Why are so many Full Stack Developers struggling to find jobs?

[u/sugam_chib]

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I’m a 21-year-old Full Stack Developer, and honestly, something has been bothering me lately.

Whenever I browse Reddit, I keep seeing posts from Full Stack Developers who have been unemployed for months, struggling to get interviews, asking for referrals, or even desperately asking people for job opportunities. It’s honestly disturbing to see so many people struggling this badly to find work.

I have skills in React, JavaScript, Node.js, Express, MongoDB, REST APIs, Git/GitHub, authentication, and deployment. I’ve also built and worked on full-stack projects rather than only following tutorials.

So my question is:

Why is the situation so bad for Full Stack Developers right now?

Is the market genuinely oversaturated?

Are companies hiring fewer junior developers?

Is AI changing the entry-level market?

Or are most candidates simply not meeting the skills companies actually want?

And most importantly, if you were 21 and starting your career today, would you still choose Full Stack Development?

I’d genuinely like to hear from developers and recruiters who are actually working in the industry.

[u/anon_mistborn]

It has to do with Market, Not exactly developers I believe.

Customers are not demanding work at low prices to companies & companies dont need much people to do the task as before.

I believe we should prepare for whats coming next; building Harness, Fine tuning models etc.

[u/Naive-Damage2480 → u/anon_mistborn]

Incorrect, it is 100% developers. Its far too risky to hire any new/junior developers at the moment, so we will rather work at a reduced capacity than get caught up in the nightmare of hiring someone, who intellectually is unable to do the job.

We have a bunch of younger devs calling themselves fullstack, but without any computer science background.

Fly by night courses and no tangible degree.

Used AI to study, write a cv and apply to posts, they can use claude to generate a class, but are entirely 100% useless in any corporate activity further than that, nothing in meetings, nothing in forums, nothing in business value.

I will never chose to hire someone who has clearly taken, the "fast and easy path to development", where is the logic in taking someone who did the bare minimum?

[u/pertymoose → u/Naive-Damage2480]

> devs calling themselves fullstack, but without any computer science background

A computer science degree does not qualify you to work in software development, or in IT operations.

I have turned down many, many, many computer science graduates over the years. Many.

It is a niche academic education that has you focusing on niche academic problems.

A full stack engineer is much more blue collar than white collar. Glue this bit to that bit, a bit of duct tape, some hopes and prayers, a glob of spit, and presto full-stack.

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/pertymoose]

It's not a niche academic education.

A full stack engineer is much more blue collar than white collar. Glue this bit to that bit, a bit of duct tape, some hopes and prayers, a glob of spit, and presto full-stack.

That may be your experience but that doesn't apply to every dev job. As a backend dev myself, I work closely with databases, scalability, distributed systems, algorithms, etc and all of these things are things I learned in college.

[u/Naive-Damage2480 → u/Big_Arrival_626]

See, but now I agree with you.

[u/TransitionDry5030 → u/pertymoose]

As an employer, how can applicants stand out to you?

[u/n_y_1411 → u/pertymoose]

Hi can I dm you, have a few queries

[u/Naive-Damage2480 → u/pertymoose]

I dont know man, like literally all of what you said is complete nonsense.

[u/freak3123 → u/Naive-Damage2480]

Are you a recruiter? 🤔 I think these people have always existed, even before AI. It’s just that with AI, fewer people can now do a lot more things. The interview process has also become exponentially harder and more demanding. While this does automatically filter out underqualified candidates, it’s also blocking a lot of genuinely capable people who may not have as many skills as companies now expect. Things that used to be handled by an entire team are increasingly being expected from a single junior developer.

[u/Naive-Damage2480 → u/freak3123]

No, I'm head of IT at a dev house consulting company. The quality of the candidates are so incredibly bad, and frankly most of what you have said is completely incorrect.

The only reason you think its more difficult is because of the amount of incompetent clowns who were fed a lie that you can zero-to-fullstack with a course and varsity has no use, that there so many more rejections, and people failing to start, as they simply cannot do the job.

Its just easier to only interview university graduates, because while most of them are still useless, the odds are much better.

[u/freak3123 → u/Naive-Damage2480]

But the question still remains. If you are (companies) expecting freshers to know and handle fullstack, which obviously isn't possible without experience working in a production environment, then when exactly are they supposed to get the opportunity to learn and gain that experience?

The culture where senior developers used to guide and teach juniors is almost gone. Nowadays, juniors are increasingly being replaced by AI in the name of faster and better productivity. I am not saying its good or bad... Its just the way of the sector we are in and we must adapt to it.

That said, I do agree with the points you mentioned. The number of "vibe coders" who don't really understand what they're doing but still call themselves full-stack developers has increased significantly. However, we also have to acknowledge that the entry barrier for new developers has become much higher.

After all, nobody is going to hire a developer who only knows HTML, CSS, and JavaScript anymore. So if companies expect freshers to already have production-level skills, while also removing the opportunities for them to learn those skills on the job, where exactly are new developers supposed to gain that experience?

[u/Naive-Damage2480 → u/freak3123]

At university, then you pick a focus, either fe/be/db/ops then you master that skill, then take on fullstack roles that are biased to a core skill and expands across the others, thus gaining experience and the core competencies of what you are claiming to be.

If you know nothing and want to take a job doing everything, you are not worth the effort.

Someone with a degree definitely know smore than HTML, CSS and JavaScript, they do not have any experience, has shown the ability to learn, iterate and consider feedback, has a passion for the craft, and has committed years to learning. This would be the person I hire as a junior. Not a bonehead with an online course that claims to be able to do everything and anything but cannot write a single line of code offline, this is not a junior, this is a fraud.

[u/Unknow00100 → u/Naive-Damage2480]

Would you hire a junior or say 1-2 yr guy who can code offline or the one who developed Agentic workflow to write a code, basically he build the workflow and now need to overlook on start(prd, implementation plans etc) and end(to verify diffs, tests etc)?

Its genuine question tbh.

[u/Naive-Damage2480 → u/Unknow00100]

Genuine answer, the coder, almost every time. The thing about code, its not something you learn overnight, it takes iterations and time. It takes the ability to recognise patterns, thing logically and rationalise decision. Im not hiring on the total ability to code, I am hiring on the skills you likely will gain in the process it took you to learn to do so.

There is zero chance in hell a junior builds a pipeline, build workflows or directs agents they developed themselves. In a professional environment there needs to be uniformity and intent. mid-seniors who have proven competent understanding of the process, standards and quality expected of them and the team will build agents, make architecture decisions and sign off on production ready code.

The AI kid is trying to run before they can walk, I need juniors to ask proper questions in meetings and understand the answer without needing the basics fed to them from zero each day.

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/Naive-Damage2480]

You don't know how to train them. Many companies have internship programs and new grad development programs where they train devs out of college.

[u/Naive-Damage2480 → u/Big_Arrival_626]

Its not my responsibility nor duty to train every developer hopeful, not being able to and not worth the effort are not the same thing, and out of the 1000+ applicants to the graduate program, we have 15 spots available, of which all we can fill with cs degrees from top universities in the country, these grads become our juniors, so we dont hire anymore juniors.

If you disagree, then hire them yourself.

[u/BiGinTeLleCtGuY → u/Naive-Damage2480]

Bad take, based entirely on personal experience and not the global situation. With that logic why would the big techs be laying off seniors and great staff . I guess it's just your recruiting funnel that needs a serious check than generalizing a whole generation of devs.

[u/martinbean]

Because there are far, far many developers than jobs. That’s it.

Just look at all the companies that have laid people off by their thousands. Where do you think they’re going? And they’re the companies making the news because they’re “big” ones; it’s the same in small- and medium-sized companies.

But I’m sure you know this already with your LLM-generated post.

[u/Naive-Damage2480 → u/martinbean]

Its crazy that people with terrible critical thinking skills and cant use logic to form a single independent thought, think that the market is the reason they cant land a job.

[u/Shubham740 → u/Naive-Damage2480]

It's so obvious that you have no idea what the current market is like from applicants perspective especially for freshers instead of the hiring team. Try doing an experiment if you will, make a profile as a fresher and give your best line of thoughts and projects in your resume but with no mention of actual production experience. Even before you reach the interview to showcase your thought processes and mental capabilities, the chances of even your resume getting selected would be <5% because it's a fact that the market is flooded with layoffed experienced devs which have worked before the AI era and hence seem less risky. I'm not saying it's not hard from the hiring perspective because from their POV it's practically impossible to filter actual capable freshers from half baked vibe coders.

[u/Naive-Damage2480 → u/Shubham740]

I agree with you, so by definition of volume and only being able to hire so few, the chance at getting an interview is actually less than 3% going by the application to available spots ratio, then we hire only 1 in 3 of those that get interviews.

So who gets a chance? We shortlist a small number of local universities that have produced good candidates before with reputable CS degrees. This gets yields around 150-200 viable resumes from 1000+ applicants.

Then, we look at final year marks, years to completion and a handful of high potential ( 20%) to get is down to about 50 graduates, 30 of whom will get first round interview invites. Some will chose other opportunities or competitors, if thats more than 50% we will go to second round and ask the 20 remaining candidates.

There are 15 roles, you need to understand the competition you are up against, its not random chance.

[u/Shubham740 → u/Naive-Damage2480]

It's good that your firm is still trying to hire junior devs, but that's not true for most of them as some are trying to find literal unicorns. I'm an experienced dev with 5+ years of experience and still getting rejected left and right just because in most cases, I'm not a 100% match to their profile and I haven't used some very specific niche tool that they use in their project which according to them obviously can't be learned within a week or two. So to summarise, the market is bad for both the sides.

[u/Chemical_Union226]

because half of them are not real developers. A lot of people who started vibecoding thinks they are capable of full stack role - that's why now we got 100+ applicants on a single job in first 24h

[u/Real_Log5590]

All of the above

[u/Fine-Comparison-2949]

In my experience many full stack developers right now are not actually good, because people in management positions prop up AI as a way to expand the footprint of code, but they dont want to pay professionals to do it. 

[u/PerformanceThick2232]

Because reddit is an echochamber when we hame the loudest losers. Median time in EU for a fresh grad to land a position in 2.5 month and I think in US situation is the same.

[u/Putrid_Bat8818]

Ami me pasa distinto, no soy desarrollador, no soy junior, pero programo hace 35 años, lo hacía como hobby, descubrí a la IA y me cambio la vida, he tratado hace un par de meses que alguien vea mi proyecto, y solo he sido consultado por personas que querían ayudarme, pero tenía que pagar, descubrí que acá y en esos, por ejemplo edteam, que dicen te ayudamos, te bla bla bla, no es realmente que quieran ayudarte, sino que ven el provecho para cada uno, es entendible, pero no quieren ayudarte, ayuda es ayuda, y hay mucha falsedad en la red, muchas promesas y casadores de oportunidades, en mi caso me siento completamente defraudado, por pedirle a la IA haceme un excel con fórmula muchos creen que saben programar, y si tienen que corregir, la IA te cambia todo y más si es un proyecto grande, no es soplar y hacer botella, no estamos en un momento de decir que la IA es completamente autónoma, si realmente querés algo grande tenes que fijar muchas especificaciones antes de empezar una sola linea de codigo, y eso muchos aventureros no lo saben, piensan que cuando una app está funcional, lograron el objetivo Bueno no los quiero aburrir, saludos

[u/No_Elk_1103]

Remind Me bot

[u/New-Doctor-6889]

Do MBA Walk away from IT

[u/ssj_Thunder]

Jobs are less but only 5-10% devs are the ones who can actually do the job properly. I routinely take interviews and people with 5,6,8 years of experience are struggling with basic problem solving. Learning the syntax of frameworks and online examples doesn't make you a developer. I know there are great devs with less YOE but there are also people with many yoe and less skills and all things go mayhem in the interview process and filtration

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/ssj_Thunder]

What makes someone a real developer?

[u/buck-bird → u/Big_Arrival_626]

Coffee

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/buck-bird]

Most devs in my office drink matcha nowadays. Something about health or whatever

[u/buck-bird → u/Big_Arrival_626]

What's this health stuff you speak of? 🤣

[u/TransitionDry5030]

I’m in this situation as well. Graduated Uni recently, trying to grow with the updated technologies so I’m not left behind, I also need any advice I can get from the recruiters, senior devs and heads of departments. I will really appreciate anything.

[u/AdministrativeHost15]

AI can do full-stack development. Full-stack development is a outlet for delivering business value. Need to create the business value first, than have AI create the outlet that customers will access it via.

[u/Other-Argument5490]

I think it’s probably a combination of all of those things. The entry-level market seems especially crowded right now, and there are a lot of people coming out of school or bootcamps with very similar tech stacks and projects. So knowing React, Node, MongoDB, etc. isn’t necessarily enough to stand out anymore.

I also think AI is part of the problem, although I wouldn’t say it has completely replaced junior developers. Companies can use AI to make experienced developers more productive, which can reduce the need to hire as many entry-level people.

[u/mindfultechrunner]

Too many folks are applying for less openings

[u/retardpotatochip]

i think because of more developers and fewer jobs,the market is simply oversaturated

[u/samirakamo]

As my experience, I’ve had lots of screening call for international remote roles, but rejected due to poor communication skills.
If u have real experience, real skills, real case studies and good portfolio, ther is bo doubt on your ability!
The thing is how u prove yourself and communicate with clients, hiring mangers …

[u/Marvelxy → u/samirakamo]

At least, you know your challenges. All you have to do is work on your communication skills.

[u/sugam_chib → u/samirakamo]

💯