Job Market Trends for Tech Roles in 2025

This image is two truths and a lie. Companies are hiring fewer software and data engineers - TRUTH. Tech layoffs are higher than at any other time - TRUTH. Hiring in tech is falling off a cliff – NOPE, 6,000-7,000 NEW TECH JOBS ARE BEING CREATED EVERY MONTH. Hiring priorities have shifted to people who build products vs. write code. Businesses are desperate for people who deliver apps, information, and agents. At the same time, they’re laying off and refusing to hire people who write code, manage data, and train models. Images like this one create confusion about the job market. Knowing how to build used to be enough. Landing a job today requires knowing what to build and why. It’s critical to understand three processes: Productization: Discovering a business or customer need, defining the optimal feasible technical solution, delivering that solution incrementally to users, and leveraging feedback to continuously improve the solution. Monetization: Assessing the opportunity (how much money/impact on KPIs is there in meeting a business or customer need) and designing a product that delivers value back to the business. Commercialization: Designing a technical solution for a business or customer workflow and fitting it to the way a user segment(s) expects it to work so they’ll adopt and pay for it. This is a response to all the surveys showing that most technology organizations are cost centers and that most technology initiatives fail to generate positive returns. Businesses are filling their technical teams with partners who can change that. Demand isn’t falling; it’s shifting. Business leaders have a new understanding of their technical talent needs and are rebalancing teams to be more value-centric. Images like this haven’t adapted to that shift, so it looks like the sky is falling when it isn’t. Adapt your career to the shift, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities over the next 5 years.

Last week, everyone was talking about Stanford University’s new study on gen AI and the workforce.. but there was a perspective missing from the discussion. The headlines were tough, especially for entry-level roles like software development. 🔍 TLDR: Stanford economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, and Ruyu Chen looked at jobs where AI can take over many of the tasks humans do. That includes software developers, receptionists, translators, and customer service reps. They found that hiring in these roles has softened since late 2022, with the slowdown sharpest among younger workers. 📉 Among software developers aged 22 to 25, headcount was down nearly 20% this July compared to its late 2022 peak. 👨💻 For workers aged 26 to 30, headcount was flat. 📈 For older workers, headcount continued to grow. What explains the difference? Senior employees often bring skills that are harder to automate. These might include working across teams, solving messy problems, or turning code into customer outcomes. Employers still see those skills as critical. Meanwhile, younger candidates are entering a job market that is shifting quickly. But here’s what is not being said enough: While AI is replacing some junior roles, it is also redefining what early-career talent looks like. Some companies are not pulling back. They are doubling down, especially on candidates who are AI-native. ➡️ Databricks plans to triple the number of people it hires right out of school this year. CEO Ali Ghodsi: “They’re going to come in, and they’re going to be all AI-native. We can’t for the life of us get the more senior people to adopt AI.” ➡️ Scale AI is actively hiring early-career talent. Scale AI’s Head of People, Ashli Shiftan: “We’re eager to hire AI-native professionals, and many of those candidates are early in their careers.” ➡️ Jure Leskovec, Stanford professor and founder of Kumo, sees a new kind of software engineer emerging: “Those who are adept at using AI…they learn fast, think fast and are able to leverage the technology to be more effective. Though they don’t have the advanced degrees, the gap between them and conventional programmers is widening” ➡️ CTGT (YC F24), an AI safety startup backed by Google, was founded by 23-year-old Cyril Gorlla. The average age at the company is 21, and Gorlla, has been receiving inbound requests from younger and younger prospective employees, including a 16 year old who already had a paper published at an AI conference. ➡️ At CustomGPT.ai, CEO Alden Do Rosario interviews candidates not just on their resumes but also on the AI agents they have built to boost their own productivity. In some cases, showcasing your agent stack is becoming just as important as your resume. AI is undeniably reshaping the early-career job market, but for those who are embracing the shift, adapting quickly, and showing what they can build, there are still doors wide open. Links to the research in the comments 👇

22,042 tech layoffs and accelerated hiring. At the same time. This isn't contradiction – it's strategic realignment driven by AI adoption. 📊 Carta's latest research on startup compensation & hiring tells an interesting story about which functions are thriving vs. shrinking: - 📈 Sales roles now account for 19.9% of all new hires (up from 14.8% in 2020), making it the second most common function behind engineering - 🤖 Approximately 50% of tech leaders anticipate both layoffs AND hiring in the next 6 months specifically due to AI adoption (Ernst & Young survey) - 📉 Involuntary departures down 35% from 2023 to 2024, but remain more than twice as high as pre-2022 levels - 🏠 For startups valued between $25-50M, in-state hiring increased from 37% in 2022 to 49% in 2024 What's fascinating is the AI-driven bifurcation of the tech workforce: While 22,042 tech employees have been laid off across numerous companies in early 2025, many organizations are simultaneously accelerating hiring in AI-specific roles. Meta, for example, is cutting about 5% of staff while noticeably ramping up machine learning engineer hiring. Similarly, Salesforce eliminated about 1,000 roles while actively recruiting for AI-focused positions. This isn't just cost-cutting – it's a strategic reallocation driven by AI's impact on productivity: - 🧠 Companies are eliminating roles made redundant by AI tools while adding positions for AI specialists and data engineers - 💼 Customer-facing functions like sales continue to grow, suggesting these human-centered roles remain harder to automate - 📱 Roles in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity show demand outpacing supply despite the broader downsizing trend For tech executives, the message is clear: AI adoption is creating "continuous cycles of strategic workforce realignment" as organizations determine which functions benefit most from human talent versus automation.

Key takeaways from Mary Meeker's (340 page!) 2025 AI Trends report: 1. The Job market is actively reshaping with data showing a dramatic divergence in the labor market. Since January 2018, job postings in the USA requiring AI skills have skyrocketed by +448%, while non-AI IT job postings have declined by -9%. 2. It's about augmentation AND replacement. While the cliche that "You're not going to lose your job to an AI, but you're going to lose your job to somebody who uses AI" may be somewhat true, it's also true that companies are exploring agents to perform work, and this will have an impact on human jobs. HR and L&D need to really kick upskilling and integration into gear, empowering the workforce to use AI as a tool for productivity. 3. Company mandates on AI use are becoming the norm. Leading tech companies are no longer suggesting AI adoption - they're requiring it. Shopify now considers "reflexive AI usage" a "baseline expectation" for all employees. Duolingo is officially "AI-first," stating that AI use will be part of performance reviews and that new headcount will only be approved if a team cannot first automate its work. AI strategy starts at the top and leaders need to lead by example. 4. Employees are already seeing the benefits of AI - a survey of employed U.S. adults found that over 72% of those using AI chatbots at work say the tools are "extremely" or "very" helpful for doing things more quickly and improving the quality of their work. No surprise there, with the exception that perhaps the number should be higher than 72%. 5. The next generation of talent is AI-Native. Today's students are already leveraging AI for career readiness. A survey of 18-24 year-olds showed top use cases for ChatGPT include starting projects, summarizing texts, and career-related writing. Recruitment and onboarding strategies must adapt to a talent pool that expects AI tools from day one. So what does this all mean for HR and Talent leaders? This report signals a clear need to: 🚀 Rethink job descriptions & skill requirements - are you hiring for AI literacy? 🚀 Transform L&D - is your upskilling strategy focused on experiential learning and practical AI application or is it limited to online learning? 🚀 Update performance management - how will you measure and reward effective AI usage? 🚀 Adapt recruiting - how are you preparing to attract and retain an AI-native workforce? I don't think you can afford to take a "wait and see" approach. What are you and your company doing to get ahead and take full advantage of the benefits AI has to offer? Check out the full report here: https://lnkd.in/ed7j4Wi7 #AI #FutureOfWork #HumanResources #TalentAcquisition #Leadership