[blhblah12345]

If you quit today, expect this to be your last technical position. You will not find another job this year.

I know incredible engineers with great experience, well known engineers, who have been unemployed 50% of the time or more during Covid.

It's no longer a seller's market, it's a buyer's market. If you do find a new job, it will take you a long time, and you will take a lower salary than you have now.

[cableshaft]

For FAANG jobs, yes. For non-FAANG, it sounds like there's still a good amount of demand, especially for senior-level.

Regardless they shouldn't just quit without having another job lined up, and you have to be a bit more careful with your choice of company (maybe choose one that already jumped at the chance to do its "well everyone is laying off 10% of their staff, we should too even though we're still making record profits").

[blhblah12345]

This is definitely happening. After 6 glowing interviews, I was expecting an offer two weeks ago from a startup. small company, profitable, growing quickly, only 100 employees, just closed a $70m funding round. While waiting for the "final" interview, I noticed the 40 jobs on their website disappeared. Finally heard from them 10 minutes after the interview was supposed to start, to tell me they had decided to halt hiring and "rightsize" their (skeleton) staff.

[ghaff]

That's probably overstated but directionally correct. I know people landing new jobs. I also know of people who have been looking for quite a while and there's no particular reason to think things will improve this year. In general, if someone doesn't like where they are, they should by all means start looking around--but I wouldn't quit on the assumption I can find something better next week or next month.