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? Sucks 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.

~3 years of experience. I can't exactly isolate the independent variable of my employment gap that increases as time goes by from my perceived quality of the job market, but my application response rate has steadily dropped from ~35% 2+ years ago to 18% right now. I rarely even get to talk to a human, it's either code assessments, IQ tests, or personality tests that get sent out within a day or two after applying, or no response. Almost always no response. Sometimes I get a request to video interview with an AI. I kindly reject those.

I'm tired, boss.

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)

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.

My company is simultaneously doing mass layoffs and mass hiring. Morale is dead in the water

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 whole team got laid off recently and I have been in constant communication with them, I also have multiple friends who got laid off this year who shared the pain it has been to get a new role,

Market seems better than the last few years but it still does not feels right to me,

We have got multiple people reaching out but the majority of the roles are in-office or hybrid while I work fully remotely.

I posted on LinkedIn, with the help from friends I got quite a lot of visibility (most viral post I have ever had) but still, out of the ~10 recruiters that reached out, only 2 are remote roles, I also got a few offers to work for equity only.

I posted on the monthly "Who's wants to be hired?" thread, it has lead to a few offers to work for equity only + shady people that want me to attend calls and "delegate" the work to them while splitting the revenue.

I have also got a few referrals and even for these, they are moving slowly.

To put it in perspective, years before I'd easily get 10 recruiters in my inbox per week,

Market seems tough and I can't imagine what junior people are passing through while trying to get a job.

EDIT: I forgot mentioning the people reaching out with promising offers and the intention of getting me to run their malware hidden in coding challenges.

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

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.

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.

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...

To go by the numbers, it's pretty good. Not as good as the truly anomalous post-pandemic peak of hiring. But still good compared to almost every other occupational group.

https://www.comptia.org/en-us/resources/research/tech-jobs-r...

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)

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.

The CEO herd mentality is in full swing. RTO and AI everywhere. I don't think it's been this bad since the 2008 crash. The Fed is indicating a rate hike so that's probably going to get worse in the near-term.

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.

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?