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Tech is no longer a “safe” career bet. 

It’s no secret that in the age of GenAI, the mid-2010s mantra of “learn to code” is far from the sage professional wisdom it used to be. Where software engineering skill sets were once associated with plentiful jobs, incredible workplace perks, and robust paychecks, the profession has since been tainted by relentless layoffs, agonizing job hunts, and a mounting sense of doom. It’s become all too clear that engineering can no longer be taken for granted as a “safe” career path – perhaps especially for new graduates. 

This ambiguity is not lost among the more seasoned members of the engineering workforce. In LeadDev’s survey of more than 880 engineering leaders for its AI Impact Report 2025, 18% of respondents said they expected fewer junior hires over the next 12 months. Looking beyond the one-year mark, respondents offered an even bleaker forecast: more than half (54%) said that they anticipate a long-term reduction in junior developer positions. 

With less-than-promising job prospects in sight, recent graduates and junior developers are forced to contend with a labor-market reality that is markedly different from the one they’d signed up for. 

The great entry-level contraction 

Though there remain plenty of unknowns ahead, recent hiring data appears to support engineering leaders’ grim predictions. 

A new working paper from the Stanford Digital Economy Lab found that early-career US software developers have seen a nearly 20% decline in employment since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022. A separate job-posting analysis from Indeed further found that experience requirements for tech job openings tightened between mid-2022 and mid-2025; job postings seeking candidates with two to four years of experience declined from 46% to 40%, while those requiring at least five years rose from 37% to 42%. 

Similar trends have been observed on the other side of the Atlantic, with TechCrunch reporting that the UK tech industry has seen a 46% drop in entry-level jobs since 2024, according to a new paper from the Institute of Student Employers (ISE).

“The lines between entry-level and mid-level skills have become blurred, and skills that were once considered optional for entry-level applicants are now required,” says Twinkle Joshi, a Toronto-based senior QA test engineer for the geospatial software company IQGeo. “Now, each entry-level applicant should have a T-shaped job profile that shows a broad knowledge across tech stacks with deep expertise in one.” 

Joshi adds that organizations also expect entry-level employees to work on production code and deliver the final product. “They need to understand how the architecture works, how system design works, how deployment works, and how automation tests work. And they need to think from the product order perspective.” As recently as a couple of years ago, rookie developers were usually given the opportunity to develop these capacities on the job. Now, Joshi says that these skills are increasingly becoming requirements for getting hired in the first place, and on-the-job training is largely gone. 

Pankaj Khurana, VP of technology and consulting for the talent-recruitment firm Rocket, affirms that employers no longer invest the time or budget for training junior developers that they did in the recent past. “More and more companies are looking to hire a person who can do a lot of things together,” he says, adding that while a degree from a top computer science program is still vital for “getting a foot in the door,” it’s far from enough to land a job. 

“You have to have something extra before the employer is even interested in an interview,” Khurana says.

A skill-building strategy

Idhant Jena, a 2025 computer science graduate from the University of California at Irvine, had no way of anticipating the labor-market landscape he would find himself entering upon graduation. He counts himself among the scores of recent grads who have been unable to land a job since collecting their diplomas. 

“When I started my degree in 2021, tech was in a pretty good place with a lot of hiring, and I feel like pretty much anyone I knew who was in my field graduated with multiple job offers,” Jena says. “They had the pick of the cream of the crop. But over time, that reality has changed. You’re more likely to graduate without even having a full-time job offer. It’s hard to find entry-level jobs in 2025.” 

Although AI has certainly accelerated entry-level hiring declines, labor-market corrections for pandemic overhiring – and the end of the ZIRP era – kicked off a pattern of industry-wide labor-force reductions beginning before the GenAI boom. A new report from the Yale Budget Lab appears to support tech critics’ argument that AI is an easy scapegoat for companies cutting jobs, suggesting AI may not be replacing as many positions as the public is being led to believe. 

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Regardless of AI’s role in creating the present circumstance, the end result is effectively the same: a deepening pool of applicants vying for fewer positions, with new graduates and more seasoned professionals sometimes competing for the very same jobs. 

Jena tells LeadDev that his job hunt has found him applying to entry-level engineering job openings that attract upwards of 300 applications within hours of being posted online. In an informal survey for his newsletter, The Pragmatic Engineer, author Gergely Orosz found that “1,000+ candidates for a single role is not uncommon,” noting that one startup founder received 23,000 applications over 30 days for eight in-person, New York-based roles.

It’s a reality that Jena is taking in stride. His strategy is to keep applying while expanding his skillset and project experience to beef up his resume. “AI agents are probably the most happening thing right now in the industry, so I’m doing a side project that I can incorporate agents into – building a fantasy football performance director, ” says Jena. “I get to learn something new, which is always something I’m passionate about. And I also get to keep up with current industry trends.”

Jena’s strategy is the right one, says Khurana. He believes that the tech industry could do more to build relationships with university computer science departments so that internships and project work can be built into students’ graduation requirements. In the meantime, employers are looking for candidates who have taken the initiative to amass wide-ranging expertise in addition to relevant practical experience – “and they are willing to pay more” for those who do. “Since the advent of AI, our clients are looking for candidates who have done side projects and have GitHub repositories, and there are many tools available that can enable them to do so,” he says.