Raw LLM Responses

It isn't. Look at your team's Jira backlog. Look at the incoming rate of work for your team. How often does a PM/CEO/etc come to your team and say, "I've got this great new idea" and you're like, "We're still working on the last thing you asked for". For the majority of teams there is almost always more work that people want done than any development team can do. The bottleneck is almost always developer time. Let's wildly overestimate things and say AI doubled developer productivity, why would you lay people off? If you're a successful, profitable company wouldn't you just take the productivity gain and just build more stuff to try and expand into new markets? You've likely already budgeted to have those people for the year so there isn't a ton of pressure to cut expenses, so you might as well just do more instead of spending less. Sure, maybe you'll reduce future developer hiring, but there's not a ton of reason to layoff current emaployees. I'm sure not every company falls into that bucket, but I would bet most do. AI is just a scapegoat. The job market is bad for developers because of the blowback around COVID over hiring, the Section 174 change around writing off R&D expenses, and the end of 0% interest rates. There are too many candidates on the market (COVID hiring), developers cost companies more than they used to (Section 174), and companies and VCs need to be more cautious about what work they fund resulting in fewer new projects and startups (end of 0% rates). Basically, more people on the market for fewer open roles. That's why the market sucks right now.