The Tech Job Market Is Dead. Also, It’s Hiring.

If you’ve been anywhere near LinkedIn lately, you’d think the entire tech industry packed up, turned off the lights, and went home. Layoffs everywhere. AI taking jobs. Engineers posting “open to work” selfies like it’s a graduation photo. And yet, somehow, companies are still hiring. A lot. That’s the weird part. Open tech roles have actually been climbing this year, even while the layoff headlines keep coming. So what’s going on? Simple. The market isn’t dead. It’s just meaner now. Companies are still hiring, but they’re being way more selective about who they hire and what they expect that person to do. A few years ago, being a decent generalist could carry you pretty far. Know JavaScript? Great. Built an app? Cool. Can talk through a system design interview without sweating through your shirt? Even better.

Today, the bar is different. Companies have AI tools writing code, summarizing docs, generating designs, analyzing data, drafting emails, and doing a surprising amount of the busywork that used to justify adding another person to the team. So the real question isn’t just, “Can you do the job?” It’s, “Can you do the job better now that these tools exist?” That’s a very different test. And honestly, it explains why candidates and companies seem to be living in two completely different realities. Candidates say nobody is hiring. Companies say they can’t find the right people. Both can be true. There are tons of applicants. There just isn’t always enough signal. A thousand resumes can still hide five people who are actually great. And if you’re a candidate, that means blasting the same resume to 300 jobs and hoping for divine intervention is probably not the move. You need something that makes you memorable. A project. A weird specialty. A real result. Something you fixed. Something you shipped. Something that makes a recruiter stop scrolling for half a second and go, “Wait, okay.” That matters more now. And for companies, here’s the other side of it. Just because you’re getting 900 applicants doesn’t mean hiring got easier. Sometimes it just means you now have 900 tabs open and a headache. The market isn’t short on people. It’s short on clear proof. That’s the real shift. The tech job market isn’t dead. It’s just getting a lot less patient with average.