I had a friend with plenty of experience in HR get laid off.
He looked for a job for 13 months. One of the top 3 smartest people I’ve ever known looked for seven months and had to take a big step back in his career, despite having Amazon and Home Depot on his resume.
Both of them said that even getting an interview was almost impossibly hard.
These are people in different parts of the county, and in different industries.
I think we have a serious problem on our hands with employment that’s probably not getting better any time soon.
My current job search has been the longest and most difficult of my career (5 months so far). Caveats:
- I’m only applying with climate tech companies
- I’m trying to transition back to engineering after a detour into product
- I’m trying to pivot into more hardware-focused roles
Most companies I apply to don’t respond at all, and I’ve had about 6 phone screens, two technical interviews, and one “we’d love to hire you once we get the funding for this position sometime in June”.
So from my perspective, the job market is awful, but YMMV.
P.S. if you’re working on any clean energy related software, I’d be a great addition to your team — https://matthewgerring.com
Having just been on the job market, my experience was that career pivots are much harder now. I initially intended to transition to a neighboring field after an education break - but none of the companies in that field would speak to me. At most I had a recruiter call with one who decided to reject. To complete this transition I had been planning on a massive pay cut.
When I focused on areas I had some more credible experience in, I got significantly better engagement and eventually found a very narrow niche where I had substantial success.
I think we're partially adjusting to a world where employers expect a very narrow experience match to their role. Employers are also paying a premium within that narrow match.
I suspect the third criteria might be the hardest.
In my experience HW companies are rarely interested software engineers from other, non-related domains unless they’re hiring a team to do web interface or something.
Candidate discovery is absolutely miserable right now. For a lot of people standing out is their resume and their LinkedIn page and the processes that exist just plain aren't getting the right eyes on those.
If you're getting recruiters continually its probably less about your qualification (not to downplay them, I'm sure they're lovely) and more about being on a handful of company's candidate and talent banks.
Everyone hates resumes, and being involved in any process a company can pay to bypass them is a huge advantage.
You can also tell how garbage a pipeline ATS screening and other such shit is by the sheer number of positions you see that are advertised for four to six weeks, go off-market only to re-appear 2-3 months later.
You know what's even more exhausting for an employer than having to invest energy into the top of your hiring funnel? Having to redo it every few months because an ATS filtered much of the cream off the top and sent you keyword stuffers to choose between.
From my non objective, not looking but I try to stay as informed as possible across South Africa, Europe, US perspective and regularly talk to people on both sides and ask them directly
- it's not as bad as it was in the last several months
- it's still very hard to get noticed, get interviews, etc there's so much noise on both sides that personal references are much more important than front door applications. This was always the case but much more now
- there were previously a lot of jobs for low agency people who were good at doing what they were told and meeting specs, AI is taking these as if you are willing to spend hours per week writing specs and checking results then tokens are better bang for buck than freelance devs now
- approximately all the demand now is for directly AI related plays and even people who get them don't feel secure because the whole industry feels so unstable and bubbly, but there's no money in anything not AI now
It's primarily a discovery problem, on both sides of the market.
Candidate-wise, everyone is slinging ChatGPT'd resumes left and right, which just leads to an arms race where the other side has to use LLMs to filter them, which just makes the situation even worse. The bar for "senior software engineer" is insanely low right now (and no, Leetcode doesn't count - I'm talking more pragmatic skills like being able to use a *nix terminal).
Employer-wise, everyone wants a unicorn that will lick their ass but isn't willing to pay (in either money or benefits) well for said service. Then they complain that "nobody wants to work anymore" or that there are no good candidates. Well, it's just that the good ones don't even bother applying.
As a result, lucky, good actors on either side find themselves via networking, while the less lucky ones are left to swim in a sea of trash.
Wife is a lead motion designer, ex Bumble etc. 6+ months of no job results in NYC. Not sure what's going on honestly, all very slow. Any tips welcome :)
I'll bite: 15.5 years tech experience across SRE, SWE, PM, PGM, & strategic initiatives-adjacent things. Last roles was Director/Principal level. Last projects were driving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of portfolio acquisition integrations (successfully) at a $5B public company. NYC metro area but I've been remote for 13 years. No degree, self-taught, first real tech role acquired when I was recruited after hacking a company back in 2010. Laid off in Feb, though garden leave ran through April.
I've had mixed results overall. Primarily looking at senior+ TPM, TPGM, SI roles. My network is hard to leverage due to being remote for so long. Lots of cold applications. 25% of applications got recruiter responses within a day, 25% within a week, 50% blocked at ATS, ghosted, or hiring being re-evaluated. Not as many direct recruiter outreaches as I've received in the past.
From the JD side, salaries seem to be more stratified and requirements, even for lower roles, seems to be higher than before. I've seen quite a few requests for 10+ years experience for mid-level PGM roles. In loose convos with friends, everyone wants a big name on a resume but no longer will pay a premium to get it.
No degree seems to be a bigger gate now than it was the last time I was searching. Being a generalist also seems to be more of a risk but I'm sure that's at least partly a fault in my own framing. I do not play the LinkedIn game well. My major contributions have been either inside a company (internally-focused, hard to share publicly or company-specific), mildly popular open source dev work (>100 stars), or things actually used everywhere but no one cares because it's not "real" dev work (created puppetlabs-firewall module, 10M+ downloads, adopted as part of Puppet Enterprise, used globally, no one cares). Without a strong public profile in a specific direction, I've been told I read as too hard to quantify.
Overall, it seems "bad" in that everyone is battling uncertainty about where things are going and being more vigilant to avoid the wrong hire. Credentials and resume pedigree seem to matter more than ever and roles are much more vertically aligned than I've seen them in the past. If you're good, with some amount of credentials, and a lot of vertical ownership then you'll probably be fine though it might take longer. If you're a generalist who's hard to pin down, you might be in for some pain.
Depends how you look at it. In tech its probably a lot easier get a job in most of e.g. Eastern Europe, of course unless you are at the top even (where the competition is higher) even adjusted by CoL salaries are much lower.
I have been wondering if my LinkedIn just happens to hit all of the right content somehow. I've been afraid to post or change anything just in case I upset some secret balance!
"Bad" is relative. It can be more difficult in compressed markets where talent is either in surplus (read: SV, Dub, etc) or where there's a distinct lack of enterprises/startups/whatever providing the surface layer. Given some of the retraction of "warm feelings", esp. re: US contractors in other countries circa American imperialism these days, it can also have a chilling effect on localized markets. But, this is all highly influenced/mutable daily.
> It can be more difficult in compressed markets where talent is either in surplus (read: SV, Dub, etc)
The Bay Area hiring market is extremely hot right now. Most of my peers who have been laid off and people I have laid off landed on their feet within weeks with Base+Bonus being comparable to big tech and some startups giving all-cash TC comparable to Netflix during it's peak.
I've been looking for 4 months and only had one phone screen from HR. Cybersecurity in Raleigh, my last employer was MAG 7. My particular problem is I took off 6 years to be a stay-at-home parent.
Having them reach out to you is key. Most job postings get thousands of applicants. I don’t think it’s possible to screen them. I just waded through the first 20 till I found someone who would work and hired him. I most certainly could have done better if I wanted to do a lot of filter and screen legwork. When they reach out you’re skipping the hardest 13mo of the job search.
I took your point to be "hirers would rather that job seekers contact them directly than look through resumes", but then your example is one where no one contacted you and you hired without looking through many resumes anyway. That doesn't really prove your point, and makes it sound like advice for people who don't much care who they hire.
Anyway, if people start to follow the advice of reaching out directly, that channel will become exactly as clogged as the job postings.
Hiring is now by filter. Corporations do not try to hire good people, they just avoid hiring questionable people. In other words they are looking for the lowest common denominator.
If you do not think this is true, then ask yourself whether the company is attempting to use AI. THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT AND VALUE. The safer and easier you are as hire the better you will be.
So yes. You were probably hired because you are not a super genius and because you don't have a fancy company name. Not despite it, but because of it.
The question I have is why do I now think many corporations are "too stupid to succeed"? I know they will not fail, but the panicky rush for the supposed safety of AI is stunning.
Yeah definitely this. I work in silicon verification and there's strong demand, weak supply and easy to get a job. My impression is it's very different in e.g. web frontend dev.
What sector/size are your offers? The "who is hiring" is shifting. Many large corps are now feeling a couple of squeezes from more expensive capital, to finding their footing in a quickly changing world, to over-hiring, to market pressures to "AI-ify" themselves (doubles as excuse to layoff caused by former three squeezes).
Mid-market saas seems to be getting crushed at the moment for different reasons.
Startups and the AI shops can't hire fast enough, but also seem to be looking at different candidate profiles.
My experience mid-2024 was pretty much the same, and when I look now things do seem easier to find. The only caveat is the wider white collar market still seems pretty affected. I have a handful of friends in advertising who have been laid off and looking for more than six months.
My friends have told me that here in LA there are positions but many want you to move or commute excessively far, and there's real wage suppression going on. Also, many of the positions are "unicorn" roles, where they want someone with very niche experience. It's an employer's market for them.
This is anecdotal and purely vibes based so YMMV but my view is that it’s a lot worse looking if you’re restricting yourself to just Big Tech like all of the programming subreddits do. There’s tons of companies outside that sphere who need engineers, but too many programmers thing it’s MAANG or bust.
Ragebait. Haven't been contacted by a single recruiter in years. The only time is someone trying to sell me their shitty interview course/grad school program.
From a different perspective: I do volunteer resume reviews and some coaching in a local group. Luck and timing play a role, of course.
I do see a lot of resumes that are really bad, though. Other people need a lot of help communicating during interviews. Some people go through their careers getting jobs during easy times where hiring managers will overlook a lot of things and be willing to take a chance on candidates with not so great resumes or communication skills that need help. That all stops in a job market like this where hiring managers aren’t going to waste their time on anything other than the 5-10 best applicants they get.
There’s a lot of cope material out there that shifts all of the blame to the companies: Stories about “ghost jobs” or beliefs about nepotism or “you dodged a bullet” comfort when someone doesn’t get hired. With half of the people I talk to getting them to accept that they need to improve how they’re applying and interviewing instead of blaming external factors is most of the battle. For the other half it can be things like focusing too narrowly (only FAANG, only remote, only a big title, only a compensation number they got 3 years ago during COVID and now they don’t want anything less) or some times just poor luck.
I saw this shitstorm brewing back in Jul 2025. Gave up on finding a job. Started 100% looking for cofounding (or at a minimum being a founding engineer in a startup). Networked like crazy. Landed exactly what I wanted. Cool startup, motivated people around me, money to burn on crazy projects.
If I had stayed for job hunting, I would be unemployed IMO.
Is this specifically for software development ? Are you just looking at large companies or also medium sized stuff that may hire in house but not be super well known ?
Not sure why you are being downvoted. This is my experience as well. If you have experience at FAANG doing “foundational work” (read: datacenter engineering, core software infrastructure, multi zone computing, point of presence management) you are still in high demand. Many of the people I know in such areas are going to the big hyperscalers to build the infrastructure to run AI inference. There are not a lot of people who have experience doing this stuff and that domain is in very high demand.
I say the following not to brag but to offer up some more perspective for you: you’re comp is in the lower-mid range of the market. Comp was there for remote, startup eng positions back in 2017.
As you move up in comp, the market actually gets more difficult, not just because the market is more competitive but because some companies won’t even interview qualified engineers with FAANG on their resume because they don’t believe they can afford them.
So I can understand why you might have an easier time compared to other engs.
I've never had a problem getting contacted. I've done some self reflection, and practice and now I'm much better able to communicate technically. It also helped that my last project before I was laid off was pretty wide reaching and impressive and being able to talk about that has made things a lot easier. I still haven't gotten a job I want, so I don't have a lot to offer you, but I'm getting better at interviewing.
OK shitty job market means different things to different people.
For my self, I was making over 300k, took a job (remote) at a little over 200, and now struggling to get that much and considering jobs at 170-180. I think the job market sucks, those jobs paying 300+ would normally respond to me aren't.
Yeah, this is my current read on the market. If you're looking for typical $400k senior software eng role at a public tech company - you're going to be having a really hard time. Meta closed many roles and is laying off 8000. The rest of the public tech market seems to be following similar.
If you're looking at 200k/yr roles in SF that are in person and looking closer to 996 than not - plenty seem to be hiring and trying to recruit. Downside? You have to be in SF 6 days/week and it's shit pay for the region. (You will likely have to do roommates because $200k/yr is borderline for a decent apartment in SF now due to 20% yoy price hikes)
Recruiters are ghosting me if i won't reply to their LinkedIn messages same day. I've applied to 65 jobs in the last month and landed three phone screenings and zero interviews.
I have 5 years experience including two at an F500 and two as a tech lead on my current team.
In 2022, with less than 2 years experience, i had competing offers all over 100k within a month of starting to apply places.
I've been applying off-and-on for a full year, consistently for a month.
I've been in the industry almost 30 years and the job market we have now is the worst I've ever seen. This includes the dot com crash, great recession, and COVID times.
Fortunately, I am still employed, but I am looking.
There's no monolithic "Job Market", so specific details matter. I have not been tracking details too closely but here are two things I am tracking:
- CRUD generation by running through JIRA tickets and clearing backlogs seem to be replaced by agentic workflows. So if you were an extremely productive dev who would machete your way through CRUD and API integrations, agentic workflows do it better, faster and for cheaper. I can point CC, Codex (Cursor in progress) at design specifications and it can turn those into perfect Django apps with well written test cases like there's no tomorrow. It might not make sense for such a business to continue to hire humans to do the same work
- Tokens for frontier models over the API are really expensive. I am personally aware of some companies that have monthly high five figure token expenses and one company that has a monthly six five figure token expense.
It's still worth it because they are churning out code 24x7 vs a typical human's 8x5 if you're putting in the right workflows, guardrails in place - that's a 4x productivity gain.
You're getting done in a month, what a full quarter would require humans to do. However, the company still has to pay for that and unless they are signing up 4x more paying net new customers every month with 0 churn, engineers have to be let go to pay for those tokens.
But how do they scale the reviewing of the agentic output? Or they just blindly trust it and worst case scenario they get to write a sob story on HN about how Claude has deleted the production db?
A company can operate aimlessly for a long time and carry along due to inertia and/or monopoly position. So chances are nobody (competent) is reviewing it.
> But how do they scale the reviewing of the agentic output? Or they just blindly trust it and worst case scenario they get to write a sob story on HN about how Claude has deleted the production db?
Like many things in life, it's highly situational and individualized. If you have top credential from a top school, your prospects are going to be better than someone with worse credentials, all else equal. Or if your expectations are too highs , things may seem worse.
As someone who has made hiring and firing decisions at the Board level, the people who are the most severely affected were either (in no order):
1. Working remotely in North America but demanding Bay Area salaries without the chops to justify it.
2. Working in Western Europe (they complain more about stuff irrelevant to the business but shy away from business critical decision making when offered the opportunity, unlike their Czech, Polish, Romanian, and Bulgarian peers despite us paying €90k-150k TCs across the EU, and Warsaw+Prague becoming Berlin level expensive).
3. Bootcamp grads who never fixed skills issues (foundational knowledge is foundational for a reason).
4. Getting paid Bay Area or Seattle salaries while living in LCOL regions like RTP. The whole point of a Cary office was inshoring - the talent was meh but if we needed a cheap QA engineer or move ops for a stagnant part of our business in 2019 we'd move that job and BU there. They didn't realize they were viewed as at the bottom of the totem pole skills wise.
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So long as you keep your skills sharp, have foundational computer science and engineering knowledge, and live in the primary tech hubs globally, it's a pretty good market.
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Edit: can't reply
> What, in your opinion are the “foundational” CS skills the #3 people are missing
If you've survived this long, I think you will be fine. But I'd recommend anyone from a bootcamp to take an OS course comparable to CS61 [0], an algos course comparable to CS170 [1], and a programming language design course comparable to CS421 [2].
There is foundational design and architectural patterns and knowledge that are taught in OS, Programming Language Design, and Algos classes that cannot be taught in a bootcamp.
My recommendation for people in your shoes is to do GATech's OMSCS or UPenn's online MCIT to learn some of the foundational stuff you were never introduced to at a bootcamp.
I’m a bootcamp grad (although it was an intense 5-night a week, year long bootcamp, not some 6-week build-a-demo class). I have a college degree but it’s in the arts.
I do try to continually improve my skill set, refresh on design patterns, etc. I’m currently employed and have been for the last six years. I don’t really know if I fall in category 3 or not.
What, in your opinion are the “foundational” CS skills the #3 people are missing?
As someone maybe in group (2). What kind of stereotyping is this? And why do you want to have non-complaining worker drones? Maybe older people from those countries are good at keeping their head down in soviet style work configurations, but is this the kind of company you want to have?
I'd more guess it is that there is a severe income tax advantage, B2B contracts are also easier in eastern Europe.
> why do you want to have non-complaining worker drones
We want opinionated engineers. But we want engineers who will respond to a slack message after 5pm during a P1 escalation.
> I'd more guess it is that there is a severe income tax advantage
Somewhat but not enough to move the needle because depending on the local government, they are matching cross-EU subsidizes.
> older people from those countries are good at keeping their head down in soviet style work configurations
Other way around. The Western European employees want a heads down and no input but high paying job.
CEE peers will push back and be opinionated but also try to think from a business outcomes perspective.
> soviet style work configurations
Which ironically is closer to German business and work culture instead of in Eastern Europe.
Edit: can't reply
> Of course if you pay someone 135k vs 70k real income
Salaries at the 75th percentile and above for SWEs are kept constant across Europe.
Heck, the companies for which I am a board member as well as companies at I have previously been management or line-level engineers all pay in the €130K-€170K TC range in Germany as well as across the CEE.
This is waaaaaay above TC for the average European in tech and we know it.
It sucks but the reality is the talent density in Western Europe is weaker than in the CEE, and it is mindset driven.
A German SWE wants a 9-5. A Czech SWE wants to build the next JetBrains.
We want to hire or fund the latter, not the former.
It's idk 10% for B2B in Poland and more than 50% in western Europe. Of course if you pay someone 135k vs 70k real income the first person will put in more effort.
In western Europe you'd just have to specify the availability requirements and they'd do it there as well. You'd just have to pay for it.
Edit: If you pay someone 150k€ in Germany what they see after-tax is just not that much. They are going to compare this with the 9-5 IGM position (when it is available...). Why not just admit that you don't want to pay equivalent wages for accessing the western european market?
> Why not just admit that you don't want to pay equivalent wages for accessing the western european market?
Is it his responsibility? If some countries have a better tax policy, why should he not take advantage of it, and ultimately end up in a situation that benefits both the employee and his company?
Well, if he says that a solution for me would be to move to a country with better tax policy.
If he says that it is some issue with western European work mentality, that won't help because my CV would show that I am western European.
We do. €130K-€170K TC is at the top of the range across ALL of Europe outside of HFT.
Money ain't a problem, attitude is.
The Western Europeans with the right attitude either move to America (eg. I'm sponsoring the O-1 of 2 founders who are shifting from London to SF for that reason) or end up becoming leadership for American companies in Western Europe.
I find it absurd how she generalized that Western Europe is complaining a lot and less pragmatic than whatever. The same for working remote but not having the chops like the 'Bay Area'. Could have been a serious question as well, why do you find it absurd?
Many others from the big labs are moving back to their core EE field into stuff like optical networks for data centers and so on by the way. That is a lot of the attrition.
At his level and position I doubt that is actually the primary reason simply because at his level, a way would have been found to retain him despite family issues (eg. opening an OpenAI tech office in Bangalore, Hyderabad, or Chennai or make him GM for OpenAI in India). Something else is going on with Srinivas' departure - either pushed out by Fidji or planning on starting his own thing.
That said, in my peer group I would say around 25-35% of people left for the family reason - especially after how COVID was handled in India. At one point, Google leadership was offering to match MTV salaries for engineers and PMs who Google wanted to retain but who decided to shift back to India to care for family during and slightly after the pandemic.
> Many others from the big labs are moving back to their core EE field into stuff like optical networks for data centers and so on by the way. That is a lot of the attrition.
My hunch is he is probably leaving to work on something like this or an adjacent space, but admitting as such would leave him open to litigation. That said, given his age I'd assume family decisions are also somewhat playing a role.
Ofc, some Indian diaspora types do leave for other reasons (eg. Sridhar Vembu and his divorce).
On the EE and optical side, diaspora founders are actually serious about leaving the US for Hyderabad simply because the Indian vintages of American deeptech funds plus the RDI are giving ridiculously competitive funding terms for startups in that space.
I had a friend with plenty of experience in HR get laid off.
He looked for a job for 13 months. One of the top 3 smartest people I’ve ever known looked for seven months and had to take a big step back in his career, despite having Amazon and Home Depot on his resume.
Both of them said that even getting an interview was almost impossibly hard.
These are people in different parts of the county, and in different industries.
I think we have a serious problem on our hands with employment that’s probably not getting better any time soon.
So much pre-employment screening and automated filtering. Getting to the interview stage is like having your paper refereed instead of desk rejected.
Cold applications are very difficult, especially because of the sheer volume of applicants.
Unless I have a referral, it’s such a low probability exercise it’s not worth it for me.
Whenever I see “100+ candidates have applied” on LinkedIn, I just ignore the job posting.
My current job search has been the longest and most difficult of my career (5 months so far). Caveats:
- I’m only applying with climate tech companies
- I’m trying to transition back to engineering after a detour into product
- I’m trying to pivot into more hardware-focused roles
Most companies I apply to don’t respond at all, and I’ve had about 6 phone screens, two technical interviews, and one “we’d love to hire you once we get the funding for this position sometime in June”.
So from my perspective, the job market is awful, but YMMV.
P.S. if you’re working on any clean energy related software, I’d be a great addition to your team — https://matthewgerring.com
Having just been on the job market, my experience was that career pivots are much harder now. I initially intended to transition to a neighboring field after an education break - but none of the companies in that field would speak to me. At most I had a recruiter call with one who decided to reject. To complete this transition I had been planning on a massive pay cut.
When I focused on areas I had some more credible experience in, I got significantly better engagement and eventually found a very narrow niche where I had substantial success.
I think we're partially adjusting to a world where employers expect a very narrow experience match to their role. Employers are also paying a premium within that narrow match.
I suspect the third criteria might be the hardest.
In my experience HW companies are rarely interested software engineers from other, non-related domains unless they’re hiring a team to do web interface or something.
To be fair, in the best of climates that is still searching in a niche market with an attempt to do something new with an engineering experience gap
Good luck, brother.
Candidate discovery is absolutely miserable right now. For a lot of people standing out is their resume and their LinkedIn page and the processes that exist just plain aren't getting the right eyes on those.
If you're getting recruiters continually its probably less about your qualification (not to downplay them, I'm sure they're lovely) and more about being on a handful of company's candidate and talent banks.
Everyone hates resumes, and being involved in any process a company can pay to bypass them is a huge advantage.
You can also tell how garbage a pipeline ATS screening and other such shit is by the sheer number of positions you see that are advertised for four to six weeks, go off-market only to re-appear 2-3 months later.
You know what's even more exhausting for an employer than having to invest energy into the top of your hiring funnel? Having to redo it every few months because an ATS filtered much of the cream off the top and sent you keyword stuffers to choose between.
From my non objective, not looking but I try to stay as informed as possible across South Africa, Europe, US perspective and regularly talk to people on both sides and ask them directly
- it's not as bad as it was in the last several months
- it's still very hard to get noticed, get interviews, etc there's so much noise on both sides that personal references are much more important than front door applications. This was always the case but much more now
- there were previously a lot of jobs for low agency people who were good at doing what they were told and meeting specs, AI is taking these as if you are willing to spend hours per week writing specs and checking results then tokens are better bang for buck than freelance devs now
- approximately all the demand now is for directly AI related plays and even people who get them don't feel secure because the whole industry feels so unstable and bubbly, but there's no money in anything not AI now
It's primarily a discovery problem, on both sides of the market.
Candidate-wise, everyone is slinging ChatGPT'd resumes left and right, which just leads to an arms race where the other side has to use LLMs to filter them, which just makes the situation even worse. The bar for "senior software engineer" is insanely low right now (and no, Leetcode doesn't count - I'm talking more pragmatic skills like being able to use a *nix terminal).
Employer-wise, everyone wants a unicorn that will lick their ass but isn't willing to pay (in either money or benefits) well for said service. Then they complain that "nobody wants to work anymore" or that there are no good candidates. Well, it's just that the good ones don't even bother applying.
As a result, lucky, good actors on either side find themselves via networking, while the less lucky ones are left to swim in a sea of trash.
Wait, you mean there are senior software engineers who don't know how to use a *nix terminal? I've been using them since I was like 16 or so.
Wife is a lead motion designer, ex Bumble etc. 6+ months of no job results in NYC. Not sure what's going on honestly, all very slow. Any tips welcome :)
I'll bite: 15.5 years tech experience across SRE, SWE, PM, PGM, & strategic initiatives-adjacent things. Last roles was Director/Principal level. Last projects were driving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of portfolio acquisition integrations (successfully) at a $5B public company. NYC metro area but I've been remote for 13 years. No degree, self-taught, first real tech role acquired when I was recruited after hacking a company back in 2010. Laid off in Feb, though garden leave ran through April.
I've had mixed results overall. Primarily looking at senior+ TPM, TPGM, SI roles. My network is hard to leverage due to being remote for so long. Lots of cold applications. 25% of applications got recruiter responses within a day, 25% within a week, 50% blocked at ATS, ghosted, or hiring being re-evaluated. Not as many direct recruiter outreaches as I've received in the past.
From the JD side, salaries seem to be more stratified and requirements, even for lower roles, seems to be higher than before. I've seen quite a few requests for 10+ years experience for mid-level PGM roles. In loose convos with friends, everyone wants a big name on a resume but no longer will pay a premium to get it.
No degree seems to be a bigger gate now than it was the last time I was searching. Being a generalist also seems to be more of a risk but I'm sure that's at least partly a fault in my own framing. I do not play the LinkedIn game well. My major contributions have been either inside a company (internally-focused, hard to share publicly or company-specific), mildly popular open source dev work (>100 stars), or things actually used everywhere but no one cares because it's not "real" dev work (created puppetlabs-firewall module, 10M+ downloads, adopted as part of Puppet Enterprise, used globally, no one cares). Without a strong public profile in a specific direction, I've been told I read as too hard to quantify.
Overall, it seems "bad" in that everyone is battling uncertainty about where things are going and being more vigilant to avoid the wrong hire. Credentials and resume pedigree seem to matter more than ever and roles are much more vertically aligned than I've seen them in the past. If you're good, with some amount of credentials, and a lot of vertical ownership then you'll probably be fine though it might take longer. If you're a generalist who's hard to pin down, you might be in for some pain.
There is a lot of "spam" jobs.
You see the same offer by the same company for months! with the same generic reject (seriously I think no even check the resume or whatever!).
Then, a lot of fake I-am-a-AI "companies and middleman and such things.
Ironically, I have been contacted more by somebody looking here in hn than in all the job boards!
Totally depends on where you are and your past experience. Being in the US puts you at a huge advantage compared to just about anywhere.
Maybe you're just lucky.
Depends how you look at it. In tech its probably a lot easier get a job in most of e.g. Eastern Europe, of course unless you are at the top even (where the competition is higher) even adjusted by CoL salaries are much lower.
I have been wondering if my LinkedIn just happens to hit all of the right content somehow. I've been afraid to post or change anything just in case I upset some secret balance!
I get a ton of hits too on linkedin if you want to compare or contrast ever
"Bad" is relative. It can be more difficult in compressed markets where talent is either in surplus (read: SV, Dub, etc) or where there's a distinct lack of enterprises/startups/whatever providing the surface layer. Given some of the retraction of "warm feelings", esp. re: US contractors in other countries circa American imperialism these days, it can also have a chilling effect on localized markets. But, this is all highly influenced/mutable daily.
> It can be more difficult in compressed markets where talent is either in surplus (read: SV, Dub, etc)
The Bay Area hiring market is extremely hot right now. Most of my peers who have been laid off and people I have laid off landed on their feet within weeks with Base+Bonus being comparable to big tech and some startups giving all-cash TC comparable to Netflix during it's peak.
> Given some of the retraction of "warm feelings"
Why do you say this? Is this coming from personal experience, or anecdotally?
I've been looking for 4 months and only had one phone screen from HR. Cybersecurity in Raleigh, my last employer was MAG 7. My particular problem is I took off 6 years to be a stay-at-home parent.
Can't you simply fill that gap on your resume with something made up? "Self employed", "freelancer", "stealth startup", "confidential employer" etc.
How would the companies ever know?
Email in my bio, I’m in the triangle and would love to connect. I know some cyber folks who I can link you up with.
People like you are wonderful!
Are you involved in DefCon? There's probably a local chapter that would help you get in touch with the right people.
Also, I totally wish I could afford to be a stay at home parent. I'm sure you made the right choice with those 6 years!
> Currently I’m waiting for a final decision from another fully remote company and I’m in midstage with 2 more.
At the top you said you had a new job after a week, then why are you waiting on a second and continuing interviewing with two other companies.
Yes I took a not ideal job while I continue interviewing for better ones.
I'm sure your new employer is proud of you.
The employee's goal here isn't to make the employer feel proud, it's to exchange their services for money.
If the employer wants an employee they can feel proud of, well, that's a service too, and one they can purchase with money, if they choose.
Judging by the OPs comments, the employer could easily retain them if they offered them remote and a bit more comp.
It’s on the employer to retain talent.
I'm sure the company is only doing what's best for the employees. How ungrateful of them.
Fuck My employer, and yours, and theirs
They certainly think the same about you. We could all be gone with no severance by tonight if they felt like it. We owe them nothing.
Manager spotted.
Good thing I don't work just for their benefit.
Are you for real? Employees owe employers nothing more than their labor for their last paycheck.
Having them reach out to you is key. Most job postings get thousands of applicants. I don’t think it’s possible to screen them. I just waded through the first 20 till I found someone who would work and hired him. I most certainly could have done better if I wanted to do a lot of filter and screen legwork. When they reach out you’re skipping the hardest 13mo of the job search.
To anyone considering quitting, search first.
I took your point to be "hirers would rather that job seekers contact them directly than look through resumes", but then your example is one where no one contacted you and you hired without looking through many resumes anyway. That doesn't really prove your point, and makes it sound like advice for people who don't much care who they hire.
Anyway, if people start to follow the advice of reaching out directly, that channel will become exactly as clogged as the job postings.
Hiring is now by filter. Corporations do not try to hire good people, they just avoid hiring questionable people. In other words they are looking for the lowest common denominator.
If you do not think this is true, then ask yourself whether the company is attempting to use AI. THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT AND VALUE. The safer and easier you are as hire the better you will be.
So yes. You were probably hired because you are not a super genius and because you don't have a fancy company name. Not despite it, but because of it.
The question I have is why do I now think many corporations are "too stupid to succeed"? I know they will not fail, but the panicky rush for the supposed safety of AI is stunning.
I think geography and industry will have a large influence on the job market.
Yeah definitely this. I work in silicon verification and there's strong demand, weak supply and easy to get a job. My impression is it's very different in e.g. web frontend dev.
I get contacted by recruiters for remote (USA) jobs in all kinds of industries, mostly not ones that I have any experience in.
What sector/size are your offers? The "who is hiring" is shifting. Many large corps are now feeling a couple of squeezes from more expensive capital, to finding their footing in a quickly changing world, to over-hiring, to market pressures to "AI-ify" themselves (doubles as excuse to layoff caused by former three squeezes).
Mid-market saas seems to be getting crushed at the moment for different reasons.
Startups and the AI shops can't hire fast enough, but also seem to be looking at different candidate profiles.
I think in the past year it’s gotten better if you are already established. 2023 was the worst of it for me.
My experience mid-2024 was pretty much the same, and when I look now things do seem easier to find. The only caveat is the wider white collar market still seems pretty affected. I have a handful of friends in advertising who have been laid off and looking for more than six months.
My friends have told me that here in LA there are positions but many want you to move or commute excessively far, and there's real wage suppression going on. Also, many of the positions are "unicorn" roles, where they want someone with very niche experience. It's an employer's market for them.
This is anecdotal and purely vibes based so YMMV but my view is that it’s a lot worse looking if you’re restricting yourself to just Big Tech like all of the programming subreddits do. There’s tons of companies outside that sphere who need engineers, but too many programmers thing it’s MAANG or bust.
I am sure the smaller companies are inundated with applications too and have to be very choosy, with high rejection rates.
Ragebait. Haven't been contacted by a single recruiter in years. The only time is someone trying to sell me their shitty interview course/grad school program.
And yet, there are other people prepared to say they continue to be contacted by recruiters currently.
Yup totally organic.
I get one a week minimum, hundreds per year. I don’t follow up often enough to know whether they are real and separate etc though.
From a different perspective: I do volunteer resume reviews and some coaching in a local group. Luck and timing play a role, of course.
I do see a lot of resumes that are really bad, though. Other people need a lot of help communicating during interviews. Some people go through their careers getting jobs during easy times where hiring managers will overlook a lot of things and be willing to take a chance on candidates with not so great resumes or communication skills that need help. That all stops in a job market like this where hiring managers aren’t going to waste their time on anything other than the 5-10 best applicants they get.
There’s a lot of cope material out there that shifts all of the blame to the companies: Stories about “ghost jobs” or beliefs about nepotism or “you dodged a bullet” comfort when someone doesn’t get hired. With half of the people I talk to getting them to accept that they need to improve how they’re applying and interviewing instead of blaming external factors is most of the battle. For the other half it can be things like focusing too narrowly (only FAANG, only remote, only a big title, only a compensation number they got 3 years ago during COVID and now they don’t want anything less) or some times just poor luck.
I saw this shitstorm brewing back in Jul 2025. Gave up on finding a job. Started 100% looking for cofounding (or at a minimum being a founding engineer in a startup). Networked like crazy. Landed exactly what I wanted. Cool startup, motivated people around me, money to burn on crazy projects.
If I had stayed for job hunting, I would be unemployed IMO.
I'm kinda looking at jobs available (Europe):
- AI (as in: stupid AI wrappers "disrupting" shit)
- FinTech
- Gambling
- AI in FinTech
That's about 99% of jobs advertised. No idea how hard it's to get hired, but even jobs on offer are shitty.
Most people on Earth would trade up to your idea of a shitty job.
And it’s been like this since ~2023
Is this specifically for software development ? Are you just looking at large companies or also medium sized stuff that may hire in house but not be super well known ?
Software development. Looking just at a filtered search for "backend/fullstack"
It's K shaped, like the economy.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. This is my experience as well. If you have experience at FAANG doing “foundational work” (read: datacenter engineering, core software infrastructure, multi zone computing, point of presence management) you are still in high demand. Many of the people I know in such areas are going to the big hyperscalers to build the infrastructure to run AI inference. There are not a lot of people who have experience doing this stuff and that domain is in very high demand.
I created this post because my experience is the complete opposite.
You didn't give a lot of info
How much are you getting paid?
Going into the office is important too, are you in sf?
I'm not in SF. I'm making mid $100k and interviewing for remote jobs in the $170k+ range.
I say the following not to brag but to offer up some more perspective for you: you’re comp is in the lower-mid range of the market. Comp was there for remote, startup eng positions back in 2017.
As you move up in comp, the market actually gets more difficult, not just because the market is more competitive but because some companies won’t even interview qualified engineers with FAANG on their resume because they don’t believe they can afford them.
So I can understand why you might have an easier time compared to other engs.
What did you do to start getting traction for senior positions? You were struggling in the beginning of the year.
I've never had a problem getting contacted. I've done some self reflection, and practice and now I'm much better able to communicate technically. It also helped that my last project before I was laid off was pretty wide reaching and impressive and being able to talk about that has made things a lot easier. I still haven't gotten a job I want, so I don't have a lot to offer you, but I'm getting better at interviewing.
OK shitty job market means different things to different people.
For my self, I was making over 300k, took a job (remote) at a little over 200, and now struggling to get that much and considering jobs at 170-180. I think the job market sucks, those jobs paying 300+ would normally respond to me aren't.
I don't even know what I would do with that much money. Maybe have 4 or 5 kids.
Retire earlier?
Yeah, this is my current read on the market. If you're looking for typical $400k senior software eng role at a public tech company - you're going to be having a really hard time. Meta closed many roles and is laying off 8000. The rest of the public tech market seems to be following similar.
If you're looking at 200k/yr roles in SF that are in person and looking closer to 996 than not - plenty seem to be hiring and trying to recruit. Downside? You have to be in SF 6 days/week and it's shit pay for the region. (You will likely have to do roommates because $200k/yr is borderline for a decent apartment in SF now due to 20% yoy price hikes)
Location probably matters, where are you?
Recruiters are ghosting me if i won't reply to their LinkedIn messages same day. I've applied to 65 jobs in the last month and landed three phone screenings and zero interviews.
I have 5 years experience including two at an F500 and two as a tech lead on my current team.
In 2022, with less than 2 years experience, i had competing offers all over 100k within a month of starting to apply places.
I've been applying off-and-on for a full year, consistently for a month.
Sure seems pretty bleak to me
I've been in the industry almost 30 years and the job market we have now is the worst I've ever seen. This includes the dot com crash, great recession, and COVID times.
Fortunately, I am still employed, but I am looking.
Wow lots of astroturfing going on here.
There's no monolithic "Job Market", so specific details matter. I have not been tracking details too closely but here are two things I am tracking:
- CRUD generation by running through JIRA tickets and clearing backlogs seem to be replaced by agentic workflows. So if you were an extremely productive dev who would machete your way through CRUD and API integrations, agentic workflows do it better, faster and for cheaper. I can point CC, Codex (Cursor in progress) at design specifications and it can turn those into perfect Django apps with well written test cases like there's no tomorrow. It might not make sense for such a business to continue to hire humans to do the same work
- Tokens for frontier models over the API are really expensive. I am personally aware of some companies that have monthly high five figure token expenses and one company that has a monthly six five figure token expense.
It's still worth it because they are churning out code 24x7 vs a typical human's 8x5 if you're putting in the right workflows, guardrails in place - that's a 4x productivity gain.
You're getting done in a month, what a full quarter would require humans to do. However, the company still has to pay for that and unless they are signing up 4x more paying net new customers every month with 0 churn, engineers have to be let go to pay for those tokens.
But how do they scale the reviewing of the agentic output? Or they just blindly trust it and worst case scenario they get to write a sob story on HN about how Claude has deleted the production db?
A company can operate aimlessly for a long time and carry along due to inertia and/or monopoly position. So chances are nobody (competent) is reviewing it.
Have the agents review their own output, obviously. What could go wrong
> But how do they scale the reviewing of the agentic output? Or they just blindly trust it and worst case scenario they get to write a sob story on HN about how Claude has deleted the production db?
Thats a fantastic question. Here's my take: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917314 - would love your thoughts on it.
In short, I think you're asking a billion dollar question - how do we solve the verification, validation, and QA bottleneck?
The way I handle it for my personal projects is I invest tremendous time and effort into writing thorough test and validation suites.
I bet the next billion dollar companies will be those addressing this verification, validation, and QA bottleneck.
Yes, and going on 4+ decades, now :(
Like many things in life, it's highly situational and individualized. If you have top credential from a top school, your prospects are going to be better than someone with worse credentials, all else equal. Or if your expectations are too highs , things may seem worse.
It isn't.
As someone who has made hiring and firing decisions at the Board level, the people who are the most severely affected were either (in no order):
1. Working remotely in North America but demanding Bay Area salaries without the chops to justify it.
2. Working in Western Europe (they complain more about stuff irrelevant to the business but shy away from business critical decision making when offered the opportunity, unlike their Czech, Polish, Romanian, and Bulgarian peers despite us paying €90k-150k TCs across the EU, and Warsaw+Prague becoming Berlin level expensive).
3. Bootcamp grads who never fixed skills issues (foundational knowledge is foundational for a reason).
4. Getting paid Bay Area or Seattle salaries while living in LCOL regions like RTP. The whole point of a Cary office was inshoring - the talent was meh but if we needed a cheap QA engineer or move ops for a stagnant part of our business in 2019 we'd move that job and BU there. They didn't realize they were viewed as at the bottom of the totem pole skills wise.
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So long as you keep your skills sharp, have foundational computer science and engineering knowledge, and live in the primary tech hubs globally, it's a pretty good market.
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Edit: can't reply
> What, in your opinion are the “foundational” CS skills the #3 people are missing
If you've survived this long, I think you will be fine. But I'd recommend anyone from a bootcamp to take an OS course comparable to CS61 [0], an algos course comparable to CS170 [1], and a programming language design course comparable to CS421 [2].
There is foundational design and architectural patterns and knowledge that are taught in OS, Programming Language Design, and Algos classes that cannot be taught in a bootcamp.
My recommendation for people in your shoes is to do GATech's OMSCS or UPenn's online MCIT to learn some of the foundational stuff you were never introduced to at a bootcamp.
[0] - https://cs61.seas.harvard.edu/site/2025/
[1] - https://cs170.org/
[2] - https://cs421-sp26-web.pages.dev/
I’m a bootcamp grad (although it was an intense 5-night a week, year long bootcamp, not some 6-week build-a-demo class). I have a college degree but it’s in the arts.
I do try to continually improve my skill set, refresh on design patterns, etc. I’m currently employed and have been for the last six years. I don’t really know if I fall in category 3 or not.
What, in your opinion are the “foundational” CS skills the #3 people are missing?
As someone maybe in group (2). What kind of stereotyping is this? And why do you want to have non-complaining worker drones? Maybe older people from those countries are good at keeping their head down in soviet style work configurations, but is this the kind of company you want to have?
I'd more guess it is that there is a severe income tax advantage, B2B contracts are also easier in eastern Europe.
> why do you want to have non-complaining worker drones
We want opinionated engineers. But we want engineers who will respond to a slack message after 5pm during a P1 escalation.
> I'd more guess it is that there is a severe income tax advantage
Somewhat but not enough to move the needle because depending on the local government, they are matching cross-EU subsidizes.
> older people from those countries are good at keeping their head down in soviet style work configurations
Other way around. The Western European employees want a heads down and no input but high paying job.
CEE peers will push back and be opinionated but also try to think from a business outcomes perspective.
> soviet style work configurations
Which ironically is closer to German business and work culture instead of in Eastern Europe.
Edit: can't reply
> Of course if you pay someone 135k vs 70k real income
Salaries at the 75th percentile and above for SWEs are kept constant across Europe.
Heck, the companies for which I am a board member as well as companies at I have previously been management or line-level engineers all pay in the €130K-€170K TC range in Germany as well as across the CEE.
This is waaaaaay above TC for the average European in tech and we know it.
It sucks but the reality is the talent density in Western Europe is weaker than in the CEE, and it is mindset driven.
A German SWE wants a 9-5. A Czech SWE wants to build the next JetBrains.
We want to hire or fund the latter, not the former.
It's idk 10% for B2B in Poland and more than 50% in western Europe. Of course if you pay someone 135k vs 70k real income the first person will put in more effort.
In western Europe you'd just have to specify the availability requirements and they'd do it there as well. You'd just have to pay for it.
Edit: If you pay someone 150k€ in Germany what they see after-tax is just not that much. They are going to compare this with the 9-5 IGM position (when it is available...). Why not just admit that you don't want to pay equivalent wages for accessing the western european market?
> Why not just admit that you don't want to pay equivalent wages for accessing the western european market?
Is it his responsibility? If some countries have a better tax policy, why should he not take advantage of it, and ultimately end up in a situation that benefits both the employee and his company?
Well, if he says that a solution for me would be to move to a country with better tax policy. If he says that it is some issue with western European work mentality, that won't help because my CV would show that I am western European.
> If he says that it is some issue with western European work mentality, that won't help because my CV would show that I am western European.
If you are actually talented, have a good work ethic, and the track record to show that then get a job that relocates you to London.
That is your only option if you want to stay in Western Europe as a SWE long term.
>But we want engineers who will respond to a slack message after 5pm during a P1 escalation.
Then you're going to have to pay, aren't you.
We do. €130K-€170K TC is at the top of the range across ALL of Europe outside of HFT.
Money ain't a problem, attitude is.
The Western Europeans with the right attitude either move to America (eg. I'm sponsoring the O-1 of 2 founders who are shifting from London to SF for that reason) or end up becoming leadership for American companies in Western Europe.
Hey, care to share some company names if you're still hiring?
I feel so much disdain for workers coming from your words. I hope to never work for someone like you
He’s a bozo who said he would delete his account.
And yet he’s still among us. Pathetic lmao.
Doesn't matter to me. You're in Germany, not Czechia.
And you’re still on HN after posting you wanted your account deleted.
Who are you mate? You think you’re someone special? Hahahahh
Translation: for almost everyone not living in a major tech hub, it's not a good market.
I.e. "for most people..."
lol you might work for my company re: point 4
Why do you even hire in Europe when the smartest people are in the Bay Area?
Why even post such an absurd comment?
I find it absurd how she generalized that Western Europe is complaining a lot and less pragmatic than whatever. The same for working remote but not having the chops like the 'Bay Area'. Could have been a serious question as well, why do you find it absurd?
In some subindustries within tech (eg. Cybersecurity), the best engineering talent is now in Eastern Europe, Israel, and India and not the Bay.
Additionally, diaspora engineers whose parents are growing old are starting to move back to the old country to be close with them.
I see you read the srinivas narayan article :P
He's moving back close to where I stay.
Many others from the big labs are moving back to their core EE field into stuff like optical networks for data centers and so on by the way. That is a lot of the attrition.
> I see you read the srinivas narayan article
Nope.
At his level and position I doubt that is actually the primary reason simply because at his level, a way would have been found to retain him despite family issues (eg. opening an OpenAI tech office in Bangalore, Hyderabad, or Chennai or make him GM for OpenAI in India). Something else is going on with Srinivas' departure - either pushed out by Fidji or planning on starting his own thing.
That said, in my peer group I would say around 25-35% of people left for the family reason - especially after how COVID was handled in India. At one point, Google leadership was offering to match MTV salaries for engineers and PMs who Google wanted to retain but who decided to shift back to India to care for family during and slightly after the pandemic.
> Many others from the big labs are moving back to their core EE field into stuff like optical networks for data centers and so on by the way. That is a lot of the attrition.
My hunch is he is probably leaving to work on something like this or an adjacent space, but admitting as such would leave him open to litigation. That said, given his age I'd assume family decisions are also somewhat playing a role.
Ofc, some Indian diaspora types do leave for other reasons (eg. Sridhar Vembu and his divorce).
On the EE and optical side, diaspora founders are actually serious about leaving the US for Hyderabad simply because the Indian vintages of American deeptech funds plus the RDI are giving ridiculously competitive funding terms for startups in that space.
Most jobs don’t require the smartest people.
ha! thanks