I was laid off in March, 2023, a victim of the startup shakeout after the SVG banking collapse. A year previous, I had a small bidding war for my services. When I was let go this March, it was in the midst of the Facebook and Amazon layoffs.
It was terrible. The market had flipped 180 degrees away from where it was in 2022. I did not, however, have problems getting interviews. I got lots of them. I also got ghosted regularly after third and fourth interviews as the companies interviewed dozens of candidates looking for the very best deal they could find.
Now, for some perspective, I am a 30 year veteran of the IT industry, with well over 20 years of programming experience under my belt. You guessed it, that means I'm in my mid-50s. Did I run across ageism in my search? Not overt, but undoubtedly, yes.
Were companies overwhelmed by the number of applicants? Unquestionably. I had one recruiter tell me they had over 150 applicants for a single programming job, and they planned to only talk to 10% of them. 10% is still a LOT of interviews to find the right candidate.
So yes, the job market is bad, although not for traditional reasons. The economy seems to be chugging along, even though it's rumored to have one foot on a banana peel. Companies are hiring. But there's a lot of competition out there for posts, and companies have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the number of candidates to choose from. They don't know how to act.
So if your resume isn't in as-expected format, forget it. If your interviewing skills reveal you're an introvert with poor social skills, forget it. If you don't respond quickly and professionally to every serious inquiry, forget it. If you're not making your job search a 3-5 hour DAILY effort, forget it.
In other words, you have to bring your A-game right now, where you might have gotten by in previous years with just having good coding skills and a halfway decent resume.
The good news is that everyone can bring their A-game with some practice and effort. I got hired after two months. It was hard-- gut-wrenching, even -- but after dozens of interviews I finally landed a good job that met my requirements.
If you are working right now and you aren't saving your money for a rainy day, you're being foolish. Fortunately, I had been saving, and my bank account wasn't destroyed. I feel bad for people in this market who don't have savings. Be prepared to weather a six month outage. And keep upskilling. Complacency will get you laid off.