this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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206
AI Has Ruined the Job Market (www.theatlantic.com)
submitted 18 hours ago by drd@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world
37 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm applying to jobs, and the amount of AI assessments, rounds, AI interviewers, questionnaires, is nuts.

One of these emails for example,

It's rough.

top 37 comments
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[–] curiousaur@reddthat.com 5 points 56 minutes ago (1 children)

I've been hiring for a year now and I can't get anywhere. Open the job listing for 5 minutes and have 10 million applications. Many are fake made up people. Many are repeated entries, like 100 for the same person but with slight differences, like they are trying to hedge their bets. Have to close the listing after those 5 minutes since there's already far too many to sift through, which means only automated, generated applications got in.

Sift through all of those, interview a few folks, find no worthy talent, start over. It impossible, there is just too much noise.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 points 33 minutes ago

Almost better off posting the address where you are hiring and see who comes in person to apply. That would be a bigger hurdle for serious applicants.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 1 points 29 minutes ago

"It will create more jobs." is the equivalent of trickle down economics.

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 1 points 46 minutes ago

The job market was already ruined, AI is just an yet another excuse that corporations trot out. The heart of the problem is that corporations do not care about society, simply existing to line the pockets of a few people within their ranks. Nothing else matters to them. Country and humanity are equally worthless in the eyes of the elite.

[–] Newuser@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Have been applying from a while and have deduced that any org that take OA without cam on or without monitoring or takes any AI interview is just isn't interested in hiring

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 0 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 59 minutes ago)

Just use "connections," you know, the fancy word for "rich friends." (At least that's all they eman when first getting into industry)

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 hours ago

giving an applicant an engineering test (kind of like a crossword puzzle with code instead of words)

lol.

[–] Damarus@feddit.org 21 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Remember the pre Covid times when we had mostly on site job interviews? Yeah turns out it's harder to cheat in person. Maybe companies should go back to that and pay a wage that is fair for the area they operate from.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Even for some individual contributor positions I budget to fly them in for a final interview. No access to AI, no ability to hide behind a bot. I’ve actually knocked some people out in the final round because they refused to meet in person.

A few hundred to a thousand spent on travel up front is worth the insurance of the six-digit salary we offer.

[–] Rubanski@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Six-digit salary you say?

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 1 points 31 minutes ago

Maude you say?

[–] Napster153@lemmy.world 7 points 9 hours ago

Impossible. The CEOs would have less time on their islands that way.

[–] SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 64 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Corrected headline: AI gave companies a new excuse to make jobs worse

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

That’s a thing too, but this article is about interviewing and hiring.

AI teleprompters for remote interviews, AI generated resumes, AI candidates screening, etc.

Everything really shifted aggressively over the last 12 months.

[–] LemmyBruceLeeMarvin@lemmy.ml 20 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Works both ways too. The number of AI generated resumes I've gone through, the incomprehensible business speak..

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 1 points 30 minutes ago

"We've decided to hire chatgpt since that is who wrote all of the applications."

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 6 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

I guess you were hiring. If that's the case, would you prefer a manually written resume that is not matched to the listed position and skills (because applicants now have to send so many resumes that they don't have any more time to match them)?

[–] LemmyBruceLeeMarvin@lemmy.ml 8 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

No no. I want the applicant to be human. Don't bullshit. No buzzwords. Just say I can do this, I want to do that, I like turtles. Be yourself and don't fill the resume with fake ass shit, it's so obvious and depressing

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 1 points 16 minutes ago

My experience with this is receiving emails with "we will not proceed with your application" and absolutely no indication what or why, for positions that I'm uniquely qualified for.

I'm still looking, don't use Assumed Intelligence, and want to work, but it's not going well.

I suspect that your needs for human written applications is being thwarted by bots filtering your applicants before you even see them.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 1 points 29 minutes ago

The problem is 99% of hiring is looking for specific keywords and phrases like "increased revenue". Since they always do that applicants fall into the same patterns, like an evolutionary arms race.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 9 points 7 hours ago

Problem with that is most jobs are using an AI ingestion and rating system. So if I were a job applicant who doesn’t like AI and prefers to hand write resumes but I need a job to feed my family, I’m going to just blast out the AI resumes anyway because it just has the highest chance of working.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 4 points 7 hours ago

Hiring manager here… yes. Give me a hand created resume, that shows what you did. I can extrapolate skills without it needing to match every bullet point word for word. Bonus is that you don’t need to butcher your resume, just put your best foot forward.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 19 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

It has certainly not done any good to job search.

For example, search for job ads for "embedded Linux software engineer" in your area. Notice the phrasing and keywords which are used. Now, ask on chatgpt.com to write a job ad for an "Embedded Linux software developer", without any further info. You'll see that half of the job ads use, at least in large parts, exactly the same phrasing and the same silly list of technically unrelated protocols - and demand senior experience in real-time systems, which is actually needed in perhaps 1% of use cases. And looking for Linux kernel developers which "are experts in C++"....

[–] eodur@piefed.social 1 points 1 hour ago

I don't like it but you gotta game whatever the current meta is. If they are using AI, you gotta figure out which AI they are using and game that. Maximize your chances to get through the automated bullshit. Once you get through the bullshit you can find out what the job really requires and showcase skills. Its dumb to jump through these hoops, but this is the current game. Play that shit.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip -1 points 10 hours ago

I have used Copilot to generate specialist job titles and their detailed job description for staffing, extracted directly from documentation and half a dozen knowledge transfer session, under severe time pressure. It did a much better job than I could possibly do.

[–] Arrandee@lemmy.world 28 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I’m sorry it sucks.

It seems like there’s a dividing line between newer techs and senior techs that determines the difficulty in getting new gigs. I don’t know where it is but I crossed it at some point in the last 10 years.

Each time I’m done with a job I’m sure there will be some kind of horrible gauntlet to get the next engagement, but it stopped happening. Maybe I just made a lucky connection but it keeps happening. I think they just want candidates who have seen some shit.

I guess the point is that eventually you’ll have done something that gives you the right gray in the ponytail. Keep at it.

[–] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 29 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

I have been in software for 20 years and I never had trouble finding work until this past year. All of a sudden it's a lot harder. I'm just one data point but this time feels different for me. The job market feels a lot more disjointed and full of spoofs and fake listings.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 3 points 3 hours ago

Yeah I have over 25 years and I also have had the assesment stuff although not to often and not every time. Basically I went into tech because it was a field where they wanted people and if you were sharp you could get a job. They don't seem to have the demand they used to but I don't see another place to pivot and honestly I don't think I can change careers the way I did over 25 years ago.

[–] newbeni@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

I am a second data point.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca -3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Do you have experience with AI dev environments? That’s generally the differentiator right now. Claude Code replaces managing a junior dev team of 5. Anyone who can demonstrate the ability to leverage it is not short of work.

Those 5 junior devs are, though.

[–] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 17 points 15 hours ago

Yep. Actually ran the rollout for Cursor at my last job, right before I got laid off lmao. I trained a bunch of devs on what do and what not to do. A bunch of my recent interviews have incorporated variations of the question "Do you think you could manage an LLM orchestration that would replace our junior devs?" and, I could but I don't think I can muster the enthusiasm for it that people are looking for. Maybe that's why I haven't made it through the interview gauntlet. So much senior hiring right now seems to be looking for people to be the scapegoat for LLM bullshit and I ain't looking for that kinda work.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 5 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

Claude Code replaces managing a junior dev team of 5.

But who was hiring 5 junior devs?!

Did nothing they produced matter to anyone who knew better?

I can't think of a better way to drive my organization into obsolescence, than to have 5 junior devs rampaging across the place leaving stupid mistakes in their wake.

I love having one or two junior devs around the office. On a large team (15 devs), there's just enough deeply unimportant unimpactful harmless bullshit to keep two junior devs from doing too much damage.

Once, on a huge team (30+ senior devs split into squads), I had four junior devs at the same time.

That is the maximum I have ever allowed, and that was during a period of exceptional demand.

Anyway, I guess I just wish the folks replacing 5 junior devs with an AI equivalent to 5 junior devs the day they deserve. Lol.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I most places I worked in (all in Europe), Junior Devs are generally hired as an investment, since their productivity sucks until they become more experienced so the idea is to teach them until they become more senior.

You can't really replace such Junior Devs with LLMs because the LLMs don't learn (at best they'll somewhat follow past guidelines still in their context until those guidelines are push out as the context fills over time).

Maybe in the US (were job security is a joke) there's more a tendency to hire Junior Devs as cheap manpower.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 minutes ago

I most places I worked in (all in Europe), Junior Devs are generally hired as an investment, since their productivity sucks until they become more experienced so the idea is to teach them until they become more senior.

Yes. Same here. I never would have managed to build teams as large as I have if I didn't create some of my senior devs out of junior devs.

You can't really replace such Junior Devs with LLMs because the LLMs don't learn (at best they'll somewhat follow past guidelines still in their context until those guidelines are push out as the context fills over time).

Yes. Exactly! It boggles my mind when folks talk about all the money they're saving on junior devs. A forever-junior sounds terrible, to me - no matter how cheap.

Maybe in the US (were job security is a joke) there's more a tendency to hire Junior Devs as cheap manpower.

Yes. When I was doing consulting gigs for clients too incompetent to maintain their own developer teams, I would hire junior devs and charge clients for their work. Organizations too incompetent to hire and retain their own developers are also pretty reliably too incompetent to tell the difference.

Even so - while I never felt I owed those (generally sociopathic, often malicious and usually willfully stupid) clients too much loyalty - professional ethics still meant that I didn't saddle them with any fully un-supervised junior developers. So they were still better off with my consulting team than with an AI.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 7 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

An extra problem is that AI heavily favours bullshitters. It destroys the capability and cues to recognize them.

The tech job market is now a lemon market for both sides - neither applicants nor companies can reasonably know what's really offered to them, and what is made up.

[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 19 points 18 hours ago

job markets ruined work

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 3 points 12 hours ago

AI has Tinderized hiring. Workers are applying to hundreds of positions and never hearing back; companies are receiving thousands of resumes and struggling to respond. More than that, AI has Amazoned hiring.[...]