Work

In 2025, the IT market has finally lost the momentum of previous years: there are fewer vacancies, and employers are much more selective. Companies are thinking longer, hiring more slowly, and selecting candidates almost under a microscope. The specialists themselves complain: there are fewer and fewer relevant offers, competition is getting tougher, and sometimes hundreds of people apply for one position. Despite this, the market still had its «star» areas — roles that were most sought after throughout 2025. dev.ua asked key employers in the industry who companies were looking for most often, what skills were in short supply, and which professions became most in demand in the past year.

Senior Graphic Designer Anna Zhuravel told how she was confronted with outright rudeness from a potential manager during an interview. It turned out that other job candidates at this company had also been in a similar situation. We tell you what happened and how the employer reacted.

Senior Front-End Developer Alex Dolya admitted on LinkedIn that he is increasingly thinking about leaving Ukraine, and named the reasons that lead to such thoughts. The developer’s post caused quite a stir online and collected over a hundred comments. What do IT professionals think about this?

In technology companies — and Web3 in particular — the work rhythm resembles an endless sprint that somehow lasts like a marathon. The product moves faster than processes can update; markets sag and take off overnight; users expect perfection and security at the same time; and teams operate in a mode of constant multitasking and information noise. In such an environment, burnout ceases to be a rarity or a consequence of «bad organization». It becomes a systemic phenomenon. Not accidental — almost natural.

Chief Technology Officer Max Dorash shared his experience of job searching. During the year of searching, he sent out over 1,000 resumes and had only one interview.

HR specialist Maria-Victoria Borukh planned to make her first LinkedIn post something inspiring, but instead it came out about an inadequate recruiter.

Hello! It’s #vsrativakansii again. On the eve of the most difficult, as the authorities say, winter for Ukrainians, the IT labor market continues to test IT professionals and creatives for strength. Today is a pre-winter selection of vacancies and situations in recruiting based on expert reviews.

Senior QA Kateryna Marakhovska drew attention to the fact that the profession of a tester in society is still perceived by many as an easy job that does not require deep technical knowledge, high-quality training, and full involvement.

45-річний програміст Дмитро Кривошапкін із Харкова — унікальний фахівець, бо тричі працевлаштовувався в одну й ту ж саму компанію. За свої 23 роки айтішного досвіду левову частку часу він пропрацював у найбільшому українському аутсорсері SoftServe. Дмитро розповів dev.ua, як тричі увійшов в одну річку і чому це його анітрохи не бентежить. Далі — пряма мова героя.

Ukrainian EdTech company Promova last week laid off about 15% of its staff, or 28 employees. The employees were fired «in one day.»

In the USA, there is a real boom in the search for IT specialists with web coding experience. Vacancies from Visa, Reddit and other large IT companies require the relevant skill. So we decided to investigate how the Ukrainian IT market is dealing with this. To do this, we monitored hundreds of vacancies on jobs.dou for almost a month, and also asked companies whether they would require web coding experience for their candidates.

Quite often, entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of clearly delineating the roles of a CMO, marketer, digital marketer, or SMM specialist in their business, creating a situation where executors are given responsibility for the strategist’s duties or vice versa. This leads to systemic problems: at a minimum, marketing begins to work fragmentedly, strategic goals remain goals, and budgets are wasted.

In Web3, classic Web2 hiring methods often simply don’t work. According to the Electric Capital Developer Report 2024, over 65% of active Web3 engineers have never had experience in large corporations, and over 70% demonstrate their skills openly — through GitHub, hackathons, or DAOs. In this ecosystem, experience is not hidden behind NDAs; it lives in commits, contributions, and open repositories. Over 80% of Web3 teams work remotely or asynchronously, and the average time to accept an offer here is 4–6 days, compared to 2–3 weeks in Web2. It’s not just numbers — it’s a different pace and culture. Teams that continue to operate according to old principles with multi-level interviews, long feedback, and checking every CV item lose candidates before the final stage. In Web3, those who know how to evaluate not formalities, but code, culture, and speed win. Because it’s not “where you worked” that matters, but what you’ve created and how you think. Below, I’ll break down the six most common mistakes recruiters make when trying to hire Web3 engineers the “old way” — and what you should do differently.