I keep hearing that "AI is killing developer jobs". Let's zoom out for a second, shall we?

The myth: AI ate your vacancy

AI is definitely reshaping the industry, but the best engineers have never depended on job ads. In a decade of hiring at MarsBased, I can count on one hand the people we hired who came through our Jobs page. The real talent spreads through:

• Word-of-mouth referrals.
• Boutique tech-recruiting agencies.
• A tight network of founders and ex-colleagues running on whatsapp and the like.

When someone applies through a generic job board or even through our website, it usually screams "newbie" more than anything. This is a surefire way to fail to get noticed at all.

In fact, most of the people we've hired, we had worked with in previous companies, are friends of friends or have made themselves noticeable by interacting with our content on social media, messaged us on LinkedIn asking questions about the company, sharing their feedback of our podcast and other similar strategies. Intentional or not, they have paid dividends for them in the end!

Another thing worth mentioning is that most companies don't publish all of their openings. A lot of them, will hire great talent they don't have a vacancy for, if that person is really worth it. Others just publish their entry level openings and keep more senior ones for word-of-mouth referrals only.

A quick flashback

My generation landed our first gigs on InfoJobs - mine was at Deloitte! - because we didn’t know any better. Now, I've grown older and wiser, so I wouldn't use InfoJobs, nor work for Deloitte.

The moment you're inside the circuit, those platforms turn into noise. Recruiters still ping me about a 2008 Java-developer résumé that’s fossilizing on InfoJobs, or that one time over 10 years ago when I started accepting requests by recruiters from the US. Big mistake. There's no way to get out of that loop.

What's really shrinking the job boards, in my uninformed view:

1. Macro-economics, not micro-chips

• Budget cuts everywhere
• Valuations in free-fall
• M&A on life support
• VC rounds outside AI are very scarce nowadays

2. Role-shifting

Jobs once labeled "Developer" now read "AI-something". Same dog, different collar.

Through reskilling, upskilling and other technicalities, people are moving either horizontally or vertically across and/or up the market and their careers.

The AI paradox: fewer ads, more growth

Companies plugging AI where it matters are scaling faster than ever. For instance, at MarsBased, we're not doing grandiose things with AI. We never even considered training models or trying to reshape the industry using AI with big wow-inducing projects. On the contrary: we intentionally positioned ourselves as an integrator of third-party solutions without having to dig too deep into the fundational models, because 99% of our clients' needs can be solved with already-existing solutions, wrapping up something like ChatGPT or similar tools.

We doubled our team in two years to nearly 30 Martians now, because AI made us leaner. We've applied small wins here and there, which we covered on the blog post Balance of our first year building AI projects. As a result, we obtained even more projects, thus allowing us to grow further and do more cool shit with AI, in turn.

According to the World Economic Forum, by 2025 AI is projected to create 170 million new jobs worldwide while eliminating 92 million, resulting in a net gain of 78 million jobs. Other estimates from previous years also indicate a positive net effect, with job creation outpacing job losses.

So, all in all, my view is that AI isn't swallowing programmer jobs. The macro climate and a branding pivot are. Talent still moves through trusted networks, not through "Apply Now" buttons.

That's my biased two cents.