As graduation season collides with diminishing entry-level roles and slower hiring, the former distinguished engineer at Google has notes for fresh grads.
Kelsey Hightower, who retired from Google in 2023, told Business Insider that the current job market is vastly different from the one he entered decades ago, but young people still have more control over their careers than they may think.
“AI is definitely a very convenient reason to look at what you’re currently doing,” said Hightower of AI’s effect on the workplace, adding that the industry is undergoing a “recalibration.”
“The fact is that for the last 20 to 30 years, we’ve taken millions of super bright people who would’ve been good at anything, and we pushed them all into tech,” he said.
Here are three pieces of advice Hightower has for new graduates and early-career workers, especially those looking to break into the tech industry.
Treat extracurriculars like a job requirement
Hightower said that the new “harsh reality” is that grades and diplomas are no longer enough to stand out.
“All your work has been at school, you do projects for school, maybe you get a GPA, maybe you get a diploma from that, but no one knows if you’re going to provide anything special or if you’re just another person graduating,” Hightower said.
“You’re going to have to show your work in public,” he said. “I think now going into the workforce, you’re going to have to put together a strong set of extracurricular activities.”
Hightower said prospective graduates should think about workforce preparation the same way they once approached college admissions.
“That means open source projects, real-world things that you’ve actually built — not just internships, but things that people can really point to to say, oh, this was a meaningful contribution, whether it’s to a company or society,” he said.
Invest in real-world relationships
Referrals remain one of the most important pathways into coveted tech jobs, Hightower said, but many younger workers came of age during the pandemic and have built far more online connections than in-person ones.
“The network really matters,” Hightower said. “I think being in the physical world next to other people that are doing this work or going through the same challenges as you — it’s very different than trying to do that online.”
He said he remembers attending programming-language meetups and technology gatherings when he was younger, but sees fewer people investing in face-to-face professional relationships today.
“They’re on Reddit, they’re on social media, they’re on LinkedIn,” he said. “I see them posting all the time, but I don’t really see a lot of them building those real-world connections.”
Don’t become a ‘senior engineer and a junior human’
Hightower said that new graduates shouldn’t lose hope in the face of AI and should focus on their human qualities.
“I think a student really has to start thinking about what we traditionally call soft skills,” he said. “Like understanding people, being creative, artistic, having a big vision, having experienced the world, and all those creative elements that typically don’t get measured in the interview process.”
“Those are the only things that AI can’t do well,” he added. “It has no experience. It has no empathy for the human condition.”
He said that many workplaces have created what he calls “a senior engineer and a junior human,” where around 20% of workers are expected to be more robotic and are “reduced down” to what a computer could do.
“I can promise you a lot of people are not performing to the best of their ability, and in many cases, it’s not their fault,” he said. “They’ve driven the motivation out of you to the point where you’re almost just doing what a robot would do: open this ticket, assign this task, write this code, check it in, rinse and repeat.”
“Start making that list today. What can I bring to the table that this AI model cannot?”
