This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by
Member-only story
You got the degree, built the GitHub, earned the certs, but the ladder seems gone. The dev job market now crowns AI stars and sidelines everyone else.
Last week, a friend showed me his rejection tracker: 117 jobs applied in four months. Three side projects shipped. Two AWS certs completed. One callback. And the kicker? The “junior” role required 2+ years of Kubernetes experience. He laughed, then he cried, then rage-posted. That’s not an isolated story. It’s the new baseline for dev careers.
If you’re reading this right now, you’re probably scrolling LinkedIn, Reddit, or Slack in between pretending to debug something. You’ve got 15 tabs open: LeetCode, a job board, ChatGPT, and let’s be honest, YouTube in the background playing lo-fi beats to cry to.
And on at least one of those tabs, you must have seen it:
“600 applications. 0 interviews.”
“Entry-level role requires 5 years of React, Kubernetes, and clairvoyance.”
“AI engineer hired yesterday, already making triple my salary just for writing prompts.”
This is the feed now. Every day. And the wild part? It’s not juniors venting after their first bootcamp. These are mid-level engineers, the backbone of dev teams. They were the ones who delivered features, handled PagerDuty rotations, and ensured the continuation of projects even when PMs made unattainable promises. Now they’re rage-posting like it’s their exit letter from tech.
The system feels broken. Juniors can’t get in. Mid-levels can’t move up. And only the elite “AI specialists” or FAANG survivors seem to be thriving. Everyone else? Stuck in job-hunt purgatory.
That’s what I call The Great Developer Split.
And it’s not just a career problem. It’s an innovation problem. When you kill the pipeline from junior → mid → senior, you don’t just burn out developers. You burn out the future of software itself.
In 2015, the split was between front-end and back-end. In 2020, between product engineers and infra specialists. In 2025, it’s between ‘AI-aligned’ and everyone else. Every generation of devs hits a split. The real question is: will you evolve with it, or get stuck fighting the last war?
Press enter or click to view image in full size
Before the contents
I took a three-day break from everything else just to dig into this. Why?
Every time I opened LinkedIn or Reddit, I noticed a recurring theme: developers who once thrived now seem defeated, stuck, or are outright leaving the industry.
This isn’t another “how to pass your next interview” post. This is about the cracks in our career ladder and what it means for all of us.
Here’s what we’re diving into:
- The Vanishing First Rung: Why junior jobs disappeared overnight.
- Mid-Level in Crisis: The backbone of teams stuck in interview purgatory.
- The 10x Mirage: AI winners take all; everyone else takes pay cuts.
- The Broken Pipeline: No juniors, no future leaders, no innovation.
- Global Debugging: How the split looks in the U.S., Canada, Europe, India, and Singapore.
- The Salary Paradox: Why offers feel smaller even as demands get bigger.
- What’s Next: Survival strategies and what this split means for your career.
1. The vanishing first rung
Once upon a time, being a “junior developer” meant you could actually learn on the job, ship messy features, break prod, get roasted in code review, and climb. Today? That ladder is missing its bottom rungs.
Try googling “entry-level developer job” and you’ll see listings begging for 2–3+ years of experience. Teal HQ found that 48.7% of postings labeled “entry-level” require at least two years’ experience, and only 11.2% require no experience at all. That’s not a rookie role it’s a mid-level job wearing a junior hat.
The decline is real:
- In the U.S., according to EL, there has been a 50% drop in entry-level roles at Big Tech and a 30% drop at startups since pre‑pandemic levels. Engineering Leadership
Meanwhile, Times of India warns that CS graduates face a “shrinking entry-level market,” with companies demanding advanced skills from day one.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
That’s the data. But here’s the human reality. As one developer ranted on Reddit:
“Let’s be honest. This is cooked. Networking, personal site, portfolio, GitHub, side projects, cloud certs, LeetCode. I don’t have six lives.”
It’s the modern catch-22:
- No job without experience.
- No experience without a job.
I spoke to a CS grad who applied to 200 jobs in 6 months. Every rejection email read like a Mad Libs: ‘We’re impressed by your skills, but we’re moving forward with candidates who have more experience.’ She had none that’s why she was applying to junior roles.
So juniors grind LeetCode until their wrists ache, build indie SaaS projects no one uses, chase certifications like Pokémon cards and still get ghosted.
And here’s the kicker: it’s not just juniors who lose. When the first rung disappears, the entire career ladder collapses. No juniors means no mid-levels tomorrow. No mid-levels means no seniors in five years. And if you think innovation is safe in the hands of a few AI specialists and FAANG elites, that’s like saying:
the NBA should only recruit LeBron clones and shut down high-school basketball.
This isn’t a skills gap. It’s a systems gap. Companies stopped investing in teaching. They want IKEA developers preassembled, just add coffee and Slack.
The result? Tomorrow’s CTOs, open-source maintainers, and staff engineers are sitting in limbo, waiting to climb a ladder that’s already been pulled up.
2. Mid-level in crisis mode
If juniors are locked out, mid-level engineers are stuck in something worse: career purgatory.
You know the type, the 4–7 year devs. They carried PagerDuty rotations, shipped features at 2 a.m., debugged outages while the PM asked if we “tried restarting the server,” and mentored interns who now have shinier LinkedIn banners than them.
“One dev on Reddit wrote: ‘I passed five interview rounds for a mid-level role. They ghosted me for three months, then reposted the job with ‘senior preferred.’ I don’t know if I’m underqualified or just too expensive.’”
These folks are the backbone of software teams. And right now? They’re burning out on interview loops and salary stagnation.
- Hiring has slowed: The 2025 tech job market is seeing longer hiring cycles and fewer listed roles across levels as companies pivot toward AI and automation. The industry faces what the Wall Street Journal calls “The Great Hesitation.” Companies are more selective, often cancelling postings outright. Junior and mid-level applicants are the hardest hit. The Wall Street Journal
- Layoffs continue: So-called stability isn’t real for mid-levels anymore. TechCrunch in list of 2025 layoffs reports over 150,000 tech roles cut in 2024, with another 22,000 layoffs logged in early 2025 alone. TechCrunch
- AI is pushing the squeeze: The Guardian reports that generative AI threatens up to 50% of entry-level roles, putting long-term promotion pipelines at risk, and mid-levels in the crossfire. And Meta not even needing the mid-level engineers anymore by the end of 2025. The Guardian
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has been more pointed in his assessments, asserting that his company will no longer need mid-level coders by the end of 2025. Shortly after, Meta announced a 5% staff reduction. (The Guardian)
The mid-level reality; In their words
On r/ExperiencedDevs, a seasoned engineer laments:
“I’m a principal engineer with 20+ years’ experience, and it took months to clear the interview gauntlet. Why is my salary frozen at mid‑2022 levels, even after inflation?”
Meanwhile, the demand paradox is everywhere hiring managers want the skills of a staff engineer but with compensation of an entry-mid level.
Think: lead infrastructure projects, design microservices, manage cross-functional squads but expect humility when negotiating pay.
3. The 10x Mirage -> AI Specialist
Every dev has heard the legend of the “10x engineer.” You know, the one who codes faster than you can type git push origin main, never breaks prod, and somehow rewrites half the codebase over a long weekend.
In 2025, that legend got a rebrand: the AI specialist.
These are the folks who know how to “whisper” to large language models, duct-tape Copilot into workflows, and drop “fine-tuning” into meetings like it’s a spell. They’re getting sky-high salaries, VC offers, and LinkedIn headlines like “LLM Strategist” or “AI Orchestrator” roles that didn’t exist two years ago.
The winner’s circle numbers
- AI engineers at the Staff level earn 18.7% more than their non-AI peers in 2025 up from 15.8% in 2024. Entry-level AI roles pay ~6.2% more; Engineer-level roles are ~11.9% more; Senior-level roles are ~14.2% more. Levels.fyi Q3 2025
- In the U.K., job postings for AI developers have quadrupled between 2023 and 2024 and these roles come with premium salaries (14%+) compared to other tech roles.
- AI roles in 2025 offer more than just cash: an academic labor market study finds AI jobs are twice as likely to include parental leave and three times more likely to offer remote work compared to other tech positions.
The mirage effect
This premium premium AI engineers earning 18–20% more than non-AI colleagues and pulling six-figure comp is not just about money; it’s about positioning. Teams and execs are pouring resources into AI talent, while many reliable backend and feature builders are sidelined.
One senior engineer summed it up best on Hacker News:
“I built robust systems for years, and now someone with zero product shipped but a TikTok on prompt crafting gets paid more than me. Is this the future?”
4. The Broken Pipeline
If you delete the tutorial level in a game, you can’t complain when no one finishes the campaign. That’s what’s happening to software careers right now.
Juniors can’t get in, mid-levels can’t move up, and seniors are left asking: “Who’s going to replace us when we burn out?”
The Missing Middle
The numbers are sobering:
- Contributions from devs under 26 to open-source maintainers slipped from 25% to just 10%, signaling a generational collapse in the talent pipeline. GitHub (Who will maintain the future)
- Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey shows only 69.8% of dev respondents are employed a figure that includes freelancers but that leaves over 30% either jobless, students, or on the sidelines Stack Overflow Survey.
In other words: if you’re a mid-level today, you’re staying there longer, earning less, and probably mentoring nobody because the juniors don’t exist.
Developer Voices
A top-voted comment on Hacker News summed it up:
“I’m mentoring exactly zero juniors because we don’t hire them. My career progression is stalled because my company doesn’t promote mid-levels. I’m just… here. Writing tickets. Watching my seniors leave.”
On Reddit’s r/cscareerquestions, one mid-level vented:
“It feels like there’s no next step. I’m too senior to be a junior, too junior to be a senior, and too tired to keep grinding LeetCode for FAANG.”
Innovation On Hold
The lack of juniors isn’t just hurting careers. It’s hurting the future of software:
- Fewer juniors → fewer experimental projects, fewer fresh ideas.
- Meanwhile, teams are stacked with seniors stretched thin, plugging production leaks instead of innovating.
It’s like running a band with only lead guitarists: no drummers, no bass, no one to actually keep time. Sure, you can shred but you’re not making music.
5. Global debugging: How the developer split plays out worldwide
Developer career paths aren’t universally collapsing they’re fracturing. Here’s how it looks across regions:
United States: Polarized opportunities
- In the U.S., demand for AI-savvy roles is ballooning. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI teams are offering six-figure salaries with fast promotions. At the same time, traditional mid-level roles are down by 30–40% since 2022. (hiringlab.org)
Line chart titled “Postings for senior tech roles are somewhat closer to 2020 levels” shows February job postings for senior/manager and standard/junior tech job titles between February 2020 and February 2025, both indexed to equal 100 in 2020. In 2025, senior/manager tech titles were closer to their 2020 level, because they rose more during the boom through 2022. Source: Hiring LabCanada: Pipeline dried up
- Canadian CS grads face a daunting reality: the callback rate for new grads is 35–40% lower than it was in 2019, per Statistics Canada. Many pivot to contract work or exit the profession.
- Salaries for early-career developers have stagnated due to regional hiring freezes (especially in tech-strong cities like Toronto and Vancouver).
“In Canada, grads joke that their degree is worth about as much as an expired Costco card. Callback rates have dropped 40% since 2019.”
Europe: Age delays and skill demands
- Eurostat reports entry-level roles have dropped nearly 45% in the EU since 2019. Yet, mid and senior openings remain relatively stable.
- Countries like Germany and France now see mid-level engineers holding their roles for over 6 years before promotion a century ago it was closer to 3–4 years.
India : Price pressures and overload
- In India, entry-level salaries hover at ₹4–6 lakh per year (~$5K–$8K USD) in key tech metros like Bangalore a steep mismatch for lifestyle costs.
- Fresh graduates are entering a crowded market with 100–200 applicants per junior role.
6. The salary paradox. Expectations soar, pay doesn’t move
Expectation: Rocket 
Reality: Turtle 
You’d think demand would drive pay up, right? But 2025 tells a different story:
flashy job titles, endless upskilling, and cloud-ready resumes… paired with salary hikes that barely keep pace with inflation or worse, lag behind.
What the Numbers Show
- Job-switching pay bump shrank alarmingly: The Atlanta Fed reports job switchers saw their median pay growth fall from 7.3% in early 2023 to just 4.2% by February 2025. Business Insider
- Global developer rate erosion: Outsourcing has taken its toll. Developer hourly rates across Eastern Europe, South Asia, and Southeast Asia dropped 9–16%; all while AI-powered productivity rose. The Times of Indi
What it feels like
On Reddit:
“I’ve been a mid-level SWE for 4 years; shifted jobs once, upskilled on cloud and microservices. Got a $5,000 raise (annual). Five thousand.”
That’s no longer a rounding error, it’s demoralizing math.
Meanwhile, peers focused on AI tooling snag 25% bump packages, plus remote flexibility and cushy benefits. That creates not just envy, but real inequity.
Beyond the Numbers
This isn’t just about $ per hour, it’s about the broken signals in the industry:
- There’s a gap between expectation and reward: Employers want full-stack/cloud/AI/DevOps owners, but aren’t paying accordingly.
- Job-hopping no longer guarantees pay growth, so loyalty for some is a disservice.
- Not all roles are equal: You can scrape edge AF packages if you’re in AI, but most of us aren’t. Do you abandon your domain or double down?
- Perks are reinventing value: As base pay plateaus, remote work, better leave policies, and flexibility became the real differentiators.
This salary paradox doesn’t just hurt your bank account it chips away at morale, motivation, and long-term retention. When pay feels disconnected from delivery and upskilling, you’re left wondering why keep grinding.
7. What’s next: Surviving (and thriving) in the split
Here’s the hard truth: there’s no going back. The old career ladder:
junior → mid → senior → lead: isn’t coming down from the attic.
It’s splintered, reassembled, and in some cases, burned. The question is: how do you climb when the rungs aren’t where they used to be?
Redefine what “career growth” means
Stop chasing the perfect LinkedIn title. In 2025, career growth looks less like a ladder and more like a graph traversal problem lateral hops, contract detours, skill pivots, and the occasional boss fight. Don’t panic if your path looks nonlinear. That’s the new normal.
Treat AI like a wild intern
AI isn’t your replacement, it’s your reckless intern. It types fast, forgets context, and occasionally drops production at 3 a.m. Your job is to manage it, not compete with it. The devs who rise won’t be the ones with the flashiest prompts, but the ones who know when to throw the AI output in the trash and write it themselves.
Specialize before you generalize
The middle is collapsing. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be versatile but it does mean deep expertise beats broad mediocrity. Whether it’s security, DevOps, accessibility, or domain-specific stacks, plant your flag somewhere first. You can branch out later.
Build in public, share in public
Here’s a secret the job boards won’t tell you: half of hiring isn’t résumés, it’s visibility. Write about your project on LinkedIn. Push that half-baked open-source library. Share your debugging horror story. Every post is a breadcrumb that leads opportunities your way.
Think like an owner, not an applicant
The developers who survive the split won’t just be “good workers.” They’ll be builders. Freelancers, startup founders, solopreneurs, side-hustlers. The line between employee and indie hacker is thinning, and the best hedge is to start thinking like you own the code you ship because one day, you might.
The Bottom Line
Yes, the Great Developer Split is real. Yes, it’s brutal. But this isn’t a eulogy for the software industry, it’s a wake-up call.
The future will still need engineers not just button-pressers, but problem framers, system thinkers, and people who can keep the machine honest. If you’re willing to adapt, specialize, and treat your career like a product you’re building, you won’t just survive this fractured market. You’ll shape what comes after it.
Because if there’s one thing we know as developers, it’s this: nothing stays broken forever. Someone always ships a fix. If history has taught us anything, it’s that developers always find a way. We survived waterfall, Flash, IE6, Kubernetes YAML, and the time someone force-pushed main on Friday. We’ll survive this too.
Because while the system feels broken, one truth remains:
every broken system is just a pull request away from being fixed.
CLAP SHARE COMMENTS. 
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by