[Ancalagon]

What I'm seeing is an explosion in software jobs at the small-company size level, with larger companies mostly holding steady (sans a few exceptions like Block and Oracle), as I've seen from: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/number.... The jobs are out there in my opinion for a competent engineer with decent AI experience (not going to comment on new grads or very high level principal+ engs, because I am neither).

[pants2]

I do think you're right, custom software is now more viable for small companies, you'll see a lot of them hiring a SWE or two to build out custom tooling whereas before it didn't make financial sense since it needed a whole team.