A deep dive into the state of the tech job market in 2025, including an increase in demand for AI engineers and a rising average tenure at Big Tech companies
A deepdive into today's tech jobs market, with exclusive data on tech jobs, AI engineering, Big Tech recruitment, the growing importance of location, and more Bluesky: @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com and @pragmaticengineer.com Bluesky: Gergely Orosz / @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com : Average tenure at Meta increased from ~2 years to ~4 years since the 2023 layoffs. Similar changes across most of Big Tech. Basically, folks working in Big Tech are not leaving like before. — If that's not a smell on the market, not sure what is [embedded post] @pragmaticengineer.com : State of the software engineering job market in 2025: Big Tech has started to hire more software engineers. — Also: tenure at Big Tech has dramatically increased since the 2023 layoffs (surprising!) — A lot more details in today's deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ state-of-t... …
Context & Ripple Effects
The market enters 2025 after a sharp contraction in software-developer listings, with one earlier report finding Indeed developer listings at a five-year low. This review adds a more uneven picture: hiring is improving at Big Tech, but mobility has weakened.
AI specialization had already been commanding a pay premium, and a March analysis found AI skills appearing in a growing share of tech openings. Rising tenure at Meta and across Big Tech suggests employees are responding to a market in which attractive alternatives remain scarcer than before 2023.
First-order effects
- AI engineers become the most directly advantaged candidates as employers concentrate incremental software hiring on AI-related capabilities.
- Big Tech employees, including at Meta, are staying longer; that reduces voluntary turnover and makes internal openings less available to outside candidates.
Second-order effects
- Companies competing for AI talent may have to differentiate through compensation, location, or role design, while generalist engineers face a comparatively narrower external market.
- Longer tenure slows the usual churn-driven hiring cycle at large platforms, making lateral hiring more selective even as those firms resume recruiting.
Third-order effects
- If this persists, software employment may become more bifurcated: AI-specialist roles gain bargaining power while broad-based engineering mobility remains constrained.
- The pattern points to a labor market shaped less by aggregate headcount than by strategic skill allocation, with employer retention and AI capability becoming linked competitive priorities.
The trend: Tech hiring is shifting from broad post-layoff retrenchment toward selective AI-led recruitment alongside reduced employee mobility at large platforms.