Why nobody is hiring Software Engineers (hint: is not AI)

Whenever you see people talking about the state of the software development job market, this graph pops up. Basically, the number of open tech jobs ever since 2022 up until now. Right, we went from almost half a million openings to barely not even approaching half of that, roughly 2,000, maybe 30, 2,040 as of now, 2025. Now, of course, if you see this graph, you won't be very optimistic about the market.

And I think there's a problem with that. Because the reality of software development jobs and of the market as a whole, it's more complex and it's not as depressing as most people want you to believe. I think a more interesting graph, it's this one. This is a normal skill distribution applied to developer skill. We will talk about this in depth, but let's assume this is a skill distribution in a normal market.

Specifically in the software development job market, where we are mapping out the the number of developers by skill level. Basically, we see under the junior and mid level level, it's where most people, let's say, roughly 80% of the distribution of the people will be below what is considered senior, and then above senior about the 20%, this is people that are very experienced experts sit here. Now, again, this is the normal state of an industry.

Yet right now in the software industry, we find ourselves into a skewed distribution. This skewed distribution, it's mostly due to tons of junior and mid-level devs who entered the sector in the last 5 years, and of course, the management layer on the other side that formed to manage these people. We will analyze these curves in depth, because what's actually happening right now in the market is not that software development jobs are disappearing, we are simply going to a big correction.

Things are changing, but it's not the end of the world. If you understand the patterns that are emerging in the market, then you can adapt and make sure you have a driving future as a software engineer. So in today's video, we are going to understand what's happening right now in the software development job market. Based on that, we will understand what's the best thing you can do if you are a software engineer.

you continue to get hired right now. And finally, what does the future hold for software engineers? But first, let's understand how we got here in the first place. And the story goes like this, right? First we had cheap money for the last 10 years after the big financial crisis, governments wanted to stabilize the economy. And so the central banks dropped interest rates, of course, cheap money, it's addictive.

So we forgot to raise them up when they were just about to tighten this monetary policy. Covid hit, so then we had again cheap money and now 2024 and 2025, with inflation going to the roof, central banks saw themselves forced to actually correct this. Now, with the financial sector being in trouble, a lot of this cheap money went to the companies which got used to having infinite amounts of cash for their project.

Not only that, but as I mentioned in 2018, 2020, the Covid pandemic hits. And what happens? People are locked up, so they are online a lot more, they buy stuff online. Tech companies are the companies that can work very well with remote work. So they are able to still deliver no matter the lockdown. So, as you can see here, their advertising revenues and their revenue overall goes up, which, if you added to the cheap money that we mentioned before, they are doing very, very well.

So, of course, they start over hiring. As we can see here, Amazon almost duplicated their head count between 2019 and 2022. Same with meta, same with Snap, same with Salesforce, 67% people, most tech companies took advantage of the situation. and grew their workforce many times in double digits. It was a big tech party and that's when a lot of people got into the sector. Because, of course, you had these people showing how life is so amazing as a software engineer, you know, you go and you have coffee with your bodies and you play chess and you can work next to a Porsche doing over six figures.

It's an amazing job and if you are out doing something else, then you are a fool. And many existing software engineers got quite comfortable. It was a good market. I don't blame them. In the meantime, a lot of software engineers overspecialized. What do I mean by overspecializing? Well, big tech. companies have big teams, so you can survive and you can get by just becoming the button developer. And this is a two story, you had people front engineers getting paid six figures salaries to just sit around and fix a bug here and there.

There was a lot of cash going around and you could actually maintain these teams. But eventually all good things come to an end and they came to an end when this guy acquired Twitter and fired about 80% of people. Trying to prove the world that you can actually run a take company with a lot less people. Now, layoffs are very contagious, so we've seen a chain reaction and of course, Google, Meta, Amazon jumped into the layoff wagon.

These companies proceeded with mass layoffs, which led to the software job market basically imploding on itself. For the first time in decades, software engineers had to worry about their future and had less job security than almost a McDonald's employee. Cuz no matter how alphabet stock is doing, people still love hamburgers. All in all, in the last 5 years, more than a million people have been laid off in by the tech industry.

But wait, it gets even worse because then open AI releases chat GPT and we see things like co-pilot, deep seek and cloud coming up. Then Nvidia CEO says AI means everyone can be a programmer, so it's not about you being unemployed, it's actually you won't have a future. And tech CEOs saw this as the perfect excuse to drive even more layoffs. Which actually brings us to today, we are in one of the most crowded developer job markets we ever seen.

A market where normal software engineering jobs get about 2,000 applicants or even 7,000 in some cases. What's actually happening, it's as I mentioned, a big correction. Everything in nature follows a normal distribution, as we've seen in the last 5 years in the software development job market. With so many people being compelled to become developers because of the nice salary, the nice lifestyle, we've seen a lot of mid-level and junior engineers coming into the sector.

We had a huge influx of developers, and then, of course, companies, as I said. you know we're hanging all these people and they need to create an engine manager layer to manage those people. So the the curve got skewed on both sides. Now, a new word order, it's being established and decided even before Stalon 24, where this curve, of course, like everything in nature, has to move towards a normal distribution again. Which is why junior and mid developer are not finding any open jobs, almost all new job openings are looking for a senior dev or senior level of skill. On the other side, engineering managers are also being let go. We've seen Amazon doing that. We've seen every company from meta to alphabet trying to eliminate management layers. The funny part it's that while mid-level used to be the mid of the curve, the senior full stack developer, it's the most demanded profile and it's becoming kind of the mid of the normal distribution. This is why the market is converging to not reflecting the actual skill of software engineers, which is why there is a mismatch between what the market needs and what a lot of the software engineers out there looking for positions have to offer. Again, the job market is going through a major correction and everything is converging towards the senior level. It's not that companies only want senior devs. They they really don't. But what they don't want, it's juniors because what they actually don't want, it's inefficiency. They can't afford them. With inflation being so high and the economy doing not doing that well, nobody has time for people who cannot deliver from day one. The more interesting question is, what can you do as a software engineer to thrive in this new board order? And I think this applies to you whether you are a junior, mid-level or even a senior dev, you will be affected by this new situation. And I think this applies to you whether you are a junior, mid-level or even a senior dev, you will be affected by this new situation. Competition is higher even at senior level. So pay attention. Well, as Charles Darwin said, it's not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It's the one that is the most adaptable to change and the keyword for the next age of software engineer that we are getting in, it's adaptability. Which is why, again, the full stack engineer, the most adaptable

Engineer is the one that will do best in this market. The first thing you want to do is to manage your own expectation. It's a cycle, this thing happened in the past. The economy will recover. This is not the end of software engineering, as we know it. Actually, what usually happens in these cycles is that when the cycle ends, the the industry expands. We've seen this back in the 2000s, we've seen it in 2009, and we are going to see it again in 2025 and beyond.

As you can see here, even after the famous.com bubble popped up, the tech sector recovered in about less than 3 to 5 years. Now, this happened 20 years ago. Tech industry was not as big as it is today, which means that the recovery today will be much faster because software has made its way into everything we do on a daily basis. Like a good mentor of mine used to say, there is no non-tech company today, all companies are tech companies.

The second thing you want to do here is to look outside the Fang. As you can see in this graph, most tech talent is not working anymore at high-tech company, companies, actually 60% of them work at non-tech company. As the number of tech workers grows, non-tech companies have hired more IT workers than the tech business this year. This is from 2024. I know here on YouTube, there is an obsession with Fang jobs.

I think that's definitely overinvested. Honestly, there are tons of amazing companies that need software engineers and are not tech companies, and you know what? You can do better than these guys. Also, make sure you read this small print, going back to the graph with the number of open tech jobs. Keep in mind, this graph, for example, it's only tracking tech companies. For example, Walmart, Disney, Visa, JP Morgan, and the New York Times, are not considered tech companies in this analysis.

The actual number of open tech jobs might be a lot higher, given that those companies are driving most of the hiring. Even indicators such as the number of openings on websites like Indeed are not accurate, because Indeed doesn't have access to major corporate websites where jobs are being advertised. So, don't get fooled by pretty graphs. Get to full stack, get to senior. The age of the over specialized developer, it's over.

The age of the generalized specialist just started. This does not mean you need to become a jack or Jane of all trades and you need to try to learn everything. It means that if you are someone who spent few years within their own specialization, being backend, frontend, it's time for you to add some generic skills. And make sure you are more versatile and you can contribute across the stack, meaning that even if your project gets cancelled, you can move on to another project or another company.

and still be able to add value. And if you're looking to do that, the best way to start is by knowing your tingle gas. At the senior dev, we created this free 10 minutes tingle assessment for JavaScript engineers who are looking to find out their gaps and a way to fix them, invest 10 minutes in it and you'll get a clear picture of where you are at. But in the end, like Richard Feyman mentioned, what I cannot create, I do not understand.

So, the meat of the Vibe coder, the developer who doesn't understand what they are actually doing and is just talking to the AI and building high-quality performance applications through that, it's just a meat. You cannot build something you do not understand. You cannot just make magic. We went deep into this AI tools and their accuracy in other videos and I invite you to watch those ones. Without being said, I hope this video bring some positivity and hope, I wish you the best of success and I'll see you in the next one.