Alternatively: this is an America problem. I'm outside of America and I've been fielding more interviews than ever in the past 3 months. YMMV but the leading indicator of slowed down hiring can come from so many things. Including companies just waiting to see how much LLMs affect SWE positions.
It's from AI either directly or indirectly, either the top SWE's using AI are replacing 10 mid/juniors or your job is outsourced to someone doing it at half your Salary with a AI subscription. Only the top/lucky/connected SWE's will survive a year or two, if you have used any SOTA agent recently or looked at the job market you would have seen this coming and had a plan B/C in place, i.e. Enough capital to generate passive income to replace your salary, or another career that is AI safe for next 5-10 years. Alternatively stick your head in the sand.
I guess I just don’t see that happening right now. I’m at a big public startup and our hiring hasn’t changed much and we still have a ton of work and Claude code with SOTA models can shortcut some tasks but I’m still having a hard time saying it’s giving us much of a multiplier. Even with plenty of .MDs describing what we want. It can ad-lib some of the stuff but it’s not AGI yet. In 5-10 years I have no idea
In Europe it doesn’t seem too bad right now (for the 15+ yr cohort?). I interviewed at a handful of places and got an offer or two and my current team and company is hiring about the same as the last few years
Those who downplay it are either business owners themselves or have been employed for 2+ years.
I think a lot of software engineers who _haven't_ looked for jobs in the past few years don't quite realize what the current market feels like.