From my experience when I lived in Europe, the following is important to get a job in IT:
- Degree, a general one is good, a specific one related to the job is better (especially in the German-speaking area, I don't know about the others)
- Experience, especially in well-known big companies
They used a trick there to reduce the leverage of employees in IT and created the myth of a "shortage of skilled workers" by repeatedly publishing this in various media, creating fake statistics and ghost job ads. A lot of foreigners jumped in and also the existing workforce, afraid of losing their jobs or not finding a new one, didn't bother to negotiate well anymore and are doing jobs for really bad money (e.g. 50k/year).
Now you add the "AI will replace you anyway" mantra, which initially increases this fear and the willingness of employees to work for low wages.
The effect is a workforce that is well educated and willing to work for food and shelter, no questions asked.
If you're trying to compete, a degree helps, but in the end you may be undercut by someone with the same degree (with better grades) but who takes less money because they don't know their worth.
My opinion: try to get out of Europe, run your own business or find a different career / business opportunity. These are bad times for CS employees in Europe.
They also said shortage of skilled workers in the US.
It's kind of upsetting because it's supposed to be the nature of free markets that demand increases price in order to better allocate labor resources, that means wages should be going up. So the message shouldn't be there's a shortage, the message should be that it's in high demand and that should be matched by increased starting salaries.
When anyone said "shortage of skilled workers" they meant "shortage of cheap satisfactory labor"/"software costs too much".
Shortage of workers is an excuse to bring in offshoring or short term visas / save money. I would prefer strategic longer term permanent immigration of quality candidates rather than moving the skills and knowledge overseas.
I'm not sure getting out of Europe would help that. Where would you suggest, maybe Canada, Australia, New Zealand but the situation will continue to be volatile I think. I don't think going to US is ideal at the current time for Europeans. Running a business is probably the best option if you can do something in demand. A different career is probably only realistic if you're very young as the only things I could suggest that would be a lot better (financially) might be by training as a professional Accountant, Lawyer or Doctor (and all of these might also be threatened by AI.
This is a UK perspective not Europe, but there are a lot of parallels (until recently) and I know Europe pretty well.
- Degree, a general one is good, a specific one related to the job is better (especially in the German-speaking area, I don't know about the others)
- Experience, especially in well-known big companies
They used a trick there to reduce the leverage of employees in IT and created the myth of a "shortage of skilled workers" by repeatedly publishing this in various media, creating fake statistics and ghost job ads. A lot of foreigners jumped in and also the existing workforce, afraid of losing their jobs or not finding a new one, didn't bother to negotiate well anymore and are doing jobs for really bad money (e.g. 50k/year).
Now you add the "AI will replace you anyway" mantra, which initially increases this fear and the willingness of employees to work for low wages.
The effect is a workforce that is well educated and willing to work for food and shelter, no questions asked.
If you're trying to compete, a degree helps, but in the end you may be undercut by someone with the same degree (with better grades) but who takes less money because they don't know their worth.
My opinion: try to get out of Europe, run your own business or find a different career / business opportunity. These are bad times for CS employees in Europe.