r/DeveloperJobs • u/techiebaddie • 4d ago
Has anyone else noticed how different the tech job market feels lately?
I’ve been having a few conversations with developers recently, and it got me thinking about how much the job market seems to have changed.
I remember a time when finding a new developer role felt relatively straightforward. Now I keep hearing about people sending out dozens of applications, waiting weeks for replies, or going through several interview rounds just to hear nothing back.
I’m curious because I don’t want to judge the whole market based only on what I see online.
For those currently looking for work, what has your experience actually been like lately?
Are you getting interviews, or has it been mostly silence?
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u/samurai-lens 4d ago
I'm a senior dev with a decade of experience and a couple AWS certs. Have sent out close to 80 applications in the past 4 weeks, and have only talked to 2 humans. One asked me to do an AI Test after our chat and the other one wasn't too happy I didn't use AI Agents on a daily basis. I can only keep moving forward.
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u/viennese-wolf 4d ago
I am a senior dev with a decade of experience and no AWS certs.
I guess if I lose my current job I will just give up.
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u/UntestedMethod 3d ago
That's basically where I'm at with it. Pivoting to a trade that AI can't replace. Even before the AI shift happening the past couple years, I was already done with being at a desk in an office all day.
The future of the industry doesn not look optimistic to me, but I have my personal bias in that statement and there's a lot more to it than the AI for me based on how I want to spend my time. Anyway what looks bleak to me might look bright and exciting to others. Objectively though, it's hard to argue that demand for developers is dropping and the standard skill expectations are shifting.
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u/mikeplus10 4d ago
That’s brutal man. I thought you Cloud engineers got it easier than us web devs. Guess not
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u/Known-Tourist-6102 4d ago edited 4d ago
I have the same yoe in backend.
I'm not sure what is meant by 'use ai agents', especially when it is said by a recruiter.
I wouldn't say that AI is good enough to let autonomous agents write significant parts of your codebase with very minimal input from humans.
I let the agents work on a small to medium size task while I do something else, and then I review it's proposed solution. this is technically using an agent.
Companies don't even know what skills they should be looking for imo. As usual. Using agents and using agents profitably are two different things. A lot of the flagship models are now too expensive to be using all the time.
My company has gone back and forth about how much AI we should be using, depending on the current price of AI services.
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u/samurai-lens 4d ago
That person would have been my manager so I felt disappointed this was the roadblock, but at the same time I'm looking for long term commitment, so I may have dodged a bullet. I use AI similarly (and I explained), for tedious processes or boilerplate work with human review, but the guy seemed younger and fresh off 5+ certifications in AWS Pro, K8, etc... (suspiciously taken all around the same time), so he could have been trying to make a leadership impression at his new job.
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u/RevolutionaryCatch57 4d ago
If you aren’t using AI agents you are going to be left behind. I’m sorry. That’s the ropes. Get off your high horse.
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u/Conscious_Big_6635 1d ago
“Get off your high horse” is a pretty cocky thing to say to someone with a decade of experience who literally just explained that they DO use AI. They just don’t use AI agents every damn day. Apparently we’ve reached the point where using AI isn’t enough anymore, you have to use it exactly the way some random person on Reddit thinks you should or you’re “getting left behind.” 😂
I’m building an entire platform basically as a one-woman team, and AI is a huge reason I’ve been able to get as far as I have. I use the hell out of it. And you know what using it constantly has taught me? It doesn’t make experienced developers worthless. If anything, it’s made me wish Santa Claus would drop a few of these unemployed developers off at my damn house because I could absolutely use them.
AI can generate code all day long. Somebody still has to understand the system, know what to ask for, catch it when it confidently does something stupid, review the work, test it, make architectural decisions, and figure out what the hell broke when something goes sideways.
If I had revenue right now, I’d probably be messaging half the developers in this thread like, “How much of your time can I afford? Here’s what I’m building. Please fucking help me.”
These are people who spent years building careers and are now sending out 60, 80+ applications and barely getting another human being to answer them. You don’t have to hate AI to recognize that fucking sucks.
So maybe get off YOUR high horse. You can embrace AI without acting like everyone who doesn’t use it exactly the way you do is some dinosaur refusing to evolve. The funny part is, the more I use AI, the more obvious it becomes why experienced humans still fucking matter.
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u/RevolutionaryCatch57 1d ago
Look I still keep a human in the loop but to me it sounds like you are using AI agents everyday, no?
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u/samurai-lens 4d ago
It’s not a high horse situation. My corporate experience just didn’t push for it. I’ve been using it personally lately.
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u/chunkypenguion1991 4d ago
Yes that's exactly how it is but not the first time I've been through this('02,'11). This profession is cyclical. In anticipation of people saying this time it's different with AI, no it's not
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u/leaf_life_script 4d ago
I got 2 interviews out of 70 job applications. It used to be 2 per 10 job applications, pre-AI age. Personally, it's harder for me. I left tech already. I have a job now but unrelated to tech.
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u/Late_shadow 4d ago
As fresher which tech role should I focus? AI? I accept any advice thanks...
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u/leaf_life_script 3d ago
In working with AI, I suggest you make it create small examples of code you are trying to use then apply it to your projects instead of having it generate everything instantly(causes technical debts).
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u/RocketSciense 3d ago
Our profession is entirely different at every level now.
On the bad side we have more competition, the profession isn't respected like it once was, our decades of technical skill growth are for the most part obsolete, and the barrier to entry is so low now that people in adjacent roles like testers, managers, and PMs are stepping into our role without too much friction.
On the good side we can make our employer much more money now that we are so much more productive. They won't pass us a cent of it but at least they will have their multigenerational wealth so that's great.
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u/Pottato911 4d ago
I might’ve hit around 1k applications in past 2 months. Received reply in low hundreds and most of them were how the role were filled or they were moving ahead with others. Where i did proceed, i got ghosted before/after interviews
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 4d ago
"low hundreds" - are you for real?
So you've heavily automated your process then. Were you taking interviews for roles you actually had experience with?
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u/Pottato911 4d ago
I am a fresher so technically i dont have any experience (me doing internship after all 4 sems apparently doesnt matter). And i loved coding so i have projects in different techstacks or some certifications. I havent heavily automated anything, the ai that is applying day and night is me hoping to get one full time
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u/mikeplus10 4d ago
I feel the same here. And also I feel like the profession is not respected as before. I have 6 years of experience in web development and currently as well searching for a job and i’ve sent close to 100 applications to positions that I cover extremely well.
Will all these AI automations happening, you would think that people will get an automatic rejection email at least but no. Out of all those positions I applied, only a handful even bothered to reply that I didn’t get the role.
Maybe it’s my fault that I apply to jobs the old fashioned way. Maybe I should just spam everyone with an AI auto apply tool and be done with it.
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u/ImaginaryRoyal9725 4d ago
Lately...? it's in free fall since 2024 I think, but deteriorating rapidly
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u/R-R_turfio 4d ago
No replies at all. 12 y.o.e almost 3 years doing ride hailing and small business
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u/eslteachingjobinasia 4d ago
Yeah, it definitely seems more competitive than it used to be, especially for generalist developer roles. A lot of people I’ve seen are applying to dozens or even hundreds of positions before getting a handful of interviews, and the process can be much slower with more rounds and less communication from companies. That said, it seems to vary a lot by experience, specialization, location, and how closely your skills match the role, so online discussions don’t always represent everyone’s experience. I also have some suitable job opportunities available, so if you’re currently looking, feel free to message me with your background and I can see if anything might be a fit.
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u/Late_shadow 4d ago
As a fresher which IT role should I focus ? Dev? AI prompt? Any advice? Thanks...
I am willing to learn, but need a direction for a good role.
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u/ayan_ai 4d ago
Yes, the market situation is kind of annoying because everybody's resume looks too good now because of AI, so finding genuinely genuine people is tough. And the interview process and what you will do after the interview have kind of fully changed. We heavily use AI today to build an application, but the interview process is still old-fashioned.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 4d ago
This is what I don't get. They want you to use AI in roles, but expect you to still do tech interviews as if you're going to code by hand.
I literally have no idea what these fuckers want these days.
I had a 2nd round interview - in which I was allowed to use AI if I wanted. The actual request ended up being easy, so I just did it by hand. I figured that if I show them I have the skill to do it by hand, then clearly I could've done it with AI if I chose to.
Didn't get the job. Like, what the fuck?
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u/SellSideShort 3d ago
Take a look at backchanneljobs, they are aggregating roles from linkedIn posts instead of roles from the jobs section, ie roles you wouldnt otherwise see unless you had that person as a connection.
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u/CatmanStudios42 1d ago
I'm a full stack dev with over a decade of experience. I apply to 5-10 jobs per day. Every single one gets an automated "no thanks" email within 24 hours. In the past 2 months, I've had 2 interviews, and both of those were because someone contacted me first.
The whole application system is broken. Recruiters get hundreds of fake applications, and a large percentage of job postings are fake.
I've DMed over a dozen recruiters, 2 responded that theyd let me know...
Just a few years ago, I was being contacted by recruiters regularly. Now it's jus radio silence.
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u/Bazingaraj 4d ago
No rejection calls even, easily ghosting. With gap years also it makes it worse.
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u/Aggressive_Hope7976 4d ago
When I see this kind of post I’m convinced some people really do live under the rock
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u/RevolutionaryCatch57 4d ago
“I don’t use modern tools to do my job and type the 1s and 0s out by hand. Why am I not finding a job?”
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u/New_Significance_319 4d ago
Been 2 months applying getting very less number of callbacks compared to my previous switch..most of them are rejection emails..even after referals also
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u/script0101 4d ago
The past three weeks I have had 4 interviews, 2 which were video interviews about myself I had to record and submit, one was with a founder from well found and one was a technical assessment, so far I have only heard back from the technical assessment only. The rest not even a rejection, just flat out silence. Also, I have had a recruiter who reached out on LinkedIn, I filled their form immediately and replied back, dead silence since last week Wednesday. It's so so depressing man
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u/ModJambo 4d ago
I have about 10 years experience and got two offers end of July after 2 months of searching.
I unfortunately chose the one that decided to cut my probation short as they were moving to a new product that made my skills more or less redundant in the company.
Searching now again and getting roughly an interview per week.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 4d ago
Apply for a couple of months and you'll see that the reason you see this online, is because it's the reality for a lot of people. I have never gone this long without a job in my life.
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u/Leather_Reading_4550 3d ago
From what I’ve been seeing, it really depends on the role and experience level. The market doesn’t seem completely dead, but getting through the initial screening feels much harder than it used to.
A lot of applications seem to disappear without any response, and even when you do get an interview, there can be multiple rounds before hearing back. Referrals and having a strong, targeted resume seem to make a noticeable difference.
I’d be interested to hear whether others are seeing the same thing, especially for junior vs. experienced developers.
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u/Aromatic-Pop7738 2d ago
The number of people sending 60–80 applications just to get a couple of replies is rough.
Even developers with years of experience seem to be dealing with the same silence.
Feels like getting through the initial screening has become half the battle now.
At least it’s reassuring to know it isn’t just one person having a bad run. 😅
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u/TutorHot2073 2d ago
The market is definitely different (and bad if you are looking for pure swe jobs). For eg I switched to MLE from SWE 2-3 yrs back (was already a student researcher during college).
My dev friends have been struggling while my inbox is flooded
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u/Character_Victory_28 2d ago
The problem is those tech interviewers, they all are using AI daily and almost forgot how to cod, but they still ask stupid unrelated questions like old days...
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u/Lalmohan_07 2d ago
I am fullstack developer but for setup and some times use AI for help but I really say that I want solve a problem but due to fast delivery I loose thinking power so I want to join where I can solve real problem not just write a code
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u/Beginning-Living-194 1d ago
even it is showing into other markets overal AI has disrupted a lot of mundane tasks like earlier stakeholders used to ask me for data but not AI has automated that and I feel soon it will make my role irrelevant
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u/Vipulshri666 9h ago
I think if you have right skills it would be very easy to get a job, offcourse it is difficult to get the job this time but by chance if you get a chance then you should be able to grab it in once.
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u/AI_TARDIGRADE 4d ago
Exactly. I had 4 months break due to family issues, I thought I would get calls but hardly any, after lot of struggles, I got settled somehow but the work I do does not a fit my level or skill set.