Companies seem to be hiring and focusing on the short term, that is focused expertise that can hit the ground running, on a hard problem, right away. Certain fields seem to be more in demand than others (ML, infra, etc) - but to me the main pattern is companies caring more about short term gains than long term growth potential.

So I think it sucks to be relatively junior right now.

To me its sad as I think how well you onboard other team members is one huge differentiator in your dev culture, and points at a healthy team that can readily share knowledge. How its setup now may work for short term problems, but also creates a lot of "bus factors" where crucial functionality depends on 1-2 skilled people.

I also see a bit of getting rid of middle management / product management type layers lately. A sense of wanting to streamline / eliminate alleged "bureaucracy"