> Good explanation for why hiring stopped. If AI is improving rapidly why hire engineers now that you might not need in 6-12 months?

I'm not so sure that's the reason. I mean, to believe LLMs replace engineers you first need to believe engineers spend the bulk of their time typing frantically churning out code in greenfield projects. That's not compatible with reality. Although LLMs excel at generating new code from scratch, that scenario is the exception. Introducing significant changes to existing projects still requires long iterations which ultimately end up consuming more development time than actually rolling out the changes yourself.

The truth if the matter is that we are not observing an economic boom. The US is either stagnant or in a recession, and LLMs are not their cause. In an economic downturn you don't see spikes in demand for skilled workers.

We don't hire juniors anymore

They are definitely not needed anymore.

The market is flooded with seniors.

So no problem there either