"AI" is going to make getting software engineering jobs harder over the next year... but not because "AI" will replace humans, but rather because of the interaction of accounting and the need to pacify stock market investors.

1. Megacorps have spent massively on AI datacenters. This is a capital expenditure which means the expense isn't booked immediately.
2. Instead, the expense gets turned into deprecation over the next few years, i.e. reported expenses are going to be much higher for the next few years.
3. Higher expenses shrink reported profits, so these companies will start doing layoffs.
4. So far there is no evidence of offsetting profits.

Notice this effect happens _even if all AI datacenter spending stops today_. It's baked in as depreciation.

So far we've had layoffs at Amazon, rumored layoffs at Meta, and layoffs at Oracle (much more dire straits financially than the others). Today Microsoft is doing voluntary worker buyouts: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-23/microsoft-offers-voluntary-retirement-to-about-7-of-us-workers

I've seen rumors of Google doing buyouts too. And when these layoffs hit software engineers, that's going to mean a lot more competition for any open jobs across the whole industry. All those laid off engineers will want jobs too.

And these companies have also hired a lot of people in the past, and will be hiring less going forward, so this also means fewer jobs even if the rest of the industry continues as normal.

So that means more applicants for fewer jobs.

Update: Meta announces the rumored layoffs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-23/meta-tells-staff-it-will-cut-10-of-jobs-in-push-for-efficiency?srnd=homepage-americas