My Honest Thoughts on the Software Engineering Job Market in 2025

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Senior full stack engineer here: That AI generated increase in productivity brings with it an equal increase in burnout at no additional benefit to me, the employee. The company just sees this as extra $$$ with less people doing the work. Why are we so obsessed with doing more when it doesn’t translate to more money in our pocket or free time?

The problem is YouTube is full of videos promising people financial freedom by simply learning how to talk to AI. It doesn't help when top tech leaders are also saying the days of software development by human is over. These tech leaders also do not understand the details because they don't do the work themselves either. They only get to talk big in big events. I am an experienced AI developer. I tried my best several times to vibe code a complete product. I failed in every single one of the experiment. In all cases, I get to 80% but that 20% will take forever and lots of frustration. After that going into the code to fix it myself took longer than I would by developing them myself. The only way that work for me is to use AI as my assistant. I will have to do all the thinking and architecting. I will translate the thinking into very specific instructions for AI to follow. Only by doing that, I could complete a project with productivity gain.

Had my job acceptance offer revoked in January just after graduation. I had a few other jobs that offered me jobs prior and they ghosted me. What an interesting time to be an entry level developer. Wishing everyone luck in their endeavors!

The problem is that it is now expected that you are much more efficient in getting things done, but that goes against the expectation of having a deeper understanding and knowledge because that takes more time. It's like running in slow motion. I miss the time when things took longer time and the challenge was so frustrating but also very satisfying.

Thanks for this insightful video! ♡ I really missed your videos since I was busy. Your video sparked the passion to revisit and cover the skill gaps. Thanks for the motivation man!

Tim, I LIVE YOU IN MY HEART

Should do a follow up video on the things that Ai can’t help you understand and the different skills that will make you standout.

this hit hard honestly but also made me realize how much more leverage tools like genum ai give solo devs and small teams in this new market

Great video! Thanks! I’m actually more optimistic about SWE in the future and I think everyone should be as well. AI allows engineers to focus on more aspects of software engineering rather than just the tiny, minutia of code, which is actually what I find to be the most exciting aspect of being a full stack engineer. I enjoy solving problems for the backend, front end, data model, etc.