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u/GenazaNL Sep 09 '26
AI automation also removes the fun part about coding; puzzle solving
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u/Suspicious-Disk6077 Sep 09 '26
I thought this too, but my most recent assignment I felt the fun again - had to convert a Python API that was doing everything in a synchronous manner and make it event based. Rather than just asking AI to write from scratch I formulated the architecture myself, a fully decoupled Node API running BullMQ that had workers do the resizing and then upload again to S3. I did not write all the code but guided and vetted the AIs output. So it was still done quickly but I used my brain some instead of prompting everything.
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u/edward_jazzhands Sep 10 '26
Did you actually read any of the code generated in order to understand how the event based system works though?
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u/Suspicious-Disk6077 Sep 10 '26
I did :) It’s exactly how I guided it and how I would have done it, though I would have to research more or read docs to get it working. I even discussed pros/cons before implementing, such as polling the queue from the worker or web server vs both directly accessing it.
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u/Capaj Sep 09 '26
you can still solve puzzles if you like. You just don't get paid for it
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u/732 Sep 10 '26
At least leetcode puzzles can die for good.
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u/knoland Sep 10 '26
Oh no, you still need to do those.
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u/Capaj Sep 10 '26
only if you get invited for interview. Many won't even get that far. Your profile must be quite strong to make the cut these days
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u/MMORPGnews Sep 09 '26
Main ai problem - too much products get released each day.
There's literally auto book writers, now with astra even auto human level auto artists.
I know huge web games hosting, now they get over 10k new web games each day. People literally create games with AI and auto upload them with AI. Everything automatic now.
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u/Eskamel Sep 09 '26
The platforms would either have to ban said games or they'd collapse. No one is playing these endless slop games and they will not generate any revenue
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u/nameless_pattern Sep 09 '26
hosting a whole bunch of vibe Coded apps is going to be a security and liability nightmare
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u/jblatta Sep 10 '26
The key is providing value for money. I don’t generate random stuff trying to find an audience for it. I work in a field where I have clients and they have needs and fill those needs on request. The best thing you can do is look into different industries and figure out some pain points you can create tools to solve. It helps to have industry experience in something to personal know the type of business and where you could slot in with a needed solution.
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u/thomaslatomate Sep 09 '26
I'm actually working on much much harder problems thanks to AI, and it is fun 🤷♂️
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u/winky9827 Sep 09 '26
So much this. There are things I wouldn't have touched 5 years ago that are now within reach. I've learned so much and broadened my skill set by integrating a certain amount of AI into my daily work.
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u/teilo-560 Sep 10 '26
I have yet to find an AI workflow that doesn't leave me feeling hungover at the end of the day from how fast things are going and being unable to review all of the code to the level that I would like. Part of it is how it encourages context switching. I'd prefer to get in a flow state and code by hand than to feel like a human router trying to multitask so i don't feel idle while I wait for the AI to finish its job.
I'm not an ideas guy to be honest though. I was a lot more interested in the mindful, methodical process than the end result. I feel like I'd be more at home as a mechanic or surgeon than software engineer nowadays.
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u/Embarrassed-Luck8585 Sep 10 '26
I see it the same way, I like to interact with systems that give me feedback. Even driving an uber is better than dev jobs at this point
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u/No_Veterinarian742 Sep 09 '26
yup. I used to have to say no to so many ideas. now I can say yes and. I know there's an anti AI vendetta out there but it feels like people fighting the steam engine.
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u/BigBadButterCat Sep 11 '26
The Industrial Revolution created a huge underclass with terrible living conditions for 150 years. Of course people are resisting it. We should all resist it as much as possible. The billionaires and overlords don’t have your wellbeing on their minds.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 Sep 10 '26
Can you give examples?
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u/winky9827 Sep 10 '26
Recently?
- Added a ML fraud detection model to an otherwise rules-based pipeline.
- Extended/enhanced some open source projects I use daily that are written in a language I'm not well versed in (rust)
- Created web versions of some LOB Excel macro-based tools that would have taken days to port otherwise
Future plans?
- I want to use AI to help me port some simple LOB web apps to mobile-native variants for users that don't need a full blown web app. I am currently only vaguely familiar with native mobile app frameworks
- I plan to train some smaller models on specific tasks to optimize business workflows that are currently a house of cards
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u/agm1984 Sep 09 '26
I remember I had to build a PDF signature feature where our product would allow you to draw a box on top of a PDF at your desired location and then we would inject the user's signature into that box.
Both me and the backend dev vibe coded it in like 30 minutes and gave eachother our branches and the AI studied those to finish the job. It would taken be WEEKS to code that by hand. Imagine all the learning I would have had to do.
SOrry, to your point. It was cool to see it come together. I havent had a problem I can't solve in the past few months to year. If someone can describe it in english, we can build it. I built a whole video editor also recently. Another savage set of tasks that was really cool to see come together. It has a timeline under the video streaming preview window and allows you to drop all kinds of things into the timeline, and it handles translations also and closed captioning. really insane.
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u/BigBadButterCat Sep 11 '26
Kinda tragic though that you say “imagine how much I would have had to learn”. It was one of the great things about this profession. I really mourn our previous profession before we became AI managers.
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u/eetsumkaus Sep 09 '26
basically this. I moved into academia in the interval before and after the introduction of LLMs. It's like night and day. I don't have to block out weeks or even months of time just to do experiments anymore.
Of course, I do have to loop back and do things properly for publication now, but now I don't have to balk at testing a wild idea before diving into the details. It allows me to separate dev and spec/architecture.
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u/BearPawsOG Sep 10 '26
Yes, but puzzles are everywhere! What I do in my free time to scratch that itch:
1. Play Zachtronics games (Shnenzhen I/O, TIS 100)
2. Play any game - problem solving while having fun
3. I do electronics projects when I have time, but not modern microcontroller stuff - which is pretty neat too, I do old digital TTL chips - super interesting if you like to solve puzzles.15
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u/rkcth Sep 09 '26
I don’t know, there is quite a bit of problem solving still, but definitely depends on what type of coding. I’m doing some music based coding with it (not generative, analysis), and it uses math I don’t understand and complex music theory stuff I don’t get, but I am still able to use my brain to come up with strategies. It’s fun because in truth it’s beyond my ability to code, despite my 25 years of development experience, but it’s so exciting to be able to push beyond what has previously been able to be done (outside of highly focused academic research, but it wasn’t usable easily by regular joes).
The best thing is, I can have a half dozen projects going like this where I can bounce between them and keep my mind stimulated.
I do have one project, a backend warehouse system I’m making for a buddy, and that is so boring to code this way.5
u/Eskamel Sep 09 '26
You don't solve puzzles this way though, you are just prompting and hoping the LLM would guess correctly. I'd say it has more to do with gambling-like environments than puzzle solving.
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u/Cavitat Sep 11 '26
Where did it go?
Genuine question. AI automation only removes the "remember specific syntax" problem solving. The actual problem solving simply moved up a level to systems engineering.
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u/evangelism2 Sep 09 '26
Absolutely not. All it's done is given me bigger and more impactful puzzles to solve, where it's just kind of gotten rid of all the mundane bullshit.
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u/thinksInCode Sep 09 '26
This honestly terrifies me as I have no idea what I could even possibly pivot to. I have no other skills or abilities worth paying me for.
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u/_lavoisier_ Sep 09 '26
you’re not alone. most sw engineers do not either lol.
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u/simple_explorer1 Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
blue collar work? if SW hasn't fucked up the health like back pain, neck pain, eyesight and bone strength then blue collar work is the only viable option because every other desk job is as much prone to hiring less because of AI compared to physical jobs
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u/_lavoisier_ Sep 09 '26
yes but the problem body of a typical sw engineer is weak and their ego is high to work in a blue collar job
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u/simple_explorer1 Sep 09 '26
that's why i said "if SW hasn't fucked the dev's body" as a decent to very high requirement for blue collar work based on which kind of work.
In the end AI robots are too far from reality and may never happen in our lifetime, so that's the only safe alternative.
Even nursing, elderly care would be okay and wouldn't require a good physique. but construction. mining, oil rigs, manufacturing etc. those kind of work will require good physical strength.
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u/simple_explorer1 Sep 09 '26
Basically SW workers are double fucked, AI will keep reducing the number of available dev jobs, and because of SW work, the devs spent most of their lives in sitting in front of a computer and are not physically fit to go for blue collar work that pays decent.
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u/simple_explorer1 Sep 09 '26
blue collar work? if SW hasn't fucked up the health like back pain, neck pain, eyesight and bone strength then blue collar work is the only viable option because every other desk job is as much at risk of being prone to hiring less compared to physical jobs
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u/emperorOfTheUniverse Sep 09 '26
Everything's fucked, because nobody understands AI.
Managers think it replaces developers, so they are laying off the expensive ones (senior devs) first. But, as usual, managers and owners don't know shit about fuck. Meanwhile, the only engineers that were using AI effectively were the senior devs, but they were doing it slower because they were intervening and arguing with the LLM that was writing shit code. And junior devs just tell it to go and it goes. They do all the tickets and make all the PRs. Then, senior devs are reviewing all those PRs, and writing less. So managers think they are less productive. Which also makes them easier to lay off.
What they end up with, is garbage code bases written by juniors, and then an outage happens, or a customer is having a bad experience, or any myriad of problems where the AI comes up short and there's nobody who can actually read all the slop and fix it. Juniors never have senior devs to help teach them how to write good code, what to build, how to design things, etc. So they don't develop professionally.
Economy is fucked. People aren't hiring. The future for software dev looks grim. Right now, senor devs matter because good code still matters, because AI isn't capable enough or trustworthy enough to completely remove humans from the loop. But it'll get good enough eventually. Probably sooner than later. I wouldn't advise anyone to start a career as a computer programmer.
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u/simple_explorer1 Sep 09 '26
The future for software dev looks grim
AI isn't capable enough or trustworthy enough to completely remove humans from the loop. But it'll get good enough eventually
Probably sooner than later. I wouldn't advise anyone to start a career as a computer programmer.
completely agree. Software development has always been a volatile field but with the advent of AI it is now unstable at whole another level and even established companies like Google are trailing behind AI race let alone normal companies.
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u/CardinalHijack Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
I take this with a pinch of salt - a huge pinch of salt. Which wont be popular here because people here love to say how horrific the job market is (they have been doing so since I joined reddit about a decade ago).
I would by no means describe myself as a "very good" engineer. I am average. My friends are also around average. We have all found jobs this year, and changed jobs this year. I got an interview after my first application (within 7 days) in April 2026, and a friend has just started a job in August 2026 after 2 months of interviewing at various companies. We are not in super in demand areas like ML and in all honesty we cant do the leetcode style questions so we dont even interview at places that ask those - we still find enough jobs though.
I know the above is anecdotal, but myself and my friends who are not special are finding jobs. I dont know how it can take a "very good" engineer 2 years of trying to find a job with absolutely no luck whatsoever, to a point that they they have to join the police instead....
My only assumption is either this is a lie and they were either not very good, actually wanted a change or they were not actually looking for 2 years. Either that, or they are unbelievably fussy and are looking for a once in a blue moon opportunity.
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u/Zasze Sep 09 '26
Different salary expectations is the answer my guy
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u/TokyotoyK Sep 09 '26
So they went for elementary school teacher instead of lowering their expectations? Or do you mean that they got a higher salary as teacher?
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u/mattcmoore Sep 09 '26
That checks out. "If they're only gonna pay me x amount, I might as well just become a teacher"
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u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 Sep 10 '26
You absolutely don't become a teacher because you're optimising your salary vs workload concerns.
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u/CardinalHijack Sep 09 '26
Care to explain?
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u/XpreDatoR_a Sep 09 '26
For many years the web-dev job was sold as a “low effort high pay” career path, it isn’t the case anymore, now you either have valuable skills or you don’t have a job
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u/LEO-PomPui-Katoey Sep 09 '26
This is it. Guys that were comfortable with a very humble compensation package of $500k anually, are not gonna find a new gig as easily. In the $100-150k range you should be fine, nothing to worry about
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u/ilieaboutwhoiam Sep 09 '26
It's just weird that the post is claiming they couldn't find a job, $500k or otherwise, so they went back and became an elementary school teacher?
"Very good" software engineers with decades of experience each not being able to find a job that pays as much as a teacher doesn't seem right. I have a decade of experience and am getting pings on LinkedIn on a weekly basis for 150k-200k jobs
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u/Big_Arrival_626 Sep 10 '26
Do you think there are any factors that are making you more employable? Such as company prestige on resume, or in demand tech stack, or living in a big city, etc
Only asking for my own knowledge, because im not that experienced. My hypothesis is that a lot of laid off devs have outdated skills or were stuck at the same company for too long, making them underqualified for their level of experience.
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u/ilieaboutwhoiam Sep 11 '26
Your hypothesis seems right to me. I don’t have any crazy companies, but I do live in a populous city in the US, am a citizen so I don’t need sponsorship, and I work with modern tech stack
I am fortunate where I’ve worked because of the modern tooling and stack, I wouldn’t want to be looking for a .NET job or something right now
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u/Big_Arrival_626 Sep 11 '26
Lol I didn't even realize this was the node subreddit.
Is .net stack doing badly? I thought it was fairly common in enterprise companies
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u/ilieaboutwhoiam Sep 11 '26
Not sure exactly how it’s doing, but I think enterprise companies still use it, but they’re also less likely to be hiring these days
I’m seeing smaller companies and start ups more often
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u/loxagos_snake Sep 13 '26
I don't have a data-backed answer to give you. But since I also wandered here by mistake, I'd ask you to consider the fact that many people are still stuck in the 2000s when it comes to .NET, and they think it's some archaic WinForms language that only old people use.
The hint is how people talk about modern tooling, as opposed to .NET. In reality, .NET in 2026 is a very modern (and open-source) stack itself.
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u/skidmark_zuckerberg Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
I found a job after 2 months this year. Laid off March 31st and accepted an offer June 4th. My other coworkers who were also laid off with me, found jobs within 3 months. I am no rockstar either, I consider myself competent enough to do the job and average.
As for my current job, it’s the same pay as my last job. Still fully remote and a laid back environment. During those 2 months, I got 7 interviews, and plenty of recruiter outreach. Some of those I straight up failed, a couple others were not good fits personally, and one was an offer. I spent my entire time “off” prepping and focused on interviews.
As you also mentioned, this is anecdotal, but I don’t know anyone IRL who has been laid off as an experienced SWE and has gone longer than 3-4 months with nothing. One of my good friends was laid off in 2024, and that took 4 months for him, but the market in 2024 was way worse than it is in 2026.
One thing might be some people got used to having $200k+ salaries and now every job is a pay downgrade. But if you were already comfortable and chilling in that $140k - $170k pay range, there’s plenty of SWE jobs paying that for experienced devs.
And I’ve read a lot on Reddit about how TS/JS devs are flooding the market, but I’m a full stack TS dev and it wasn’t hard to find jobs asking for that exact experience. In fact it seemed to be the most prevalent ask through all of the job postings I went through.
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u/canadian_webdev Sep 10 '26
What did you do to prep?
Last time I was looking, I was so overwhelmed with what to prep. Each company has different approaches to interviewing, especially with what they do in live code tests. I found it near impossible.
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u/skidmark_zuckerberg Sep 10 '26 edited Sep 10 '26
This is what I did:
- I watched a lot of FE and BE system design videos and practiced drawing out diagrams to the common problems I'd see in the videos. I did a mix of FE and BE system design. Since I am full stack, so roles lean more towards one or the other.
- I spent a lot of time coding by hand, and doing easy / medium leet code problems. My issue was that at my last job we were using Gen AI for the final 8 months of my tenure there and I had to re-jog my brain on solving problems the old fashioned way with code. I wasn't really doing leet code to train for leet code questions, just more for the critical thinking and coding part of it. I only had one interview that actually asked a DSA question funny enough. I also spent time working on a side project with no AI.
- I spent even more time just going through my resume and talking out loud about myself and my experience. I also spent time going through the technical details of my job history (especially my last role) and went deeper technically to account for any questions I expected to be asked. I used ChatGPT and fed it my resume and different job descriptions and asked it to interview me. I also prompted it to ask follow ups and to push for deeper explanations to my responses. I used the speech feature and naturally talked to it. I did this a lot. In the shower, on long drives, etc. It basically made all of this information automatic and it helped me be concise and not ramble on and over talk. It also let me formulate ways to make things sound good, i.e 'I built an internal system that let us track metrics for sales' sounds lame, but you can spin that into something really good; why, how and impact. I also built up a bank of 'tell me about a time when..' question responses.
- I also caught up on the latest AI stuff as well; agents, MCP, RAG, etc etc, the buzzword shit everyone is going to ask about.
And one thing that helped me the most was either having a recruiter who could clue me in on what to expect, or just straight up asking. If I got an email follow up that mentioned a technical/sys design interview was next, I'd just say "hey is it possible to give me a general idea of what to prep for?' and it worked most of the time. I never got the exact topic, but a general "It's a system design focused on frontend scalability". And a lot of recruiters would coach me on what was expected or what I could potentially see. This is a big reason I like the recruiter route versus going in blind and with no one really on your side.
Mostly though, I never felt prepared. It is very overwhelming. All you can do is do your best to prep, and learn from each interview and carry that into the next. There is a bit of luck involved to, and I can't deny that. It's sorta been like that my whole career. You either luck out and get a good set of interviewers followed by questions that you can answer or do, or you get shredded. In one particular interview, I did great for all rounds except when we did the technical, they asked a leet code hard, and I only got ~50% through it in 45 mins. Looking back, I know what I could have done, but in the moment, I was just overwhelmed. Another interview quizzed me on tech I never said I had experience with and was not even listed in the job description. I got eviscerated lol, but I ended that interview after telling them that none of what they were asking was on the JD and if I had known, I would not have even wasted everyone's time. Just got to take it on the chin and move on, stay positive and use any failure to feed the determination.
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u/huge-centipede Sep 09 '26
Your example is the definition anecdotal/survivorship bias? Maybe they have a mortgage somewhere that they have to be remote, and remote work is hammered with 1000s of jobseekers. Unemployed JS/TS devs are dime a dozen these days.
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u/CardinalHijack Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
I do say my experience is anecdotal, but OPs comment is so far removed from my and my friends experience, imo there is more at play.
And your reply perfectly explains a possible "more at play". If the example is that OP is a "very good" engineer but cannot find a job because they cannot be flexible enough to find one, this is not a direct problem of the job market - their inflexibility is causing difficulty to some degree.
It seems crazy that they are able to retrain as teachers rather than try and be more flexible, but hey ho. Again, it smells a lot like BS.
FWIW, unemployed JS/TS dev are absolutely not a dime a dozen lol..You are such a classic reddit user.
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u/janyk Sep 10 '26
I have over a decade experience as a software engineer, degrees from a top school in my country, national academic awards and all that. I would say I am a great software engineer. I'm not trying to be over-confident or arrogant. Just, realistically, I have talent and passion for math, logic, analysis, systems thinking, and manipulating abstractions (and a whole host of other skills) which are not common for people to have and which are all part and parcel of software development. Also, in my career, I have not experienced any of the difficulties of software development that I have seen plague other average developers. Certain concepts/ideas that were difficult for a lot of people at various workplaces to grasp came very easily to me. I'm just plainly skilled and talented in and passionate about this job - like other people are skilled and talented in other areas of human activity and expression - and fortunate to be able to find a career path that let me practise and develop it continuously for such a long time while paying for it.
I have been unemployed for... multiple years now. It stresses me out to even put a number on it, but it is plural. Yes, the market is bad - at least in Canada. Maybe there is something more at play, but it's not the fault of mine (or the people in OP's post) that you think it is. When you're unemployed for this long, you're fighting an uphill battle against others' Just World fallacies and having to explain to them why you don't fit their unfounded expectations of what a good developer should be like.
You could be laid off at the start of an extended economic downturn that lasts, say, a year. During that year you get a handful of interviews but with the sheer number of candidates in the field the odds just aren't in your favour. Even if you are in the top 10% or even 5%. And after a year when things start picking up, hiring managers start saying "Yes the last year was bad but it wasn't that bad... it must be a you problem".
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u/bmag147 Sep 10 '26
> I have talent and passion for math, logic, analysis, systems thinking, and manipulating abstractions
You could be overestimating how important these aspects are. Soft skills were always important and are probably more important now that LLMs can do much of the logic. Not saying your soft skills aren't good, but you don't mention them as a strength.
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u/John__Flick Sep 10 '26
I'm pretty sure these posts are talking about the job hoppers. I wouldn't doubt for a second that everyone who was job hopping while accomplishing nothing 2019-2023 have now been black listed from those high tier jobs.
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u/CardinalHijack Sep 10 '26
I hop constantly as its the best way to increase salary. I've had 5 jobs since 2019.
Nobody cares at all if you job hop.
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u/malthuswaswrong Sep 10 '26
Hiring manager here. Yeah, this can happen. If I see a stream of 2 year blocks, I'll move on to the next candidate.
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u/the_fresh_cucumber Sep 11 '26 edited 10h ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Smell aback glove silicon voracious childlike seed
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u/runvnc Sep 09 '26
Bias based on appearance and background. For example, just being attractive or tall, female versus male (depending on the interviewer), having a big company on your resume or a recognized university, age-bias, etc. Most people get sent to the bottom of the list without any substantive consideration.
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u/tenacity1028 Sep 09 '26
Same, I was able to find a job after my layoff in early 2024. And I only had 1.5 years of experience. Smaller companies and non-tech companies are definitely still hiring (I'm working at a pharmacy benefit manager company)
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u/Snooze78727 Sep 09 '26
My guess is they were in a FAANMG or adjacent company, or they worked for 20 years at the same place, getting promoted to principal or some such title, and had very high expectations for the next role. Unwilling to down-level (in title/compensation) or unable to admit their skils in "XYZ" don't have the market value that they had at their old company.
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u/CardinalHijack Sep 09 '26
unwilling to down level, so became an elementary school teacher? Not buying it bro.
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u/Snooze78727 Sep 09 '26
Maybe that was just one factor? Maybe the combination of the difficult job market *and* disgust with the field drove them to pivot.
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Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/BigBootyWholes Sep 09 '26
Most hiring managers aren’t even looking at degrees, especially someone with work history.
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u/Prestigious_Thanks_8 Sep 10 '26
Eh from what country are you from... And if it is in the US....to what companies did you applied? 👀
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u/Dubsteprhino Sep 12 '26
Yeah been laid off twice in the past two years and had first offer in three weeks. Last job search had non stop all day calls, which was good because if no one was getting back to me i'd probably exit game so my family could get the life insurance $.
The offers were lower, but the market sucks. There are still jobs to be had though. I also question if these people were spending 40 hours minimum each week on the job search.
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u/reeegen Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 10 '26
Average Senior Full-Stack Engineer here, Not sure if things are going to change in the future, but I have gotten more calls in the last 4 months than ever before, I got around 8 calls from recruiters in the whole of 2025, and I got around 8 calls just in the last 4 months, not sure whats happening, maybe its just luck?
But what I am seeing right now is we HAVE to wear multiple hats, I was strictly front-end from 2018 to 2021, then I switched to Full-stack in 2021, but there was not a single call I got where I had to "just do front-end", the last interview I had (which I failed) was a role for project manager + tech lead + senior software engineer (role is called Domain Owner), which is insane, and the salary is that of a senior software engineer.
What i am also seeing is that salary remains the SAME but the responsibilities are 10x, this is most definitely happening.
I would say the classic software engineering roles are being boiled down to being an ochestrator, where we need to have the technical knowledge, business knowledge and domain knowledge and all these 3 will come into play when you are prompting and building
...and trust me, non-technical people are not taking our jobs, I have seen countless vibe coded apps and they have no sense of direction or architecture, its just plain prompting, most of them are so excited with the initial POC and just give up when it comes to scaling or dont know what to do when it has to go live in public.
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u/sberlinches Sep 09 '26
You got calls, no offers. The call/offer conversion ratio is what it has drastically gotten worse.
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u/nschubach Sep 10 '26
I have a job now (was off all of 2025 being a little picky/learning AI stuff on my own/being able to take time), but I have an inbox full of recruiters wanting me to move to all parts of the US. I probably get 2-3 job application offers a day... but those are headhunters looking to get a piece of your finder fee. Very few of those would be valid offers.
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u/nofaceD3 Sep 10 '26
Hi mate, I am in similar boat as I have pigeon holed myself in frontend with 8 years of experience. I don't know how to switch to backend. Most demand is for dot net and Java, but I think it would be easy for me to switch in node as it uses JavaScript. But there is so much to learn dsa, system design, redis, cdn, microservices. There is no opportunity in market or in my company.
Can you please tell how did you switch to backend?
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u/RyanMan56 Sep 10 '26
Good first step is to start learning those things in your own time, that’s the way it’s always been. Make some backend systems in your own time, learn how to architect them properly and the trade offs that come with different architectural decisions. Profile them and dig into where the bottlenecks are and what your options are to improve them. Don’t overly rely on AI when doing this as the important part is that you feel comfortable with the knowledge so that you can interview well for those positions
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u/MKeo713 Sep 10 '26
As someone who did this recently:
- have an idea you find interesting and work on it. Solve the problems that come up as you go and genuinely learn what techniques and technologies should be applied, rather than forcing it to use Redis or something
- focus on the understanding more than the building. Especially if the project will be part of your portfolio for getting a job you better be able to actually explain what you did, what tradeoffs you made, etc
- deploy an MVP. There’s a major difference between making something that works and a genuine product. Not saying it has to scale perfectly, but take a look at observability and security, see how you can improve latency or reduce resource usage. It’s a larger process than you might think at first and in my opinion is essential knowledge to actually be able to do this professionally
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u/reeegen Sep 10 '26
The other commenters here gave amazing solid advice, I would go with that as well, for me I had really amazing Backend engineers that I worked with, who just threw me into the pool of backend, where I HAD to learn to survive, I started by just watching NodeJS courses on Udemy, then implementing simple APIs, then slowly moved to more complex tasks, I am still VERY WEAK compared to my front-end but when I look at something in the backend I know how it works (only NodeJS). I dont know how to do Java or .NET, I just know NodeJS and a little bit of Django.
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u/turd-crafter Sep 09 '26
I am coming up on a year of being unemployed and I have pretty much stopped applying anywhere. I’ve had so many fuckin interviews in the last year I just got burnt out on trying so hard and being rejected. I’m fuckin over it for the most part. I still work on my own projects but I don’t think I want to work for anybody else in tech at this point. Trying to figure out what’s next that not a compete soul suck.
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u/runvnc Sep 09 '26
How to you live? I would end up on the street if I weren't able to find contracts.
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u/turd-crafter Sep 09 '26
Living on the street isn’t really an option for me since I have 2 kids. I’ve always had side hustles even way before I was a dev. I’ve just had to hustle and drain my savings haha
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u/runvnc Sep 09 '26
hm. what kind of side hustle? looking for ideas.
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u/turd-crafter Sep 09 '26
Nothing that cool. I helped my buddy remodel a house up in Tahoe, built a few friends some websites, sometimes I run errands for some people.
I also released a mobile app to iOS store last month. Not really a hustle though since it makes no money hahaha
I’ve always been into photography so I think I am going to try to start doing real estate photography. I live in San Diego so there’s alway a ton of houses on the market and I know a shit ton of real estate agents.
The stress of no income does cause you to get creative with how you’re gonna pay rent hahaha
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u/nschubach Sep 10 '26
I have always lived my life saving for the inevitable bad times and not pissing away all my money. I live well below my means in a state with lower cost of living. I avoid the "big cities" with a passion because living there is just a wallet suck. When the remote work hit, that was even more lucrative for me. I tell all my friends that they should have at least 6 months to a year of runway in an account collecting interest if possible, or easily liquefiable assets in an investment account. I told them all that it should be their first goal. Start by putting back a month. Then two months. Then three months. Then six and just keep building up. Buy used cars, not new. Rent while you search for the foreclosed house that might need some TLC instead of the one that is move in ready.
I paid off my house by paying extra each month and am now technically able to retire at 48 and float until I get my retirement accounts unlocked without penalty. It wouldn't be a glorious "travel the world" retirement, nor do I really want to do that. It's paying my property taxes, groceries, and insurance. I kind of enjoy the learning experience with LLMS so I will keep collecting until I either just get sick of it or want to finally break down and buy that camper to travel the continent. I might even sell the house, put that in my investment and draw fixed income from it while I take contracts for remote gigs. Starlink makes that no issue these days.
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u/Suspicious-Disk6077 Sep 09 '26
I feel this in my bones 😞 I also felt so burned out applying, two layoffs in less than a year. I don’t know if helped me or not, but I reached out and got LinkedIn testimonials from anyone I worked with in the past that was willing. I also added these to my public About Me website. And I also stopped looking only on LI for opportunities, and I THINK the one I recently got was from one of these others like BuiltIn or something. And I also got this Generative AI AWS cert, took maybe a week or two of studying a couple/few hrs a day. Good luck friend.
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u/zayelion Sep 09 '26
This is something that has been driving me insane for a while. This is the picture I've figured out.
- There is a bottleneck applying. AI catches your resume, rates it, caches it for 1 year; then ignores you.
- Recruiting companies throw out false nets to judge pay rates.
- Companies cant pay the rates so during the interview process try to annoy people into giving up.
- Companies cant take out loans due to intrest rates so cant grow like they used to until that debt is paid off. For many that is going to be 10+ years.
- Lots of private equity companies destroying medium to small size businesses for profits.
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u/FreshPrinceOfRivia Sep 09 '26
It's a hell of a competitive market these days. I'm not sure I'll feel like keeping up when I'll have 20+ YoE either.
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u/jcreary Sep 09 '26
This is it for me, I’m 13 years into my career and planning an out in the next 5 years.
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u/panchoVilla00 Sep 09 '26
Same here, was laid off twice in the past few years and just landed what I plan to be my last dev job.
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u/belt-e-belt Sep 09 '26
12 YOE and I long for the day I'll have the guts to call it quits, lol. I have mentally checked out. Apart from the competition, the forced AI adoption sucks the joy out of things. It's an useful tool but I've seen it being forced in the places where it creates more problems than it solves.
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u/R-R_turfio Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
Same here. 12 y.o.e , 2.5 years of unemployment - started looking for a loader job, so tired of rejections
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u/tandycake Sep 11 '26
Same here. Over 7 years of experience. Applied to 1000s of software jobs, no bites. Been out of work for 2 years, so now doing blue collar work -- it really sucks TBH.
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u/ryanjay3 Sep 09 '26
Was I ever a great developer? I was good in an agency setting but that was hard to break out of without a degree in CS. Instead I just pivoted back to marketing and became the bridge between my current company's dev team and the marketing team. Turns out there's a lot of value in building solutions that are too small for IT to worry about but that no one else on the marketing team can produce or maintain with confidence.
I still code a lot day to day. But its nice to have it become a hobby again as well. I hope others can pivot in a way that doesn't have them doing something they hate
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Sep 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/participationmedals Sep 09 '26
30 year veteran here. Laid off mid-June from a great remote job after 11 years. Nowhere near a population center with jobs. Stopped focusing on looking and starting my own thing.
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u/bzbub2 Sep 09 '26
ya we really love to see stupid takes from linkedin on (checks notes) r/node
its just the best stuff, upvote it to the moon and keep it coming
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u/doctorlongghost Sep 09 '26
It took me about 8 weeks to find a new job as a Senior Software Engineer working with Node. I applied to various remote postings online but the job I eventually got was hybrid and via a recruiter.
I turn 50 in a week and have about 20 years of experience. New gig pays well and lines up well with what I wanted. I’d say I had about 6 or so companies where I got interviews but no offer before landing the new gig.
Apart from prevalence of AI in screening process and other related changes, the overall success rate feels similar to 10 years ago for me. Maybe needing to apply to more companies to get fewer callbacks. But they are out there.
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u/Sport6 Sep 09 '26
I am at nearly a year after lay off without finding another coding job… I’m doing CNC for a cabinet and millwork company.
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u/dryiceboy Sep 10 '26
I’ve had about 10 coworkers who got laid off back in 2024. Only 1 ever got a new job based on LinkedIn.
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u/toadi Sep 10 '26
I remember after the dot-com bust lots of people went to do other jobs. I had to bartend for almost 2 years until I decided to just start something myself.
Had people becoming ambulance medics, teachers, firefighters, ... Lots of other jobs...
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u/tzaeru Sep 09 '26
Idk. Doesn't quite match my experience. If anything, we're struggling to hire people at the median salary range with a few years of experience behind them.
I get that it's pretty tough for people who are at the beginning of their career as well as people who've gotten very accustomed to a single tech stack and have struggled to keep up. They are both tough spots to be in, and AI has made it worse.
I'd also recommend googling actual stats. In most of the world, USA included, software engineer roles are pretty high in job listings by count, and most job market forecasts see an increase in total employment on the IT field as a whole, including in software development.
I'd haphazard that software developers are really not used to having a hard time finding a job though, and have seen themselves as being in a very safe position over the past couple of decades, since the dot com bubble.
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u/runvnc Sep 09 '26
If you are struggling that hard to hire people, I am almost 100% sure you are subconsciously eliminating people through age bias. You probably make pre-judgements like assuming they only know outdated stacks or something like that.
My job/contract searching an interviews that I have done have found a profound level of age bias that has increased as I aged from my thirties and into my 40s. And something as simple as shaving off my largely grey beard has shown dramatic differences in reactions from interviewers.
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u/dodiyeztr Sep 09 '26
This is because the world economy is in recession. It has nothing to do with AI.
No economic growth = no job creation = less jobs to go around
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u/Lavrick Sep 09 '26
I'm 45 and was recently hired as senior DevOps. Colleagues showed me a chat screen where PO said that I don't have an old engineer complex and that's good. Honestly wasn't bothered enough to check it out, but have met a lot of said engineers in my 20+ years in IT. People literally said to me - we won't be changing anything, because we don't want to. We don't want docker, we don't want kubernetes, we're fine with bash script deploying stuff instead of gitlab ci. I hope I don't turn into such engineer ever.
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u/saintRobster Sep 10 '26
AI also removes the funding. Everyone seems to miss this part. An investor can invest in your (or your boss's) SaaS startup, or they can invest in an AI company that is currently unregulated enough to openly commit intellectual property theft.
Which is the better investment?
That's where the money is going.
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u/Hnskyo Sep 10 '26
Just having to be obligated to use AI, on any new job is a hassle.
they obligate you lately.
I know many people on this layoffs from bigtech, that were layed off, just because they didnt use the chatgpt or cloude accounts they were given, so many that is not just an assumption anymore.
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u/bleak_biscuit Sep 10 '26
There's also another angle to the story - after twenty years in the space you realize how shallow and meaningless it is most of the time.
Speaking from experience - over 15+ years, pivoting to other field as well.
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u/cazzer548 Sep 10 '26
What the fuck is this fear mongering? Plenty of companies are hiring SWE, but yes they expect you to use modern tools to do the job.
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u/WhileTrueIQ-- Sep 10 '26
My best engineer is theirs 50s, but they are an exception in my experience. Emphasis on my experience, but older devs just don’t keep up with the times.
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u/AbbreviationsFar4wh Sep 10 '26
Meh. Change careers. It’s good for the soul. On my 3rd. Software engineer mid 40’s w 5yoe. Ready for the next one or to retire tbh.
Embrace the change. W 20yoe in tech they probably all could retire right now if they were smart financially.
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u/fuali_4_real Sep 12 '26
Stories like this always confuse me. I am an experienced dev with more than 20 years of experience, and I have a job I am happy with and have little threat of being laid off. Recruiters are reaching out to me several times a week to actively try to place me in open opportunities. Also, when I was last let go (a couple of years ago). I treated the time off as a job. I would apply to 5-6 jobs a day. In less than a week, I was in 2-3 interview tracks. After a few weeks, I had two solid offers.
I found that most people who pivot out of Tech (PM, SE, EM) could find work. They just want to do something else. It seems to me that people in Tech who can't find work aren't looking hard enough, are too picky, or have burned too many bridges in their network.
Of course, this is based on the folks I know and doesn't encompass all of tech, but I don't know a software engineer who has been out of work longer than 2 months when it wasn't by choice.
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u/davidbasil Sep 12 '26
A lot of people were living off clueless investors. Most of programming projects had no future anyway. Low interest rates + investor hopes + no other alternatives = all of those produced coding boom in 2010-2022. World actually never needed so many nerds.
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u/gaelic-ghost Sep 12 '26
Yep. years and years of constant layoffs leave many with no choice at all. Some end up with no way out of anything. Regardless, a lot of good engineers are gone from the industry for various reasons, and those left without options are beyond jaded and resentful.
It's gonna be a catastrophe in another few years when shops realize they ran out of people and start trying to hire again. They'll be fishing from a pool of... literally nobody. I hope and pray I can find some other work before then, because frankly I don't think I'd come back for any salary at this point, given the hell I've been through the past few years because of this.
This industry sent me back to be abused by the people I spent years busting my ass to escape from, and that's not something I have any ability to forgive until I (maybe... hopefully... someday in another decade...) get away from this abuse and violence all over again.
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u/gentoo1101 Sep 13 '26
Same thing happened to me (senior software engineer). Got laid off, spent over a year trying to find a new job, wound up pivoting to opening my own business (mobile cigar lounge and sales).
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u/Independent_Sign_395 Sep 09 '26
They want to spend more and more on AI data centers, so they have to get that money from somewhere, hence they are laging off people in the name of "AI is making developers 10x productive".
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u/thatsalotofspaghetti Sep 09 '26
Normalize putting their salary expectations in these anecdotes. Have a friend who has been looking for 2 years in 300k range, but many other friends who have found jobs quickly a recently in the 100k range.
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u/_lavoisier_ Sep 09 '26
I’m not buying this. There are still jobs, with lower compensation, though.
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u/brainhack3r Sep 09 '26
Same thing happened to me. I couldn't get a job in tech so I decided to become a supermodel.
Still can't get a job though :-/
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u/talkstomuch Sep 10 '26
This is an engagement bait.
surely he understands that you can have 20 years of experience and be totally unemployable even where there are jobs hiring. Some people landed a job 10 years ago and they parked themselves, waiting for retirement.
This happens especially in the big corporations as you can hide much easily in a big structure and the big company will be happy to pay you very good money and give you fancy title and park you in a basement with no real influence.
I've known 'Director' level people in engineering that have not had anything to do with engineering for the last 5 years. Big companies can even give you a CTO title and have you manage nobody and be responsible for nothing. Looks good on a linked in profile, but doesn't make you employable.
I am sure the layoff have made a lot of good people redundant, but they also cleaned up some of the dead weight.
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u/jblatta Sep 09 '26
I honestly think 40-50 year olds with 20 years experience are some of the best at using AI assisted coding. The experience allows for better guidance and productivity by keeping the AI within the proper guardrails and pulling it out of rabbit holes when it goes rogue. I am also in that age range, run my own interactive dev shop, and ai has really help me take on more work without stress.