I'm a full-stack developer with about 20 years of experience, starting with classic ASP and VB before moving through .NET, PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript, and modern frameworks. I'm job hunting now and expected that depth of experience to help, but the search has been much harder than I anticipated.
At the same time, I keep seeing people claim that AI agents are doing most of their work while they sit around waiting. I'd honestly be thrilled to have that problem, even temporarily. Are other senior developers experiencing the same squeeze? How are you handling the current market and finding opportunities? I have a small network and I'm quite shy about asking people for help, so networking has been especially difficult.
4 Answers
You probably need to focus less on application portals and more on speaking with actual people. Automated applications are overwhelmed, and even a strong résumé can disappear without anyone noticing it. Reach out to former coworkers, acquaintances, hiring managers, or recruiters and ask for a short conversation or advice. I once sent dozens of applications without getting anywhere, then casually mentioned my search to someone I met socially. They happened to be a hiring manager, and that conversation led directly to an interview and a job. There was luck involved, but personal connections made the difference.
You’re definitely not the only experienced developer seeing this. I have around ten years of experience and have sent hundreds of applications with almost no response. It’s hard not to take that personally, but the market is extremely crowded and many companies are filtering aggressively before a human ever reviews an application. Try not to measure your ability by the response rate.
Age bias may be part of what you’re running into. You don’t need to hide your experience, but consider tailoring each résumé so it emphasizes recent tools, relevant achievements, architecture decisions, mentoring, and ownership of production systems rather than listing every technology you’ve ever used. Employers seem to be looking for senior people who can guide AI-assisted development, review generated code, make sound technical tradeoffs, and handle ambiguous problems—not just produce more lines of code.
It’s also worth presenting AI as part of your current workflow if you use it. Showing that you can work effectively with these tools while still supplying judgment and accountability may help distinguish you from candidates who only claim general experience.
The people who are spending all day watching AI agents work may not be safe either. My company adopted AI aggressively, laid off a large portion of the staff, and I suspect my own role may disappear soon. I’ve been trying to make myself more attractive to employers, but the search has been discouraging. Companies may eventually realize that AI still needs experienced engineers to set direction, maintain architecture, and prevent systems from slowly turning into a mess.
That’s especially true for large or poorly structured codebases. Current models can generate plenty of code, but they still need someone competent to define the structure and catch the long-term problems.
Some areas, such as complicated UI and CSS work, may still reward people with deep hands-on experience, since generated solutions can be inconsistent and difficult to maintain.
I had a similar experience after being laid off from QA. After years away from the field, professional networking sites were worsening my mental health, so I stepped back and concentrated on other options. Protecting your mental health matters while you decide what direction to take.