Let’s stop pretending the job market is bad because there’s no money.

Tech budgets are fine. Actually, they’re more than fine. Cloud spending is up. AI budgets are bottomless. Security vendors are feasting. So why are so many top-tier experts sitting on the sidelines, struggling to land meaningful work?

Not entry-level folks. I’m talking about people who have actually built things. people with ideas. People who know how to scale infrastructure, stabilize chaos, lead teams, modernize architectures, and turn ideas into reality. People who should be shaping the next generation of systems but instead are waiting for a recruiter to get back to them after running a keyword scan.

This is what happens when an industry built on boldness becomes addicted to safety.

I know because I’ve lived both sides of it.

I founded the first private cloud startup in the U.S. with my own money. This was before the word “cloud” even existed. We didn’t have a blueprint. We weren’t copying anyone. We just knew it made sense. It was bold. It was raw. And it was exciting.

I built a tiny team of hungry young minds who said yes to a dream. We had no idea if it would work. We barely had a business plan. We built anyway. When we told people they didn’t need their own servers or data centers, they looked at us like we had lost our minds. We got laughed out of meetings. But a few small customers believed. They bet on us. They became our lifeblood. And when the world caught up, those customers were already ahead.

We built things that were far ahead of their time. We also built even more things that completely failed. We didn’t care. Because we were chasing the edge, not a title. And we had fun doing it.

Compare that to today.

Hiring has been corporatized into paralysis. HR filters screen out people with too much experience. Managers say they want innovation, but only if it’s familiar. Interviewers ask safe questions and expect safe answers. “Culture fit” has become a euphemism for “don’t challenge me.”

We built this entire industry on rebellion. Now we punish people for it.

Leadership doesn’t want uncomfortable truths. They want slide decks. They want someone to manage the illusion of progress, not someone who points out that the whole system is held together by legacy junk and ineptitude.

Here’s the kicker. Most of these companies wouldn’t hire Steve Jobs either. Too abrasive. Not collaborative enough. Too honest in meetings. Doesn’t check the right “culture fit” boxes. And those black turtlenecks are not business casual.

So here we are. Massive budgets. Empty seats. Mediocre execution. And actual talent losing hope… feeling broken.

If we want to fix this, we have to start thinking like builders again. Give decision-making power back to people who actually understand the work. Kill the obsession with buzzwords. Forget the AI resume scanners. Stop treating competence like a threat.

And maybe, just maybe, stop pretending that a clean résumé and a friendly smile mean more than the ability to get the job done when everything’s on fire.

We don’t need more mediocrity. We need people who have been through the war and still want to build. People who ask “what if” and aren’t afraid to be wrong. People who don’t need your process, because they’ve already solved harder problems without it. We need people who know they can!

If that makes you uncomfortable, good. That’s the point.

Because comfort didn’t build this industry. Chaos did. Creativity did. Conviction did.

It’s time we remember that.