Intro

2025 was a hell of a year in tech. Roughly 170,000 people were laid off, and the birth and rapid growth of AI products seemed to excite and terrify companies of all sizes.

I say excite and terrify because, even as 2026 gets underway, it seems there is no real AI “strategy” at most companies (unless they’re literally building the products or were in “AI” before AI was AI).

This year, I hope companies will be less reactive. Or, if they are going to be reactive, I hope their first option isn’t to reduce their workforce. The number of times I’ve seen companies go through layoffs only to post openings for those roles is…a lot.

Where I’m At

For me, interviews continue. Some great, some not so great. Call me Casper, because I be getting ghosted.

Recently, my favorite interviews were for roles that I wasn’t a good fit for early on. It was refreshing to have a candid conversation with a few recruiters, but continue the conversation for the duration of the meeting. While these only resulted in new connections, I’d happily work with those recruiters in the future.

Last year was a lot for me when it came to getting back into the job search after my son was born. Not necessarily from a workload perspective (I was interviewing with 3 companies just five days after he was born), but from the perspective of getting excited about roles. I simply stopped myself from doing it, which sounds a bit sad.

Competition and volatility are what I attribute to today’s market. You’re not only going against the normal candidate pool, you’re going against those 170,000 people who were laid off. On top of that, like I mentioned, companies seem to go through reorgs multiple times throughout the year.

Being an “AI-forward” Candidate

Companies are preaching AI all over the place. It’s on landing pages, it’s in product features, and the term is used abundantly in job descriptions. There was one point in my search where I slowed down applying to those roles because I didn’t feel I could be a subject matter expert.

After all, I do not spend most of my free time vibe coding apps or other products. That was my interpretation of what hiring managers wanted in “AI-forward” candidates.

It wasn’t until I started asking designers and others on hiring panels how they utilize AI tools in their workflows that I realized I was completely wrong. They were using the same products I use with the addition of tools like Cursor to help with prototyping straight from Figma.

The lesson for me here was that I don’t need to be building tools all day, every day, to be considered AI-forward in this job market. The beauty of Product Design is curiosity, and if you have that, you’ll do great.

2026 Job Market Predictions (Tech)

As I continue my search, I’m excited to get back to work, and I’m hopeful for what’s to come. Here are some predictions for the job market this year.

1. Clearer “AI” Strategies

With comparisons to the .com bubble, I think discussions of an AI bubble will force companies to double down on fewer tools, rather than dipping their toes into each one. With consumer spending on AI being much lower than the trillion-dollar market caps, there’s a monetization gap. If 2025 was the year of AI inception, 2026 is the year of AI refinement and the success of the “winners” in the space.

2. Leaner Workforces

I’ll never forget the picture of Elon walking into Twitter with an actual kitchen sink. Outside of that being a weird thing to do, companies soon followed suit, and I think they will continue to do so. I’m a user of some of the products that I’ve been interviewing for, and I’ve been surprised to learn how many have design teams of around 5-10 people.

3. Tech will Grow Slower

Gone are the days of mass hiring like we were used to for a few years. I think that, even if a company has a billion-dollar market cap, they won’t be as quick to scale the number of employees compared to 2021-2022. While I hope this means layoffs will stop being as common, something about history repeating itself makes me feel otherwise.

Conclusion

I’ve been seeing an increase in the number of jobs being posted, which makes me excited for the job market as a whole. This was an intentionally short post, but I’ll be posting longer pieces every other week! Stay tuned, and share with anyone you think might enjoy or benefit from this newsletter.

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