Ryan Bigg, a well-known figure in the Ruby and JavaScript communities, announced in a personal blog post that he is stepping away from the tech industry entirely. After applying to more than three dozen jobs and receiving 24 rejections, Bigg says the current state of tech hiring has become untenable for even experienced, highly credentialed engineers. His story has struck a nerve because it reflects a broader anxiety among developers about where the industry is heading.

Who is Ryan Bigg and why his exit matters

Bigg is not a junior developer struggling to break in. He has spent 20 years working across Ruby and JavaScript, written programming books, given conference talks, organized developer events, and maintains two of the most downloaded Ruby packages in the ecosystem. At his last job, he grew a team from 2 people to 12. In other words, he represents exactly the kind of senior, proven talent that companies typically compete to hire. That someone with this resume is being rejected by the vast majority of employers he applies to is a signal worth paying attention to, not an isolated case of bad luck.

The numbers behind the burnout

According to his post, Bigg applied to over 36 roles and heard back from 24 with a rejection. He describes the process as causing him “a great deal of mental harm and anguish,” to the point where he says he cannot continue putting himself through it. This is a window into the emotional toll of prolonged job searching in a market where even strong applications routinely go nowhere, and it echoes complaints from many developers across experience levels over the past couple of years.

The AI hiring paradox

One of the most pointed parts of Bigg’s post is his critique of how companies talk about AI in hiring. He argues that the industry currently wants candidates who can “use AI to further business goals,” but says plainly that no one actually knows what that means in practice. Bigg notes that he does use AI himself, generating a lot of his code with it, but then critically reviewing that output before it ever reaches production. His point is that this pragmatic, review-heavy use of AI is common sense engineering, not some rare differentiating skill that justifies the vague “AI fluency” requirements showing up in job listings. This gap between what companies say they want and what they can actually define or evaluate is, in his view, part of what makes the current hiring process so dysfunctional.

Remote work, geography, and the hybrid mandate problem

Bigg also points to location and remote work policies as a barrier. He lives in Warrnambool, a regional Australian town roughly 3.5 hours by train from Melbourne, and has worked remotely for the past six years, including helping other colleagues transition to remote work. For him, hybrid arrangements requiring regular office presence in Melbourne are simply not feasible given the distance. This highlights a tension many companies are navigating: as firms push for hybrid or in-office mandates, workers who built their careers and lives around remote flexibility are being effectively locked out, regardless of their track record of remote productivity.

What this signals for the broader job market

Bigg’s conclusion, that there is simply “no room for him in tech anymore,” is a strong statement from someone with two decades of experience and visible open-source contributions. His experience suggests that the current downturn in tech hiring is not just affecting junior developers or people without a strong portfolio — it is also squeezing senior engineers with leadership experience and public track records. Whether this reflects a temporary market contraction, a structural shift driven by AI-era hiring expectations, or a combination of both is speculation at this point, since the post itself doesn’t diagnose the industry beyond Bigg’s own experience. He says his next step is to talk to people and figure out what comes next, without specifying what that might look like.

Frequently asked questions

Is Ryan Bigg’s situation representative of the wider developer job market?
It’s one individual’s account, but it echoes a pattern many developers have reported recently: high rejection rates even for experienced candidates. It should be read as a data point and personal account rather than a comprehensive market study.

What does Bigg mean by companies wanting “AI skills” nobody can define?
He is referring to job postings and hiring expectations that ask for candidates who can use AI to drive business outcomes, while, in his view, no clear consensus exists yet on what that actually looks like in day-to-day engineering work.

Does this mean remote work is disappearing?
Not necessarily industry-wide, but Bigg’s experience suggests that hybrid and in-office requirements are creating real obstacles for remote workers based outside major metro areas, even those with long, successful remote work histories.

Source: Leaving Tech