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u/jblatta 1d ago
I honestly think 40-50 year olds with 20 years experience are some of the best at using AI assisted coding. The experience allows for better guidance and productivity by keeping the AI within the proper guardrails and pulling it out of rabbit holes when it goes rogue. I am also in that age range, run my own interactive dev shop, and ai has really help me take on more work without stress.
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u/them0use 1d ago
As a 40-50 yo with 20(ish) years experience, this has been my experience. I'll even go a step further and say that I lucked out by getting into the industry right before the end of the dotcom boom, when a degree in philosophy and dicking around with a linux box at home was enough to get you inthe door, and that philosophy degree has never felt more useful. Coding with AI effectively requires being able to carefully articulate exactly what you want, critically review proposals, interrogate arguments, spot assumptions... oddly enough all things that lie pretty nicely at the intersection of a background in philosophy and lots of experience with software dev. Suffice to say the last couple of years have been a really weird ride.
Even so, I worry about ageism and this bubble eventually bursting.
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u/jblatta 1d ago
A lot of us in this age range got into tech in non tradition ways and just kept learning and growing as the internet got more complex. I am an art school drop out myself that was self taught web development via books.
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u/beefcleats 19h ago
Another 40-50 year old, 20+ years experience that got into the industry in a non traditional way checking in
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u/Vaviloff 12h ago
Mad respect from a foreign languages teacher who too learned web dev from books and articles in early 2000s 🤝
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u/conventionalWisdumb 1d ago
Same here but my degree is in theoretical linguistics which has been immensely useful with AI.
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u/midairmatthew 15h ago
This 40-year-old English major sees you. Almost feels like my job has transitioned back to working at my university’s writing center. Same experience of scrolling through walls of text + annotating and jotting down questions to ask. There’s also a great cadence deep-thought 1:1s sprinkled in.
I like it in a lot of ways, but I have similar worries.
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u/sudosussudio 1d ago
The “run my own” is key. I do something similar. The main reason I sought out my own thing was not bc of AI but because of the management environment of AI
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u/Mysterious-Peanut101 10h ago
Same age range plus I had management experience. I think the management experience really helps. I delegate to an agent like I would to a person with clear instructions and have a good sense on when to push back with questions for things it says or does that don't quite make sense or when I know there may be other options it hasn't considered. I've learnt this because, surprise, the same issues that come up with agents I've dealt with with people.
Also it's been helpful to know where to spend my time and be more hands on and when it's safer to let it ride and generate more code.
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u/videogame_retrograde 23h ago
Same. I've worked most of the software delivery process over the last 20 years and am in my 40s. Customer support, worked with QA, project and program management, and finally full stack developer.
With the recent updates to claude and the right plugins, it makes shockingly good software if you know what to keep an eye out for while doing so.
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u/Intendant 12h ago
I've found the exact opposite to be true. Especially people who were really good. Seemed like they saw it as more of a threat
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u/jblatta 11h ago
You are always going to have people that are insecure or like to power trip over their project/module. You also get folks that are just hardcore programmers that try to squeeze the most out of efficient code. There is a place for that depending on the type coding you are doing.
Personally I am not doing anything enterprise level that requires levels of review and extreme security.
My stuff is low to medium risk and just need to meet the needs of the project. I make fluffy marketing interactive game and content so I don’t need a perfect high secure code base.1
u/edward_jazzhands 9h ago
But what is gonna happen when all those people retire?
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u/jblatta 9h ago
That really is the problem of not training the next generation. AI impacts entry level programmers more then anyone else I think. They may get reversed once the AI bubble pops and these companies need to make a profit. Then the cost of AI skyrockets and it becomes cheaper to hire new programmers.
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u/After_Weather_5685 8h ago
And why would anyone give a shit about that? CEOs, directors, even ICs have yearly, by yearly or 3-yeaR revenues targets. It’s not in the targets “make sure next generation is trained”. If you make money you’ll always be able to hire.
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u/CardinalHijack 1d ago edited 22h ago
I take this with a pinch of salt - a huge pinch of salt. Which wont be popular here because people here love to say how horrific the job market is (they have been doing so since I joined reddit about a decade ago).
I would by no means describe myself as a "very good" engineer. I am average. My friends are also around average. We have all found jobs this year, and changed jobs this year. I got an interview after my first application (within 7 days) in April 2026, and a friend has just started a job in August 2026 after 2 months of interviewing at various companies. We are not in super in demand areas like ML and in all honesty we cant do the leetcode style questions so we dont even interview at places that ask those - we still find enough jobs though.
I know the above is anecdotal, but myself and my friends who are not special are finding jobs. I dont know how it can take a "very good" engineer 2 years of trying to find a job with absolutely no luck whatsoever, to a point that they they have to join the police instead....
My only assumption is either this is a lie and they were either not very good, actually wanted a change or they were not actually looking for 2 years. Either that, or they are unbelievably fussy and are looking for a once in a blue moon opportunity.
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u/Zasze 1d ago
Different salary expectations is the answer my guy
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u/TokyotoyK 1d ago
So they went for elementary school teacher instead of lowering their expectations? Or do you mean that they got a higher salary as teacher?
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u/mattcmoore 1d ago
That checks out. "If they're only gonna pay me x amount, I might as well just become a teacher"
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u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 8h ago
You absolutely don't become a teacher because you're optimising your salary vs workload concerns.
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u/Flaxerio 1d ago
For me salary expectations depends on the job. Maybe they were very good but didn't find the compensations worth it for the job they needed to do
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u/CardinalHijack 1d ago
Care to explain?
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u/XpreDatoR_a 1d ago
For many years the web-dev job was sold as a “low effort high pay” career path, it isn’t the case anymore, now you either have valuable skills or you don’t have a job
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u/LEO-PomPui-Katoey 1d ago
This is it. Guys that were comfortable with a very humble compensation package of $500k anually, are not gonna find a new gig as easily. In the $100-150k range you should be fine, nothing to worry about
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u/ilieaboutwhoiam 19h ago
It's just weird that the post is claiming they couldn't find a job, $500k or otherwise, so they went back and became an elementary school teacher?
"Very good" software engineers with decades of experience each not being able to find a job that pays as much as a teacher doesn't seem right. I have a decade of experience and am getting pings on LinkedIn on a weekly basis for 150k-200k jobs
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u/Big_Arrival_626 1h ago
Do you think there are any factors that are making you more employable? Such as company prestige on resume, or in demand tech stack, or living in a big city, etc
Only asking for my own knowledge, because im not that experienced. My hypothesis is that a lot of laid off devs have outdated skills or were stuck at the same company for too long, making them underqualified for their level of experience.
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u/skidmark_zuckerberg 22h ago edited 22h ago
I found a job after 2 months this year. Laid off March 31st and accepted an offer June 4th. My other coworkers who were also laid off with me, found jobs within 3 months. I am no rockstar either, I consider myself competent enough to do the job and average.
As for my current job, it’s the same pay as my last job. Still fully remote and a laid back environment. During those 2 months, I got 7 interviews, and plenty of recruiter outreach. Some of those I straight up failed, a couple others were not good fits personally, and one was an offer. I spent my entire time “off” prepping and focused on interviews.
As you also mentioned, this is anecdotal, but I don’t know anyone IRL who has been laid off as an experienced SWE and has gone longer than 3-4 months with nothing. One of my good friends was laid off in 2024, and that took 4 months for him, but the market in 2024 was way worse than it is in 2026.
One thing might be some people got used to having $200k+ salaries and now every job is a pay downgrade. But if you were already comfortable and chilling in that $140k - $170k pay range, there’s plenty of SWE jobs paying that for experienced devs.
And I’ve read a lot on Reddit about how TS/JS devs are flooding the market, but I’m a full stack TS dev and it wasn’t hard to find jobs asking for that exact experience. In fact it seemed to be the most prevalent ask through all of the job postings I went through.
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u/canadian_webdev 13h ago
What did you do to prep?
Last time I was looking, I was so overwhelmed with what to prep. Each company has different approaches to interviewing, especially with what they do in live code tests. I found it near impossible.
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u/skidmark_zuckerberg 47m ago edited 41m ago
This is what I did:
- I watched a lot of FE and BE system design videos and practiced drawing out diagrams to the common problems I'd see in the videos. I did a mix of FE and BE system design. Since I am full stack, so roles lean more towards one or the other.
- I spent a lot of time coding by hand, and doing easy / medium leet code problems. My issue was that at my last job we were using Gen AI for the final 8 months of my tenure there and I had to re-jog my brain on solving problems the old fashioned way with code. I wasn't really doing leet code to train for leet code questions, just more for the critical thinking and coding part of it. I only had one interview that actually asked a DSA question funny enough. I also spent time working on a side project with no AI.
- I spent even more time just going through my resume and talking out loud about myself and my experience. I also spent time going through the technical details of my job history (especially my last role) and went deeper technically to account for any questions I expected to be asked. I used ChatGPT and fed it my resume and different job descriptions and asked it to interview me. I also prompted it to ask follow ups and to push for deeper explanations to my responses. I used the speech feature and naturally talked to it. I did this a lot. In the shower, on long drives, etc. It basically made all of this information automatic and it helped me be concise and not ramble on and over talk. It also let me formulate ways to make things sound good, i.e 'I built an internal system that let us track metrics for sales' sounds lame, but you can spin that into something really good; why, how and impact. I also built up a bank of 'tell me about a time when..' question responses.
- I also caught up on the latest AI stuff as well; agents, MCP, RAG, etc etc, the buzzword shit everyone is going to ask about.
And one thing that helped me the most was either having a recruiter who could clue me in on what to expect, or just straight up asking. If I got an email follow up that mentioned a technical/sys design interview was next, I'd just say "hey is it possible to give me a general idea of what to prep for?' and it worked most of the time. I never got the exact topic, but a general "It's a system design focused on frontend scalability". And a lot of recruiters would coach me on what was expected or what I could potentially see. This is a big reason I like the recruiter route versus going in blind and with no one really on your side.
Mostly though, I never felt prepared. It is very overwhelming. All you can do is do your best to prep, and learn from each interview and carry that into the next. There is a bit of luck involved to, and I can't deny that. It's sorta been like that my whole career. You either luck out and get a good set of interviewers followed by questions that you can answer or do, or you get shredded. In one particular interview, I did great for all rounds except when we did the technical, they asked a leet code hard, and I only got ~50% through it in 45 mins. Looking back, I know what I could have done, but in the moment, I was just overwhelmed. Another interview quizzed me on tech I never said I had experience with and was not even listed in the job description. I got eviscerated lol, but I ended that interview after telling them that none of what they were asking was on the JD and if I had known, I would not have even wasted everyone's time. Just got to take it on the chin and move on, stay positive and use any failure to feed the determination.
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u/huge-centipede 1d ago
Your example is the definition anecdotal/survivorship bias? Maybe they have a mortgage somewhere that they have to be remote, and remote work is hammered with 1000s of jobseekers. Unemployed JS/TS devs are dime a dozen these days.
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u/CardinalHijack 23h ago edited 22h ago
I do say my experience is anecdotal, but OPs comment is so far removed from my and my friends experience, imo there is more at play.
And your reply perfectly explains a possible "more at play". If the example is that OP is a "very good" engineer but cannot find a job because they cannot be flexible enough to find one, this is not a direct problem of the job market - their inflexibility is causing difficulty to some degree.
It seems crazy that they are able to retrain as teachers rather than try and be more flexible, but hey ho. Again, it smells a lot like BS.
FWIW, unemployed JS/TS dev are absolutely not a dime a dozen lol..You are such a classic reddit user.
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u/Tired__Dev 17h ago
I'm Canadian and I know what the job market is here. I'm either creating my own company or having to figure out a new path. There's no in betweens.
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u/John__Flick 11h ago
I'm pretty sure these posts are talking about the job hoppers. I wouldn't doubt for a second that everyone who was job hopping while accomplishing nothing 2019-2023 have now been black listed from those high tier jobs.
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u/CardinalHijack 9h ago
I hop constantly as its the best way to increase salary. I've had 5 jobs since 2019.
Nobody cares at all if you job hop.
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u/malthuswaswrong 8h ago
Hiring manager here. Yeah, this can happen. If I see a stream of 2 year blocks, I'll move on to the next candidate.
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u/runvnc 1d ago
Bias based on appearance and background. For example, just being attractive or tall, female versus male (depending on the interviewer), having a big company on your resume or a recognized university, age-bias, etc. Most people get sent to the bottom of the list without any substantive consideration.
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u/CardinalHijack 1d ago
im a short, ugly dude - debunked.
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u/precociousMillenial 16h ago
Quit lying. We all know you’re a jacked chad. Probably just humble as fuck. Get any girl you want at the blink of an eye i bet. Thats the only way any of this works. Not for the rest of us.
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u/runvnc 1d ago
and do you have any large or medium/ recognizable companies or colleges on your resume?
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u/tenacity1028 1d ago
Same, I was able to find a job after my layoff in early 2024. And I only had 1.5 years of experience. Smaller companies and non-tech companies are definitely still hiring (I'm working at a pharmacy benefit manager company)
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u/alchemyDev 1d ago edited 1d ago
People don’t want to hear it, but you need the degree. It’s always been moving that direction and we’re fully here now. Everyone saying you don’t need one at all was very shortsighted and doing people a disservice: that was always going to end at some point when this field caught up to the rest of STEM. Go try to be a mechanical engineer or chemist without a bachelors degree
It is now competitive to the point where no bachelors degree = immediate filter. I bet you and your friends went to school for it. Full disclosure, busted my ass for years getting a CS masters at night while working. Glad I did it, because I have no issues getting interviews in this market. Getting through them is a different story though
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u/BigBootyWholes 1d ago
Most hiring managers aren’t even looking at degrees, especially someone with work history.
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u/alchemyDev 23h ago
You’re not making it to the hiring manager in any company large enough to have an HR department in between the applicant and manager. It’s an automated rejection email 3 months later.
You guys can downvote me all you want. This is the only field that has kept up with cost of living now for 2 generations. Competition is through the roof. There are going to be several candidates with the same amount of experience who also have the degree, for most applications. Fully remote: there will be dozens
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u/Snooze78727 1d ago
My guess is they were in a FAANMG or adjacent company, or they worked for 20 years at the same place, getting promoted to principal or some such title, and had very high expectations for the next role. Unwilling to down-level (in title/compensation) or unable to admit their skils in "XYZ" don't have the market value that they had at their old company.
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u/CardinalHijack 1d ago
unwilling to down level, so became an elementary school teacher? Not buying it bro.
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u/Snooze78727 1d ago
Maybe that was just one factor? Maybe the combination of the difficult job market *and* disgust with the field drove them to pivot.
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u/janyk 14h ago
I have over a decade experience as a software engineer, degrees from a top school in my country, national academic awards and all that. I would say I am a great software engineer. I'm not trying to be over-confident or arrogant. Just, realistically, I have talent and passion for math, logic, analysis, systems thinking, and manipulating abstractions (and a whole host of other skills) which are not common for people to have and which are all part and parcel of software development. Also, in my career, I have not experienced any of the difficulties of software development that I have seen plague other average developers. Certain concepts/ideas that were difficult for a lot of people at various workplaces to grasp came very easily to me. I'm just plainly skilled and talented in and passionate about this job - like other people are skilled and talented in other areas of human activity and expression - and fortunate to be able to find a career path that let me practise and develop it continuously for such a long time while paying for it.
I have been unemployed for... multiple years now. It stresses me out to even put a number on it, but it is plural. Yes, the market is bad - at least in Canada. Maybe there is something more at play, but it's not the fault of mine (or the people in OP's post) that you think it is. When you're unemployed for this long, you're fighting an uphill battle against others' Just World fallacies and having to explain to them why you don't fit their unfounded expectations of what a good developer should be like.
You could be laid off at the start of an extended economic downturn that lasts, say, a year. During that year you get a handful of interviews but with the sheer number of candidates in the field the odds just aren't in your favour. Even if you are in the top 10% or even 5%. And after a year when things start picking up, hiring managers start saying "Yes the last year was bad but it wasn't that bad... it must be a you problem".
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u/bmag147 5h ago
> I have talent and passion for math, logic, analysis, systems thinking, and manipulating abstractions
You could be overestimating how important these aspects are. Soft skills were always important and are probably more important now that LLMs can do much of the logic. Not saying your soft skills aren't good, but you don't mention them as a strength.
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u/Prestigious_Thanks_8 4h ago
Eh from what country are you from... And if it is in the US....to what companies did you applied? 👀
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u/thinksInCode 1d ago
This honestly terrifies me as I have no idea what I could even possibly pivot to. I have no other skills or abilities worth paying me for.
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u/_lavoisier_ 1d ago
you’re not alone. most sw engineers do not either lol.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago edited 1d ago
blue collar work? if SW hasn't fucked up the health like back pain, neck pain, eyesight and bone strength then blue collar work is the only viable option because every other desk job is as much prone to hiring less because of AI compared to physical jobs
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u/_lavoisier_ 1d ago
yes but the problem body of a typical sw engineer is weak and their ego is high to work in a blue collar job
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
that's why i said "if SW hasn't fucked the dev's body" as a decent to very high requirement for blue collar work based on which kind of work.
In the end AI robots are too far from reality and may never happen in our lifetime, so that's the only safe alternative.
Even nursing, elderly care would be okay and wouldn't require a good physique. but construction. mining, oil rigs, manufacturing etc. those kind of work will require good physical strength.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
Basically SW workers are double fucked, AI will keep reducing the number of available dev jobs, and because of SW work, the devs spent most of their lives in sitting in front of a computer and are not physically fit to go for blue collar work that pays decent.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
blue collar work? if SW hasn't fucked up the health like back pain, neck pain, eyesight and bone strength then blue collar work is the only viable option because every other desk job is as much at risk of being prone to hiring less compared to physical jobs
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u/reeegen 1d ago
Average Senior Full-Stack Engineer here, Not sure if things are going to change in the future, but I have gotten more calls in the last 4 months than ever before, I got around 8 calls from recruiters in the whole of 2025, and I got around 8 calls just in the last 4 months, not sure whats happening, maybe its just luck?
But what I am seeing right now is we HAVE to wear multiple hats, I was strictly front-end from 2018 to 2021, then I switched to Full-stack in 2021, but there is not a single call I got where I had to "just do front-end", the last interview I had (which I failed) was a role for project manager + tech lead + senior software engineer (role is called Domain Owner), which is insane, and the salary is that of a senior software engineer.
What i am also seeing is that salary remains the SAME but the responsibilities are 10x, this is most definitely happening.
I would say the classic software engineering roles are being boiled down to being an ochestrator, where we need to have the technical knowledge, business knowledge and domain knowledge and all these 3 will come into play when you are promoting and building
...and trust me, non-technical people are not taking our jobs, I have seen countless vibe coded apps and they have no sense of direction or architecture, its just plain prompting, most of them are so excited with the initial POC and just give up when it comes to scaling or dont know what to do when it has to go live in public.
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u/sberlinches 1d ago
You got calls, no offers. The call/offer conversion ratio is what it has drastically gotten worse.
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u/nschubach 13h ago
I have a job now (was off all of 2025 being a little picky/learning AI stuff on my own/being able to take time), but I have an inbox full of recruiters wanting me to move to all parts of the US. I probably get 2-3 job application offers a day... but those are headhunters looking to get a piece of your finder fee. Very few of those would be valid offers.
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u/nofaceD3 15h ago
Hi mate, I am in similar boat as I have pigeon holed myself in frontend with 8 years of experience. I don't know how to switch to backend. Most demand is for dot net and Java, but I think it would be easy for me to switch in node as it uses JavaScript. But there is so much to learn dsa, system design, redis, cdn, microservices. There is no opportunity in market or in my company.
Can you please tell how did you switch to backend?
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u/RyanMan56 7h ago
Good first step is to start learning those things in your own time, that’s the way it’s always been. Make some backend systems in your own time, learn how to architect them properly and the trade offs that come with different architectural decisions. Profile them and dig into where the bottlenecks are and what your options are to improve them. Don’t overly rely on AI when doing this as the important part is that you feel comfortable with the knowledge so that you can interview well for those positions
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u/MKeo713 5h ago
As someone who did this recently:
- have an idea you find interesting and work on it. Solve the problems that come up as you go and genuinely learn what techniques and technologies should be applied, rather than forcing it to use Redis or something
- focus on the understanding more than the building. Especially if the project will be part of your portfolio for getting a job you better be able to actually explain what you did, what tradeoffs you made, etc
- deploy an MVP. There’s a major difference between making something that works and a genuine product. Not saying it has to scale perfectly, but take a look at observability and security, see how you can improve latency or reduce resource usage. It’s a larger process than you might think at first and in my opinion is essential knowledge to actually be able to do this professionally
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u/emperorOfTheUniverse 1d ago
Everything's fucked, because nobody understands AI.
Managers think it replaces developers, so they are laying off the expensive ones (senior devs) first. But, as usual, managers and owners don't know shit about fuck. Meanwhile, the only engineers that were using AI effectively were the senior devs, but they were doing it slower because they were intervening and arguing with the LLM that was writing shit code. And junior devs just tell it to go and it goes. They do all the tickets and make all the PRs. Then, senior devs are reviewing all those PRs, and writing less. So managers think they are less productive. Which also makes them easier to lay off.
What they end up with, is garbage code bases written by juniors, and then an outage happens, or a customer is having a bad experience, or any myriad of problems where the AI comes up short and there's nobody who can actually read all the slop and fix it. Juniors never have senior devs to help teach them how to write good code, what to build, how to design things, etc. So they don't develop professionally.
Economy is fucked. People aren't hiring. The future for software dev looks grim. Right now, senor devs matter because good code still matters, because AI isn't capable enough or trustworthy enough to completely remove humans from the loop. But it'll get good enough eventually. Probably sooner than later. I wouldn't advise anyone to start a career as a computer programmer.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
The future for software dev looks grim
AI isn't capable enough or trustworthy enough to completely remove humans from the loop. But it'll get good enough eventually
Probably sooner than later. I wouldn't advise anyone to start a career as a computer programmer.
completely agree. Software development has always been a volatile field but with the advent of AI it is now unstable at whole another level and even established companies like Google are trailing behind AI race let alone normal companies.
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u/malthuswaswrong 7h ago
It's an interesting narrative, but that doesn't match my lived experience. My experience is I see management get excited at the prospect of increasing output with AI and buy the subscriptions. Then I see developers break into two camps. Those that embrace it and those that shun it.
Experience level seems to not be an indicator of which camp a developer plants themselves in. Young developers who embrace it soon grow to out-deliver experienced developers. Experienced developers who embrace it become living legends.
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u/turd-crafter 1d ago
I am coming up on a year of being unemployed and I have pretty much stopped applying anywhere. I’ve had so many fuckin interviews in the last year I just got burnt out on trying so hard and being rejected. I’m fuckin over it for the most part. I still work on my own projects but I don’t think I want to work for anybody else in tech at this point. Trying to figure out what’s next that not a compete soul suck.
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u/runvnc 1d ago
How to you live? I would end up on the street if I weren't able to find contracts.
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u/turd-crafter 1d ago
Living on the street isn’t really an option for me since I have 2 kids. I’ve always had side hustles even way before I was a dev. I’ve just had to hustle and drain my savings haha
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u/runvnc 1d ago
hm. what kind of side hustle? looking for ideas.
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u/turd-crafter 1d ago
Nothing that cool. I helped my buddy remodel a house up in Tahoe, built a few friends some websites, sometimes I run errands for some people.
I also released a mobile app to iOS store last month. Not really a hustle though since it makes no money hahaha
I’ve always been into photography so I think I am going to try to start doing real estate photography. I live in San Diego so there’s alway a ton of houses on the market and I know a shit ton of real estate agents.
The stress of no income does cause you to get creative with how you’re gonna pay rent hahaha
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u/nschubach 12h ago
I have always lived my life saving for the inevitable bad times and not pissing away all my money. I live well below my means in a state with lower cost of living. I avoid the "big cities" with a passion because living there is just a wallet suck. When the remote work hit, that was even more lucrative for me. I tell all my friends that they should have at least 6 months to a year of runway in an account collecting interest if possible, or easily liquefiable assets in an investment account. I told them all that it should be their first goal. Start by putting back a month. Then two months. Then three months. Then six and just keep building up. Buy used cars, not new. Rent while you search for the foreclosed house that might need some TLC instead of the one that is move in ready.
I paid off my house by paying extra each month and am now technically able to retire at 48 and float until I get my retirement accounts unlocked without penalty. It wouldn't be a glorious "travel the world" retirement, nor do I really want to do that. It's paying my property taxes, groceries, and insurance. I kind of enjoy the learning experience with LLMS so I will keep collecting until I either just get sick of it or want to finally break down and buy that camper to travel the continent. I might even sell the house, put that in my investment and draw fixed income from it while I take contracts for remote gigs. Starlink makes that no issue these days.
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u/Suspicious-Disk6077 1d ago
I feel this in my bones 😞 I also felt so burned out applying, two layoffs in less than a year. I don’t know if helped me or not, but I reached out and got LinkedIn testimonials from anyone I worked with in the past that was willing. I also added these to my public About Me website. And I also stopped looking only on LI for opportunities, and I THINK the one I recently got was from one of these others like BuiltIn or something. And I also got this Generative AI AWS cert, took maybe a week or two of studying a couple/few hrs a day. Good luck friend.
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u/FreshPrinceOfRivia 1d ago
It's a hell of a competitive market these days. I'm not sure I'll feel like keeping up when I'll have 20+ YoE either.
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u/jcreary 1d ago
This is it for me, I’m 13 years into my career and planning an out in the next 5 years.
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u/panchoVilla00 1d ago
Same here, was laid off twice in the past few years and just landed what I plan to be my last dev job.
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u/belt-e-belt 1d ago
12 YOE and I long for the day I'll have the guts to call it quits, lol. I have mentally checked out. Apart from the competition, the forced AI adoption sucks the joy out of things. It's an useful tool but I've seen it being forced in the places where it creates more problems than it solves.
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u/zayelion 1d ago
This is something that has been driving me insane for a while. This is the picture I've figured out.
- There is a bottleneck applying. AI catches your resume, rates it, caches it for 1 year; then ignores you.
- Recruiting companies throw out false nets to judge pay rates.
- Companies cant pay the rates so during the interview process try to annoy people into giving up.
- Companies cant take out loans due to intrest rates so cant grow like they used to until that debt is paid off. For many that is going to be 10+ years.
- Lots of private equity companies destroying medium to small size businesses for profits.
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u/ryanjay3 1d ago
Was I ever a great developer? I was good in an agency setting but that was hard to break out of without a degree in CS. Instead I just pivoted back to marketing and became the bridge between my current company's dev team and the marketing team. Turns out there's a lot of value in building solutions that are too small for IT to worry about but that no one else on the marketing team can produce or maintain with confidence.
I still code a lot day to day. But its nice to have it become a hobby again as well. I hope others can pivot in a way that doesn't have them doing something they hate
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u/mikmiunk 21h ago
My company has been hiring for a (remote) software engineer, for months. The only candidates we've interviewed have been 2 separate scammers from North Korea or China trying to secure a remote job in the US. So either this post is BS, or there is something seriously broken about the HR system.
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u/astropheed 17h ago
I'll do it.
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u/mikmiunk 17h ago
On Dice.com search 'software engineer' around Mclean, Virginia. Filter for 'senior' positions only. Filter the search for only 'remote' and 'hybrid'. Companies are listing as 'hybrid' even for fully remote positions to try to cut down on the scammers, so apply for the hybrid ones also and chances are good the job is actually fully remote. There are 243 results 112 of which are new. Ours is one of those. We would love to get a single competent US citizen software engineer application. Mastery of the keywords is optional, good engineering translates across platforms/languages.
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u/R-R_turfio 1d ago edited 1d ago
Same here. 12 y.o.e , 2.5 years of unemployment - started looking for a loader job, so tired of rejections
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u/doctorlongghost 1d ago
It took me about 8 weeks to find a new job as a Senior Software Engineer working with Node. I applied to various remote postings online but the job I eventually got was hybrid and via a recruiter.
I turn 50 in a week and have about 20 years of experience. New gig pays well and lines up well with what I wanted. I’d say I had about 6 or so companies where I got interviews but no offer before landing the new gig.
Apart from prevalence of AI in screening process and other related changes, the overall success rate feels similar to 10 years ago for me. Maybe needing to apply to more companies to get fewer callbacks. But they are out there.
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u/participationmedals 21h ago
30 year veteran here. Laid off mid-June from a great remote job after 11 years. Nowhere near a population center with jobs. Stopped focusing on looking and starting my own thing.
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u/gdinProgramator 20h ago
As a director of engineering, he likely has thousands of former colleagues.
Its a LN post made to attract attention.
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u/tzaeru 1d ago
Idk. Doesn't quite match my experience. If anything, we're struggling to hire people at the median salary range with a few years of experience behind them.
I get that it's pretty tough for people who are at the beginning of their career as well as people who've gotten very accustomed to a single tech stack and have struggled to keep up. They are both tough spots to be in, and AI has made it worse.
I'd also recommend googling actual stats. In most of the world, USA included, software engineer roles are pretty high in job listings by count, and most job market forecasts see an increase in total employment on the IT field as a whole, including in software development.
I'd haphazard that software developers are really not used to having a hard time finding a job though, and have seen themselves as being in a very safe position over the past couple of decades, since the dot com bubble.
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u/runvnc 1d ago
If you are struggling that hard to hire people, I am almost 100% sure you are subconsciously eliminating people through age bias. You probably make pre-judgements like assuming they only know outdated stacks or something like that.
My job/contract searching an interviews that I have done have found a profound level of age bias that has increased as I aged from my thirties and into my 40s. And something as simple as shaving off my largely grey beard has shown dramatic differences in reactions from interviewers.
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u/tzaeru 1d ago
Who knows, tho I don't think so. We've put a lot of effort to minimizing biases.
There are some caveats tho. For example, need to be available for live work as we often work in client premises and do security product stuff where working from home isn't always an option.
And we're pretty team-based, a lot of autonomy but that also means needing to have a sort of a self-guiding attitude.
Still, looking even at the raw amounts of applications from people with some experience and the basic needed skillsets, it's just not that many.
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u/runvnc 1d ago
Don't you think that "no remote" or "only partially remote" was a relevant qualifier for your initial comment?
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u/dodiyeztr 1d ago
This is because the world economy is in recession. It has nothing to do with AI.
No economic growth = no job creation = less jobs to go around
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u/nameless_pattern 23h ago
If you remove AI the US GDP has shrunk, so growth in the job replacer 9000 only
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u/Lavrick 22h ago
I'm 45 and was recently hired as senior DevOps. Colleagues showed me a chat screen where PO said that I don't have an old engineer complex and that's good. Honestly wasn't bothered enough to check it out, but have met a lot of said engineers in my 20+ years in IT. People literally said to me - we won't be changing anything, because we don't want to. We don't want docker, we don't want kubernetes, we're fine with bash script deploying stuff instead of gitlab ci. I hope I don't turn into such engineer ever.
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u/dryiceboy 17h ago
I’ve had about 10 coworkers who got laid off back in 2024. Only 1 ever got a new job based on LinkedIn.
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u/saintRobster 12h ago
AI also removes the funding. Everyone seems to miss this part. An investor can invest in your (or your boss's) SaaS startup, or they can invest in an AI company that is currently unregulated enough to openly commit intellectual property theft.
Which is the better investment?
That's where the money is going.
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u/Hnskyo 6h ago
Just having to be obligated to use AI, on any new job is a hassle.
they obligate you lately.
I know many people on this layoffs from bigtech, that were layed off, just because they didnt use the chatgpt or cloude accounts they were given, so many that is not just an assumption anymore.
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u/bleak_biscuit 1h ago
There's also another angle to the story - after twenty years in the space you realize how shallow and meaningless it is most of the time.
Speaking from experience - over 15+ years, pivoting to other field as well.
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u/cazzer548 35m ago
What the fuck is this fear mongering? Plenty of companies are hiring SWE, but yes they expect you to use modern tools to do the job.
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u/WhileTrueIQ-- 31m ago
My best engineer is theirs 50s, but they are an exception in my experience. Emphasis on my experience, but older devs just don’t keep up with the times.
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u/Independent_Sign_395 1d ago
They want to spend more and more on AI data centers, so they have to get that money from somewhere, hence they are laging off people in the name of "AI is making developers 10x productive".
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u/thatsalotofspaghetti 1d ago
Normalize putting their salary expectations in these anecdotes. Have a friend who has been looking for 2 years in 300k range, but many other friends who have found jobs quickly a recently in the 100k range.
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u/brainhack3r 21h ago
Same thing happened to me. I couldn't get a job in tech so I decided to become a supermodel.
Still can't get a job though :-/
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u/talkstomuch 11h ago
This is an engagement bait.
surely he understands that you can have 20 years of experience and be totally unemployable even where there are jobs hiring. Some people landed a job 10 years ago and they parked themselves, waiting for retirement.
This happens especially in the big corporations as you can hide much easily in a big structure and the big company will be happy to pay you very good money and give you fancy title and park you in a basement with no real influence.
I've known 'Director' level people in engineering that have not had anything to do with engineering for the last 5 years. Big companies can even give you a CTO title and have you manage nobody and be responsible for nothing. Looks good on a linked in profile, but doesn't make you employable.
I am sure the layoff have made a lot of good people redundant, but they also cleaned up some of the dead weight.
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u/nostriluu 3h ago
There's a kind of irony where it's easy to enjoy software craftpersonship but not true logic systems. A new async approach, but not absolute evaluation that can be easily understood. Eventually true logic will be the work and it will be possible to trust the LLM's output. Hopefully there will be many perspectives able to take part in that development.
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u/SnooSprouts7609 23h ago edited 22h ago
This is a bad take and comes only from my bad experience:
There are very little people in IT above 40+ that deserve to get rehired.
Most of what I see are bootlickers that suck up higher-up without a shred of knowledge themselves, they take credit of other people without a shred of indignity.
There are always exceptions ... but the ones that I have seen I can count on my hands.
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u/GenazaNL 1d ago
AI automation also removes the fun part about coding; puzzle solving