2025 Year-End Reflection for Developers: AI Hype, Layoffs, and What’s Next

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. Here we are on New Year's Eve and it happens to be, actually it's New Year's Eve Eve, the day before that, and we're sort of in a different place. You may have noticed that we clicked record and we were actually both here. We're not in our like normal like virtual screens and such. So we're diving right into the New Year's Eve special. As always, this is, if you haven't figured it out yet, it's a developer podcast. It's Building Better Developers. We are in the midst of the Building Better Foundation season. And this episode, like I said, we're going to handle a couple of special things. Look at the year that's gone by and then in a couple of days we get New Year's and we're going to see what the new year looks like. I happen to be Rob Brighthead, one of the founders of Develop and Orr, also founder of Arby Consulting, where we help you assess your technology and build a roadmap for success. Good thing, bad thing. Good thing is technology. We get to move our recording studio around. Bad thing for him, not so much for me, is that this is probably going to be harder than normal to edit. We've got our nice little mics here and we're going to see how well our microphones actually work for us and audio wise what this is going to do. But better yet, I'm going to let Michael introduce himself. Hey everyone, my name is Michael Mollast. I'm one of the co-founders of Develop and Orr, Building Better Developers. I'm also the founder of InvisiQA, where we help companies, reducers, get any software through automated testing. Good thing and bad thing. Good thing, we're finally, we've been talking about doing this for years. We're finally in the same room doing the recording. So those of you on YouTube, you guys see our friendly faces. On audio, yes, we're in the same room. You just have to trust us. Bad thing, as Rob mentioned, this is a different format, so it's going to make editing this a little more fun, but we'll see how it goes. All right, so we're going to talk about it being New Year's Eve. I think it's a good time to do a little retrospective on the year and talk about what this time we're going to put this out to the studio audience, including our some people that are staring daggers at us because they are also like our technicians for tonight. But we're going to talk about what we are ready to see go away in the year that has gone by. And I think for myself, honest, funny enough, I think it's this discussion of AI. I think like people have overblown it all year. I happen to, yes, enjoy using it and talking about it, but I'm like ready for us to move on to some other topic for some of these things. Now I say that and I'm sure the next couple of interviews, we're still going to be talking about it. However, I think we need to like get out of like the, you know, this is going to destroy the world or it's going to save the world and get into the reality side of it. So your thoughts on 25? Oh, I'm going to pick on AI a little bit too, but I'm actually going to pick more on big businesses. I'm a little tired of larger Fortune 400 companies stating that all these layoffs and productivity for employee elimination, you know, all the people that are being let go because of AI, it's a bit of a farce. We're actually dealing more with the end of the COVID, no hire, no fire. Yes, AI is going to have an impact on jobs, but that's not what we're seeing right now. They're just hiding behind that. So let's, you know, fess up. If you're going to fire someone, just say you're firing them for the bottom line, move on, don't lie about it. And agree. The other thing with AI that I'm a little tired of is the whole, let me just give you crap, you know, where AI, the chatbots just feed you crap. It's like, come on, it's getting better and I'm looking to see what AI will do next year. So now we're going to pass it over here. We're going to pass it over to one of our studio audience members. We're going to start with you. Introduce yourself and then what do you think? Sorry, I lost my mic. Introduce yourself and then what are you ready to see go away in 2025? You don't have to touch any buttons. Just speak into the fuzz. Hey, I'm Ian. I work under Rob. I'm a developer at the RV Consulting Company. For 2025, I got to work on some pretty cool projects. I got to work on my first, it's Agile, with the practices. I worked on my first Agile project with the team. It was fun sort of learning how to work with a bunch of other developers on one big project. As for a bad thing, there were of course some hangups as we went along, it ran a little longer than expected, but that's how some of these projects go sometimes. Pass it on and we are going to go to our huge studio audience sort of. Introduce yourself. Hey, I'm Wesley. I am one of Arby's developers. As far as things that I'm really hoping I don't see in 2026, I'm really tired. I'm going to kind of piggyback off what Michael said about Fortune 500 and bigger companies using AI. I'm really sick of the AI buzzword. It's currently the fad right now. I like playing around with it. It's a fun little toy. I'm hoping that in 2026 we finally figure out or get to a point where we understand where the tool is useful and where it's not. There's a lot of panic going around that Rob mentioned that it's going to replace everybody. Michael said yes, big businesses are slashing jobs and trying to just really shoehorn it into things where it really doesn't need to be there. I'm looking forward to as the technology matures, we find the roles that it is. I'm also really hoping a lot of these AI projects kind of flop. Everyone's kind of jumping onto the bandwagon right now and it's making all kinds of markets go crazy. Like the PC RAM market right now, absolutely insane because so many of these AI companies are buying it all up. 128 gigs is like two grand at this point. Absolutely insane. So I want the AI frenzy to die down. I don't necessarily want the technology to go away and specifically when we're talking AI, we need to specify in large language models, not AI as a whole. What we have right now is kind of a buzzword in and of itself. But let's just calm down a bit. And flipping the camera around here, we're going to pass this over to our camera woman and we'll get our other take. There we go. So go ahead and introduce yourself. What are you ready to see go away from 25? What are you asking right now? What am I ready to see go away in 25? Of course, who are you? Oh, I'm Natalie. I work for RB and I work with Michael also and I help her cats within all of our platforms. I think what I'm ready to see go away in 25 is a lot of the fear that everybody has and a lot of the fear and the uncertainty and for people to really remember who we are and that we're all in this together and it shouldn't be so fearful all the time that it's going to be OK. That's a really good one. So I'm going to give this back to Michael because he's not going away. Perfect. So there you have it from our panel of experts. Things that could go away in 25. I think we're sort of in agreement that there's some definitely some things that we are ready to see disappear and we're ready for 26 as we are going from the Christmas season into the new year and all that kind of stuff. Just like go out there, have some fun, get out, socialize, hang out with other people, be kind to each other. You know, this is like brothers and sisters for a little bit. Sort of like like Natalie said, there's like the fear and the anger and some of this kind of stuff like this. Let's let it go. Enjoy the next few days as we go into the new year and we will see you in 2026. Go out there and have yourself a great day. Great week. Great next year. And we will talk to you next year. This was sponsored by R.B. Consulting, your partner in building smarter, scalable tech from startups to established teams. R.B. Consulting helps you turn tech chaos into clarity with proven roadmaps and hands on expertise. Visit R.B. S and S dot com to start your next step forward. Also sponsored by Envision QA, they help businesses take control of their software by focusing on what matters most quality, reliability and support you can count on. Find out more at Envision QA dot com. Thanks for tuning in to the Develop and Learn podcast, where we're all about building better developers and better careers. I'd love to hear your thoughts or feedback. So drop a note to info at Develop and Learn dot com. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you listen. And remember, a little bit of effort every day adds up to a great success. Keep learning, keep growing, and we'll see you in the next episode.