We should factor in the hiring sprees that really distorted the market from 2020-2022..
2020-2022 was not "normal hiring", it was much higher than normal.
Even the large, conservative, boring enterprise where I work was hiring about 5 new developers a week in those years.. I know because I did the "Welcome to our department" technical onboarding workshop and I saw everyone coming in the door every week.
Before 2020 I ran that workshop once a month or so? Probably 10 times a year at most.
So of course then the layoffs came when ZIRP ended, as everyone had to adjust back to real world conditions and grapple with the fact that the team sizes they had now were not sustainable (or necessary?) when free money ended.
Couple that with "efficiencies" from AI and generally more conservative scope and ambition by a lot of companies in these uncertain times, and the market looks drastically worse than it did in 2020-2022.
But if you compare the market today to 2018 (for example) instead, it's still worse but definitely not as worse.
Lastly, hiring is also very broken today due to AI, with candidates using it to flood companies with applications and then companies using AI to auto-filter that incoming flood (and likely losing out on good candidates in the process) simply because they can't handle the volume.
I have a lot of sympathy for folks coming right out of university trying to land their first good job. I'm sure it's the toughest it's been in a generation...
2020-2022 was not "normal hiring", it was much higher than normal.
Even the large, conservative, boring enterprise where I work was hiring about 5 new developers a week in those years.. I know because I did the "Welcome to our department" technical onboarding workshop and I saw everyone coming in the door every week.
Before 2020 I ran that workshop once a month or so? Probably 10 times a year at most.
So of course then the layoffs came when ZIRP ended, as everyone had to adjust back to real world conditions and grapple with the fact that the team sizes they had now were not sustainable (or necessary?) when free money ended.
Couple that with "efficiencies" from AI and generally more conservative scope and ambition by a lot of companies in these uncertain times, and the market looks drastically worse than it did in 2020-2022.
But if you compare the market today to 2018 (for example) instead, it's still worse but definitely not as worse.
Lastly, hiring is also very broken today due to AI, with candidates using it to flood companies with applications and then companies using AI to auto-filter that incoming flood (and likely losing out on good candidates in the process) simply because they can't handle the volume.
I have a lot of sympathy for folks coming right out of university trying to land their first good job. I'm sure it's the toughest it's been in a generation...