[LRUG] Ghosttown

[Jon Rowe]

The main Ruby discord also has a jobs channel which has a very active hiring channel albiet its pretty much all automatic postings from https://rubyonremote.com/ but I'm not sure I've seen many UK-centric roles there.

On Thu, 12 Feb 2026, at 1:16 PM, Greg Molnar via Chat wrote:
> My 2 cents...
> I don't know where you guys are looking, but these job boards have Rails opportunities:
> 
> https://railshotwirejobs.com/
> https://jobs.gorails.com/
> https://jobs.rubyonrails.org/
> 
> Besides these, every conference I went to last year, I've seen many companies hiring, and not all of them advertise those jobs(or at least I did see them advertised). There are also Ruby related discords, like the Gorails one or the one I started a while ago, there are job postings on both that are not advertised elsewhere.
> I am not saying it is easy to get hired, the high number of applications(most AI generated) make it hard on the hiring side too, but if you write a good application and you have a good profile, I think you can land a job. Maybe not as quickly and maybe not as well paid as 10 years ago though, when we had a golden age and Ruby devs were able to demand high salaries and amazing work conditions. But times change, and who know, maybe we will get back to that in a while.
> As for the entry level jobs, that was always hard, except the precovid ZIRP period when they hired people that didn't even know how to use git. And I remember how hard it was for me almost 15 years ago when I transitioned to Ruby. 5 years ago this was blamed on Covid, now it is blamed on AI, 5 years from now it will be blamed on something else. 
> 
> So in overall, I think we are fine, not as good as used to be, but if you make an effort, you can likely find work. If you struggle, you might need to work on your skills(tech or human). Start a blog, contribute to open source, go to conferences and you will end up with a better profile a good network and will likely not suffer when looking for a job. 
> 
> Good luck to all the jobseekers out there.
> 
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2026, at 3:12 PM, Benjamin Eskola via Chat wrote:
>> If everyone's claiming it, does your CV really stand out by claiming it?
>> 
>> Anyway, that's even assuming it *is* an amplifier. In many cases it seems to be a longwinded (and expensive) way of doing what would be easier to just do oneself.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Ben
>> 
>> > On 11. Feb 2026, at 13.53, Igor via Chat <chat at lists.lrug.org> wrote:
>> > 
>> > Agree with Eleanor. In today’s world, the smartest move might be to embrace AI as an amplifier, using it to boost your impact and make your CV stand out, while still highlighting the problem-solving and critical thinking only humans can provide.
>> > 
>> > On Wed, 11 Feb 2026 at 13:49, Eleanor McHugh via Chat <chat at lists.lrug.org> wrote:
>> > Best Outcome?
>> > 
>> > Bubble grow large.
>> > 
>> > Bubble go pop.
>> > 
>> > Employers rediscover that programmers don't just regurgitate code: they understand problems and devise solutions.
>> > 
>> > Judging by previous hype cycles, this could take a while...
>> > 
>> > 
>> > > On 11 Feb 2026, at 11:10, Michael Pavling via Chat <chat at lists.lrug.org> 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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