I just talked to a bunch of recruiters (we're hiring) and their main piece of advice was: The market is crazy. Move fast. We're seeing people getting jobs within days of starting to look, bailing on offers after signing because they got a better offer somewhere else, etc. 24 hours is the longest you can leave a candidate waiting. You have been warned

edit: I am in SFBA. Your reality may be different. People have spilled some 2 trillion dollars onto the area in the past 2 years. A lot of that is going to software engineers as everyone tries to shove AI down consumers' throats. Rents are up 60% in 12 months, which is not the sign of a cold employment market :)

Regardless, it's not like that was the only job I applied to. I had a policy of applying to at least ten jobs a day, so I applied to about ~1500 jobs, and literally all of them rejected me except for the one I have right now. I had about twenty other interviews (edit: 15, checked my calendar from last year), a few that got to late stages, and they didn't pan out [1].

I psychotically save money so I wasn't worried in any kind of existential sense, I could survive for years if I needed, but man I would have killed to be in a situation where I even had the opportunity to bail on an offer.

This has been the worst economy for software engineers I've seen in my ~15 year career. I am slightly optimistic that it will improve eventually but I suspect "eventually" might mean several more years.

[1] And one at a one of the world's largest bank (that my lawyer/mom has advised me not to name publicly) where my interviewers were potentially the most incompetent people I have ever talked to and who didn't seem to know what an atomic was in Java, and "corrected" my counter code with a mutex. And I put "corrected" in quotes, because what they corrected it to would deadlock. Morons.

I think recruiters will just carpet bomb emails out and then only respond like ten percent of the people that email them back.

I think there's MORe to GAiN from STAyiNg away from this deLicatE storY.

Sorry my keyboard acted up and I can't seem to delete that sentence.

That doesn't scale to 10 jobs/day for very long because almost nobody has a network that big. If you don't land something through referral to the hiring manager, it's mostly a crap shoot these days.

What I had tried to do was start randomly requesting connection invites with people on LinkedIn in fields I was interested, and a surprisingly large number of them accepted my requests, but that didn't actually pan out to anything productive, which is a little depressing.

I hope I don't get laid off from my current gig, because now I really don't have a clue on the best way to find a job. Maybe I could try that "CEO at a big corporation" thing, it doesn't look too hard and apparently you can lay off half your staff and still be rewarded.

https://www.citadelsecurities.com/news-and-insights/2026-glo...

Unless I'm getting whooshed now lol, but yeah the market here is just super hot because all the AI money sloshing around.

In the last three transitions I applied to a grand total of 5 companies.

Also, looking at the recruiter emails I've been getting, they've been ramping up over the last few months, and I'm back up to one or two cold emails per week.

But again, I'm fairly senior, and I have deep domain knowledge in a few key areas. I understand the market is brutal if you're early career or your knowledge isn't "T" shaped.

Around 12 calls if I remember correctly. With the exception of those who ghosted me, every company was very prompt, respectful of my time, and had a reasonable process that went from first to final interview pretty fast. I got a ton of outright rejections to my resume, which I sent around a lot. Getting the first call was the hardest part. YC job board ultimately led to finding my new role.

The company I went with had the best, warmest process that reflected how they like to work and was built to find people who had overlapping priorities. Thinking back, I think that most companies either deliberately or inadvertently wind up with processes that sync up with how they are organized internally and what kind of people they hope to hire.

With my current job search I've got the sense that sf is once again the place to be. Everything else kind of sucks, lots went back on remote work.

absolutely be skeptical

and fwiw i dont know any swes struggling to find work personally

swe is so broad and in bubbles its hard to get an objective analysis

https://x.com/perborgen/status/2025890393166917857

However, the chart settings were actually modified to hide/deemphasize the earlier decline: the the index date was changed. 2025-02-20=100 in their graph, default of 2020-02-01=100 would have the chart start at 64 and rise to 71.44.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS

https://trueup.io/job-trend

this tracker shows continuous improvement since 2023

What's not shown in a graph of job postings is the demand side. With all the layoffs, out of work college grads, people staying put in jobs they are unhappy with, etc., I'd wager that demand per job is still at a historically high level compared to what we have been accustomed to

Need to tell more recruiters.

- I'm contacted less often

- Offered Salaries are lower, despite inflation

- They basically all required being in office, and relocating at my expense

- Most of them are from AI startups that have a decent chance of not lasting more than a few years.

Really? So no take-home projects? No leetcode? No six rounds of interviews? Just show up and express interest, you're hired!

Betting the company on becoming a conglomerate is just not a great strategy. It is almost always smarter to focus on what you do best, "core competencies" in MBA-speak.

Positive EV bets are hard to come buy. There aren't an unlimited number of them.

To avoid laying them off in next year's job market.

Dripping a 10% cut every year for the next four years when you *know* that you're going to do it is cowardice.

For all Block knows, AI for coding kind of plateaus where it is now and there is a huge boom in software engineer hiring taking advantage of the new tech to produce even more/better features.

“General and administrative expenses increased by $68.1m ... The increase was primarily driven by … an in-person company event held in Q3 2025”

We are no longer in a zero-interest rate environment, so I think those experiments are more costly than they were a few years go

Yes this sucks, but this mode of operation for our society was repeatedly chosen through centuries of experimentation. We all asked for this, literally.

Well - if "we" refers to the original selfish gene (à la Dawkins), then yes - modern capitalism has manifested as an emergent property of the core evolutionary principle. I suppose you could say that about virtually anything however...

Or just be a psychopath.

some companies are in the position to go for moonshots and block hasn't panned out

The idea of a job being some task that needs to be done is being lost in favor of the view that a job is something you give 8 hours to in order to fill up your bank account every two weeks. It's becoming so detached from the concept of production/productivity that people literally start inadvertently talking past each other when they discuss things like layoffs or employment. I find it very common in AI jobloss discussions; the Citrini article over the weekend was subtly full of this variety of thinking. For instance, his prediction that corporate profits would rise while consumer spend dropped are literally incompatible realities, but a natural conclusion of the "the purpose of a job is to give people money" type of thought.

Incredibly interesting to see, but the social contract, or at least the perception of what it ought to be, is definitely shifting.

These are not incompatible realities.

I would be willing to accept the statement that corporate revenues increasing and consumer spending decreasing are incompatible realities.

But it’s feasible to think the following occurs:

- labor income falls

- consumer spending drops

- corporate revenues drop

- corporate profits moderately increase because profit margins get much higher

- government deficit continues (which, from an accounting perspective, means other accounts are in surplus, potentially US corporations)

I’m not saying I strongly predict the above, necessarily! I just don’t think it’s correct to say it’s not a conceivable reality.

on a macro-level yes; CEOs are only thinking about firm-level though (other tech firms will act differently or tech is small part of total economy, many ways to rationalize). they should be assuming others will follow in their footsteps but they are not incentivized to model that or think in the longterm.

Or perhaps public doesn’t owe corporates bailouts when push comes to shove?

Edit P.S. Should the individuals who don’t receive a job from a bailed out company get proportional tax refund?

I know we have to balance inefficiency and optimal allocation of resources... but I agree it doesn't seem optimal for social wellbeing to remove people from their access to health and risking their ability to house and feed themselves without a financial need to do so (like Block going bankrupt).

Humans are violent, self-centered tribalists. What species are you referring to? Not homo sapiens.

(This is also my go-to argument against zero sum economics)

i personally want products i purchase to be cheaper and i don't want to be paying for products that are costly simply because they are hiring people for "human wellbeing".

i would rather people work in productive places than just exist in a company for some reason.

two options

- the 4000 employees can still be employed in block - thats around $600,000,000 that goes into literally no value and this is price borne by us consumers

- or the 4000 employees get fired and work in different companies that actually require them so that we as consumers can actually buy more products

by choosing option 1, you not only accept that as consumers we pay more for the product, but also miss out on other valuable work the 4000 employees can do. no good economy runs this way.

I dispute that this is a fact. Maybe within a small group, but startups shouldn't be possible if masses of more cooperating people led to better outcomes. A large company should always win there and that does not happen.

> What is the point of organizing socially if not for the benefit of all society members?

We don't come anywhere close to this on a global scale. Most countries aren't this way on a national scale.

Stability means removal of volatility, which means to stay stable they end up becoming more generalised, rather than the laser focus a small team like a startup can have. That laser focus can work out when applied to the right problem at the right time, but is very much not a guarantee.

what you're talking about is the role of government. govt should be supporting policies like you are suggesting, by for example allowing for universal basic income or uniersal basic land or services, etc.

Why should society let the concept of a company exist if it is actively detrimental to society at large, for the gain of a very few?

But if you are okay with getting some heads chopped off with a guillotine from time to time, feel free to believe that.

But I would think 5 months paid time before you have to go on state unemployment is significantly better than the WARN act minimum of 60 days of notice or pay or the alternative of a campaign to raise attrition. Looks like recent google/meta layoffs are 4 months, so it's 25% better than that. I always thought I wanted to get a package, but I recognize that I would probably not have been happy if it happened.

/s

Maybe it’s just my background, but I’m starting to feel that a lot of people in the tech industry have never learned empathy.

I see you haven't visited the absolute delight that is team blind or you would have figured this out already.

So does being dumped from a relationship. You might not be able to find another relationship in 6+ months. But I don't think people would seriously propose that people should therefore not be able to leave a relationship.

A lot of people would focus on the many obvious differences, and use those to deflect attention from the important similarity I was highlighting: That they are both things that ought to exist only so long as both parties want them to.

Relationships are between two people, not between a human and a public entity like a company.

My partner doesn't have extremely disproportionate leverage over me, if tomorrow I leave – company will chug along just fine, if I'm laid off tomorrow – I might lose my home, relationship, well-being, never recover from the layoff (meaning I won't contribute back to economy and go on well-fare, and potentially start a revolution if there are millions of me) or ultimately die.

I know it's a difficult concept for 20 year old tech-bros who sucked VC money with the milk of their mother to grasp, but money does dry out. You might think you're invincible right now and that it's you and companies against them (lazy, stupid coworkers), but you're the same cattle to them as the rest of us. As you can see by the topic of the thread.

Back to the analogy: Main goal of a company is to produce value for society, not making money for VCs. It's a difficult pill to swallow, I know, tech bros been taught for decades that job security, health insurance, taxes, value creation – all of those are commie concepts aimed to undermine our God given right to make money, and we – temporary embarrassed millionaires – need to fight it with every ounce of our existence by working 60 hours a week.

Labor IS the main input that turns capital + IP into products and services. Without those people Block would be nowhere near the current position it is in. But when business is strong, though, VCs and C level get obscene bonuses while employee compensation stays flat. Go figure.

I could go on and on, talk about tax reliefs [0], that countries and companies exist for people and not the other way around, but this should be enough to understand that THIS IS NOTHING LIKE A RELATIONSHIP WITH A HUMAN BEING.

[0] https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/businesses?utm_source...

This is the most... hinged... thing you said. I totally agree that bargaining power is usually far more skewed in the employment case. I think unequal bargaining power is the root of much unfairness in the world, and that the only way to really counteract this is through organising, i.e., unionisation. It's far from a panacea, mind you.

With all that said: Fundamentally, I don't think that an employer should be obligated to employ someone indefinitely. If you do: Think about whether regulations enforcing this would make an employer more likely, or less likely, to hire someone they are on the fence about.

The fundamental question is: Should employers be obligated to employ the people they hire forever?

Most people are making >50% of their income in RSUs.

Block has never really made a real profit. These layoffs are basically saying the company is no longer in moonshot mode and it’s now in the extraction phase of whatever it has, which means increase prices for whatever it sells and decrease expenses, i.e. payroll.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/XYZ/block/net-inco...

Five months severance is quite generous; during that time "their job is to get a job."

They literally did that. The irony is that the top comment is pointing out (correctly, IMO) how Block had all these people working on speculative projects for years and none of them really panned out.

Bold of you to assume he gives a single shit about it.

Yes, because there's always work somewhere. People that can't find jobs are often just unwilling to move to where the jobs are, or unwilling to take jobs that they think are beneath them.