Ask HN: Is the Job Market Actually Bad?

138 points by idontwantthis 15 days ago | 211 comments

I’m not trying to brag, I am just genuinely confused. I got laid off recently and I had a new job within a week because I constantly get contacted by recruiters both through LinkedIn and directly by email. I’ve never sent an application to anyone and I’ve had dozens of interviews in the past year while I was looking for a new job before getting laid off.

I would have had a new one earlier except I was aiming for fully remote and a big raise, and I failed their correspondingly difficult evaluations. Never got ghosted, never had to deal with AI, never had to fill out an application. I took a local, in office offer that I would have ignored if I were still employed.

Currently I’m waiting for a final decision from another fully remote company and I’m in midstage with 2 more.

I’m not a super genius engineer, and I don’t have any fancy companies on my resume. How unusual is this experience?

iambateman 15 days ago |

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.

doomkaiser21 14 days ago | |

Don't want to discredit or invalidate your/your friend's experience, but I do want to offer some hope during these times where a lot of what you see on the web is doomer posts.

From Google: The Jevons paradox occurs when technological improvements increase the efficiency of a resource, but the resulting drop in cost causes demand to rise so much that total consumption of that resource increases rather than decreases.

The message being, it may seem now that because the friction for creating software is so minimal now that there will be no need for software engineers in the future. But historically when friction has been reduced, we have seen an increase in demand that outweighs the efficiency gain, increasing total consumption. I believe that software won't be an exception to this millennia-old pattern.

While what "software engineering" may look like might change, I still believe strongly that people who understand software will actually be in higher demand than ever in the future.

bluecheese452 13 days ago | | |

To paraphrase Keynes, in the future we are all dead. His friend is suffering now, not in some theoretical far off future where the magic market had been blessed by the invisible hand.

nm980 7 days ago | | |

Most software is not price elastic so Jevon's Paradox will not matter

paulpauper 15 days ago | |

So much pre-employment screening and automated filtering. Getting to the interview stage is like having your paper refereed instead of desk rejected.

Esophagus4 15 days ago | | |

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.

NBJack 15 days ago | |

HR, particularly recruitment, was one of the biggest hit departments when the blood-letting started at Meta in 2022. The hiring freeze that followed didn't help.

yarrowy 10 days ago | |

if he was responsible for Home Depot's app, I can understand why it took him so long to find another job.

garbawarb 15 days ago | |

When was he looking and when did he get the job?

iambateman 14 days ago | | |

Two different friends…

First spent most of 2025 looking.

Second started last week

mbgerring 15 days ago |

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

noprocrasted 15 days ago |

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.

xboxnolifes 15 days ago |

I have 2-3 years of professional software experience. I've been unemployed for 4 years, barely able to get a response from employers, let alone interviews, let alone a job. My response rate (even just a rejection email) from applying to jobs has gone from an average of ~35% down to an average of ~18%. Numbers wise, the job market is very frustrating for me.

I apply everywhere in the US, and at this point I consider it a success if I get a rejection email, since that's getting pretty rare. The only recruiters who reach out to me are very clearly shotgun recruiters who have not read my resume and bring positions which are obviously looking for a different type of applicant.

I know I can do the work. Half of my friends work in software or software adjacent roles. I'm at least as capable as them, and, based on how much they have to complain about them, more capable than some of their coworkers.

So, I don't know what the issue is. Clearly I'm not good at marketing myself, but what exactly to change, I'm not sure. I know the 4 year gap looks awful to recruiters, but it's not getting any smaller and I didn't choose it willingly. At this point I'm just mindlessly sending out more resumes, because I don't know what else to do.

noprocrasted 14 days ago | |

Lie and ChatGPT your resume to hell. Use those interview cheating tools to pass the bullshit interviews that will be thrown at you.

Your competition is doing it, there is no reason for you not to.

zingababba 14 days ago | | |

Wisepilled response. The state of hiring is completely broken. I started a new position recently and what they told me the position was like vs what I saw/learned after I started were two completely different things. It's like managers don't even know what their own team does.

tavavex 15 days ago |

I'm surprised no one here talked about the junior side of the market yet. It's underrepresented on HN, but I would have still expected to see something. I'll share what I subjectively gathered from this job market.

Senior devs, people with many years of experience, people who have had the chance to funnel themselves into something specialized are doing okay. It's still not as good as it once was, many still find themselves out of a job and unable to find another one without having to settle for worse conditions or a lower wage, but the squeeze isn't nearly as bad on them.

For juniors and new grads, it's a bloodbath. The best people I know are sending hundreds of tailored job applications to try and get just about anything, and it's still almost impossible. Rates of applications to interviews are probably <1% for most people. Internships still help, but it's not as much of a difference as it once was. Everyone is desperate, and people are lowering their standards as far as they'll go, but employers are still not budging.

Basically, it seems like the sides of the job market are diverging. People who are already in are usually still in. You're either doing great or living through the most hopeless and soul-crushing time of your professional life, with a small portion of outliers in either group.

toyetic 14 days ago | |

I have about 3 yoe and agree my friends who’ve gotten laid off took 6months to a year to get a new job and new graduated are taking about the same even longer.

What’s interesting to me is what this looks like in 10 years when the lack of junior engineers and smaller amount of cs grads come to fruition

Tanoc 13 days ago | |

On the freelance side it's not much better. People who used to hire me back on project after project as a contractor aren't doing that anymore. I don't get replies stating what gaps in my skillset they're concerned about despite them asking me to tell them, I don't get information sent as to what the project entails, most of the time nobody even gets past the bidding process because they never update any contractors bidding on it.

It's been about a year since I've had a big project, and my attempts to slide out of freelancer work and into the mines are all getting shafted. The longer I go without a big project, the more toxic my work history appears. At the same time, I can't find any big projects because either the ones who sent out the contract don't know the skillset needed or just don't post anything externally anymore.

I'm on the very tiny side where projects pay $200 to $300 on completion and take a day or two from acceptance to submission, not triple digit salaries for months long rewrites. The smaller you go the worse it gets.

x3cca 15 days ago |

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.

FireBeyond 15 days ago | |

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.

pbgcp2026 15 days ago | | |

Those are the "visa applicants ghost jobs".

xboxnolifes 15 days ago | | |

I'm not even seeing them taken down for a few weeks. I've been seeing the same job postings for years now from companies who don't even reply.

CM30 14 days ago | | |

Have to be honest, I do sometimes wonder how many of those might be cases of literal liars/scammers getting the roles thanks to heavily puffed up CVs and lots of AI usage, only for said companies to end up needing to lay them off again when they realise their claimed skills don't match reality.

I feel like someone has to be getting past these systems, and I get the feeling it's not the people these companies want to be hiring.

sixhobbits 15 days ago |

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

adjejmxbdjdn 15 days ago | |

> it's not as bad as it was in the last several months

I think this needs to be caveated by the fact that the job market is seasonal. The beginning of the year is usually the best part for jobs since departments have shiny new budgets, with a boost again around March-April as people quit after getting their bonuses triggering of another set of churn.

JohnBooty 15 days ago | | |

This matches my experience as well as a sr. Ruby/Python engineer (NE USA based)

The market was pretty barren in late 2025, but wasn't too terrible in Jan 2026 and I progressed nicely through two interview processes. Got an offer from one. Made it to the final round with the other but timeframes did quite not align.

    shiny new budgets

I was curious about this aspect. Lot of companies have fiscal years (and, presumably, budgets) that do not start at the same time as the calendar year.

saysjonathan 15 days ago |

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.

subhobroto 15 days ago |

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.

DrJokepu 15 days ago | |

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?

subhobroto 15 days ago | | |

> 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.

noprocrasted 15 days ago | | |

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.

queenkjuul 15 days ago | | |

Have the agents review their own output, obviously. What could go wrong

tacostakohashi 11 days ago |

Having a decent linkedin profile, and getting regular contacts by recruiters on linkedin is the way.

Those recruiters tend to be internal recruiters working directly for the company, which I find less pushy/annoying to deal with, and they tend to be already somewhat keen on you by the time they contact you, because they have already decided you are an appealing candidate. They'll generally fast-track you to an interview, not make you fill in some long ATS application form, keep in contact regularly, etc. - it is a much better experience than cold "applying" via an ATS / workday portal and having that go into a black hole.

I'd say, if you're not regularly getting recruiters contacting you on linkedin every week, your profile isn't very good and you should fix it until you do.

It amuses me a bit when people complain about linkedin post in the newsfeed being lame (which they are), or reminiscing about the old days when people would have their email addresses next to loud warnings saying "do not contact me if you are a recruiter!!!".

It turns out, the only thing worse than being contacted by recruiters is not being contacted by recruiters. It only takes a second to respond with a polite "no thanks, not looking right now, maybe another time!", and it is far easier to start engaging with a steady stream of regular contacts than trying to create that stream when you need it.

talkingtab 15 days ago |

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.

briga 15 days ago |

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.

pqtyw 15 days ago | |

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.

idontwantthis 15 days ago | |

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!

Melatonic 15 days ago | | |

I get a ton of hits too on linkedin if you want to compare or contrast ever

ParanoidShroom 15 days ago |

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 :)

sputknick 15 days ago |

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.

weakfish 15 days ago | |

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.

Schiendelman 15 days ago | | |

People like you are wonderful!

lpapez 15 days ago | |

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?

Philpax 15 days ago | | |

They'd presumably ask for more details and/or references, at which point you would be hopelessly enmeshed in a web of lies of your own making.

BoneShard 14 days ago | | |

They will run a background check listing all your past jobs, with the exact title you had, and start-end dates.

idontwantthis 15 days ago | |

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!

taurath 15 days ago | |

I was able to get 2 offers last year after a 4 year break (distributed systems), but it was difficult to get thru front doors, references make a bigger difference nowadays.

I took a position 1 level down from previous to pay the bills. Am now interviewing for positions 2 above since I’m already performing at that level and my current company is too bureaucratic to bump me quick enough.

tim-tday 15 days ago |

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.

Noumenon72 15 days ago | |

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.

kristianp 15 days ago | | |

They meant hirers contacting future employees.

FireBeyond 14 days ago | |

> I just waded through the first 20 till I found someone who would work and hired him.

You get lucky, sometimes. But I also watch that - that mostly leads to "hire someone, can them within 3 months, recycle that job ad". I've seen companies who have taken the same position on and off their Careers page 3+ times a year (for the same req, to be clear, not company growth).

andsoitis 15 days ago |

> 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.

idontwantthis 15 days ago | |

Yes I took a not ideal job while I continue interviewing for better ones.

mamcx 15 days ago |

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!

FireBeyond 14 days ago | |

I think Wellfound (f/k/a AngelList) is doing this.

The jobs advertised on there are real...

I'd been on the job market four months. Every day I did the rounds: Levels, Wellfound, YC/jobs, Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn.

It is what it is, as a crappy jobs market.

Wellfound? I didn't ever hear from anything from their job ads.

And I'm pretty certain that whatever Wellfound/AngelList was, it has become a company that just markets resume writing services, resume review services, all sorts of other services that draw in your money somehow.

Why do I say that?

120+ applications on Wellfound since then. Crickets. Absolutely nothing.

One day I got an email, "Your profile has been viewed!". Weird, never seen an email like that from Wellfound. Indeed, "You have 1 profile view in the last 90 days".

Huh. 120+ applications, 120+ times me answering filling out Wellfound's content questions on "why you would be a good fit for this role", "tell us about x and y and z", no interviews, no contact, only ONE company has ever even viewed my profile (and for what it's worth, it's not a company that has any positions open).

Well, maybe my answers suck, you say. Maybe my resume isn't as impressive as I think it is.

But similar answers and the same resume get me fairly steady hits on every other site I mentioned, I've got to multiple final rounds, I've been explicitly told I was hirable, I was just the number two, I was "in the top three".

And to be clear, many of the companies I see on WF are advertising on other sites too.

My suspicion? WF does take job listings, but they also harvest them from other sites - the job is real, but there's no-one from the employer reviewing the applications to their "phantom" job... and meanwhile all people like me are doing are providing content for WF to harvest and train models for their AI-driven resume writing and review service and other products.

My AI video interview? Viewed... zero times.

Huh.

roymain 15 days ago |

I have spoken to a couple of founders in the last few months and what I keep hearing isn't "we're not hiring" but "we're hiring fewer juniors and being pickier about the ones we take." The bar for what a screen actually tests for moved a lot in the last 18 months and most companies haven't caught up. Its like everyone has so much to absorb before they can decide who to pick. Most down-selected candidates have gone through 5-6 rounds of interview in their selection process.

troupo 15 days ago |

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.

Melatonic 15 days ago | |

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 ?

troupo 15 days ago | | |

Software development. Looking just at a filtered search for "backend/fullstack"

sph 15 days ago | |

And it’s been like this since ~2023

adi_kurian 15 days ago | |

Most people on Earth would trade up to your idea of a shitty job.

troupo 15 days ago | | |

I don't succumb to statements of performative moral superiority.

(I do succumb to feelings of hunger, so I might end up at one of those shitty jobs anyway)

jitler 14 days ago | |

Reminds me of back a few years browsing job boards and the only people posting jobs were blockchain companies for some reason.

confidantlake 15 days ago |

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.

grantith 15 days ago | |

And yet, there are other people prepared to say they continue to be contacted by recruiters currently.

FireBeyond 14 days ago | | |

I'm contacted by recruiters not constantly, but steadily. But they all want me to accept a pay cut of about 50% for a contract role of 3-6 months half way across the country.

pierrekin 15 days ago | | |

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.

confidantlake 15 days ago | | |

Yup totally organic.

weakfish 15 days ago |

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.

paulpauper 15 days ago | |

I am sure the smaller companies are inundated with applications too and have to be very choosy, with high rejection rates.

abirch 15 days ago |

I think geography and industry will have a large influence on the job market.

idontwantthis 15 days ago | |

I get contacted by recruiters for remote (USA) jobs in all kinds of industries, mostly not ones that I have any experience in.

confidantlake 15 days ago | | |

Those are scams.

IshKebab 15 days ago | |

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.

egorelik 14 days ago |

Nearly 10 years of experience at Microsoft, I've been looking for a remote position for almost a year.

Even just finding appropriate openings has been next to impossible. Every company seems to be looking for either a generalist (lots of full-stack) or a senior in an exact specialized bucket and stack. My role at Microsoft was a sort of specialized databases/compilers/functional programming hybrid, but without clear buzzwords no one seems interested. What was once a frequent stream of corporate recruiter messages dried up a little over a year ago too.

My suspicion is that things are a lot better for non-remote positions in the usual hubs.

anovikov 14 days ago |

Personally, i have stopped trying and retired about 9-10 months ago. There's nothing there, i think the whole thing is dead.

iExploder 14 days ago | |

it was running on fumes for almost a decade, now we are really at the end times...

uncircle 14 days ago | | |

Time to pivot

Nesco 14 days ago | |

retired?

anovikov 14 days ago | | |

Yes just pulled the plug. Now mostly travelling and meeting people (not even drinking, because Ozempic totally killed all the joy of doing it).

austin-cheney 12 days ago |

When I was laid off as a senior fullstack developer I received a few calls and interviews. There was one time when I received two competing offers with prestigious companies but both required relocation.

My learning about JavaScript employment is that, for the most part, it’s permanently a beginner’s area of software. If you have done that kind of work forever you have some hard choices to make: pretend to be an expert at really beginner things or wait a really long time for extremely rare opportunities to open. So I don’t do that work anymore. My 6 months of unemployment was largely self inflicted.

My other learning about software employment is that when you enter management your technical skills in a given language matter so much less. Other generalized factors become more important like strong communication skills, multitasking endurance, soft skills, a wide distribution of technical knowledge your developers won’t have.

newsclues 15 days ago |

It's K shaped, like the economy.

__turbobrew__ 15 days ago | |

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.

idontwantthis 15 days ago | | |

I created this post because my experience is the complete opposite.

noprocrasted 14 days ago | | |

Do you know how to break into such fields, for someone having experience operating on-prem infra at a smaller scale?

tayo42 15 days ago |

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?

idontwantthis 15 days ago | |

I'm not in SF. I'm making mid $100k and interviewing for remote jobs in the $170k+ range.

tayo42 15 days ago | | |

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.

Denzel 15 days ago | | |

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.

mzi 15 days ago | | |

What did you do to start getting traction for senior positions? You were struggling in the beginning of the year.

senexes 14 days ago | | |

Remote is the big variable.

I am currently employed, remote but not in IT. I have been applying for various jobs the last 6 months because there isn't much growth left for me at my current company. I am a really strong candidate for what I am applying for. If I apply to a local company, I get contacted almost immediately. If I apply for a remote job it is crickets.

I think for remote, you are going to have to be recruited or have a strong network tie because that is the only way to filter the volume of applications. Cold applying is just a waste of your time and energy.

speeder 12 days ago |

Finding crappy jobs is easy. Finding a decent job is proving challenging.

Crappy I don't mean only job in bad companies, but sometimes job in good companies but a bad situation or project. For example one of my recent-ish experiences was in an excellent company but the project was pure firefighting, the people that knew the thing well were leaving, and the company policies were getting in the way of the project, so I got hired to "replace" people, this just sucked and in the end didn't work.

moduxis 8 days ago |

My company rarely laid off full-time employees, but we are mostly cutting contractors or cutting their contracts without extending their work. But every full-time employees seem worried.

Aurornis 15 days ago |

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.

carimura 15 days ago |

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.

smackeyacky 15 days ago |

This contract I took was out of town for me so I’ve been commuting 300km week on/week off. Smallish “college town” in Australia that used to provide steady IT work no longer does. I am older 50+ so I don’t know whether that is a factor.

I was using Seek.com to get jobs but it’s increasingly difficult to get past the fake jobs, the resume harvesting and the thousands of AI or overseas applications.

The only real solution seems to be referrals or recruiters.

From my perspective the job market here is brutal.

redanddead 15 days ago |

The economy is bad.

It's super super hard for companies first and foremost, forget employees for a second. The environment is extremely hostile to private industry right now

alexgotoi 13 days ago |

You we’re already a “warm” candidate.

Because in the last year you responded to Linkedin messages from Recruiters, this boosted your visibility in other recruiters’ searches.

That’s something I think every working person should do: if they get outreach from recruiters, respond to all messages. Maybe even jump on a call/interview.

senko 15 days ago |

> I constantly get contacted by recruiters

> I got laid off recently and I had a new job within a week

> Currently I’m waiting for a final decision from another fully remote company and I’m in midstage with 2 more.

> How unusual is this experience?

Yes, unusual. Most people aren't this active with their interviewing. You basically have a full deal pipeline.

saidnooneever 14 days ago |

i never have weirdness people describe like AI interviews etc

it IS easier to have built up a resume but each time im hired they joke my resume is shit...

this stuff can be really dynamic though as in you can be lucky to run into nice recruiter, live somewhere with more work available, etc. etc.

i dont think its in 1 state, good or bad. it has a lot of dependencies.

tornikeo 15 days ago |

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.

gaurav2372 15 days ago | |

hey, could you please share some tips with the "networking" part?

i'm also pivoting in this direction after attending too many sessions and networking, but getting it a point of employment does not seem a reality.

tornikeo 14 days ago | | |

You have to go to conferences and meetups. Paid conferences are worth is most of the time IMO. I spent $500 for the most expensive one and it landed me a really good offer later.

Go to conferences and shake hands with people, try to be friendly and ask questions. Later check companies of people you've met for openings - and ask the guy you met, directly, to put a word in for you, pretty please.

Works really well.

cs02rm0 13 days ago |

Might vary depending on where you are and where you're applying to. I'm from the UK, spent a year and 500+ applications applying to remote or Gulf roles. Turned up nothing.

trashface 15 days ago |

Its bad for people on the margins, which is a lot of people these days.

rootsudo 15 days ago |

Yeah, I think so. It’s so bad that I pass 2nd and 3rd round interviews and when I email about it the recruiters email bounces alongside several cc’s that were on the thread.

credify 14 days ago |

There is a big impact on of the country also on the job market, please select it wisely for the remote job.

queenkjuul 15 days ago |

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

icedchai 15 days ago | |

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.

queenkjuul 15 days ago | | |

Yeah I'm employed but once this project I'm on wraps up this year, I'll be asked to work on a project that violates my personal ethics.... So really hoping i can find something by the fall, we'll see

alephnerd 15 days ago |

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.

-------

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.

-------

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/

moomoo11 13 days ago |

It’s only tough for people who want 400k plus TC and people straight out of college.

bayareapsycho 15 days ago |

I'm doing OK, I can get phone screens / interviews at big tech. Can't manage to get any from AI labs.

My current company is highly abusive and is doing a bunch of saber rattling over layoffs and I'm honestly fed up at this point.

They want us to work 7 days a week and are like "ohh maybe we'll lay half the company off, we'll see". And all of the reorgs are making my life fucking hell. (It's a large company that's run by an asshole. Guess which one)

The hard part is just getting the time to prepare for interviews properly. I'm not even bothering interviewing at the more leetcode heavy companies right now.

CM30 14 days ago |

Personally my experience has been kinda brutal, having been struggling to find a new job for a few months now. Interviews haven't been that rare all things considered, but as someone who's neurodivergent, it feels like the chances of me getting through one successfully is lower than ever now, especially when there are like 3-5 rounds of meetings and calls to get through.

I'd also say it's a mix of not having the best company experience in the world (even the larger ones I worked for didn't use cutting edge tech), not having enough war stories about times of adversity, and having to compete with both top tier engineers from FAANG companies and liars just using AI to make up everything.

But based on other people's experiences, it seems like some people get way luckier than others in this job market. I know people who've gotten a job in a week or two without any hassle and others who've been out of work for months or years now. One of my friends had probably the best luck I can imagine in that regard; they got laid off from one job and then a week later found a job in the same exactly industry doing the exact same thing at approximately the exact same salary range. They went from designing brochures and posters for medical companies at one company to designing brochures and posters for medical companies at a direct competitor.

But yeah, it seems like a very tough market right now, and one where success pretty much depends on the stars aligning in the right way.

antisthenes 15 days ago |

Post your resume/credentials and university. Pointless to talk outside of that.

idontwantthis 15 days ago | |

I agree that would be helpful but that's too much info for me.

paulpauper 15 days ago |

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.

ApolloRising 14 days ago |

Were you at a big brand name company before you got laid off?

idontwantthis 14 days ago | |

I was not.

kzzzznot 15 days ago |

Location probably matters, where are you?

idontwantthis 15 days ago | |

Not a tech center, and I'm talking about USA-remote jobs exclusively.

MatrixOrigin 11 days ago |

your experience isn't rare.it's the silent majority.people who land quckily don't post about it.The ones who struggle are loud.

"Hundreds of interviews"is just ongiong price discovery.you were runing the experiment before it mattered. Declined a local offer to stay at your company?That'sjust knowing your leverage.Nothing special.

Good luck on the final round.

cybercatgurrl 15 days ago |

you must be neurotypical

benchwright 15 days ago |

"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.

alephnerd 15 days ago | |

> 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.

tbojanin 15 days ago | |

> Given some of the retraction of "warm feelings"

Why do you say this? Is this coming from personal experience, or anecdotally?

jitler 15 days ago |

I think in the past year it’s gotten better if you are already established. 2023 was the worst of it for me.

CSSer 15 days ago | |

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.

SilentM68 15 days ago |

Yes, and going on 4+ decades, now :(

confidantlake 15 days ago |

Wow lots of astroturfing going on here.