I could give the standard “ah shucks brother keep your head up!” advice that most people do.

Or I can give tactical suggestions, which may be a bit hard to stomach, so he can improve his odds at landing a job.

It’s fairly easy to infer his job domain from comments. He mentions web technologies and SQL often. He refers to himself as a dev, not as an engineer, and he mentions running numerous websites. He probably got his start working in “IT” (nobody says IT anymore, but he still does) in the 90s in support or technician roles and moved into full-stack web developer roles around dotcom.

He also comes across as low self-confidence due to “I've almost always gotten good to great performance reviews” instead of telling us why he’s an excellent dev. That likely comes out in interviews and further hurts his chances.

I don't know how often unsolicited advice on the internet is helpful. Sometimes a rant is just a rant.

Regardless, I don't exactly see the good faith when saying "well you don't like AI, just find some crusty old phpjobs and take the cut". Which is both over-presumptuous (we don't know the domain they work in) and not very helpful anyway ("old" companies may not be laying off thousands but still aren't exactly throwing jobs out like candy).

>It’s fairly easy to infer his job domain from comments

Even 20 years ago. Web has so many pieces of tech (some that didn't survive) that I wouldn't assume. Could be IT (which no one says because it evolved into its own separate domain. A 2000's IT engineer wouldn't really be doing what SDET or DevOps do today), could be old style vanilla JS website development, could be flash. Or something entirely different.

>He refers to himself as a dev, not as an engineer, and he mentions running numerous websites

Titles don't really mean much. My domain calls people developers, programmers, or engineers as the company sees fit (also, it's awkward to say "game engine engineer"). The terms are almost as flexible as "senior" these days.

No, because even if you are at a pretty standard company, you will be expected to deal with these technologies

Maybe in 10 years AI will be "standard", but as of now I'd be surprised if anyone meets the stereotypical HR requirements of "5 years of AI experience"

Personally haven't had to deal with Cloud. My domain leaves that to network engineers on the product and probably devops for the company servers. It's there but Ive never been expected to touch it.

Nah. Cloud is a maybe, I (front-end focused) don't deal with cloud technology directly.

I should, but I find it draining.