Hiring Devs In 2026 - Part 1

Hiring for tech is broken.

Hiring SWEs, DevOps, and “AI” engineers is tough in 2025, and I doubt it will get easier in 2026.

Between vibe coders using tools to cheat on interviews to malicious parties submitting viruses in their code samples, the hiring market is rough for both the employer and the prospective employee.

Here are a few of my thoughts on how to navigate prospective candidates.

If you are a candidate, you may still want to read this, as it will help you understand what I look for when hiring.

I work with a lot of startups with dev teams with fewer than 100 people.

If you are that size, you typically are past the need for a full-out jack of all trades but master of none.

Conversely, you are likely not to the point where you can hire the equivalent of a theoretical physicist with a PhD, but doesn’t have the engineering skills to push a commit to Github (The software equivalent of changing a lightbulb).

This is where “T” shaped skills come into play. You want your candidates to have a solid basic foundation in a lot of skill sets, frontend, coding, basic DevOps, but then have one particular skill set that they are a beast in, for example, generative AI or Vector DBs.

They should be able not only to dream up a project using their domain expertise but also to get their hands dirty implementing the project while being supported by the rest of the team.

If they don’t have some of that cross-training you are going to spend a lot of the rest of the engineering team’s hours supporting them, which leads to missed deadlines and frustration.

I am going to do a short series of posts on this topic, giving you some tips I have found useful to find the right candidate for the job.

If you are struggling to hire your dream team and want some help with it, you should check out my Group Coaching Community.