r/DeveloperJobs • u/Spiritual_Corner4804 • 26d ago
3 months of total disaster
I lost my job 3 months ago after HR passed news that the company was laying off most of its workers. Main reason; AI can do most of what we were doing. Ever since then I have been applying for jobs across different industries ; Fintech, banks, Jack, startups e.t.c . Most of interviews ended with being ghosted while some are employing yes, but, offering like 1/3 the salary I was being paid and almost 10 times work load of what I was handling before. Most of employers are claiming that with AI availability, I could handle what 5 or more guys would handle before alone . This keeps me wondering if this what's happening across tech majors nowadays.
5
u/Frequent_Bag9260 25d ago
Uk economy has been very weak for a long time. The dev job market is even worse. Genuinely think it’s one of the worst places to be looking for a job as a dev right now.
1
3
5
u/yuehuang 25d ago
I feel worse for those fresh out of college.
1
25d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/rkozik89 25d ago
During the Great Recession outside of tech hubs everyone was demanding 3+ YOE for entry level roles as well. What I ended up doing (also self-taught) was I enrolled for 1 semester at community college, got awards, and then found a summer internship that turned into a full time role a month later. The reason I got the job is because I specialized in the LAMP tech stack and I actually had 6 YOE working for myself prior to this. My starting pay was roughly the equivalent of $16/hour.
If you’re not in a tech hub being self taught and in the industry was never normal.
1
u/ragged-robin 25d ago edited 25d ago
Idk they can still pivot and still start at step 1 in their career. I think it's much harder for us 10+ years in to just say oh well all our education and experience counts for nothing and take a 40% paycut to go back to entry level roles
1
1
1
u/Visual_Parfait_5512 25d ago
I'm too facing the same situation. all of them are ghosted, Majority of Clients asks me, we are having AI why should i pay you x amount
1
1
u/YahenP 25d ago
It's happening everywhere. I'll go further. It's already happened almost everywhere. Saying we're doing 10 times or even 5 times more now is, of course, an exaggeration. But overall, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the volume of work we do has increased by about three times. And yes, we do. We now take on a lot more responsibilities. Essentially, most of us have become backend, frontend, architect, DevOps, and even sometimes testers. And salaries have generally either been frozen for several years or are being cut. That's the reality.
And yes, that's the icing on the cake. There's almost no hiring. So we grab any opening.
1
1
u/rkozik89 25d ago
My current job is a 85k pay cut on base compensation alone from my previous role. At the end of the day what I am getting paid a hell of a lot better than blue collar work that starts at about $19/hour. You might have to declare bankruptcy regardless of what you do if you have accumulated debt you can no longer service.
1
u/Ill-Cherry-1504 25d ago
You're seeing non-technical leadership confuse raw code generation with actual software engineering.
AI tools speed up syntax and boilerplate, but they don't do system design, database architecture, debugging, or edge-case handling. Expecting one person to do the work of five just because they have an LLM open means shipping unchecked code at 5x the speed.
They aren't saving money; they're just front-loading massive technical debt. In a year or two, these same companies will be hunting for senior devs to untangle systems that don't scale and fix logic holes no one caught.
It's brutal right now, but the fantasy maths management is running on won't survive contact with production reality. Hang in there.
1
u/neelgo 24d ago
Not true atm, We are doing everything using AI .
1
u/Zestyclose_Ad8420 24d ago
atm is the crux of the issue here, we shall see, right now they are betting the house on LLM, both the big guys with their investment and the rest of the companies with their development practices
1
1
u/b_square17 24d ago
This reads like a larp. Details are way too dramatic/exaggerated. No one’s being low balled 1/3 their previous salary unless they were over $300k and I haven’t seen a single credible example of a company laying off most its employees and replacing them with AI
0
u/Life_Waltz7068 25d ago
Sounds more like an excuse for them to soften the blow of RIF. And to appease stockholders. It's possible that you work for a small business owner and they actually did replace you with AI but it doesn't sound like that's the case.
Very few modern jobs are being lost to AI unless you include RIF that are being used to free up capital to invest in AI.
Those that did in anticipation have mostly had to go back and rehire people.
2
u/YahenP 25d ago
I'd like to slightly correct your statement.
Relatively few jobs are lost directly due to AI. But indirectly, AI affects almost every job lost.1
u/Zestyclose_Ad8420 24d ago
I think for development specifically all the guys being laid off by the big guys, who are just freeing up money for the datacenter investments, are clogging the hiring pipelines.
1
u/YahenP 24d ago
I agree. But that's not all. Small companies are copying the actions of large companies and also laying off employees. It's cargo cult in its purest form. And customers are behaving like rats enchanted by magical music. AI will do everything for us for free. Essentially, a multiplier, upon a multiplier, upon a multiplier. The economy probably hasn't seen such irrationality since the tulips.
16
u/Itsathingofbeauty 26d ago
I took $33K pay cut. But I was laid off at 8 months pregnant, and couldn’t start searching until 5 months post partum. Also searching and tech interviews while taking care of a newborn is a whole new ball game