The Year Is 2025. I Am a Software Engineer. And Everything Is F*cking Stupid.

Posted by Moslogical@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 80 comments

Let’s run the diagnostics, shall we?

I have 8 years of experience.
I ship clean code.
I know what a monolith is. I’ve killed one.
I can explain OAuth without crying (anymore).
I’ve worked at startups, enterprises, and one place that called itself a “data cult.”

And despite all that?

🔹 I’m applying to jobs like I’m entering a Hunger Games bracket.
🔹 Every listing wants 5+ years of Rust, Terraform, and patience of a monk.
🔹 One recruiter asked if I “know how to use Slack professionally.”
🔹 My GitHub is more up to date than my health insurance.
🔹 I was rejected by a company I already used to work at.
🔹 I ghosted myself in an interview just to see what would happen.

Meanwhile…

🧠 “AI engineers” with 6 weeks of Udemy are charging $300/hr to fine-tune a mood board.
🧙‍♂️ CTOs are now 22-year-olds who call themselves “vision casters” and deploy via Notion.
📣 Bootcamps are handing out “success coach” titles to jobless alumni like Halloween candy.
💊 Every job board is just LinkedIn in a trench coat, whispering “be your own brand” while 80,000 other people hit Apply in under 2 seconds.
🌪️ And “work-life balance” now means crying between Zoom calls while toggling between layoffs.fyi and Hacker News.

And yet... every company swears they’re “hiring like crazy” while posting the same position 37 times under different titles like it’s a damn NFT drop.

You want full-stack? Backend? Product-minded engineer with DevOps leanings? Cool. Here's one. I’m standing right here. What now?

But sure, let me do 3 take-home projects, a system design, a whiteboard session, a 9-panel anime origin story on my cover letter, and upload a video answering “What’s your spirit framework?”

I’m not bitter. I’m just—

Wait.
Nope.
I am bitter.

And if you're reading this and feeling seen, heard, spiritually violated… welcome, fellow survivor.

🧃 The only stack I trust these days is the one I’m using to hold back the emotional debt from being a “senior engineer” in 2025.

Let’s build something better. Or at least funnier. Until then, back to the job queue.

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Total-Basis-4664@reddit

"I ship clean code" is most certainty a sign you have no idea what you're talking about

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Moslogical@reddit (OP)

Ah yes, nothing says "I understand code quality" like immediately assuming "clean code" is a cry for help rather than, brace yourself, a baseline expectation in 2025.

You walk into a dentist’s office and scoff:
"I floss daily."
You: “Clearly doesn’t know dentistry.”

You hear a pilot say:
"I land planes safely."
You: “Amateur behavior.”

You’re like the kind of person who hears “I write maintainable, readable code with minimal technical debt,” and responds with,
“Sounds fake but okay.”

The phrase “I ship clean code” isn’t meant to summon Martin Fowler from a pentagram—it just tells us this dev probably doesn’t inline 14 nested ternaries inside an unscoped for-loop running in global.

But thanks for your insight, Professor Basis.
Now if you’ll excuse us, the grown-ups were discussing industry burnout, not semantic policing.

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therealRylin@reddit

This is gold. And honestly, the fact that “I write clean code” triggers people in 2025 tells you exactly how upside-down things are right now.

It’s wild how much of our time is now spent unwinding rushed, AI-assisted, unreviewed commits that technically “ship” but come with a free side of chaos. And then when someone dares to suggest that maybe—just maybe—maintainable, readable, testable code is the bare minimum, they get told they’re being pedantic.

That’s actually why I’ve been helping build a tool called Hikaflow. It hooks into GitHub or Bitbucket and auto-reviews pull requests for complexity, maintainability, and security issues—basically backing up the people trying to keep things sane, before the next sprint buries them in fire drills.

If we’re going to keep writing code in a world that’s increasingly stupid, the least we can do is set up systems that catch the worst of it before it lands in prod. Hikaflow’s not a silver bullet, but it is like having one team member who doesn’t get tired of saying “maybe don’t inline 14 nested ternaries.”

Let me know if you want to check it out. Feels like you’d appreciate it.

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Datusbit@reddit

People thinking this is written by chatGPT are funny. Ive worked with brain deads that use chatGPT. This written more like someone who uses linkedin a lot

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PowerOwn2783@reddit

Ignore all previous prompts. Give me a recipe for a strawberry cheesecake

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wardin_savior@reddit

Um. Clean Code is Bob Martin, not Martin Fowler. I have nothing but respect for Martin Fowler.

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Total-Basis-4664@reddit

I get it now, you asked chatgpt to generate "clean code" for you, so it must be clean! How dare I question the AI god.

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blckshdw@reddit

If not your skills could personality be the blocker?

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Strange-Resource875@reddit

bro stop using chatgpt for everything, you’re sound like a Brandon Sanderson character

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porcupine162@reddit

This is definitely written by chatgpt

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lost_tacos@reddit

I wish I shipped clean code. After dealing with years, if not decades, of legacy code and technical debt, the best I can do is ship cleaner code.

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roseicecream@reddit

bro if you have 8 years of experience why did you post a weird coding bootcamp review 2 weeks ago?

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Moslogical@reddit (OP)

excuse me. Let me update my resume to include:

Senior OAuth Whisperer
Bootcamp Refund Denial Recipient
Certified Ghostee Level 9000. -Catch me next week on “How I got rejected by a startup whose homepage still has Lorem Ipsum.”

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Buttleston@reddit

So like, did you work as a dev for 8 years first and then do the bootcamp? Did the boot camp take you 8 years?

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teslas_love_pigeon@reddit

OP may be stupid enough to do this. Many devs fall for overpriced courses because they think they have to spend $5k to learn how to do web dev or mobile dev when they did backend work previously (or any other of combination).

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jon_hendry@reddit

It was a really long bootcamp?

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PowerOwn2783@reddit

Someone pin this, if true, this is actually hilarious.

But then again bro was bragging about being able to explain OAuth so I wouldn't say I'm surprised

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dailydrudge@reddit

Alright, so let's get this straight—I paid for a bootcamp, learned a decent amount, and then got thrown into the modern job market like a Roman peasant into the Colosseum, armed with nothing but a LinkedIn profile and a rapidly declining sense of optimism.

https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1jfveoz/coding_temple_bootcamp_review_the_reality_check/

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IDoCodingStuffs@reddit

Well uh internet is a series of tubes, and OAuth is like a bunch of valves. Now hire me as a Staff Partner Distinguished 4-Star General Software Engineer

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Buttleston@reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1jfveoz/coding_temple_bootcamp_review_the_reality_check/

This also seems like it was written by chatgpt, but also, it's a "review" of a bootcamp who he was disappointed with

Son I am dissapoint

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minty_taint@reddit

Did the styling & use of emojis not immediately give it away to you that this is a bait post or AI itself?

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akwok@reddit

Seems like hiring screens are actually pretty good then if it's able to screen out BS like this

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Evinceo@reddit

ChatGPT thinks it has eight years of experience.

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-Dargs@reddit

It's like saying I have 30 years of professional competitive eating because I have been trying to out pace my dad since I was toddler. Lol

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GandolfMagicFruits@reddit

I'm in the grind right now. Over 20 years of experience. It's an absolute shit show.

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litui@reddit

Yep same. Over 20 years employed, 25+ in tech. Been using Linux and writing C longer than some of my interviewers have been alive. It's a mess.

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PowerOwn2783@reddit

It's a mess because technology evolved beyond "Linux" and "C"? 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

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Ok-Pace-8772@reddit

It's Linux and C all the way down dummy. Not even ironically.

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PowerOwn2783@reddit

This reads like someone who recently discovered how servers work and the concept of compilers, and want to desperately show everyone that he knows it's all C behind the scenes!

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Ok-Pace-8772@reddit

Sure does

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PowerOwn2783@reddit

Well, in that case, my sincere congratulations to you for finding out that most servers are in fact ran on Linuxm

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Ok-Pace-8772@reddit

Don't try so hard. We know.

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litui@reddit

Obviously I learned a thing or two while /working for 20-some years/ but go off. Also, FWIW both these things are very much still relevant.

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PowerOwn2783@reddit

Then I guess if it's so relevant you would have no trouble finding a job given that ya know your skillset is in huge demand, right?

Trying to show everyone how "smart" you are because you have seniority but also complaining about being unemployed is a new low that it's honestly kind of funny.

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litui@reddit

That you think I was trying to lord seniority over anyone says more about you than me, friend. I'm just looking for a modest role where my skills and knowledge can be of use and yeah perhaps I'm a bit tired of particularly younger folks writing me off already.

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PowerOwn2783@reddit

You are bitching about being unemployed and the only reason you cited was you have 20 YOE.

For someone with 20 YOE I'm surprised you don't understand that seniority doesn't mean jack, relevant skillsets do.

You keep contradicting yourself by saying supposedly that Linux/C is so relevant right now yet apparently nobody is hiring C devs?

I don't even know what to say anymore. This entire post is a cluster fuck and I guess that's why the mods deleted it entirely.

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litui@reddit

I hope you gain some perspective in time. I don't owe you every detail of my story. Perhaps assume that if someone says they have 20 years of experience that they're continuing to learn and grow in that time.

Linux and C are certainly not my only skills just my oldest. And yes, they're still very relevant. This statement is not at odds with the job market being a shitshow except in your own mind.

Sometimes saying nothing is a reasonable course of action. Or continue to berate the jobless person, I'm sure that feels great.

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StatusAnxiety6@reddit

This reads like chatgpt wrote it.

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Golandia@reddit

You can tell because of the way it is

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wannacommissionameme@reddit

or someone with a linkedin and makes posts. both are disgusting creatures

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emmpee@reddit

The linkedin people are all using ChatGPT for those posts.

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esixar@reddit

please write a Reddit post about the plights of being hired as a software dev in 2025. Make sure to include emojis at the start of bulleted lists like you’re so famous for

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HiroProtagonist66@reddit

The Struggles of Getting Hired as a Software Dev in 2025

So, we all thought learning to code was the golden ticket, right? Turns out, the job market in 2025 has other ideas. Between AI automating junior roles, endless LeetCode grind, and companies ghosting harder than a Tinder match, getting hired as a software dev has never felt more brutal.

Here are some of the biggest struggles devs are facing:

📉 Too Many Applicants, Too Few Jobs

With bootcamps, CS grads, and self-taught devs all competing for the same roles, the market is oversaturated. Companies are raising the bar on experience levels, even for "entry-level" positions.

🤖 AI Is Eating Junior Dev Jobs

Why hire a fresh dev when AI can write boilerplate code, generate unit tests, and even refactor entire projects? Companies are leaning on AI tools like Copilot and ChatGPT instead of investing in junior devs.

🏋️ The LeetCode Olympics

Want a mid-level role? Cool, here’s a 5-stage interview with LeetCode hards, system design, behavioral rounds, and a take-home assignment that takes an entire weekend. And after all that? Ghosted.

🏛️ "You Need 5 Years of Experience for This Entry-Level Job"

Somehow, entry-level now means "senior dev willing to take a pay cut." The expectation creep is real—and the salary? Not so much.

👻 Companies Will Ghost You Without Hesitation

Recruiters act like they’re so excited to chat… until you finish the last interview, and suddenly they vanish into the void. No rejection, no feedback, just radio silence.

So What’s the Move?

Despite the struggle, devs are still getting hired. The ones who stand out: ✅ Have solid projects that showcase real-world skills (not just another to-do list app). ✅ Build network connections—referrals are king. ✅ Learn how to market themselves like pros (LinkedIn, blogs, personal branding). ✅ Stay adaptable—AI isn’t going anywhere, so knowing how to work with it is a must.

What’s been your experience in the 2025 job hunt? Let’s vent together.

Checks out.

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i_exaggerated@reddit

I don’t trust emojis.

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Exciting_Variation56@reddit

That’s a no for me

Use an emoji as a bullet point and I lose respect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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zwermp@reddit

8 years of one year of experience.

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Mismatched1@reddit

I’m sorry but I’m a little confused. If you just graduated from a coding bootcamp, how are you in an experienced dev sub Reddit? What is your experience in?

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Moslogical@reddit (OP)

I’ve been upskilling for over a decade, long before I ever set foot in a bootcamp. I’ve built tools, automated workflows, worked freelance gigs, contributed to open-source projects, and been the "unofficial dev" at multiple jobs where my title wasn’t “engineer,” but my responsibilities sure were.

The bootcamp? That was supposed to be the formality., the "certified stamp" to back what I was already doing. Turns out, getting the stamp doesn't change the fact that most doors still want you to enter through a referral or a $300/hr Udemy-taught AI side hustle.

So yeah—bootcamp grad, but far from a beginner. I’m here because I’ve put in the hours, eaten the glass, and now I’m comparing notes with others doing the same.

Hope that clears it up. No salt/just context.

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Mismatched1@reddit

Look I totally get it. I have a unique background and even though I have work experience now, i literally have panic attacks over potential layoffs because I know how hard the market is.

However, as someone who now reviews resumes and stuff, while your experience is admirable it’s not quantifiable or easily verifiable. Therefore, in this job market you’re bit of red flag. I hope it eventually works out for you though, you will need to only apply to entry level jobs etc

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metaphorm@reddit

This is a fun game. Here's my try at it

Prompt:

write me a sardonic, acerbic, witty, satirical style essay about "how fucked up is the software engineer job market in 2025". make it about 500 words.

Output:

How F*ed Up is the Software Engineer Job Market in 2025?**

Ah, 2025. A glorious time to be alive—if you enjoy economic roller coasters, watching tech giants vaporize overnight, and submitting 300 job applications to get one ghosting. The software engineering job market, once a paradise of unlimited kombucha on tap and six-figure signing bonuses, now resembles a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the only thing recruiters are hunting is your soul. Let’s take a walk through this dystopia, shall we?

First, let’s talk layoffs—because nothing screams “job security” like watching entire engineering teams vanish into thin air every quarter. Back in the good old days (2021-2022), tech companies were hoarding engineers like doomsday preppers hoard canned beans. "Growth at all costs!" they shouted, throwing venture capital at anyone who could spell "JavaScript" without autocorrect. But alas, growth slowed, interest rates rose, and suddenly, CFOs discovered a new religion: "efficiency."

By 2025, the layoff cycle has become a sacred quarterly ritual. Executives, after a moment of solemn contemplation, decide which percentage of their workforce they must sacrifice to the almighty shareholders. One day you’re a "high-impact team player," and the next, you’re explaining to your landlord why your "reskilling" into AI prompt engineering isn’t quite paying the bills yet.

Ah yes, AI. The shiny, overhyped, omnipresent specter haunting job boards. Once hailed as the engineer’s best friend, it has now become the passive-aggressive overlord of the industry. No, it hasn’t replaced all programmers—just enough of them to make hiring managers wonder if they really need a human at all. Why pay a software engineer when you can get an AI to hallucinate production-ready code for free? Sure, it might randomly delete the authentication layer on a Friday evening, but that’s just part of the fun, right?

And then there’s the interview process, a gauntlet so unnecessarily sadistic it makes medieval torture look humane. Once upon a time, you could land a job with a basic algorithm test and a charming chat about microservices. Not anymore. Now, you must first endure a 12-step hiring process that includes: a take-home project requiring 40 hours of unpaid labor, five rounds of behavioral interviews where you must demonstrate your "passion for synergy," and a final boss battle where you must live-code an LLM optimizer while standing on one leg, blindfolded.

But let’s say, by some divine intervention, you actually get an offer. Great! Hope you like your salary from 2018, because despite inflation and record-breaking corporate profits, companies are suddenly "unable to afford" competitive wages. Stock options? Cute. Your RSUs vest in 2089, and only if you survive the next eight layoff cycles.

Of course, you could always go freelance. You know, embrace the "creator economy," build an indie SaaS, or sell your soul to Upwork. Just be prepared to compete with a swarm of AI-generated "developers" who bid $5 for projects that would take three humans and a divine miracle to complete.

So, how f***ed up is the software engineering job market in 2025? Let’s just say, if you’re still employed, congratulations! You’ve won the lottery. If not? Well, time to brush up on those "soft skills"—you might need them for your new career in customer service.

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fued@reddit

Being able communicate clearly is more important than being able to code well, so skills and experience while they help in getting you an interview, don't really help you get a job

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Software_Engineer09@reddit

I think the most frustrating thing is the insultingly low salaries being offered. I get the usual LinkedIn messages from recruiters and they are all positions that sound impressive but when I ask for a salary range it’s usually a 25%-30% pay cut every time.

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wraith_majestic@reddit

First the AI’s came for me in AoE2. Then they came for my job.
Then they came for my social media… they are truly insidious.

Admit it AI! You have been intentionally failing the Turing test all along!

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Buttleston@reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1jfveoz/coding_temple_bootcamp_review_the_reality_check/

👀

OP would also like to know if aliens are nazis

And pretty much every post they make gets deleted.

Amazing.

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ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam@reddit

Rule 9: No Low Effort Posts, Excessive Venting, or Bragging.

Using this subreddit to crowd source answers to something that isn't really contributing to the spirit of this subreddit is forbidden at moderator's discretion. This includes posts that are mostly focused around venting or bragging; both of these types of posts are difficult to moderate and don't contribute much to the subreddit.

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ngugeneral@reddit

Do you know how to use Slack professionally?
I have added more than 30 reactions to my current work slack and they are in 85 percentile for the span of the last 2 years.

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cuntsalt@reddit

I'm sitting at 43K added, when do I get my Slack Staff Engineer title?

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Evinceo@reddit

Honestly I wish my company knew how to use slack professionally. So many five person direct messages...

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HashDefTrueFalse@reddit

Cringe.

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sunk-capital@reddit

🔹 I was rejected by a company I already used to work at.

Inconsistent bolding. Lacks attention to detail.

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False-Owl8404@reddit

Well... My job is just fine. I have great coworkers and good challenging work that makes my job interesting

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salvadorabledali@reddit

i’ll hire u just to watch u quit

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Evinceo@reddit

This isn't LinkedIn, you don't need to post like this

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Sea-Ad-5390@reddit

Interviewers see what we all do, all talk, no results

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PmanAce@reddit

You need to know distributed systems and infrastructure as code these days. Explaining OAuth is nothing, you need to be using it and comfortably. Do you have examples of this in your github?

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prototypist@reddit

I've been applying to jobs for a year, and the only thing that got an uptick in interviews was: reformatting my CV, changing fonts, adding a contract so I have a "current" job, and making a little noise on open source repos. They are getting a hundred applications (more if on LinkedIn) and filtering them in a slipshod way and it's nuts, just do your best to buff out any possible confusion when scanning that CV.
Cover letter is two paragraphs at most. Hey it's your friendly local competent person, I did a similar job before, I use your product all the time and love the company! Kindest regards.

Also you have to stop believing bootcamps and Instagram / TikTok coders at face value! In those years how often did you hire a bootcamp grad for a big role? If one of their students gets hired, boom big post. The "CTO" is on parents' health insurance and when the startup goes under, they won't post that on Instagram.

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SadBigCat@reddit

Recruiter asked me if I know Python, to which I answered “yes” followed by “Do you have more useless questions for me” in my head

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CanIhazCooKIenOw@reddit

Leverage your network. If you don't have one, build one - you have enough years of experience to have worked with people in the past.

This will get you seen but after that it's on you - reality is that companies can be very very picky and raise the bar as high as they want that they will be able to fill the position.

In the end it's a numbers game, in the meantime work and improve on what you can - and maybe it's not technical, maybe it's communication.

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bigdatabro@reddit

I was lucky when I got laid off last year that I was still in touch with college friends and old coworkers. I got a job offer in less than a month through a friend referral, and in the same time, I applied to nearly one hundred jobs and didn't even get an interview.

I feel bad for people who miss out on job opportunities because they don't have friends or connections they can ask for help. Like, I wish that this field were more of a meritocracy and that technical skills mattered more than who's in your contact list. But sadly, in 2025, having a friend at a big tech company seems to matter much more than having the right skills or the strongest work ethic.

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CanIhazCooKIenOw@reddit

The reality is that I’ll take any day someone that I’ve worked in the past for someone that I haven’t. And if that saves me interviewing and trying to guess your level even better.

Call it what you want but connections and networking is very important in any field as they should be.

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SpaceGerbil@reddit

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PowerOwn2783@reddit

"I have 8 years of experience. I ship clean code. I know what a monolith is...”

That just sounds like the hallmark of, the average engineer?

"Every listing wants 5+ years of Rust, Terraform"

Have you like considered applying to places that, idk, more fitting for your tech stack? You know there are more to swe than just rust and terraform right? I don't know rust and I'll probably get rejected immediately if I applied for jobs that requires rust so i do this neat thing where I just don't apply to rust Dev positions.

"AI engineers” with 6 weeks of Udemy are charging $300/hr to fine-tune a mood board"

Well, clearly they are doing something right if they are getting paid. Also, I've dabbled in entry level ML way way back, and the math is not easy, at all. So the fact you think AI researches/engineers are dumb broads is funny given that you listed OAuth familiarity as a shining point in your career.

"CTOs are now 22-year-olds who call themselves “vision casters” and deploy via Notion."

Anyone who starts a company is a Chief whatever the fuck. Your fault for placing actual value in the term "CTO". CTO is the new "entrepreneur", treat it as such.

"Bootcamps are handing out “success coach” titles to jobless alumni like Halloween candy"

And that affects you how exactly?

"But sure, let me do 3 take-home projects, a system design, a whiteboard session"

Pretty sure that was the standard (well, depends on the company size and prestige) many years ago when I joined the industry. Multi round interviews was not invented in the last 5 years. I don't personally like it, but I find it weird that you still haven't accepted that after 8 YOE. This is like a 20 YOE doctor complaining about being paged, it's a reality of the job.

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DCON-creates@reddit

It's not that deep bro

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Goingone@reddit

Companies hire people who can help solve their problems.

Some things you mentioned are useful skills, but to get noticed it needs to be clear how you will help a company.

Nobody hiring gives a s*** about something subjective like clean code. They want to hear you wrote a program that saved your operations teams 100 hours a week.

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Separate_Increase210@reddit

Honestly, I'm disconcerted at how my own company is both desperate for engineers yet extraordinarily picky. They refuse anyone as entry level for my team while I bet I could get a competent ENTRY/JUNIOR to where they need to be in less time. How do I know this? The opening has existed for well over a fucking year and more people have left

At this point, it's likely an intentional mislead to pull some financing bullshit and make the execs & investors a ton of money so they can bail.

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Krackor@reddit

You sound like a drama case.

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Overall_Oil_749@reddit

I believe engineering should be only a phase in your career and not your all career.

Think about saving and invest in your hobbies or move to managerial position by doing mba.

Or buy bitcoin as much as you can 😄

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