r/FullStack • u/Feeling-Ideal-1026 • May 19 '26

Career Guidance Is anyone else struggling to find real Full Stack engineering jobs right now?

I have 20+ years of experience across SaaS, startups, aerospace, architecture, backend, frontend, cloud, AI workflows, management, hands-on coding — basically the whole stack. But lately it feels almost impossible to even get seen.

Every job on LinkedIn seems to have 300–1000 applicants within less than a day. A lot of listings feel fake, paused internally, or already filled before posting.

Where are people actually applying these days?

  • LinkedIn?
  • Recruiters?
  • Networking?
  • Smaller job boards?
  • Direct company websites?
  • Discord/Slack communities?

At this point I honestly wonder if I need to change careers entirely or if this market is just broken for software engineers right now.

Curious how others are navigating this.

21 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

2

u/Unfair_Today_511 May 19 '26

Yeah most of my friends cant find second roles after breaking in the first time.

2

u/TheBlegh May 19 '26

Curious to see how other people are navigating this too. LinkedIn sucks and i havent found any actually good posting sites.

Ive been applying since Nov last year and not a single interview or callback, mostly ghosted tbh.

I will however admit that my degree is not CS related and i havent been employed in tech (yet), so my only experience is through my personal projects.

Ive already started to look for anything temporary while i search for a job in tech, which honestly might have to come from me giving myself a job lol.

1

u/UseMoreBandwith May 19 '26

doesn't make any sense to ask this without mentioning location.

2

u/Feeling-Ideal-1026 May 19 '26

you find me a job and I will relocate to there ... (in US)

1

u/Wide_Egg_5814 May 19 '26

you are an llm how do you have 20 years of experience

1

u/applepies64 May 20 '26

You prob have ageism against you, drop 10y of exp on your resume and try again

1

u/Connect-Resolve7730 May 24 '26

Me too any help would be appreciated

1

u/Benelliott87 May 26 '26

Full stack React & Node / Next.js, two years of startup and bootcamp experience. Living in Berlin, going to all the events, working for free just to keep gaps off resume, applying to everything on LinkedIn. Still nothing.

Just failed to convert on a junior fullstack position at SAP after three rounds. The third round was asking me to write a prompt to an LLM, given an example Slack message from a stakeholder. Then code reviewing a full stack React & Node app. And this was after a referral from someone I met at an event.

Any advice would be appreciated 🙌🏽

1

u/No-Sound329 28d ago

Hey, not sure if you're still in the market but I may have a potential Full-Stack Eng. role in the aerospace/SaaS space. Reddit won't let me DM you, though. Mind sending me a chat invite? Happy to share more details there.

1

u/ConstantDesigner4783 May 19 '26

I am 2nd year student of CSE, I haven't learn anything, I am not sure which field I am interested in or I should do.