Ask HN: What is the job market like?
We've all heard about layoffs; what are people's actual lived experiences when it comes to the recent changes in the job market?
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.
I've actually seen more and more LinkedIn posts from recruiters that [are proud of ] have been laid off themselves. You know things are bad when recruiters are the ones looking for jobs.
I’ve gotten the same feeling. It’s too consistent to be a fluke. I get the feeling its a fashion thats being pushed by VC funds who are all neck deep in nvidia, openai and anthropic stocks. They must have realized they can pump this to their portfolio to inflate all the investments.
Industry trends spread in all roles ?
They even talk and act the same at conferences with clasping seal hands.
They are mostly highly paid bots, paid by the real puppeteers - boards and above to execute the common mission.
I's all about finding the next good excuse: RTO, AI are great excuses. They can tell those stories to the investors, the media, the workers who are pushed out, even to themselves to feel less stupid and guilty. "Industry shows working in the office is better, look at the trends!", "AI can do coding now, look at such and such, my nephew built a website with a prompt!". That's a whole lot better than "well shit, we over-hired like crazy and messed up, we're pretty stupid".
That's one of the reasons we have economic cycles. It's because trends come and go in waves. When one wave bankrupts a bunch of companies, they start to dig out and then the next wave hits, endlessly.
I'm tired, boss.
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)
I get plenty of messages from "recruiters" through LinkedIn. They're not particularly great, but I also only have a few years of experience
Other people I talk to said there has been a dropoff as well.
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.
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...
I'm just fortunate recruiters have found me for my jobs... there was one time I used Hired that was back in 2022 that worked for 1 job.
The hiding of user posts on reddit is bs I hate that, although it is convenient if you want to just hide all your stuff without deleting your account
I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I've gotten so aggressive about monitoring for this. I do most interviews zoomed in on the candidate's eyes and I rubric on how they "thought" through the problem, not just the results.
Thankfully the interview tools are catching on as well and now tracking this like browser focus, number of monitors, window size, and sending notifications when any of those change.
hired :)
Seems to weed these folks out.
And SpaceX is the Tyrell corporation… /s
https://www.comptia.org/en-us/resources/research/tech-jobs-r...
Both in this thread, and people I know in real life who are looking for jobs are struggling hard. Mass layoffs are becoming more common and the time spent between jobs is measured in six month increments.
And yet, the numbers say we are in a hiring market with more job openings than ever, except for during the pandemic.
My perceived reality and the numbers almost could not be further apart.
It seems weirder now partly because it isn't a clear across the board recession, though part of me keeps looking at quarterly earnings reports and the DOW and keeps wondering if we're still "early 2008" on that rather than "late 2009" and that it will get worse before it gets better.
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/nx-s1-5530733/bls-jobs-report...
Most everyone I talk with is looking as well, but nobody has moved roles. It feels like were all stuck.
The 1st number is for May, the second is “vs April”:
TECH SECTOR EMPLOYMENT
PC, Semiconductor, Components Mfg. 993,300 +900
Telecommunications 574,300 -400
Cloud Infrastructure, Data Processing, Hosting 466,100 +3,700
Other Info Services, Search, Platforms 180,600 +900
IT & Custom Software Services | Sys. Design 2,373,900 +1,700
TECH JOB POSTING ACTIVITY
Software Developer / Engineer 57,386 +2,052
Systems Engineer 25,557 +624
Tech Support Specialist 15,897 +209
Cybersecurity Engineer / Analyst 13,855 +387
Artificial Intelligence Engineer 17,267 -286
(I'm in a small central-European country, that is full of tech companies, both domestic and international)
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.
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.
What matters is where you live - the hiring market in Germany or Canada is going to be different from the Bay Area or NYC.
Personally, as someone with a German company and a good chunk of German clients, I'd argue it _does_ help a little. Occasionally. But by and large I'm far more interested in the candidate's English proficiency.
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?