[RestlessMind]

It doesn't have to be either-or. I think there are a bunch of factors all contributing to the current state of developer job market:

1. Rise of remote work: sure, it was there in some form. But prior to 2020, state of the remote work tools was abysmal. The prevalent culture was also about hiring the whole teams. After covid, remote work tools are far better. And companies learned to onboard one new remote hire at a time which over time is now allowing them to replace US workers with cheap overseas ones at a manageable pace.

2. end of cheap money - if the risk free rate is 4-5%, the demand from risky ventures like software startups is going to go up. So funding has dried up at the margins.

3. rise in the discount rate - related to the previous point, the discount rate one applies to investments have gone up. That means startups valued at 1B are now valued only at a few hundred millions. So to avoid down or flat rounds, startups have to cut costs drastically and show profitability to justify a higher valuation. Cue all the job cuts, belt tightening and death marches with a skeleton crew.

4. rise of AI - AI is helping with productivity of coding and non-coding tasks. It is also acting as an excuse for #3 when laying people off.

In my experience, all these are meaningful factors for the abysmal state of the developer market.

[tqi]

Definitely agree that it's not mutually exclusive, however I think 4 is likely orders of magnitude less impactful than the others...so far. Which isn't to say the effects won't start to magnify soon.

I think most of the trends we are seeing started around 2022, but if AI delivers on its promise things may accelerate in the coming years.

[ravikapoor101]

not true. If you see companies like microsoft, salesforce etc., they are selling AI to replace all sales, support, marketing, developer ... jobs.

AI is a big factor.