[LRUG] Ghosttown

[lrug.flaring659 at simplelogin.com]

Hey Michael, it certainly does.

The whole market’s been down for a few years, but Ruby, one of my all-time favs, seems to have almost disappeared from the visible job market entirely.

Two of my least favourite ecosystems, JS and Python, have roughly thirty to sixty times more opportunities respectively.

I’ve already seen a couple of businesses go all in on the AI hype and bury themselves under mountains of tech debt, so it definitely still needs people that know what they’re doing to build something sustainable. I’ve also seen quite a few mid/senior roles advertised to rescue companies from this situation, probably not very attractive from a prospective candidate’s point of view.

With entry-level roles disappearing, it’s hard to say how this skills gap will end up effecting the industry. I guess companies that are bullish on AI are hoping the tech will evolve enough before it becomes a more significant issue, and if not, they’ll still be enough people coming into the industry — who knows.

A few options, based on what you’ve said:

Hope the Ruby market bounces back
Try switching stacks
Leverage AI to start your own business
Retrain — electricians and plumbers are raking it in 💷😄

> On 11 Feb 2026, at 11:10, Michael Pavling via Chat - chat at lists.lrug.org <chat_at_lists_lrug_org_sxxkmvwj at simplelogin.co> wrote:
> 
> Well... The jobs market looks pretty bleak, doesn't it?
> 
> There seems to be no entry-level roles now, and the mid/senior roles are few and far between, with hundreds of applicants scrabbling to stand out with their AI tuned CVs :-(
> 
> What's gonna be the case in a couple of years? (Or even at the end of this year)
> Is that it for Ruby jobs now? Is it the end for almost all tech stacks? 😬
> 
> Do we all just need to re-align to be maintainers of the output?
> 
> *sigh* What's everyone's hope for a best outcome?
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