Recent graduates are sweating over limited job prospects; AI is quickly taking over entry-level roles, and many hiring managers doubt Gen Z’s competency in the workforce. But while tech and junior analyst jobs get swapped out for investments in automation, Stripe’s head of data and AI says she’s all-in on hiring recent graduates at the $91.5 billion financial services company.
“I’m actually hiring more new grads—now, they’re largely new grad PhDs—but more new grads than ever before,” Emily Glassberg Sands recently said on the Forward Future podcast. “Because they have the cutting edge skills, and they come in with fresh ideas, and they know how to think, and they know how to use the latest tools.”
The Stripe leader said she is concerned about the talent pipeline for traditional software engineering. Companies like Goldman Sachs and Salesforce have been replacing the essential role with AI, and Glassberg Sands questioned how undergraduates in the field will find opportunities they need to climb the ladder. Those entry-level jobs are most at-risk with AI agents and chatbots in the picture—and some leaders like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Google X’s former chief business officer Mo Gawdat have warned that the advanced tech will trigger a white-collar jobs armageddon. Glassberg Sands is holding out hope that frontline employees will be safe from the cull, but as more human skills are targeted for automation, there could be drastic effects on the careers of recent grads.
