It's primarily a discovery problem, on both sides of the market.

Candidate-wise, everyone is slinging ChatGPT'd resumes left and right, which just leads to an arms race where the other side has to use LLMs to filter them, which just makes the situation even worse. The bar for "senior software engineer" is insanely low right now (and no, Leetcode doesn't count - I'm talking more pragmatic skills like being able to use a *nix terminal).

Employer-wise, everyone wants a unicorn that will lick their ass but isn't willing to pay (in either money or benefits) well for said service. Then they complain that "nobody wants to work anymore" or that there are no good candidates. Well, it's just that the good ones don't even bother applying.

As a result, lucky, good actors on either side find themselves via networking, while the less lucky ones are left to swim in a sea of trash.

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devinprater 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Wait, you mean there are senior software engineers who don't know how to use a *nix terminal? I've been using them since I was like 16 or so.

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pibaker 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can 100% work your way to a senior position without ever leaving windows. The people who are like that just don't tend to be hanging out on platforms like HN.

	▲	noprocrasted 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To be clear, this was developing software running on nix environments, and they were all using Mac (or WSL) and the usual open-source nix dev tools. This is not a case of developers purely targeting Microsoft environments (indeed it would be excusable in that case).

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noprocrasted 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They know that it's a magic box into which you paste whatever incantation is in the README.md or spoonfed to you by an LLM, but otherwise have no mental model of how it works. Hell, they didn't even have the reflex of pressing "arrow up" to correct a mistyped command. And don't get me started on the lack of mastery of their tools - whether Docker, package managers or other tools they use daily.

(and speaking of LLMs, those can actually be a wonderful teaching aid - but they don't seem to be bothered by their lack of knowledge and so don't even try to take advantage of them)

I bet the guys are good at Leetcode though, or whatever bullshit interview process that hired them. This is in a Western European company that has adopted all the "best practices" possible, and places high importance on career progression, and these are considered senior SWEs on track to become engineering managers.

	▲	pbgcp2026 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		@noprocrasted - thank you for your 100% spot on comments. +1. And you summarised it so well that I hope they will be remembered by job seekers of today.