[tenacious_tuna]

It's not just juniors. One of my partners carries a PhD in epidemiology and bimolecular science; they've been job searching for eight months with no bites, just silence. A friend of mine is a chemical engineering PhD, she's been searching for a year and just had her first interview.

I have eight years of software engineering experience but am only one rung up from the bottom of our SWE ladder, and we don't even hire the bottom rung anymore at my org. Seems like there's crushing pressure from above to limit hiring at every stage.