The blog lacks crucial info. What type of projects have you worked on? What work are you applying for? Personally, "small contractor" and Blizzard does not translate well to the typical "enterprise web dev" role.

I really hope this thread is wrong.

In 5 years, the Junior pipeline will be completely dry.

Seniors will be retiring.

Companies will be floundering.

We'll see a great correction where we need workers again.

Programmers/SE/etc... will be needed again. Always were needed, but at least managers will realize it again.

The job market to be honest has been very fucked. To me a lot of this sounds like people experiencing how terrible tech hiring has become for the first time after being in a stable job for a long time. Almost everything the Author said, was something I’ve experienced when I was laid off in the 2022-2023 wave of layoffs. At the time I was told “it was a skill issue”.

> This is probably the worst job market I've seen in a while.

What a noncommittal sentence

The first place to look for jobs should be in your network, people that worked with you, teachers, ex-managers.

Applying for jobs out of the blue usually sucks. In the ideal world, you want recruiters calling out to you.

Don't assume you can't do proper software engineering using AI. You can. The people that want to create loops are not the only ones delivering with acceptable productivity. Lot's of us still write code, at least interfaces, traits, modules or whatever, and just use the AI to fill the blanks on the really tedious code.

Hopefully you had been saving and investing folks. The sun has set, the power is off, the signal is lost. See you on the other side!

It really is awful right now. I'm lucky enough to still have a job, but floated my resume around earlier this year. I have a pretty good resume and and 15 YOE, and got turned down EVERYWHERE. I used to at least get interviews at like 50% of places I applied to.

And then recruiter spam is COMPLETELY gone. I'm not really complaining, but it feels indicative of where things are at.

Without AI your 10 years of experience is of lower utility than an AI wielding junior with 2 years of experience

Don't blame the job market, take some responsibility over your atrophying skillset