Follow the industry trends, or at the bare minimum be able to speak "intelligently" about them. Management just LOVES buzzwords. It sucks, but that's the reality we have to deal with.

Focus on soft skills, not just technical skills.

Have a process to your thinking. Like a logical proof, show your work!

Leverage every tool you can for your job search.

Good luck.

If you're still in college, try to get an internship. Once you have something on your resume, it's a lot easier to get into places. Plus try to network and stuff. Getting recommended by someone is much more likely to result in an interview.

The AI shit is really rocking the boat right now, but ultimately I don't think it's sustainable. I don't know what the future of dev work will look like or when it'll balance out, but right now, these AI agents are effectively heavily subsidized by investors. At some point, they'll need to either turn to the public (IPO) as a last resort, or actually begin to turn a profit. I think this happened with Microsoft's Copilot. "Tokenpocalypse" was the term that got thrown around. They can't undercharge for this stuff forever.

Even if AI does end up being a significant part of work, actually knowing how to code will make you better at using it. Your skills aren't useless. You'll be better at noticing when the agents make shitty code or shitty decisions. If agentic development ends up being too costly for everyday use, you'll still be able to assist with "manual" code writing.

AI companies over hype their products and say they're world shattering as a way of marketing. They say the idea of developers are over because they want people to invest and buy their product. Agentic coding has gotten pretty fucking impressive in the past few months, but something's gonna break at some point. The bill always comes due.

But yeah. Internship and networking. Learn AI, but don't eschew traditional development practices entirely.

Network. Go to events and talk to people. Your CV may not be the issue. Openings may receive hundreds of applications. You're fighting statistics. Unfortunately, you need to be persistent.