Why Getting a Software Developer Job in 2025 Sucks (But We Still Do It Anyway)

#career #developers #ai #programming

Let’s just rip the Band-Aid off, shall we?

It’s 2025. We were promised flying cars, a post-AI utopia, and robots doing our laundry.
Instead, we got:

Infinite job applications.
Zero replies.
And AI that can build a fully functional SaaS in 7 minutes… while sipping boba.

So here’s your friendly, slightly-too-caffeinated reminder of why getting a software developer job in 2025 kinda sucks — and also, why we’re still sticking around, pushing code and breaking prod.

1. Big Tech Doesn’t Care About Your Glorious Side Projects Anymore

Oh, you built an open source app that’s basically Notion but for cats?
You added auth, you dockerized it, you wrote tests, and even made a dark mode before it was cool?

Cool. Google just fed it to Gemini 12.4. Now it’s launching the same thing… but with 10x better UX and 1000x more compute power — thanks to their infinite Kubernetes clusters and a latte budget bigger than your yearly salary.

You thought you were getting noticed. But you just got... cloned.

Big companies now look at your portfolio and go, “Aww, cute. Look what the human made.”

They’re not impressed. Why? Because they’ve got AI agents that can write code, do code reviews, generate documentation, and probably even explain useEffect correctly — in 6 languages (and TypeScript is one of them).

2. Mid-Sized Companies Are Ghosting Harder Than Your Last Hinge Date

Remember when losing one engineer meant a company would post a job, interview 20 people, and onboard someone within a month?

Yeah, not anymore.

Now it’s:

“Jason left? No worries. We’ll just give everything to Jane. She’s got ChatGPT and a double espresso machine.”

Turns out AI didn’t just help devs become more productive… it helped managers realize they need fewer of us. Less hiring. Less onboarding. More “Can you just ChatGPT this and get it done?”

Mid-sized companies have entered their ✨“We’re not hiring anymore” ✨ era. Even when people leave. Even when their internal tools are crashing like Internet Explorer in 2006.

3. Too Many Devs, Not Enough Chairs

Let’s talk numbers.

There are officially more software developers than soldiers in most countries. (No seriously, someone please tell NATO.)

It’s like musical chairs, but instead of music stopping, AI just keeps playing lo-fi beats to code/cry to and you realize all the chairs are taken by folks who started coding before Stack Overflow existed.

Bootcamp grads, CS grads, self-taught devs, weekend warriors — we’re all here, and we all want to work. But there are fewer and fewer seats at the table.

Especially now that AI tools have replaced half the junior dev jobs.
Because hey — why pay a junior dev when you can get smarter, cheaper, doesn’t-need-coffee GPT?

4. World War...? While I’m Writing CSS?

Fun fact: As I write this, somewhere in the world, a literal war is breaking out.

And here I am, struggling with a flexbox bug that refuses to center anything — except my existential dread.

Tensions are rising, economies are unsure, and even stable companies are starting to say, “Hmm, maybe we shouldn’t hire a whole new mobile team when a war might knock the internet out next week.”

I mean, what a time to be alive, right?

5. But Still… I Freaking Love This Job

Okay okay. Time for a plot twist.

Despite all this doom and gloom, I’ll say it:
I genuinely love what I do.

I’m a mobile dev. I work with React Native and Flutter. I build things that I love.
I design responsive UIs that make me go “damn, that looks good” (and yes, sometimes cry when padding doesn’t work).
I’ve built weird things, broken even weirder things, and once — I pushed secrets to GitHub.
I’ve made mistakes. Beautiful mistakes. The kind that teach you things no AI ever could.

I’m not doing this because it pays well (though it used to). I’m doing it because I like making stuff.
Because nothing compares to shipping something you made, even if no one but your mom uses it.

And I know I’m not alone.

Most devs I know — we’re still here. Still trying. Still learning.
We take pride in our janky UIs, clever animations, and handcrafted API integrations that actually work.

We aren’t doing this for the job market anymore.
We’re doing this because we love building.

So… What Can You Do?

Honestly?
If you still love this — keep going.

Learn new things. Build dumb things. Build cool things. Post about it. Talk about it.
Contribute to open source, even if your PR gets ignored for 8 months.

And hey — if you’re into learning the real internals, like building your own Git, Redis, or Docker from scratch (aka getting absolutely humbled by your own code), I highly recommend checking out CodeCrafters.

(You’ll cry. But like… the good kind of cry. The "wow I didn’t know how CPUs work" cry.)