Comment by dvt

4 days ago

As someone that's currently looking (with plenty of experience, corporate, startup, and contract), can confirm it's pretty rough out there. I think the application process is just becoming enshittified: because HR uses AI to filter, applicants are starting to use AI to apply, so we have volumes and volumes of nonsense flowing back and forth.

Been working professionally for ~15 years or so, and it's never been this bad. Other than "knowing someone" (i.e. a referral, and even that falls through routinely), not sure what the best way to snag a position is these days.

6 comments

dvt

nabbed 4 days ago

I just read this on CNBC:

  “US business continues to boom,” S&P Global Market Intelligence chief business
  economist Chris Williamson said in a statement. “To put the growth surge in
  context, barring the spike in demand following the opening up of the economy
  after the COVID-19 lockdowns, the latest improvement in business activity
  is the greatest recorded since early 2015. Business is clearly booming now in
  both manufacturing and services.”

From https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/23/treasury-yields-oil-inflatio...

Is it booming for everyone except software developers? I keep hearing about developers who have been looking for a job for 6 months or longer and don't get responses to applications.

Or is it some process failure (which you hint at) that is making it difficult to capitalize on that boom?

ndiddy 4 days ago

Most job growth for the past several years has been in the healthcare, leisure and hospitality, and construction sectors. Removing these sectors makes job growth negative for 2024 and 2025, and wipes out the majority of job growth in 2026. See https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/economy/spotl...
pixl97 4 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery
Business doing good doesn't automatically mean populations of humans are doing good themselves.
xboxnolifes 4 days ago

The article is talking about "The Economy" (read: stocks and bonds), not employment numbers. The market can both be awful for job seekers and great for capital owners.
bonesss 4 days ago

Speculation, but: if tech over hired during COVID our section of the market could be experiencing a corrective slowdown while others are booming in aggregate.