Everyone keeps saying AI is replacing software engineers. But if that’s true… why are software engineering job postings at a 3-year high while tech companies are still laying people off? The reality is much more complicated than the headlines make it sound. In this video, I break down what’s actually happening in the 2026 tech job market, why companies are quietly rehiring engineers they previously laid off, and where the real demand is shifting inside software engineering. Here’s what I cover 👇 ✅ Why 52,000+ tech layoffs don’t tell the full story ✅ The hidden reason software engineering roles are still growing ✅ Why the “AI replaced engineers” narrative is already breaking down ✅ How companies are quietly rehiring former employees ✅ The difference between jobs getting eliminated vs jobs still exploding ✅ Why senior engineers are becoming even more valuable ✅ The real skills companies are hiring for in 2026 ✅ How to position yourself if you want to break into tech or level up your career 👋 about me I’m Maddy, a senior software engineer (prev. at Google), with prior internships at Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, IBM, and Amazon. Sharing my journey here - thanks for watching 🤍 🔗find me on other socials Instagram https://www.instagram.com/madeline.m.zhang/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/madelinemzhang/ Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@madeline.m.zhang Timestamps 0:00 Layoffs vs Hiring 1:34 Engineering Jobs 2:45 AI vs Engineers 5:00 Boomerang Hiring 6:49 Where Demand Is Going 8:45 How To Position Yourself 10:01 Final Thoughts 🔔 Subscribe for more AI, software engineering, and career growth content! disclaimer: views are all my own and do not represent any current / past employer(s) #softwareengineering #techlayoffs #ai #artificialintelligence #softwareengineer #programming #coding #developers #techjobs #careeradvice #aiengineering #machinelearning #llm #techcareer #codinglife #developer #systemdesign #cloudengineering #mlops #futureofwork #bigtech #amazon #google #meta #openai #anthropic #careergrowth #computerscience
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This video is 100% copium LMAO, its so cringe. 😂😂😂
I've been in tech long enough to see this cycle repeat itself this is the third or fourth time now. I'm tired of fake interviews, repost jobs that are just fishing, having to be a unicorn anymore. AI doesn't have the ROI they wanted and now they need the people like me back but we're tired of their bullshit.
Tech is not “dying” but wages are set to be depressed to minimum wage or below like almost every other job - supply and demand in a field with no artificial barriers - globalism in action 😢
9:24 so basically no software engineering?
they are cutting out the fat gathered in the pandemin boom. The salaries are also lower. which is normal. but with this inflation, it's hard to invest so much into gathering tech skills, when you can't pay rent rn
I don't know what to say! Use whatever you want to generate miles of code, as long as you understand every single piece of it. In real SaaS applications, you need to worry about the outbox pattern, saga pattern, resilience, etc., and how to implement them using best practices. I'm saying that because when something fails in production at midnight, it is your responsibility to take off the blanket and fix your buggy code, not your teammate, not your grandma. One day, there was an electricity outage in my area, and it was normal for my team to stand still and do nothing. Unfortunately, the same thing happens when Claude has an outage.
In find this whole video to be baseless and almost sounds like paid propaganda. I know engineers and developers that are being forced out the door because their seniors are being given the choice to accept a pay raise, start folding llm systems into their stack and keep their mouths shut about their teams being hacked to pieces or take an early retirement.
Yup Tech Lead here, its becoming even more important we don't outsource our reasoning to agents. They need strict guidance, monitoring and security vetting. It's more important than ever to follow solid principles such as least priviledge and containerisation. If you have AWS creds on your machine you need to make sure they are locked down and under no circumstance should you grant access to destructive actions. Project level roles, account isolation, tagging and budget notifications couldn't be more important than it is now. With so many supply chain attacks all it takes is the wrong package, some creds on box. Bam you've given a worm backdoor access to deploy/destroy resources that you'll be liable for. Don't get me started on the security posture or lack off for the MCP protocol.
Girl, every one of your previous "jobs" were internships. Reporting that it’s the weirdest or worst hiring market you’ve seen in your (extremely) short career is next to comical.
I’m a Full stack engineer and it’s interesting that one of the areas you mentioned being replaced is front end work. In my full stack experience, there is plenty of BE work that AI can do. Most day to day BE work is simple crud API creation or data modeling. The fact is, most day to day developers aren’t architecting anything, they are doing CRUD work and either creating, or consuming some REST API in a preexisting system. BE devs say FE is easily replaced, FE devs say BE is easily replaced. Regardless both FE and BE require systems design in the modern age. FE work is not simply pixel pushing anymore. I was amazed when I started Full stack work at how complex UI has become. Easily becomes slop with the wrong people. 10x when you add AI into the mix. I just bring this up because I think with AI, it’s more important than ever to have either a BE focused expert or FE focused expert. Not a full stack dev who has to do it all. I can transition to either end of the stack, but I’d rather be focused solely on one side, not a jack of all trades. Everyone needs to be T shaped though. You have to know a little about everything and a lot about something.
This is probably because Trump canceled H1 Bs. This is a paradigm shift. You need to own the entire stack. Which is gross.
Are the rehiring in the US or in India? My Dev friends (including senior) devs still aren't finding any jobs.
um , I have never seen it this bad and I've built real RAG pipelines ,and over projects on sabbatical as well as now have multiple certs, no responses . recruiters reach out and then dont answer back, I've applied to 50 jobs, all perfect matches, not a single ping back in the last month. Before I was getting a 80% hit rates. People online are showing 500-1000 applications with no response. What about the rest of you? what are you seeing 4% unemployment rates is a lie
Some guesses, based on some data I've seen, before I'm done w/ the video (just a minute in or so): 1. Collusion to create an over-supply of tech workers so they can rehire them at lower salaries. 2. A significant portion of the job postings are fake (~27-30% are ghost jobs in LinkedIn alone). 3. They will abuse the H1B visa programs even harder (~200K new-hires in the USA, and 500K+ H1B visa hires, IIRC from a few months back). Feel free to add to this list.
I saw my previous job posted on LinkedIn. But now it is no longer US based, now it is based out of India. Big surprise...
Here is the thing the companies are also creating fake job listing to stimulate or falsify the market
This can be misleading. Boomerang hires may represent the “train your replacement” pattern in its infancy: over-cut firms recalled experts to accelerate agentic AI scaffolding that could eventually obsolete them.
how many of those job opening stats are ghost listings? Seems incredibly common and a time-wasting soul destroying drain on job hunters.
These hard times are likely just a bump in the road. If you look at the overall trajectory of humanity throughout history, it's always been up and to the right📈. Stay resilient and the good times come eventually. Whether it be for you, or future generations. The news and clickbait videos don't want you to think this way though. They profit off of views from shock-factor and entertainment. If engineers undersell themselves because they believe they are not valuable anymore, even the CEOs and shareholders profit. Thanks for the video Maddy!
What actually interests me is not babysitting LLMs. I hate this shit. I am genuinely considering leaving tech this shit is pathetic.