Flat Tech Job Market Overview
Key Points
- The job market for product managers and engineering managers has gone from years of steady growth in the 2010s to essentially flat, with only a 3‑4% increase in roles over the past two‑and‑a‑half years after interest rates rose.
- Despite high‑profile layoffs and startup failures, the total number of active PM and engineering management positions remains roughly stable, hovering around 450 k for product managers with about a 10% annual turnover (≈40 k role changes).
- This shift to a flat market feels like a “death” to those accustomed to a rapid, applicant‑friendly hiring environment where employers could afford to hire candidates who were only 80‑90% of the ideal fit.
- The current hiring landscape now forces employers to be more selective, as the surplus of open roles has vanished and candidate power has diminished relative to the tight market of the past.
- The analysis was sparked by insights from Lenny’s newsletter, which highlighted both the flat growth trend and the 10% yearly turnover rate as key indicators of the market’s new stability.
Full Transcript
# Flat Tech Job Market Overview **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGvx3u5npXU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGvx3u5npXU) **Duration:** 00:11:32 ## Summary - The job market for product managers and engineering managers has gone from years of steady growth in the 2010s to essentially flat, with only a 3‑4% increase in roles over the past two‑and‑a‑half years after interest rates rose. - Despite high‑profile layoffs and startup failures, the total number of active PM and engineering management positions remains roughly stable, hovering around 450 k for product managers with about a 10% annual turnover (≈40 k role changes). - This shift to a flat market feels like a “death” to those accustomed to a rapid, applicant‑friendly hiring environment where employers could afford to hire candidates who were only 80‑90% of the ideal fit. - The current hiring landscape now forces employers to be more selective, as the surplus of open roles has vanished and candidate power has diminished relative to the tight market of the past. - The analysis was sparked by insights from Lenny’s newsletter, which highlighted both the flat growth trend and the 10% yearly turnover rate as key indicators of the market’s new stability. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGvx3u5npXU&t=0s) **Job Market Turns Flat for Tech Roles** - The speaker explains how post‑2020 interest‑rate hikes halted the decade‑long growth in product and engineering management positions, leaving the hiring landscape essentially stagnant despite recent layoffs. ## Full Transcript
today we're going to break down how the
job market has shifted and what it means
for product managers and what it means
for engineers and sort of what the
implications are if you are job
searching so number one the job market
has become
flat and so previously in the
2010s the job market for product
managers the job markets for engineers
steadily went up that doesn't mean they
were at the same size we'll get into
that but at the end of the day there was
steady acceleration across both job
families which means more jobs and roles
were
active once interest rates rose that
changed at the end of the day since
interest rates Rose product management
roles and Engineering Management roles
are almost exactly flat they're up three
or 4% in two and a half years not much
change at
all and that's despite all of the
excitement and all of the heartache
about the jobs that were laid off and
the mass layoffs that big companies did
and startups going to the wall despite
all of that the job market is
essentially flat I know I'm surprised
too and I actually appreciate this Lenny
is the one that brought this to my
attention if you read his newsletter he
had a uh piece on the job market and it
kind of inspired me to do some thinking
and at the end of the day when
we think about
this the thing that stands out to me is
that if you are used to living in a
world where you are accelerating so fast
from a jobs perspective going to Flat
which isn't down but going to Flat from
a job market perspective feels like a
kind of death it feels terrible because
you're used to a much looser Market
you're used to the next job being around
the corner because there's so many jobs
available and there are more jobs
available if you're growing rapidly than
there are applicants which is is a very
applicant Friendly Market I remember it
was not that long ago that when you were
hiring we would sit in rooms and talk
about whether the person that we wanted
to hire would only be an 80 or 90% fit
but you could coach them into the role
and the reason we had those
conversations back then is because the
market was so tight for employers you
had to make a call on who you would hire
knowing that the employee that the
applicant had the power in the relation
ship because there were so many roles
open and there was so much active hiring
going on and that leads me sort of to
the second thing and this number is also
I think it came out of the leny uh
newsletter the market is at about 10%
turnover a year if you do the math so
it's
roughly on average think of it as like
30k in change in uh PM roles are
changing over maybe a little bit over
call it call it closer to
40K um
and that's roughly 10% of the active
roles right so 450k active rols for
PMS 40K turnover that's doesn't strike
me as ridiculously unhealthy it just
means that it's sort of a stable Market
we're in a stable State and about 10% of
PMS are turning over a year and I think
where we feel the pain is kind of what I
called out earlier where there's this
idea of deceleration and you're just
sort of hitting this expectation of
growth and you're not seeing it anymore
and so suddenly people who had expected
their careers to persist in this state
where it was always going to be
applicant friendly where there were
always going to be more jobs than
applicants they it just isn't true
anymore is the way I'll put it and that
has generated a tremendous shock for a
lot of
people
so when you look at that market and by
the way it's true for engineering too
like engineering has always been
obviously more jobs than product but
it's it's similar story right they they
climb up they flat out in 2022 I think
it's roughly 3.7 million engineering
jobs now which is roughly the same as
what it was maybe slight
growth what does this mean for hiring
and for applicants that's kind of where
I want to spend the the meat of this
time the the bulk of this time
fundamentally I think we are
characterizing hiring as easier in this
market incorrectly it is not easier if
you want an approximate fit it is easier
but if you are expecting a really
precise fit for the role it has never
been harder and the reason it's never
been harder is because you have to look
at a much larger sea of applicants a
much larger volume of applicants and
Wade through them and assess them
correctly and it's also harder because
Executives expect that the market will
be easier Executives expect that you
will be able to find someone quickly
Executives expect a precise fit because
they see the volume to and so the the
challenge is really the sortation
function the filter function that we do
for interviews which everyone who's done
the process knows is not perfect but
it's the best thing we've figured out so
far um that process is really under
strain right now it's underst strain
especially because AI has enabled
applicants to really scale up what they
apply to and that just makes it harder
for recruiters to find really good
candidates because they're sorting
through a bunch of resumés and the rums
now have really leveled up people are
using AI for their resumés people are
trying to stand out and individually
that makes sense and in a group it means
it's hard to tell the difference between
all of these different resumés which is
why I tend to recommend that people
draft with AI and then finish and polish
as a human because that human touch does
stand out when you've stared at AI
resumes all day it really does make a
difference
difference so it's really tough to find
an exact fit we probably don't have all
the tool sets we're going to have I
think there's room for Innovation on the
hiring front here as AI starts to shape
how we produce text and I'll be curious
to revisit this topic in a year or so
and see what technologies have
emerged I think it's also hard from an
applicant perspective and I want to sort
of talk about that a little bit as well
at the end of the day I think applicants
tend to blame themselves when it's not
you
we tend to take personal responsibility
and I've been in this boat too we tend
to say oh it's me it's something I did
right like if IID answered that question
better I would have gone farther it's
almost never a single question almost
never almost always it is an overall
assessment of their sense of the fit for
the role and they are looking for
someone who will thrive in the role and
if they don't see that in you if they
don't think you'll Thrive they tend to
pass
because they need someone who can thrive
in the role employers need someone who
can thrive in the
role and so if you're in a world where
you're getting
rejections don't take that personally
but do take it
productively because even if it's not
you from an individual rejection
perspective you can still shape your
future by shaping the positioning you
put forward across your applicant
surface area so across all the
applications that you're putting out
there your overall surface in the market
you can start to learn from the
rejections and shape how you position
yourself so that includes resume tweaks
it also includes story tweaks and
interviews sort of positioning yourself
differently being more precise being
more coherent getting that practice in
in front of the mirror or with a good
friend and it
includes understanding how the story
you're telling does or does not line up
with what the recruit and the hiring
manager are looking for so much of this
work is essentially getting them to
imagine that they are working with you
and if they can imagine it you are so
far ahead of the game you are so far
ahead of the game you're like in the top
5% or 1% of applicants
already and so think about it that way
think about it as any given rejection
isn't necessarily personal but over time
I can shape my applicant trajectory the
other thing I will call out is that
referrals while important are no longer
a Golden
Ticket referrals do matter they increase
candidate quality they increase the
probability that you will get
interviews but they are not something
that is wow okay this person is someone
we have to get to a team Loop right away
and I've seen that happen in the past
when we had rapidly accelerating jobs it
was like we need to get through this
process really quickly we don't want to
lose this person they're probably in six
other conversations let's get them right
to a team
Lo that's not how it works with
referrals anymore referrals get
scrutinized they just get often times at
least a courtesy call from a recruiter
or a more friendly look at the resume
because there's this assumption that if
you're referring someone you know them a
little bit and you have that extra
validation of the quality of work they
do and that kind of leads me to my
conclusion which is ultimately this
whole Talent matching exercise is about
corporations trying to optimize for the
talent they need for particular tasks
and it's applicants trying to figure out
what corporations are a great fit for
them and we just have very inefficent
methods to do that and I think that I'm
excited to see how AI enables us to do
some real disruption here not in terms
of generating text and like spamming
recruiters because I think that's sort
of a first generation hack and I think
that one is going to get arms raced away
as uh on the other side recruiters get
AI tooling that enables them to filter a
lot of the less meaningful text out so I
think that's a limited window where
that's going to be at all helpful and I
don't know that it's all that helpful
right now if you're just Spam spamming
people with AI generated resumés but I
do think there's opportunity around
optimizing process thinking carefully
about how AI can help us to consider all
applicants more carefully and there's
probably opportunities around
leveraging artificial intelligence to
give us a second pair of eyes on choices
and to give us more insight into the way
we conduct interviews so that we can be
more fair more frequent cover more of
the population we want to talk to and
ultimately come to higher quality
choices we will see we will see it's
early yet for AI um in the talent
Market I guess the the close right like
I opened talking about how job
deceleration has felt like a death to
many of us and I don't want to lose that
it's been a grieving process I think one
of the pieces that I'm going to be
watching is is there a re acceleration
when interest rates come back down or
does it stay flat because the timing is
really tightly connected the timing for
the flattening in the market is tightly
tied to the tightening of venture
capital which was associated with
interest rates getting tightened like
raised So eventually interest rates are
going to get cut again does that change
the picture or do we see enough
efficiencies do we see enough of a
stable state that we've hit now that
jobs remain roughly steady I don't know
nobody has the answer nobody has a
crystal ball I will be curious to see