[_uoud]

I applied to AWS and Microsoft last summer and I directly got invited to interviews for jobs here in Finland. However, I decided not to proceed and took a break from working and studying (I've returned to the country from Germany for doing my Master's degree). This year, since graduating just now and after many applications I've had a couple of interviews – one with a large consultancy and another one with a smaller boutique firm.

Generally, the AWS listings for the country are suddenly zero – nil. Microsoft's are close to zero and I haven't heard back from them at all. I saw one Google job ad in a smaller hometown of mine where this region's GCP servers are located which I applied to and came across later on LinkedIn, but it showed that the job had over a hundred applicants in under a week.

The salary ranges mentioned to me during my interviews I did have, e.g. for the larger consultancy role taking place at the country HQ in the capital city were abysmally low (like ridiculously low), so I guess they went with someone more eager to work for what they were willing to pay. That is, earning half of what the local junior factory welder does here in northern Europe (they do night shifts though etc.). The title for the role was: Data & AI Consultant, and it's one of the Big4 accounting / audit / consultancy firms. Anywho, they were telling I'd be working at 100% capacity without a lot of time for self-development or anything else for that matter, which is fine, but in essence, and to summarize, I've personally seen a huge shift downward in the last year in the job market and frankly, it looks rather terrible right now.

I have no visibility into the layoffs happening in the industry, but looking from the outside it does indeed seem grim. By now I'm actually thinking I should've seriously considered taking anything they were willing to offer me at all, or even working half-free to get myself back to working again! Well, I guess I'll just continue looking, but my expectations have been calibrated in a major way, that's for sure... So I guess we're all sailing in the same boat right now job-market-wise.