The Meritocracy Myth: How America’s Tech Dream Slipped Away
AI is wiping out entry-level jobs and increasingly cutting into senior engineering roles, leaving only the very top tier to compete. For young workers, the once-bright promise of tech as an equal-opportunity field is slipping away.
When Jane landed a spot at ByteDance’s North American office, she felt lucky. Coding skills and long nights had carried her through several U.S. tech jobs already, and she thought this one would finally prove the old promise: in tech, hard work pays. She joined an elite algorithm team, eager to learn from engineers hardened by China’s cutthroat tech scene.
Reality crept in slowly.
The hours came first. Midnight meetings weren’t optional—they were baked into the culture. “One last tweak before bed could save tomorrow,” she told herself. Soon weekends blurred into workdays. By the seven-month mark, she wasn’t dreaming of growth anymore. She was sketching out an exit plan: climb one rung, then coast.
The real shock came with a leadership change. A new manager arrived and brought an entourage of old friends. They collected praise for work Jane considered mediocre, while veterans who had built complex systems were ignored. “I’d pour my soul into a project,” she recalled, “and he’d barely look up.” Promotions stopped feeling like rewards for performance. They became lottery tickets handed to insiders.
Her story isn’t just a tale of one bad boss. It mirrors a deeper shift across the tech industry. Data shows what Jane lived: the ladder that once rewarded skill and grit is breaking. Entry-level jobs are vanishing. Connections matter more than résumés. And for a generation of new graduates, the open door of tech has quietly swung shut.
A Vanishing Pipeline
The numbers are stark. Between early 2023 and early 2025, U.S. software developer job postings plunged 70 percent—double the overall white-collar decline. In Europe, entry-level hiring crashed more than 73 percent in just one year.
Even glamorous roles like product management aren’t safe. Global postings dropped nearly 6 percent in July 2025 alone, while junior-level listings fell 10 percent since January.
For graduates, the fallout is brutal. Computer science majors now face an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent—nearly twice that of philosophy grads. Computer engineering majors fare even worse at 7.5 percent. The old guarantee—that a CS degree meant security—is gone.
“It’s a cruel joke,” said one analyst. Universities doubled computer science enrollment over the past decade, from 51,000 degrees in 2013 to more than 113,000 by 2023. Students chased a promise just as demand collapsed, colliding with mass layoffs that flooded the market.
AI’s Ruthless Push
Artificial intelligence isn’t just reshaping jobs—it’s erasing them.
From January to June 2025 alone, nearly 78,000 tech roles disappeared directly because of AI, about 491 jobs each day. Almost a third of U.S. companies have already replaced workers with AI, and surveys suggest that number could jump to nearly 40 percent by year’s end.
Entry-level employees are bearing the brunt. Junior tasks, once the training ground for fresh graduates, now fall to machines. Hiring for new grads at major tech firms has dropped more than 50 percent since 2019. They now make up only 7 percent of Big Tech hires, down from 15 percent before the pandemic.
Wall Street expects AI to wipe out 200,000 jobs within five years. Globally, two in five employers plan to shrink their workforce because of automation. And while AI creates new opportunities, they’re not coming fast enough to offset the carnage.
Adding insult to injury, half of today’s tech job postings demand AI expertise—experience most newcomers can’t possibly have. The catch is obvious: no entry-level jobs, no way to learn.
Trapped by Networks
With traditional hiring pipelines evaporating, personal connections have become the golden ticket.
Nearly three out of four professionals land jobs through someone they know. Employers admit they prefer hiring friends or referrals over strangers with better qualifications. And when asked, more than 90 percent of job seekers said they’d take their dream role if it came via connection—even if it meant skipping the usual process.
This isn’t just family businesses handing down opportunities. Workers are 200 times more likely to land at a parent’s company than at a competitor across the street. White men from wealthy families benefit disproportionately, widening pay and racial gaps. Analysts estimate parental connections alone explain about 10 percent of the gender wage gap at career start.
Referrals make the system even tighter. A referred candidate is five times more likely to be hired, and companies see it as cheaper and faster. For Gen Z, referrals are now the top job-hunting strategy, with six in ten saying recommendations matter most.
Yet only 11 percent of companies have real safeguards against nepotism—even though almost everyone agrees it’s unethical. The mismatch between values and reality says it all: under pressure, the industry has traded fairness for convenience.
Closing the Loop
Back at ByteDance, Jane saw the shift play out in real time. Brilliant engineers worked themselves into exhaustion only to be leapfrogged by managers’ old buddies. Reviews felt arbitrary. Criticism like “not technical enough” landed on proven veterans. “It was birthright, not hustle,” she said.
By her second year, she stopped trying. She dodged messages after hours, let language barriers protect her in meetings, and quietly searched for her next move. ByteDance still taught her plenty, she admitted, but the promise of a fairer culture was “bull.”
Her advice to new grads? Don’t expect loyalty. “Treat it like a toxic fling,” she said. Work two years, climb one step, then leave. “Stay longer, and the nepotism machine eats you alive.”
A Familiar Pattern
What’s happening in tech echoes declines in other industries. Factories, newspapers, and retail chains all followed similar paths: when jobs grew scarce, connections became the currency.
But tech’s collapse is different in speed and scale. The forces stack up: AI disruption, high interest rates choking investment, market saturation, and a wholesale shift in how companies hire.
The bar keeps rising. In 2022, 37 percent of job postings asked for five years’ experience. By 2025, it was 42 percent. Employers want instant value, not potential. The catch? Opportunities to gain that experience have dried up.
In 2024, 150,000 tech workers lost their jobs. Another 100,000 have been cut this year. The market is glutted with veterans competing with rookies for scraps. To cope, companies lean harder on referrals, touting them as “trusted pipelines.” The result: faster hires, less diversity, and a system that quietly shuts out anyone without connections.
A Promise Broken
For decades, tech sold itself as the great meritocracy. Anyone with skills and grit could break in, no matter their background. That belief shaped college majors, immigration policies, and the dreams of millions.
Now the façade is cracking. Entry-level roles are disappearing. AI is replacing human labor. Hiring decisions flow through personal networks instead of résumés.
Insiders with connections still have options. But for workers like Jane—graduates who believed effort would open doors—the industry feels rigged.
“Forget the fairy tale of bootstrapping your way in,” she warned. “It’s fixed from the start.”
The data backs her up. What no one yet knows is whether this is a painful correction or a permanent turn. Has tech hit a temporary storm—or has it joined the long list of industries where who you know matters more than what you can do?