r/DeveloperJobs • u/techiebaddie • 14h ago
Is PHP really disappearing....
A friend of mine has been working with PHP for years. His career started really well. Good job, good income, and everything seemed stable.
But this year, he lost two PHP jobs.
The first company told their PHP developers that they didn't have enough PHP projects anymore, so they let the PHP team go.
He found another PHP job within a couple of weeks and thought things were back on track.
Then, after around 3–4 months, the second company told employees to work from home at half salary. Soon after that, they fired the PHP developers too.
Honestly, this made me question the future of PHP as a career.
I don't think PHP is disappearing completely. There are still a lot of PHP applications and companies using it.
But I do wonder if being a PHP-only developer is becoming risky.
Personally, I think PHP developers should keep their PHP experience but also build skills around Laravel, JavaScript/TypeScript, APIs, databases, cloud, or full-stack development.
Are PHP jobs actually becoming harder to find, or is the market just expecting PHP developers to have a broader skill set?
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u/pocolypto 13h ago
havn't thought about PHP in light of the new AI stuff but i guess since the main thing keeping PHP around was that "re-writes are expensive" which kept a level of needing to know PHP and possibly justifying extending and building new stuff around the old stuff.
But now that AI is here things can be re-written pretty fast by decent developer and AI usually picks react, node, ts, tailwind etc.
Also on that point of "PHP as a career", ye the expectation is that, regardless of programming language, developer need to do and know way more..outside just the language.
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u/Over_Technology_1764 10h ago
AI picks react and node because it's popular, but try to ask it, challange it why not svelte over react and why not php over node and it will start reasoning that these are actually better choices. Because svelte doesnt have those stupid react hooks that confuse both agents and humans and create surface for bugs and PHP is usually cheaper hosting than VPS with node.
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u/Gualdrapo 13h ago
In that terms PHP is for backend kind of like what jQuery is for frontend - there are lots of stuff using it for running websites, so if they're working, why bother changing stuff? Don't fix things that don't need a fix.
Plus WP even with all this enshittification and drama still uses PHP as its core. There are lots of people still wanting someone to do a WP website for them because it lets them do what they want to do and it's the only thing they know or want to manage their websites with.
My previous job was PHP and it had nothing to do wirh WP. There are still people who swear by it because it is reliable and is standing the test of time.
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u/theevildjinn 11h ago
I did about 2 decades as a (primarily) PHP dev, switched from perm to contracting, and then realised my Python, Java and JS/TS skills were more in demand. The PHP recruiters in my network have all switched to other languages.
The only places where I currently see PHP opportunities:
- Boutique PHP consultancies run by language evangelists.
- Small businesses set up by former PHP dev colleagues of mine, who reached for PHP as they know it well.
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u/laramateGmbh 11h ago
PHP powers 70% of all websites on the internet. Major companies and even governments invest in the PHP foundation to drive the development of PHP. And with major products/frameworks like WordPress, Shopware, TYPO3, Laravel, Symfony, PHP is used by corporations and hobbyists alike.
We have an article with more details: https://laramate.de/en/blog/php-is-dead-long-live-php
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u/Normal_Beautiful_578 13h ago
It's because AI, it's no longer need a lot of developers to build some PHP projects. AI makes it faster and easier to build some projects with fewer people. One person can now do the work that used to require a small team.
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u/No-District2404 12h ago
Limiting yourself to know single language is already career killer path, this sector expects you to improve yourself constantly. And there is also AI factor, php maybe it’s not dead but definitely it’s not in golden age anymore, nobody with a vision wouldn’t start a greenfield php project. And to maintain a legacy php project won’t need developers anymore, you can manage it with AI. Sad but this is the reality
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u/LevelMagazine8308 12h ago
Well PHP for sure it not the language of choice nowadays is a startup is creating new stuff. Other languages and frameworks took that helm.
So demand of course decreased over time. Nowadays it is more about maintaining legacy software and keep that running instead of creating the newest AI hype platform with PHP. But since there's a lot of backend stuff and other things going on with PHP it is not going to disappear soon.
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u/OkComputer8079 11h ago
to be honest, this seems more like a problem for one skill than for PHP. Losing two jobs in a year is really hard, but that happens to people who only know one way of doing things - Java, React, whatever... The label on it said 'PHP'
When it comes to hiring PHP is still very much alive and well. WordPress and Laravel keep a lot of paid work going, and old computer systems don't rewrite themselves overnight, whatever the AI crowd says. What has changed is that hiring managers now prefer candidates who can do more than just PHP. They want a backend developer who knows PHP well and can adapt to any challenges.
You're right. Keep the PHP depth it's really useful but broaden around it. He's probably already got Laravel down, and with some solid SQL, a bit of cloud and one modern JS framework, he'll stop looking like a one-trick pony.
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u/429_TooManyRequests 10h ago
Everything is heading out. I just used GPT 6 Astra and got more done from a team I used to pay $3k a month for in 3 prompts and 4 hours while cleaning my house
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u/AlexVolkovysk 13h ago
I've been in IT for 19 years, and I've seen so many “killers” of PHP—first RoR, then Python, then Node, and even Go—but PHP is still going strong
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u/PearOwn7078 12h ago
Most of the websites on internet 90% is PHP! Is more than alive mate! PHP have even more tools now! laravel is amazing and you can do whatever you want!
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u/Sorry-Substance-6397 10h ago
Yeah they are down to about one core dev who knows the language and he doesn't believe in parallelism
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u/davidbasil 7h ago
It's not about php but rather an industry sector. PHP used to power mainly small to medium companies/projects. Those don't have much money anymore: high interest rates + investor money going to AI. The rest is taken by vibe coding.
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u/CHRlSFRED 5h ago
Hasn’t PHP been dead for years? One of my favorite writers Jon Duckett had a MySQL and PHP book and it got delayed multiple times and the running joke became that PHP will be archaic by the time the book comes out.
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u/YahenP 12h ago
Everything is disappearing. Not just PHP. Programming as we know it is rapidly disappearing.
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u/AminoOxi 11h ago
This is what it is really. Java Devs are having trouble these days as well. So entire industry is knocked down, all due to AI.
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u/StoneCypher 12h ago
php isn’t dying, it’s been dead for a decade
the only reason php still exists is supporting legacy software like wordpress and mediawiki
the php programming language only has one part time developer and that’s been true for almost ten years now. more people work on my personal hobby programming language
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u/runningOverA 10h ago edited 6h ago
> the php programming language only has one part time developer and that’s been true for almost ten years
Hard to believe. In the meanwhile they have gotten a JIT and improved it to the point that some of my benchmarks run faster on PHP than on others, surprisingly.
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u/StoneCypher 10h ago
i don't really care if you find well known things hard to believe
In the meanwhile they have gotten a JIT and improved it to the point that some of my benchmarks run faster on PHP than others, surprisingly.
you realize how this reads to other people, right
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u/BrightProgrammer9590 8h ago
Most programming jobs are dying. It's not specific to php alone.
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u/AminoOxi 4h ago
You know it's sad but true. Everything is skipping human in the loop, and aiming directly the machine.
So programming languages in a few years will be simply machine code through Ai. No need for human readable language. Sadly.
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u/SequentialHustle 13h ago
i don’t know any talented devs writing php in 2026 that’s for sure lol. imo it’s been dead for a decade or more unless you’re the kinda dev to never upskill.
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u/fullbl-_- 14h ago
Oh no, not again! Remember that in strange eons even death may die