Кого на самом деле сокращают в IT? Я опросил 471 разработчика и ОФИГЕЛ

Summary

Vladimir Balun analyzes a voluntary survey of 471 developers to examine who reported layoffs, why they happened, and how some developers found new jobs faster than others. The results suggest a difficult but active labor market: layoffs are real, yet the survey does not support the idea that developers are broadly no longer needed or that AI is the primary cause.

Survey scope and caveats

Respondents were recruited through the presenter’s social networks, whose audience largely consists of developers with commercial experience. About a third had 3–5 years of experience, another third had 6–10 years, and nearly a quarter had more than 10 years.

The sample included approximately 43% developers, 32% mid-level developers, and 13% team leads or key leads.

Because participation was voluntary and may have attracted people experiencing layoffs or job-search difficulties, the findings are not representative of the entire IT industry. Some comparisons also involve small groups.

Employment and layoff findings

• 270 respondents (57%) said they were still working and had not changed jobs in the past year.
• 54 (11%) had changed jobs voluntarily.
• 118 (about 25%) reported being laid off; 20 had lost jobs for other reasons and were looking for work.
• Among the 118 laid-off respondents, 44 had found new jobs and 74 were still searching at the time of the survey. This is a snapshot, not a final job-placement rate.
• Of the laid-off respondents who had found work, 24—more than half—said their search took three months or less. Among those still searching, 18 reported searching for 6–12 months and 6 for more than a year.

Why respondents were laid off

Among the 118 people who reported layoffs, employers’ cited reasons included:

• 46%: Cost optimization or financial difficulties.
• 19%: Closure of a product or business area.
• 13%: Automation using AI.
• 10%: Company restructuring.

Financial problems and product or department closures were cited roughly five times as often as AI. Balun stresses that layoffs can result from shutting down a product or team, not simply from judging an individual employee’s performance.

Patterns by work and experience

Reported layoffs were more common among respondents doing routine work—such as standard development tasks and simple integrations (32%)—than among those working on product development and business logic (28%). The reported rate was lowest among people working on complex engineering problems, such as distributed systems, high-load services, and performance optimization (about 17%).

Only 1 of 23 respondents working in infrastructure development reported a layoff; the sample is too small to treat this as evidence that infrastructure roles are safe.

Layoff reports rose with experience in this sample:

• 18% among developers with 3–5 years of experience.
• 27% with 6–10 years.
• 35% with 11–15 years.
• 37% with more than 15 years.

The last figure was more than twice the rate for the 3–5-year group. Among laid-off respondents with more than 15 years of experience, 6 of 22 (27%) had found new work at the time of the survey, compared with 19 of 41 (46%) among those with 6–10 years. These figures do not account for how long each person had been searching.

Reported layoffs were 21% among developers and 30% among seniors. The highest figure was 43% among Principal Engineers and Architects, but that group contained only 14 people.

Balun offers possible explanations for the higher figures among experienced specialists: higher compensation, narrower senior-level job options, or skills that have not kept pace with the market. He cautions that years in the profession are not the same as years of continued professional development.

AI and changing skill requirements

AI was cited as the layoff reason by 15 of the 118 laid-off respondents. Their roles varied, including product development, complex engineering, and technical leadership; the survey did not show AI-related layoffs occurring only among entry-level or routine-task developers.

An employer attributing a cut to AI does not necessarily mean AI can fully perform the person’s job. A company may instead be reorganizing work or trying to achieve similar output with fewer employees.

The presenter argues that strong fundamentals—such as algorithms, data structures, operating systems, networks, databases, and distributed systems—help developers handle problems beyond routine code production and demonstrate expertise in interviews.

64% of respondents rated their own engineering foundation as good or deep, while 6% rated it weak. These are self-assessments, not objective skill evaluations.

Company-size findings

Respondents at companies with 50–200 employees and 200–1,000 employees reported layoffs at rates of 31% and 30%, respectively. The rate was about 17% among respondents at companies with more than 5,000 employees.

Balun suggests that mid-sized firms may be more exposed to financial pressure or the closure of a particular product, while large firms may have more teams across which to redeploy staff. However, employed respondents reported their current company, which may not be the employer they left, so the comparison is limited.

Practical takeaways

• Treat experience as ongoing development, not just tenure. Keep skills current and assess whether they are valuable beyond your current company’s tools and processes.
• Build transferable engineering depth. Learn to reason about systems, performance, and architecture rather than relying only on familiar, repetitive tasks.
• Prepare for the job market before a layoff. Strengthen interview skills, track relevant openings, and focus on competencies you can influence.
• Interpret layoff news cautiously. Viral cases may be real without representing the overall market; the survey found that most respondents remained employed, while some moved jobs voluntarily.
• Avoid assuming any role or seniority guarantees job security. Layoffs can affect both individual contributors and entire teams when a company changes its priorities or closes a product.

Presenter/source: Vladimir Balun.