В IT больше нет работы? Вся правда о рынке в 2026

Summary

The speaker argues that IT is harder to enter than it was several years ago, but it is not a dead-end career. The market has more competition and fewer openings than during the hiring boom around 2020, when companies hired at scale, salaries rose quickly, and strong developers often received multiple offers. However, he says comparisons should also consider the broader job market, where many industries face layoffs and prolonged job searches.

Business and career takeaways

• Distinguish “difficult” from “impossible.” Fewer vacancies and more rejections do not mean hiring has stopped. The speaker says experienced developers continue to get jobs, including well-paid roles with good conditions.
• Measure experience by current market relevance, not years alone. Fifteen years in the field is not automatically valuable if someone has not kept up with demand or has relied on technologies that are now less sought after. His recommended response is to identify skill gaps, learn what the market needs, and adapt.
• Treat employability as ongoing work. Continue developing skills, monitor the market, and attend interviews rather than assuming past experience will carry a career indefinitely.
• AI raises the bar but does not, in the speaker’s view, make the profession obsolete. He frames AI as a force affecting many knowledge-work fields—not just software—and suggests learning to use and build technology rather than avoiding it.
• Compare careers by more than salary. IT may offer remote work, geographic flexibility, the ability to change employers without relocating, and access to international employers. Trades such as welding or tiling can also pay well, but offer different working conditions and lifestyle options.
• Choose a field based on fit, not slogans. IT is not for everyone; people may prefer trades, medicine, sales, or entrepreneurship. Programming may suit those who enjoy complex systems and value remote work, intellectual work, and long-term career options.
• Avoid “easy-money” expectations. The speaker presents IT as a demanding profession requiring sustained learning and competition, not a shortcut to wealth.

Practical playbook

1. Assess whether your skills and technologies match current employer demand.
2. Identify specific gaps and build a learning plan to address them.
3. Keep tracking vacancies and market shifts, and use interviews to test your readiness.
4. Evaluate career options across income, work conditions, location flexibility, and growth potential—not salary alone.
5. Make a career decision based on your interests and willingness to keep developing, rather than on claims that IT is either a guaranteed opportunity or completely closed.

Metrics and examples mentioned

• The speaker’s programming school primarily trains working developers with an average of 3–5 years of commercial experience; it does not offer a “become a programmer from scratch in three months” course.
• 2020 is used as a comparison point for a stronger hiring market, not as a forecast or performance target.
• The claim that 15 years of experience may not be enough is presented as an example of why relevance matters more than tenure.
• The speaker says conditions may vary by specialty, mentioning front-end and mobile development as areas that could be more challenging while noting his own experience in Go development. He does not provide hiring or salary statistics.

Presenter/source: Vladimir Balun.