State of the Tech Market - Taylor Desseyn

State of the Tech Market - Taylor Desseyn

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  state of thetech market Taylor Desseyn, VP of Community Randstad Digital Powered by Torc
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  join our jobsplatform
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  who am i
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  the landscape ofthe market in terms of the software job market, a large portion of it is booming. many companies are being born, exploding in value, revenue, and hiring. people who became ai pilled in their approach to software engineering have done extremely well, those who haven't have not. people who have pivoted into new and fast growing verticals, companies, products enabled by ai have done well, people who stuck with larger teams / companies that either are moving slowly or are being disrupted have had a hard time or are being laid off. people who still distinctly identify as a "frontend / backend / etc.." have had a harder time than people who have said f it and 10xed themselves by leaning harder into ai and objectively broadening their skillset + what they bring to the table. it's crazy that i can talk to someone with the former mindset and it's doom and gloom while people in the latter literally are making more than they ever have, along with more opportunities than they have ever had. — Nader Dabit @dabit3
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  the paradox these twonumbers happened in the same six months, in the same economy. if you only read one of them, you have half a map. today you get the whole thing. 139K tech layoffs H1 2026 $510B startup funding H1 2026
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  what's slowing thingsdown market forces • the great hesitation: long interview cycles, frozen headcounts • nearshoring: amazing talent globally is a real fact • we're still unwinding the overhiring binge • "the great smush": roles are being intertwined juniors are being pressed 73% drop in entry-level hiring in one year versus only 7% across all levels 7% of big tech's 2025 hires were new grads down from 25% in prior years
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  startups are hiring $392B intonorth american startups H1 2026
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  the job marketis not dead 20% YoY hiring growth at top companies March 2023 hiring has been climbing ever since 15% projected growth through 2034 (BLS)
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  read the wind 49K AI-relatedpositions open in H1 2026, up from 35K last year 63% of AI-related job titles now appear in roles outside traditional tech occupations 163% year-over-year growth in AI job postings, per LinkedIn
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  the jobs indemand applied ai / ml engineering devops + mlops + platform security full-stack with ai integration
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  the further yourwork sits from routine code a tool can generate, the safer and better paid you are.
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  THE STACK the skillsetsin demand AI-skilled workers now earn a 56% wage premium, up from 25% a year ago. AI engineer job postings are up 109% year over year. Applied AI LLM integration, RAG pipelines, evals, agents. The infrastructure Cloud, MLOps, security. Agentic tool fluency Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot. Still a differentiator, for now. The new baseline AI engineering basics aren't a specialization anymore. They're the floor.
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  network your buttoff 7% of applications are referrals 30-50% of all hires come from referrals 4x more likely to get hired when referred 3 vs 6 mo months to land a job: networked vs cold applications
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  in closing startups arehiring the market is alive the skills are learnable the rooms are open move now
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