Develop Yourself
To change careers and land your first job as a Software Engineer, you need more than just great software development skills - you need to develop yourself.
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Develop Yourself
#229 - The 2025 Tech Job Market Sucks? Here's How You Beat It
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The job market in 2025 feels broken—and you’re not imagining it. AI-generated spam is clogging recruiter inboxes, resumes are becoming less relevant, and LinkedIn is more influencer platform than job board.
In this episode, I break down why things feel so hard right now (for everyone—not just developers), and give you a practical, modern strategy to stand out and actually get hired:
✅ What to do instead of blasting resumes
✅ How to play the LinkedIn game without becoming a cringe poster
✅ Old-school tactics that still work (and new tools I recommend)
If you’re stuck, overwhelmed, or just tired of bad advice from people who’ve never written code for a living—this one’s for you.
Shameless Plugs
🧠 (NEW) Parsity's The Inner Circle Program - a highly customized roadmap to take you from 0 to hired. For career changers who want to pivot into software.
💼 Zubin's LinkedIn (ex-lawyer, former Google, Brian-look-a-like)
👂🏻Easier Said Than Done Podcast
Already a developer? Check out 👉 Not Another Course
Serious about joining Parsity? Schedule a call with me ☎️
Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software developer by learning to develop yourself, your skills, your network and more. I'm Brian, your host. I want to talk to you about a practical strategy and things you can do to be competitive in the job market in 2025. As a software developer, it feels like things have changed dramatically in the last few years. In fact, everybody keeps talking about 2020 as if it was some magical time when just software developer jobs were abundant, and they were because we had a massive global pandemic. People overhired, they corrected, and now we have a market that seems to be not only corrected but really, really difficult to land a job in. And you're not alone. People in sales are feeling alone. People in sales are feeling this. People in the procurement industry are feeling this. Kids that are trying to get jobs at McDonald's are feeling this. I have an 18-year-old son and he's also feeling the crunch. So we're not alone here. We're not special.
Speaker 1:But what has changed recently, specifically on platforms like LinkedIn or Indeed or big job boards where we used to go and find jobs? The biggest change, of course, is AI, and I don't mean AI taking your job. If you really truly believe that's happening in software, I don't know what to tell you. Just turn this off and go find somebody online that will agree with you. I work in software. I don't see this. I've yet to meet a person that said my job was taken by AI. If you can find me one, please let me know. Anyway, what I mean by AI messing things up for jobs is that we now have AI services that will spam recruiters with AI profiles, and AI generated junk. How many LinkedIn posts have you seen with those stupid rocket emojis on them? And how many resumes have you seen that were obviously written by chat? Gpt A ton. I don't blame you, because we're all trying to play this numbers game. The problem is, companies have reacted to this by having stronger filters that are also using AI. So now we have AI trying to combat AI, and who's winning? Nobody.
Speaker 1:Next, we have a global market where recession fears are rising, inflation has gone up and interest rates have gone up, meaning investors that used to just throw money at startups are not Now. Conversely, we're entering into a period where it looks like the S&P 500 and traditional stocks and safe bets aren't doing so well, so that means that a lot of investment might go back into startups, because that's what people do when their money is not going to be safe in S&P 500. They say, well, let's take some bets in the startup land. That's at least my very limited understanding of how that can work and how historically that's worked. Next, we had overhiring in the pandemic. Obviously did people think that was going to last. Is that like a time that people want to go back to? The problem with those charts that show that jobs have been cut in half in tech is that they don't show the other half of the chart going back to like 2017 or 2016. Essentially, we're kind of where we started. So it's not that, like tech jobs have been cut in half. It's just they've been cut in half since the pandemic, when we were at an all time high right.
Speaker 1:And lastly, people are going to hate me for saying this, but it's become popular to be pitied online. So the most popular videos we see are the person that did a thousand interviews, or I got rejected 10,000 times. Now I don't mean to make light of these situations, because I do believe this is really happening to people. In fact, I know it is because I talked to some of them on the phone and I get it. You're having a really hard time and you don't wanna hear that. Hey, maybe it's you. I don't think it's you. I think it is a combination of how we are reacting to the job market and doing things that used to work that now don't really work.
Speaker 1:And here's the other part that's really gonna frustrate people hearing this. It's hard to find talent. It really is. No matter what you've been hearing about oversaturation or that there's so much talent on the market for cheap, it's hard to find these people. Again, we have a problem.
Speaker 1:We have LinkedIn, which is a social media network pretending to be a job board. And how do you win on social media? You get lots of likes and views and clicks, but that's not how people win on job boards typically. So now we have a social media platform where people are trying to find jobs. So who's getting those jobs?
Speaker 1:The people that are treating it like social media, the people that are getting a lot of attention, likes and followers, which is the dumbest way to get a job I could imagine, but this is the reality we're living in. So what does this mean? You got to become a social media influencer. To be honest, it's probably not the worst idea, but that's not reality for most of us. Right? You're not gonna become a social media influencer. I don't expect you to. So here's the plan that I'm using, that I'm teaching people at Parsity to use, and the one I think you should adopt if you want to have a better chance and not become one of the many people on YouTube or on LinkedIn that's in one of those doom and gloom loops and just talking about how no one's going to hire and you got to go work at McDonald's and getting into tech is the stupidest thing ever. It's not. And if you think there's an industry where you're insulated from all this stuff, good luck finding it. So here's your plan. I have to say this one first you cannot suck at coding and expect to be rewarded in the market because you've got a certificate. This is a harsh truth that I think more people should hear.
Speaker 1:Now, the majority of people I've met. They actually don't suck at coding, but there's a lot of people I meet, especially the really angry ones. I sometimes will look into them and find them on LinkedIn, or I'll find their GitHub, or I'll even ask them. I can say hey, you know. Send me your resume, send me your GitHub. I am generally not very surprised by what I see. I don't see much indication that they can build anything beyond some basic tutorials. I see a LinkedIn that has like 100 followers. I see a blank avatar and often I see them write the kind of mean things that they say to me on LinkedIn about how much the job market sucks and all this kind of stuff. I was a hiring manager before and I'm still a software engineer now. Let me tell you, if I ever see one of those things on a candidate's profile, I'm probably not going to want to talk to them.
Speaker 1:They're going to immediately come off as a negative person, not the kind of person you want to work with, especially on a small team. Most of us work on small teams. We don't work in massive, large companies, so you don't want to invite somebody on a team that you're thinking, oh, is this person going to work out? So don't be a jerky human and don't suck at coding. Do the things that you're supposed to do and be a regular human being, and you're gonna have a lot better chance. I hate that. I have to say that, and maybe you are a jerk. Just hide it from other people. I still want you to win, even if you're a jerk. Maybe I'm just naive, but either way, maybe don't be a jerk just for a bit.
Speaker 1:Next, forget your freaking resume. Your resume is getting increasingly less important. Here's how a lot of students at Parsity have been getting hired, and here's how I just recently got hired, which is in track with what I've seen throughout the last couple of years. Actually, I'm not sending in resumes. What's happening is I'm already in a conversation with a recruiter or a hiring manager and at that point they'll say, hey, can you give me your resume, basically as a formality, because they have to collect it. So your resume can't just suck. It can't be terrible, right, but it's not going to get you to the job. It's basically all the things you're going to do that are going to lead up to that point which are going to tell them hey, I can trust this person, they seem like they might be a good fit. Let's bring them in Now. Give me your resume. It can't be terrible, but it really doesn't have to be that great at all. So if you're not sending in your resume, you're thinking well, how the hell am I supposed to get jobs. Here's a strategy that I've been using that I suggest you use, and I've seen other people at Parsity use as well.
Speaker 1:Now remember LinkedIn being a social media tool. Pretending to be a job site means you have to treat it like social media. How do you get big on social media? You have a few options. You can one post a lot. Two you can comment strategically. Most people are going to choose option two. If you choose option one, that requires a lot of effort. It requires a lot of time and patience, because nobody's going to care when you post at first. Now, commenting as a strategy is actually a really good one, in my opinion. This will lead you to connect with other people immediately and get you in the algorithm for other people that you might not be connected to. So who do you comment on? Don't comment on rage bait or find like viral posts and things like that.
Speaker 1:I would start following people that are hiring managers, recruiters, people that talk about the tech that you're interested in or currently working with, and comment on their post and say something actually worthwhile instead of being like I agree, lack it emoji, you know. Try being a human and say things you're actually interested in. Maybe you can extend or expand upon what they've written. I mean, you can use chat GPT for this kind of stuff, but make sure to write it in your own words, because it's so obvious to most people when things are written in chat GPT that it comes off really cringy and just kind of disingenuous. So you don't wanna be disingenuous, you wanna have genuine comments that actually improve the conversation. These can actually lead to DMs where if the person responds, then maybe you can take it to a DM. This happened at my previous workplace where a young woman had a DM to the CTO, turned it into an interview, turned into an offer, and then she worked with us and she was excellent.
Speaker 1:So you're commenting to become more discoverable. And what's really important whether you think this or not, or maybe you hate LinkedIn, whatever this is a game that you want to play. You want to get to 500 connections on LinkedIn. This will basically make you discoverable. So when recruiters are searching for you, they can find you. Remember this recruiters generally aren't social media influencers either, so they don't have massive networks. So when they're looking for people, they're typing in like JavaScript developer plus, like Indiana plus, whatever, whatever, whatever. And they're looking in their first, second and third party connections. If you're not in the first, second or third party connections, you're basically not discoverable by them. So how are they supposed to find you? So we have a problem when, like, a hiring manager could actually put up a post that says I'm hiring and he'll get like two likes because they don't use LinkedIn either. Again, this is a very botched, stupid system. So what can you do to get around this One? I would literally go into the search bar and type in I'm hiring, filter by people that have that in their bio. Connect with those people. That would likely give you a good list of people that you should slide into their DMs because it says I'm freaking hiring. And this leads me to outside of LinkedIn, outside of getting your 500 connections, outside of commenting as a strategy and making connections with people that might actually be able to get you to a job.
Speaker 1:Go old school Now. I'm 41. My partner that I run Parsity with he's in his 40s also. We're a little bit older, if you couldn't tell, and we remember going out on the pavement and hitting companies up and sending in resumes or boxes of donuts all the old school stuff that nobody does anymore. I don't think you need to do that, because that's really antiquated and probably a little bit weird nowadays to do, but I would do this Emails Email to the internal recruiters for the companies that you are applying for. If you find a job posting on LinkedIn or something like that, go to the internal website, find the email for the person, if you can, and email them directly. You're way less likely to get spam filtered or to get filtered out by some stupid AI thing that's going to look at your resume and tear it apart and rip apart your dreams.
Speaker 1:You don't want that, right. So be a human also in these interactions, right. When you email these people, they don't need to be long, verbose emails. They also shouldn't be really short, like I want a job. I am shocked at the number of people that get into my inbox, don't know me and essentially just say, hey, give me a job. And I'm like does this work? Does this really actually work? Maybe I'm doing it all wrong. I wouldn't do that, though. Be a human. Just say something simple like hey, I found this job posting. I'm really interested. Here's some reasons why I think you should hire me. My resume is attached. I'd love to learn more about this job and if there's any other information that I can provide you, please let me know, and I'm happy to do so. Again, be a human, and if you don't know how to be human, just fake it by doing what I just said. Okay, the last old school tactic I want you to use that we teach at Parsity is to make a list of warm and cold leads.
Speaker 1:You're going to do what's called a breadth first search. If you don't know what a breadth first search is, you should go and find that out, especially if you're a software engineer. A breadth first search essentially is when you look in your network of people you know and you look in that first layer and you look at all the people in that first layer your friends, family, old, coworkers. You make a list of people and you get their numbers, emails, whatever, and then what you want to do is get to the next layer. And you get to that next layer by saying something like this hey, I'm studying software engineering and I'm looking for my first role. Do you know anybody who might be able to either help me with advice on what to do or maybe has information about an open role? And if so, do you think I could talk to them for 15 minutes and get their information. Boom, you set up a really short call and say, hey, you just say the same thing over and over and over and the breadth first search works really well because you go through that first layer, the first layer maybe everybody has like two or three connections. That leads to a lot of people in the second layer and from that second layer you do the exact same thing. You can have a really massive amount of people in your list of people to call.
Speaker 1:If you do this right Now, this is not easy. This is not also really comfortable for a lot of people to do, but if you follow that script that I just said right there, I think that's a really nice way to do it and because you're saying this is a 15 minute conversation, it makes it like, okay, well, if you're really weird, you know we can get off the phone. That's in fact how I spoke with 1000 developers by doing 15 minute conversations. If it's ever really weird 15-minute conversations, if it's ever really weird, I'm like, hey, it's only 15 minutes. If it's a really good conversation, it can always be extended, but that's a safe amount of time, I think, to spend on the phone with somebody who you really don't know. I would recommend not doing Google Hangouts or doing things on Zoom or video. That makes it really formal. I personally prefer to do phone calls. They can do it when they're walking and talking or whatever. It makes it really low effort to do and probably will give you a lot of bang for your buck. In fact, two women in the program that we run recently got an interview and one got a job offer from doing this exact same strategy.
Speaker 1:Okay, and very lastly, here are two sites that I like to use. I am not sponsored by these sites at all. Maybe I should be, though, always looking out for anybody that wants to send me a box of donuts, always looking out for anybody that wants to send me a box of donuts. First one is jobrightai, this site. I was a little bit shocked how good it is because I was a little skeptical when it said AI. I'm like, oh great, another AI site doing junk. It sent me some really really good matches for jobs, and I'm off the job market now, but I was impressed how thorough it was and the fact it sent me to the websites and gave me information for people to contact. That was not only LinkedIn, super, super important. I think these people are realizing the same things that I'm telling you.
Speaker 1:Getting off LinkedIn may be your best bet, and the other site that I've been using for years is called Wellfound. It used to be called Angels List, and this is a site for startups. If you're a junior developer, you're risky. You're a risky hire. Startups are also risky. A lot of senior developers and people that are more established don't want to go to a startup because they're like you know what. No, I want more stability. I have a family, I'm getting a little older. I don't want to go to a startup, right, and so if you're a junior, these are often the places where you can have the most luck. You can also learn a ton, so it's really a nice symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 1:Now, the way you go on WellFound and apply for jobs here is using the same strategy that I've been saying throughout the time Be a human, write short punch notes to the people that are hiring and explain who you are, why you'd be a good fit, and follow up for any more information. These can be one or two sentences. I don't write long paragraphs that are super formal. Remember, these are startups, usually run by people that are a little bit younger, a little earlier in their career and don't have those same formalities that a lot of bigger companies get caught up in. You don't need to be like dear so-and-so. It pleases me that you have this job opening, which I think I would be a good fit for considering. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I write something like this hey, I love this product, I'm familiar with this space and I think I could be a great founding engineer on this team. I've led teams at larger companies and worked at smaller startups before and I know that I could bring the kind of impact that you need at this stage in your startup.
Speaker 1:Let's chat more. You have my information Now. That's kind of strong, right. I'm coming on kind of strong there, but I think you can do that. You can make a mix of like what do you feel comfortable with and what do you not feel comfortable with? Nowadays, with chat GBT, it's easier than ever to come up with a few different catchphrases and a few different pitches and see which one lands best that you feel comfortable with. And when you feel comfortable with it, go to one that you don't feel comfortable with. Just notch it up a little bit more. Right, that's how you win. Now very last thing, and then we're done. Go off data, not vibes. I want you to be data-driven, right, stop going off vibes.
Speaker 1:There's enough people on YouTube that have never really worked as software engineers that are telling you everything about how to be a software engineer, why you shouldn't be one and why the job market sucks. Surprisingly, many of these people, I found out, have actually never worked as software engineers. It's kind of mind-blowing, as a matter of fact. So please take what they say with a grain of salt. If you want to look at my history, go ahead. I'm on LinkedIn. I've worked at a bunch of no-name companies and a couple you may have heard of, and I've been doing this for a little bit of time. Right, you can see my job history. You can see, oh, a little bit of time. Right, you can see my job history. You can see, oh, okay, this guy might know what he's talking about a little bit.
Speaker 1:Or maybe you're like I don't want to be like that guy at all. Then don't follow me and don't listen to my advice. Follow somebody you do want to be like, or somebody's career who you want to try to emulate, potentially, and follow whatever they say to do. That's also important. I know I'm not right for every single person out there. Maybe you don't want a career like mine. That's fine. Find somebody that has a career like the one you want. Ask them how they did it and then go off data and stop listening to weirdos on YouTube telling you how you should just go work at McDonald's because computer science is the stupidest thing to do in the world, or learning to code is just a waste of time.
Speaker 1:Anyways, I really hope that's helpful. I hope I didn't come off too harsh, but if I did, I'm sorry, sue me, and if you really want some more information, you can hit me up at brian at parsity, p-a-r-s-i-t-yio. That's Brian B-R-I-A-N, and I will try my best to respond to all the emails I get, as I always do, because I really honestly truly wanna help you out. Anyways, hope that's helpful. See you around. That'll do it for yourself. Podcast. If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software developer and building complex software and want to work directly with me and my team, go to parsityio. And if you want more information, feel free to schedule a chat by just clicking the link in the show notes. See you next week.
