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Tech Hiring Is Terrible Now. What Happened?

The failing of a once-abundant job market in real time

Jon Upshaw
UX Planet
5 min readJan 26, 2025

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-white-shirt-showing-frustration-3807738/

The tech industry is finally cooling down. It might pick up again, but don’t count on it — AI might just replace you before it does. And if that wasn’t bad enough, companies are offshoring operations again while reporting record profits. Better upskill — that’s always a better option… right? Not quite, unless you agree with the idea that employers are just pushing the costs of training and time onto you while expecting you to meet their ever-increasing list of qualifications. It’s a collective race to the bottom — and unless you started at the top, you’ll always be at risk of being laid off again during the next cycle.

The nature of corporate tech

Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/female-manager-drinking-coffee-at-workplace-5668887/

It’s a sad state of affairs for white-collar workers. Trends in hiring are pointing to an increased use of AI in job postings and the hiring process. Recruiters tend to ghost for no reason at all, and now “ghost jobs”, openings that aren’t really openings, make up almost 50% of all online postings.

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Published in UX Planet

UX Planet is a one-stop resource for everything related to user experience.

Written by Jon Upshaw

I write on productivity, culture, design, entrepreneurship, and life in general.

Responses (43)

What are your thoughts?

I'm a technical recruiter with over 10 years of experience in the startup world. What you're all running to at job fairs is pure marketing. The reps are there to make the org and brand visible. They may not and likely don't have many or any job…

This kind of forced web-labor

Ironic too is that one of the first things they ask you for is your plain resume even though you have all this info on LinkedIn.

one that moves slowly and is filled to the brim with bureaucracy

Ironic that they don't replace the bureaucracy, the least valued added portion of the economy, with AI. Those people know how to justify their jobs!