if organizations do not have the ability to interview you face to face, they are not worth your time.
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Big Tech Is Not Hiring Like It Used To
Sherwood News (Robinhood), May 23
Nearly three years after the pandemic, layoffs in Silicon Valley still have not stopped. In fact, more than 22,000 U.S. tech workers have been let go just this year. Looking across a selection of the largest publicly-traded U.S., technology firms, headcount growth has either slowed or outright reversed in the past two years for many. The only notable exceptions are chip designers and semiconductor companies. It is no surprise, but the best job opportunities going forward will be with the companies that are powering the AI revolution.
Since February 2020, U.S. job listings for software development roles have fallen nearly 40%, and IT help desk roles are down over 30%. That is well below the broader job market, where listings are up 6%. For several years, it looked like this was simply the response to COVID-era over-hiring by many tech firms. However, something else is reshaping the tech job market, which some experts are calling a very powerful ChatGPT effect. According to research from the University of Maryland, the number of IT job postings dropped 27% from the end of 2022 to 2024, while AI-related roles jumped 68%. Researchers see this divergence as clear evidence of the growing influence of generative AI.
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The Age of AI Layoffs Is Already Here
Quartz, May 27
New AI technology is leading to the loss of jobs across Corporate America. Of course, AI is rarely named as the direct reason for new layoffs. Instead, companies speak about efficiency gains, or a renewed focus on automation for competitive advantage. But the eventual result is usually layoffs. This is happening to knowledge workers across the U.S., from entry-level to management-level, from tech companies to industrial companies. Usually, the only layoffs that make news are the ones at big tech companies, but even smaller companies are finding ways to downsize their workforce.
Many AI-related layoffs never make headlines. However, they exist in the form of job listings that never get posted because the roles no longer exist. And as the losses accumulate, a kind of ambient fear is settling in. White-collar jobs that until very recently offered a comfortable middle- or even upper-middle-class living are quietly disappearing, from copywriters and communications specialists to web designers and software developers. Even some CEOs and venture capitalists fear losing their jobs to AI. Unlike past waves of automation, these changes are happening not on factory floors but in glass-walled conference rooms. That is why they feel so different. AI-related job losses feel much more disturbing than layoffs in years past. The speed of the AI wave washing across the corporate landscape makes the shift even more unsettling, as security gives way to uncertainty.
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Peer Mentoring: My Favorite Growth Hack For Engineers and Leaders
ACM Queue, May 19
If you have reached a fork in the road for your career, peer mentoring may be the answer. Mentors are peers who have tackled similar problems before, so they can help you work out an improved plan, develop a new framework for thinking, and offer new resource recommendations that might have taken you hours to find. Peer mentoring is real-time, highly relevant, and actionable. In some ways, these mentors are better than executive coaches, because they are much less expensive and have a better understanding of your immediate context. In short, peer mentors can be a powerful tool for career growth, leadership development, and skill-building.
As you advance in your career, finding the right mentor gets harder. Often, the senior leaders you would love to learn from are busy, overbooked, or selective about how they spend their time. And, frankly, it can be awkward to ask someone in senior management to mentor you. By the same token, people underestimate how much they can learn from their peers. When you talk to people at the same career stage, they understand your challenges right now, as opposed to problems from five to 10 years ago. They can also recommend tools, templates, and strategies they are currently using. They can offer fresh perspectives without being too far removed from the work. One big misconception is that mentors need to be senior to you. Many people assume the best advice comes from someone who has already accomplished a certain goal. The problem is, sometimes those people are too far removed from your current challenges. For example, if you ask senior executives how to deal with a difficult problem, they might tell you what worked for them. However, that advice might also be from several promotions ago. If you get into the habit of asking peers for insights, swapping ideas, and helping others grow, you naturally build better relationships and accelerate your own learning.
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How AI Raises the Bar for Developers
Blog@CACM, May 28
A modern AI model is the result of millions of man-hours put in by the programmers, either directly or indirectly. The amount of work required to build these models has led some to challenge the assumption that AI will eventually replace most programmers. Even the most sophisticated AI model may not possess sufficient intelligence to match the depth and understanding of the hundreds of thousands of programmers who have contributed to building it. AI models may not have a good understanding of different conditions and constraints involved, or the fundamental needs of the user. Although obvious to the programmer, these are not apparent to an AI model.
One part of getting AI models to do more meaningful work will be learning how to make user insights and a basic understanding of the world available to them. When building an AI model, information can be scattered over multiple pieces of documentation. Or, it might reside only in the minds of the software architects who understand the system internals. Without such details, an AI system may be able to generate a correct algorithm for the problem at hand. However, it is very unlikely for an automatic code-writing AI software to churn out a correct version of the program on its own. In the best case, architects might feed an AI-based platform sufficient information to generate the core logic, but the responsibility of providing the software system with the right business context, initial conditions, and constraints will still be with the architects. Likewise, system engineers and architects will play an important role in testing the software, and integrating it in the wider software ecosystem, once an AI system generates it.
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