Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Reskilling for jobs has changed dramatically.
• There are lessons to learn from the last decade’s tech job push.
• Uncertainty around AI makes reskilling workers tricky.

When Rider Rodriguez founded Code Louisville 13 years ago, he imagined the tech skills program would eventually go away — but not like this.

Funded in part by the Louisville Metro Government and grants, Code Louisville aimed to train Louisvillians for tech jobs by offering a free, flexible, six-month education in areas like web development, software development, and UX design. The hope was that the expansion of local tech talent would become an economic boon and an important investment for the Kentuckiana area.

“We had an under-representation, relatively speaking, for those good-paying [tech] jobs,” Rodriguez told ZDNET, explaining that the thinking was, “Why not us? Let’s see what we can do for people.”

Also: Companies embracing AI the most are hiring more people – including entry-level, report finds

At the program’s peak, cohorts of up to 300 students passed through its doors. Roughly 1,400 of them found jobs amid projections of about 2,000 open tech sector jobs in the city. It was one of many programs across the country created to fast-track Americans into well-paying tech jobs as demand quickly increased.

But in August, Code Louisville (which later expanded elsewhere in the state as Code:You) will shutter, citing, in part, a decline in job placement, and not, as Rodriguez initially envisioned, because tech skills have become too commonplace to warrant special training programs.

“There was no shortage of interest from job seekers looking for training; it was just the jobs that were available to entry-level people in the field that seemed to have dried up,” said Code:You Program Director Brian Luerman, who took over from Rodriguez.

The end of Code Louisville illustrates just how much and how quickly the need for tech talent has shifted — and how both companies and those they hire have to reappraise their efforts around reskilling.

A new reality

One of the harshest aspects of the current moment might just be the unpredictability of the job landscape. A report from research firm Forrester, for example, estimates AI will replace about 6% of jobs by 2030. Others, like the World Economic Forum, suggest AI will create more jobs than it takes, but only if businesses invest in their workers.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to escape headlines about layoffs, even if those cuts can’t be directly tied to the AI boom.

“The tech revolution has unfolded faster than what people anticipated, and it is likely to speed up even more in the future,” said Darrell West, senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. “People need to be humble about their predictions, because things that we may think we need five years from now may no longer be true.”

Also: AI agents are your new colleagues – how to get the best results

About a decade ago, the future of tech jobs seemed secure. In 2015, the Obama administration launched the TechHire Initiative, aimed at filling the projected half a million IT jobs that would be sitting open by 2020.

The effort included partnering with organizations like tech skills nonprofits and for-profit coding bootcamps. Advocates encouraged companies to consider hiring candidates with less formal training, from nontraditional backgrounds, and the push featured a strong social justice component, promoting the inclusion of women and people of color in this bright, shiny tech future.

In the most idealistic terms, tech jobs presented a near-surefire guarantee of entry into the middle class, and the tech industry needed as many bodies as possible to keep a global competitive advantage.

Also: How to beat the AI algorithm and get the job of your dreams

That’s no longer the case.

“No one has a crystal ball for exactly how all of this is going to play out with AI,” said Julie Bedard, managing director and partner at the Boston Consulting Group. “It’s like a real-time experiment to say, as we integrate AI into the work, what happens to jobs, skills, team size, career trajectories?”

Reskilling in a new era

For what West described as the “more enlightened companies,” part of the answer is to take their existing workforces and retrain them to handle a new reality that could include AI-enhanced workflows, agents, and more.

A report from the World Economic Forum found that 77% of employers globally plan to upskill their workers. Another report from Deloitte explained that “insufficient worker skills” are the biggest hurdle for companies integrating AI into their workflows. The main approach for correcting the issue is education.

Also: AI is getting better at your job, but you have time to adjust, according to MIT

The rise of internal training showcases how much of the burden of reskilling has shifted from individuals to companies.

And, whereas the TechHire era offered a relatively straightforward path — learn full stack, perhaps, and get a job — a broad and basic fluency with AI tools may not be enough.

Bedard said reskilling employees isn’t just about teaching a specific skill, but rather instilling the mindset to be able to adapt when those skills change in six months. And increasingly, that adaptability is a quality companies are looking for among job candidates.

However, many companies lack a thorough understanding of their current or near-future talent needs.

That lack of understanding among companies is a major roadblock, because, as BCG explains, the AI transformation is a workforce transformation.

Also: AI is causing cognitive fatigue. Here’s how to work with more haste and less speed

“We say it’s 10 or 20% about the data and algorithms, and it’s 70% about the people in the processes,” Bedard said.

What’s more, reskilling within companies doesn’t necessarily ward off layoffs. The World Economic Forum report also found that 41% of employers plan to shrink their workforces because of AI.

In an earnings call last year, Accenture’s CEO said the consultancy would cut staff who couldn’t be reskilled to use AI, and also noted the company had already reskilled north of half a million workers.

Or in the case of Verizon last year, the telco set up a $20 million reskilling fund for “departing” employees after a round of 13,000 layoffs. The fund offers a variety of certifications and digital skills training, as well as career coaching.

Lessons from the TechHire years

When looking back at the reskilling efforts of the last decade, there are a few lessons workforce experts flag as important going forward.

For one, entry-level roles still matter, even if they seem to be the most imperiled.

Survey data from the Graduate Management Admission Council found that a third of employers have already replaced some entry-level positions with AI, illustrating a fear that it’s going to be increasingly difficult for people to even start their careers.

But Code:You’s Luerman is concerned that focusing on more senior-level roles, without replenishing the pipeline, will create a skills gap in the future.

Also: 51% of professionals say AI workslop lowers their productivity – stop it in 2 steps

West pointed out there’s a retirement wave happening.

“We still will need humans to oversee the robots and make sure the automated tools are performing the way that we want, and so companies need to make sure that they’re training people for the skills that they’re going to need in the future,” he said.

Some tech leaders understand. Earlier in the year, IBM said it would triple hiring for entry-level roles while readjusting what those roles actually entail.

“If we don’t continue to invest in entry-level hires, what happens in 3 to 5 years?” said IBM Chief Human Resources Officer Nickle LaMoreaux in a blog post. The blog post also described how an entry-level developer might start working with clients earlier in their career instead of tackling documentation or basic coding.

Another lesson is what Ruthe Farmer, who served as a senior adviser for Tech Inclusion under the Obama administration and now runs the Last Mile Education Fund, described as the price of participation. During the TechHire years, although programs like coding bootcamps promised expedited paths to employment, many of them cost thousands of dollars and required full-time study for several months.

Also: Worried AI agents will replace you? 5 ways you can turn anxiety into action at work

“One thing I think we should be very aware of as we’re building these new initiatives is recognizing a lot of the focus on the prior efforts was let’s increase access and let’s increase awareness,” Farmer said. “That is true, but the price of participation is still too high for the very people who need it the most,” she said.

At the end of June, a nonprofit called Raise Up launched, which brings together both Democratic and Republican governors from several states to tackle AI job loss. The organization focuses on employer coalitions, education and training, and policy, with a particular aim at the state level.

As reported by the New York Times, one policy initiative includes wage insurance for workers who take lower-paying jobs instead of leaving the job market.

Among the companies backing Raise Up are OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as Autodesk, IBM, and AMD. As the Times pointed out, several of these companies have already laid off workers in the name of AI.

In any case, West explained that any effective retraining program needs to be tuned into what skills employers actually need, and those companies need to be invested in the programs.

“The key for retraining programs is actually putting people in jobs,” he said.

Legacy program

Back in Kentucky, Luerman and the various mentors who volunteer with Code:You are trying to be direct with this final class.

“Everybody sees what’s going on in the news and their own job searches and from talking with us and their fellow students and their mentors in the program,” he said, “the tech economy is just not in a great spot right now in the United States, and particularly in Kentucky.”

The program has been emphasizing how these tech skills can be complementary in other fields.

Also: Need a new job? These AI roles are the fastest-growing in the US, says LinkedIn

“You may not be making the total shift from … nurse to software developer, but maybe you can find a technology job within the healthcare system that you work to combine those skills,” he said.

Luerman said he’s reminded of the value of community, and hopes that those building the tech of the future remember that much of it stands on the culture among folks like software developers who shared and documented untold lines of code, posted problems, and collaborated.

It is also that same spirit that saw several hundred volunteers serve as mentors for Code:You over the years.

“I hope that’s our legacy,” Luerman said, “that it brought a community together to uplift people in the tech field.”