US tech company. Just as the RTO excuse ended it started with AI immediately.
RTO was used to squeeze as hard as possible to force people to leave and not pay severance ("You're not in the office a month from now across the country? Looks like you decided to resign, sucks for you!"). First it was "be in any office, as long as you butt is in a building with our logo on it" to "well, no, you gotta be where you manager is, so move again. Oh you can't? Suck for you, you effectively resigned then".
Then the AI excuse hit. "We'll be so productive, we don't need people anymore at all". That's going on currently. Everyone is token-maxing to the limit to show how on board they are with AI to avoid getting pushed out.
In between they also managed to "cut costs" by moving jobs overseas the countries you're familiar with. This required some finagling, so they shut down one set of platform/products built in US and started building another one overseas. Then said "oh well, looks like this division in US is not needed anymore".
The strange thing is this is happening in multiple companies at the same time. It's like all the CEOs and HR reps met at some golf retreat and decided to follow a script.
Meanwhile I got only 5 or so recruiter emails in the last year or so. Before it was a constant stream, almost one every a few weeks.
> The strange thing is this is happening in multiple companies at the same time. It's like all the CEOs and HR reps met at some golf retreat and decided to follow a script.
I’ve gotten the same feeling. It’s too consistent to be a fluke. I get the feeling its a fashion thats being pushed by VC funds who are all neck deep in nvidia, openai and anthropic stocks. They must have realized they can pump this to their portfolio to inflate all the investments.
>Meanwhile I got only 5 or so recruiter emails in the last year or so. Before it was a constant stream, almost one every a few weeks.
I've actually seen more and more LinkedIn posts from recruiters that [are proud of ] have been laid off themselves. You know things are bad when recruiters are the ones looking for jobs.
I am a programmer in the US. Linkedin mails to me from recruiters -
2026 - one (recruiter did not name the company, hybrid six month contract in another city)
2025 - none
2024 - none
2023 - four (none after March)
2022 - twenty-seven (including Amazon, Google)
Funny, Amazon never contacted me, now after I'm 3 months in a new job, they did, but ain't paying half of how much I earn in this new one, and requires me to move to a major city in Brazil to work, sigh...
Staff eng at large startup in Bay Area, 7-10 YOE. Recently interviewed at the labs. Had to go through a recruiter friend at one of them to get a response. Very difficult interviews but mostly feasible to prep for. Had to get somewhat lucky to get an offer, staff-level. Took about two months from beginning to prep to signing an offer. Recruiters very responsive - a little arrogant re: other companies but insecure about other labs.
My company is simultaneously doing mass layoffs and mass hiring. Morale is dead in the water
Got laid off earlier this year. June has been significantly better than any month earlier. I think everyone was sitting on their hands waiting for Meta to do their stuff in May
Everyone I know is having a hard time in all sorts of industries. Either they are currently unemployed and have been job searching for sometimes over a year. Or they are still employed but any looking they've done has been fruitless. So different than a couple years ago. My anecdata has people from junior to director level telling a similar story.
me: 11 years experience with big tech on resume. Located in major tech city.
I get 1-2 new recruiters in my mailbox each week for different random startups. I haven’t acted on any so IDK what the process is really like, but it does seem like people are hiring. Almost 100% seem to be some sort of AI product. Senior Eng comp base seems to be in the 200-240 range plus however much worthless equity.
Staff eng level, ~15-20 years experience. 18-36 months in position at well known large company at beginning of the year, lots of the usual recruiter interest.
Responded to one from another major company mid January. Short interview process. Started late March. Similar level, slightly higher scope, significant salary bump.
Took the opportunity to send outbounds to a few other major companies while in process, with senior referrals: ~no responses at all from that stuff.
Also, despite the employer change not being public, much less recruiter outreach the last 2 months.
I don’t know how to make the statistics match my perceived reality.
Both in this thread, and people I know in real life who are looking for jobs are struggling hard. Mass layoffs are becoming more common and the time spent between jobs is measured in six month increments.
And yet, the numbers say we are in a hiring market with more job openings than ever, except for during the pandemic.
My perceived reality and the numbers almost could not be further apart.
Same. I'm still employed, but am looking. I've had a few interviews but they're all for jobs I wouldn't really want. I know talented people who were laid off and have been looking for 6 to 9 months+. It's very rough out there. I've witnessed the dot-com crash, great financial crisis... this is the worst I've seen. Maybe other industries are better.
Why would the (USA) job numbers be real? We have yes-men at every level, purposefully installed to spin any and everything in the most positive light possible. And, if not, outright fabricate numbers.
It reminds me of 2008/2009, but weirder. I remember in that time a lot of companies going through the motions as if everything was alright and they were still hiring just fine, but then not actually hiring in the way they were acting.
It seems weirder now partly because it isn't a clear across the board recession, though part of me keeps looking at quarterly earnings reports and the DOW and keeps wondering if we're still "early 2008" on that rather than "late 2009" and that it will get worse before it gets better.
Same, I'm at about a 40% ghost rate & 5% response for any applications I put out.
Most everyone I talk with is looking as well, but nobody has moved roles. It feels like were all stuck.
Yep, I feel stuck. Almost everyone I talk to is unhappy.
Check r/cscareerquestions ha usually blood bath for juniors eg. thousands of applications to try and land a job. r/experienceddevs too a little different vibe there but some insight on job market
But hey if you don't use AI when doing an interview, might have a better leg up than those that do eg. pause for 5 seconds between responses, ear piece, looking at a screen, someone replacing you after hiring, etc...
> pause for 5 seconds between responses
I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I've gotten so aggressive about monitoring for this. I do most interviews zoomed in on the candidate's eyes and I rubric on how they "thought" through the problem, not just the results.
Thankfully the interview tools are catching on as well and now tracking this like browser focus, number of monitors, window size, and sending notifications when any of those change.
We actually state in our job listings that we will have an onsite interview as part of the process (we pay for travel/hotel, of course!).
Seems to weed these folks out.
I did not have Voight-Kampff tests on my 2026 hiring bingo card, but here we are.
Surely all of those metrics can be easily gamed by a competent software engineer.
> competent software engineer
hired :)
Reddit, is not and never was reality especially now with all the bots with private profiles. Either they are unemployed or a senior developer at FAANG.
Will say there is a difference between "reality" and hackernews too, this is a startup elite type place, jobs posted here, different than those posted on LinkedIn.
I'm just fortunate recruiters have found me for my jobs... there was one time I used Hired that was back in 2022 that worked for 1 job.
The hiding of user posts on reddit is bs I hate that, although it is convenient if you want to just hide all your stuff without deleting your account
I don't have lived experience, but "Who is hiring" had only 2 or 3 posts from my country this whole year. Until about 2 years ago there were 5-8 posts in each threads.
(I'm in a small central-European country, that is full of tech companies, both domestic and international)
Just guessing, Czechia? The Central European software engineering market seems to be softening as well, likely due to second-order effects from the U.S. tech layoffs and decreased demand for remote roles from SV companies.
No, he's in Switzerland. Unexpectedly, I must say, as many big tech including AI labs are expanding here
I fear when someone says which country you are so fast lol.
Go to a good fire and brimstone preacher and sit in the pews for a while and whatever comes out of his mouth is far less hellish than the job market today.
This gets constantly asked on HN.
What matters is where you live - the hiring market in Germany or Canada is going to be different from the Bay Area or NYC.
German startups that used to be English-speaking are now asking for German. I don't understand what that solves.
I think it's primarily a filter. Candidate filters are pretty much always silly, even common ones based on degree/grades etc. But with a lot of candidates on the market, using some filters reduces the list to a manageable amount.
Personally, as someone with a German company and a good chunk of German clients, I'd argue it _does_ help a little. Occasionally. But by and large I'm far more interested in the candidate's English proficiency.
Been applying since January after a startup layoff and seeing mixed results. I have 14 years of experience spanning datacenter ops, Security certs, and all 3 major clouds. I’ve led hundreds of people across multiple technical disciplines.
Right out of the gate, I was getting great callbacks and final rounds. Then, around April, the pipeline completely dried up. I’m doing the work for EVERY application like generating custom resumes, tailored cover letters matching their culture, and engaging with leadership on LinkedIn.
I’m down to one lead at my partner’s company, but it’s a long shot. It feels like a lot of DevOps/SecOps/IT leadership roles are evaporating. Partially because companies are over-indexing on AI/LLMs to handle architecture complexity without realizing what those tools actually lack in practice.
After climbing the ladder for over a decade, I’m worried about the future of the market, but I’m not ready to stop fighting. Has anyone else with a leadership/infra background hit this exact same wall since April? How are you pivoting your approach?
Wondering what happened in April, around that time layoffs started including at my job. No reason at all aside from “AI” and the C suite wanting larger profits.