Why Reddit’s CEO Plans to ‘Go Heavy’ Hiring New Graduates

As AI advances, leaders have spoken out about its ability to replace entry-level work in finance, technology and analytics. Now, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is flipping that dominant narrative. He argues that winning companies will be the ones that scoop up early-career talent instead of automating entry-level work.

Huffman said on a recent episode of the Sourcery with Molly O’Shea podcast that he wants to “go heavy” on hiring new graduates because he sees them as “AI native” workers who have an advantage over older hires. They learned to work alongside AI tools, making them especially productive.

“The kids coming out of college right now learned how to program with AI,” Huffman said. “They’re really good at it. It’s the old people like me… I don’t want to not write code anymore. The younger people don’t have that baggage, they just write with AI.”

Huffman’s “AI native” label reflects a belief that today’s new graduates grew up with generative AI, from ChatGPT to Midjourney, and instinctively use these tools in their work. In his view, this AI expertise makes them well-suited to work at a company like Reddit, which is embedding AI into products. For example, the company launched Reddit Answers a year ago to answer questions with an AI response based on what users are saying. Reddit is also selling its data to AI giants like Google and OpenAI.

Huffman said that top new graduates are rarely on the market for long — if Reddit doesn’t hire them right away, they are gone to other employers and may never be available again. He framed AI not as a headcount reducer, but as a force multiplier that lets engineers and other employees build products more quickly. 

AI is coming for entry-level work, say some leaders

Huffman is making a push into entry-level work at a time when many white-collar workers, especially students, are worried about AI taking over junior roles in fields like software engineering. 

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, a $380 billion AI company, predicted last year that AI would wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs by 2030, causing unemployment to rise as high as 20%. He added that there is a “need to warn the world” about AI replacing entry-level jobs, and predicted that AI would fully take over writing code for companies this year. 

He isn’t the only one issuing warnings. Geoffrey Hinton, known as the Godfather of AI for his pioneering work in developing the technology, said in June that AI will “replace everybody” in white-collar jobs. He predicted that a person using an AI tool would take over the work of ten people. 

Regardless of the current climate, Huffman said he will continue to hire new graduates, especially in engineering. “Let’s say AI makes our engineers 50%, 100% or even 10 times more productive,” he said on the podcast. “We’ll just build more stuff. Not do the same amount with less.”