After 24 years as a software consultant and game developer, watching the 2025 tech market has been eye-opening...
Despite shipping 40+ production ...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Hey Phil,
I can 100% relate to this problem. Here's what has happened so far:
Now, coming to the hireability part. It's a full circus out there, that you need to perfom. It's not just about skills that you have, you need to be well known and showcase that you know things, and be well known, more or less like a creator.
You have 24 years of experience, share your learning with people, social media, and be part of any community. That will help you a LOT!
And if you like to, you can join the resume-matcher discord community. The new version is in development.
If I was hiring, and had a tool that could tell AI generated applications from human ones - I would immediately throw out ALL of the AI ones.
Also, are cover letters a thing? I've written - I think - only ONE in my entire 30 year career... and that was back in the mid-late 90s.
Well, I had a chat with CTO of Qdrant. He was dealing with 600+ applications for a Machine Learning Engineer positions and he told me, that he'd seen so many AI generated applications that he could tell just by looking at them.
You can generate a cover letter in one click with AI, so for the end user this becomes a question of why not? vs. spending time writing one.
At this point, with all the HRs frustrated, that's what all of them would do, however they need to have a tool in place which can help them select candidates faster and reject people, rather than keeping them hopeful or ghost them.
I meant 'are they a thing' as in I've never seen one from a candidate - ever, and I've only ever written one a very long time ago. I've also never seen a role advertised that asks for one.
At this point showing humanity and spelling errors gives you the upper hand.
And yet all, not most, all articles concerning hiring and CV tell you to proofread your CV to a tee.
Rightfully so - I won't dismiss a candidate based on a typo, but I won't bring them to the top of the stack either, if their experience isn't what I'm looking for, human or not.
And, since I don't know what standard the company hiring set its ATS at, for all I know, it could be the case that they have a filter to reject a CV that does have typos, meaning I still won't get seen by a human.
The tech hiring market has always been a lottery; we all know the joke about the manager throwing away half the CV stacked on their desk, saying "I don't want to hire unlucky folks", but the advent of LLMs, on both sides, creating CVs for candidates, and assessing those exact same CVs by ATSes made it into a truly random event.
Couple that with the fact that only the company's HR knows how they tweaked their ATS, what they set it to look for... You can have an LLM optimize your CV for that specific wanted ad - in truth, it's all for nothing!
You don't know what the company truly seeks, so you can't optimize for that.
Sad thing? Most of the time, the company, or rather the HR department, doesn't know either!
It's about time companies started training their HR folks in tech-speak.
I'm not saying make them into engineers, that would be competition, 🤣, but FFS at least have them understand what the wanted ads they're posting mean!
Here's to wishing, right? Sadly - right!
Just as we were talking about AI generated resume, here's a nice AI generated comment for you. (It's a blog at this point).
I miss the days when rags were my old tshirts we used to clean the house with lol. I'm caught somewhere between being enthusiastic about AI but then also it gives me a headache as to the random garbage people put out there.
If you are coding or writing. Do it. AI is a great editor, second set of eyes. God knows how many hours i've lost in my life due to a missing semicolon.
I understand the impulse. A flood of copy-and-paste AI applications can feel like spam, so tossing them all out sounds efficient at first glance. The trouble is that “AI-written” and “low-effort” are not always the same thing. Many strong candidates write their own content, then run it through a tool like ChatGPT to tighten wording or catch typos. If a filter rejects everything that shows even a hint of AI polish, you may end up screening out people who actually cared enough to refine their application.
There is also the accuracy problem. Current AI-detection tools still produce plenty of false positives and false negatives. I have watched them label Hemingway as synthetic prose while letting obvious boilerplate slide through. Relying on that kind of signal could mean you lose thoughtful humans and reward applicants who know how to add a few intentional mistakes.
A better way to judge might be the level of effort and relevance. Does the applicant clearly understand the role, the product, and the pain points? Whether they used Grammarly, ChatGPT, or asked a friend for edits matters less than whether the final text shows genuine insight and motivation.
As for cover letters, they are no longer mandatory everywhere, but they can still be a useful differentiator. In fields where communication or customer empathy matters, a short note that says “Here is why I am excited about your specific problem” often nudges a candidate ahead when résumés look similar. Think of it as the first asynchronous project update: clear, specific, and tailored. If you truly have nothing extra to say beyond the résumé, it is fine to skip it. Still, the ability to articulate your motivation in writing remains a valuable signal on both sides of the hiring table.
Yes, and I got a notification about hiring using LinkedIn Agents.
You do that and you'd be left with no applications at all.
LLMs are here to stay, and one area they're EXREMELY suited for is structured, context-driven bodies of text - both creating them, and analyzing them.
What needs to become better are the ATSes that scan CVs still playing "keyword bingo", with no added context, no greater knowledge base (e.g., if I have 5+ years doing Django, I think it's safe to say that I will take, at most 1 week to transfer my abilities to FastAPI, but a "dumb" ATS doesn't have that kind of understanding, and unless I have 50+ years of FastAPI on my CV - I'm in the discard pile before I even got a chance).
And as to cover letters, more in Europe than the US, more in "formal" countries (DACH) than laid-back ones (France), but, you know, with LLM able to generate one for you, why not include one?
Thanks for laying this out so clearly. I have felt the same lag between the AI-driven flood of “perfect” applications and the human-paced review on the employer side, and it explains the slow feedback loops we are all seeing.
I agree that visibility now carries as much weight as technical depth. I have started posting short breakdowns of the problems I solve for clients and the AI workflows I use. The response has been positive, so I will double down on that and look for more community venues where I can give back and stay top of mind.
I signed up for the resume-matcher Discord and look forward to kicking the tires. That said, I still worry that if everyone leans on the same AI tools, hiring teams will spot the copy-and-paste cover letters and use that as a quick filter. A hint of organic humanity—something that sounds like an actual person—may become the real differentiator.
Appreciate the nudge and the encouragement and the hustle ;)
Thanks for joining the community, if you already are aware of how and when to use AI selectively. Then, you can easily get ahead of the crowd.
Keep hustling, greatness is coming.
It has been a problem since the free culture on internet. How many times did you hear do this for me so you can get exposure. People want your expertise on the cheap. And before AI I think developers were seeing their worth and demanding a fair compensation.
I think the industry still needs all the levels of developers that there are now. I don't believe the industry can "robotize". We need people for the small, big, and large decisions. Most people can't make the large decisions if they didn't first learn to make small and big ones.
It is not possible run all software; websites, mobile and desktop apps, with a small group of people. That is not maintainable.
But AI companies try to convince the business leaders it is possible, and they are buying it because AI is cheaper than people.
The bug is saving money by pushing people out, until it goes wrong. And then trying to rehire them.
But at the same time AI companies throw insane money at AI researchers to become the ubiquitous solution.
My other side hustle is being a pro photographer. The big joke there is always being offered to be paid with "Exposure" lol. Covid killed that hustle.
Software development is a layered craft and each layer depends on the one beneath it. Junior engineers learn how to shape a feature before they can architect a system, and senior engineers only earn their judgment by working through those smaller challenges. Replacing that progression with an automated shortcut ignores how real expertise is built. Even the most advanced model can generate code snippets, but it cannot shoulder the daily responsibility of making trade-offs, anticipating edge cases, or mentoring newcomers. Without a healthy mix of entry, mid, and senior-level developers, a codebase quickly loses its institutional memory and its capacity to grow. Senior level developers need entry level developers around.
The dream of running every website, mobile app, and desktop platform with a skeleton crew (Thanks Elon!) sounds efficient on a slide deck, yet it collapses under real-world maintenance. Software never stops changing: browsers update, APIs deprecate, customers request oddball features at the worst possible time. When companies trim headcount to chase short-term savings, those changes pile up until the remaining team burns out or bugs start costing real money. At that point leadership scrambles to rehire the very people they dismissed, only now the applicant pool is smaller and the timelines are tighter.
Meanwhile AI vendors are funneling venture capital into salaries that rival pro-athlete contracts(I'm available), all to position their tools as the single answer to every engineering problem. It is a clever pitch because it aligns with budget anxiety, yet it glosses over the fact that code quality is not the only ingredient in working software. Design reviews, security audits(john smith is gonna love it when he logs in and has all of jane doe's info on his health app), on-call rotations, and plain old human intuition still matter. AI can and should accelerate individual tasks, but it is not a substitute for the judgment and collaboration that keep systems reliable over years. Keeping a diverse ladder of developers in the loop is not a luxury; it is the only proven way to build and sustain the digital products we rely on.
Deep Breaths. And an Advil.
I second this. I have been in the tech industry for last 23 years, hands-on coding and building products. Worked on almost all tech stacks and seen all the changes and evolutions. I struggle with the new interviewing formats and expected perfect answers.
It's hard to get someone on the phone these days. I've been also scammed alot but have not fallen for it.
Oh yeah, the expectation of perfectness.
Well, from the hiring manager's POV it's only logical and to be expected, really: in today's market said manager has a choice that is, for all practical considerations, limitless (e.g., a junior manual QA position in the company I worked for, got 300+ applications within 12 hours of posting. Read that again, and weep).
So, given this limitless supply of candidates, the manager's logical choice is to keep rejecting candidates that hit 80%, 90%, or even 95% of the expectations, because, statistically, eventually there will be the 99% candidate. Or even a 110% one.
And no, it won't be too far into the future... when your general population is boundless, even randomly pulling out a sample is almost guaranteed to produce top talent (sorry I'm not giving exact numbers, been a while since my "stat 101" days).
Until the global economy picks up, more people come up with more ideas on how to innovate, more companies are started, needing more humans to fill more roles... we're in the gutter, all of us.
And, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm not a geopolitical expert, but it looks to me like the global economy is rather tanking, not soaring...
Hey Phil,
I just want to say—your post hit me. Hard.
I’m not from your world originally, but I’ve been diving into it lately—trying to understand the architect-level thinking behind the systems you and others like you have built. And the more I learn, the more respect I have for veterans like you.
The fact that someone who’s shipped 40+ apps, optimized enterprise-scale systems, and mastered everything from game engines to LLMs is being filtered out by a keyword-matching bot? That’s absolutely insane.
You said something that really stuck with me:
“Someone still needs to architect these systems, ensure they scale, and fix them when they hallucinate.”
That’s the exact part I’ve been trying to wrap my head around—how everything we see on the surface (like AI tools and web apps) still relies on someone who can think across systems, anticipate failure points, and actually ship the thing. I’m still learning that mindset myself, and it’s a steep climb.
If I had millions in the bank, I’d hire you yesterday. I say that as someone who’s already made good money automating online workflows and building systems—but I’m in this weird transition where I’m still acquiring the technical depth you’ve clearly mastered over decades.
I wish I could explain to you the tens of thousands of dollars that I have wasted on hiring so many random people across the globe from fiver/upwork. I ended up just being a babysitting gig However, it was still valuable because I’m more pumped to go full in on my next venture
What’s wild is that I see opportunity everywhere, and I know that someone like you would not only keep up—you’d elevate the whole operation.
Out of curiosity: Have you considered building your own product or SaaS platform again?
Maybe even something lightweight to help others in the same position as you? It blows my mind that someone with your level of experience isn’t already running a consulting practice or leading a high-growth startup—though maybe you are and just haven’t talked about it yet.
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I actually do run my own consultancy, Basilecom, where I’ve spent the last two-plus decades helping clients ship real-time 3D, AI, and immersive products. That work kept me busy, but I am the founder and only employee. Consultant of one. I relied on working with recruiters to feed me work and it was a steady flow for many years. I think part of it I never had to market myself because I always had the steady flow.
I've been so busy doing work for others I really never sat down and thought about making something on my own. If you’re interested in swapping notes or exploring a collaboration, I’m all ears. Always happy to connect with others tackling similar challenges and to see where our experiences overlap.
Sorry to hear this. Hope you'll find a new path to step on soon.
thanks :)
Like your take "just another another system to debug". Quite hard, indeed, it is these days but there solutions on the way, if we're not able find them then let's build them. Good luck in your job search or should I say search for a meaningful opportunity, an opportunity to serve. #LetsServe
Tech moves so fast, and the pressure is real. We're all just trying to keep up, sharpen our skills, and find that balance between work and peace of mind. It's tough, but we'll get through this. Stay resilient—keep moving forward.