The tech job market is BRUTAL. How to survive it (from a Senior Dev)

The first thing that senior developers do is to act like they're always unemployed. Because a lot of the troubles that I see with software engineers having, it's, you know, they get a job, they become comfortable there, and then something happens at their job, you know, they get laid off. And then they realize, it's going to take me at least three to six months for me to improve my skills and get back to the market, do interviews and get an offer.

Again, a stable job, it's not an invitation for you to get comfortable and lazy. The only job security as a software engineer in the current market, it's your employability. How fast can you find a new position? You can think of it as your delivery skills, plus your interviewing skills and your marketability, again, your visibility in the market. Point number two, senior devs know that the only stack it's full stack.

The only stack is full stack because we have a lot of uncertainty in the market, and that means we need flexibility. Companies don't know what will happen in the future, they don't know which projects will they have budget for. Developers who can be flexible, either ones who will make it. And the great advantage of having full stack skills is that they allow you to contribute on different projects.

Now, if you're an overspecialized developer who can only work in react in the front end, then I have to get rid of you because I won't be able to place you in a different project. So if you have this full stack skills, you allow your company to be a lot more flexible. They don't have to make this binary decision, right? Either zero one, we need them or not. The second part is meet and small size companies cannot afford overspecialized devs.

If you look at what a developer does every day, mostly, what do we do? We do we do we, you know, create libraries from scratch? Do we program compilers? No, most times a JavaScript developer or a web developer would integrate different libraries, different frameworks and build an end product with them. But again, we do a lot of integration work. And when you do integration work, you need to be able to work with different tools, different frameworks, different libraries, but you don't have to be too overspecialized.

It's better to be more generic developer who has specific knowledge. And that's the trap here. You do have to become more flexible, but don't fall into the trap of becoming this Jack Jane of all trades. A very generastic developer who knows about everything, but doesn't have any domain, any specialization that they are very good at. You want a good mix of both. And this is why you want him to become a T-shaped developer and a senior engineer, it's a T-shaped engineer.

And you want to focus on traceable knowledge, like mental models and principles. For example, rest principles. It doesn't matter if you build an API with node.js, using typescript or with Python, the rest principles will apply. And the point is, the more transferable knowledge you have, the easier will be for you to adapt when things go sideways, like they go into this market. On to point number three, keep the main thing the main thing.

Because while every other developer, it's subscribed to 15 different email newsletters, listening to three podcasts, starting seven courses, the developer who can focus has already won. We live in a very distracted world. People these days cannot focus for a few seconds. And AI made all these worse because now you have an excuse, you know, there is this AI thing and I need to I need to keep up with it, you know, I need to keep up with what's happening.

You're not even going to fall behind. And you know, people hear these things and they believe them, and they start chasing shiny objects and I know developers who have been in the industry for 15 years. And you might think, oh, they are a senior principal engineer, and when you look at the skills, it's like, you know, they did three years of JavaScript, then they jumped into this, this Bitcoin blockchain stuff.

Uh, then it was like machine learning, so they've been around for decades, but they can't do much because they're always jumping from thing to thing, thinking, oh, this is the next thing, this is the next thing. And when I started my career as a junior dev, I was exactly the same. But I remember reading this phrase somewhere which said something like, the thing that will get you the success you want is the thing you commit to.

I was obsessed with which is the best framework? React, Vue or Angular? And that's the best one is the one you commit to, the one you know the best, and it's the same with your programming language. It's the same with your stack, you don't need to be great at 15 things. You need to be great at one. Falling for shiny objects. it's it's a recipe for a broken career. And it's not only tech shiny object, but it can be SAS, AI agency, crypto, whatever pops up in your feed, and takes you away from the actual the real work that you have to do that your brain doesn't want to do because it's boring.

On to point number four, companies want to employ your brain, very important, and not chat GPT or cloud or cursor. And it's very important that you understand that interview processes, technical and non-technical, are looking for signals. They're not looking for end results. What do I mean? Well, when people ask you for a resume, they don't really want a resume. They want a piece of paper where they can easily understand what have you been doing, how that contribution impacted a business and what you're great at.

And if you use chat GPT to generate that, you miss on the process of thinking about these things and understanding your own contribution. And it's only when you understand, hey, whatever I'm doing on my job, I will have to put it together in a resume and go to the market with it. Then you start thinking, wait, how am I really helping this company? And I'm not saying you cannot use AI at all, but you are the brain.

You have to do the thinking. You have to do the research. You cannot let it do the work for you. Again, overusing AI, it's a big mistake. You're missing on the opportunity to improve your skills. It's about the process, not the end result. AI resumes won't make you stand out. On the other side, vibe coding will only damage your reputation and make you a mediocre programmer. Because folks is not about the end result, it's about the process.

Remember, if they wanted something done by AI, they would ask the AI. If they employ you, is because they need you. On to point number five, senior devs know their numbers. Because job hunting in such a competitive software engineering market, without tracking, without numbers, is like walking in the dark. You don't know what works, you don't know what doesn't work. You're just playing your hands as they come and you're trying to get lucky in a market where very few people are getting lucky.

You have to know what are normal good and bad numbers. So you can di inos. I can tell you that it takes about 60 to 70 high quality job applications for you to get an offer in any given job market. If you have average interviewing skills, or for example, that if less than 15 in 100 applications call you back, then you have a resume problem. And because you know what your KPI is, then you can fix it.

But when you don't track your numbers, you have no clue on what's working and what's not. So you see people sending a bunch of applications, you know, 5 to 10 and then saying, oh my resume doesn't work. And that can be true, but it can also be false. What kind of companies you applied? Maybe you sent applications last week and it takes two weeks for them to answer. The point is, no numbers, bad decision.

And finally, interviewing is like statistics, not calculus. You should not get hang up on a rejection, you should not fall in love with a certain company. You should focus on your numbers, focus on your average performance, not on getting a specific job, senior devs play the table, not the hand. And if you're worried about the future of software engineers, how the market is doing, and how much AI is to blame for all this, then I invite you to watch this next video where Bogdan and I explore these topics in depth.