When the Gold Rush Ends: What Happens to Hiring When the AI Bubble Bursts

Listen, I’ve been in this game long enough to recognize the sound of hoofbeats heading toward a cliff. Earlier in my career I watched the dot-com boom turn into the dot-com bust, and what I’m seeing now in this AI frenzy has that same familiar rhythm. The kind that keeps you up at night if you’re paying attention.

Here’s what I know from living through these cycles: markets move like weather patterns. You can feel the pressure building, watch the clouds gathering, and if you’ve got enough miles on you, you learn to read what’s coming before it arrives.

The Current Landscape

Right now, every company from your corner coffee shop to Fortune 10 enterprises is stampeding toward AI like it’s the last water hole in a drought. I’ve had conversations with people who can barely explain what their product does but can spend twenty minutes telling me about their “AI strategy.” That’s not strategy, friend. That’s fear of missing out dressed up in a suit.

The hiring? It’s been feast or famine, and mostly famine for anyone not carrying an AI flag. I’ve watched brilliant engineering leaders with decades of experience get passed over because their resume doesn’t scream “machine learning” or “LLM architecture.” Meanwhile, fresh grads with a Coursera certificate in prompt engineering are fielding multiple offers.

Now, I’m not saying AI isn’t real or transformative. It absolutely is. But here’s the thing about gold rushes that people always forget: most folks don’t strike gold. They end up with pickaxes they can’t use and claims that won’t pay out. The real money gets made by the people selling shovels and the ones who stick around after everyone else goes home.

What’s Actually Happening in Hiring

Let me paint you the picture I’m seeing from the ground. Companies have been burning through capital hiring “AI teams” without always understanding what problem they’re solving. I’ve placed candidates into roles where the job description changed three times before their start date because leadership couldn’t articulate what they actually needed.

The traditional hiring that built sustainable businesses? It’s been on pause. Companies convinced themselves they need to “wait and see how AI changes everything” before making other hires. Product managers, customer success leaders, even solid backend engineers, they’re all sitting in a holding pattern while companies chase the AI dragon.

Here’s what worries me most: I’ve watched organizations gut their foundational teams to fund AI initiatives. They’re letting go of the people who understand their customers, their infrastructure, their actual business problems. All to hire people who might, maybe, possibly figure out how to shoehorn LLMs into products that nobody asked for.

When The Bubble Bursts

And make no mistake, this bubble will burst. Not because AI isn’t valuable. But because markets always correct when speculation runs too far ahead of reality. When companies realize that adding “AI-powered” to everything doesn’t automatically generate revenue, there’s going to be a reckoning.

Here’s what I think happens next, and I’m basing this on patterns I’ve seen play out before:

The First Wave: Mass Correction

The companies that never had real AI use cases? They’re going to cut those teams first. All those “AI strategy” roles that were really just hedge bets against looking outdated, they’ll disappear overnight. I’ve already started seeing the early tremors. Quietly closed reqs. Projects getting “reprioritized.” That corporate speak for “we’re pulling the plug but don’t want to admit we were chasing hype.”

The human cost of this is what keeps me up at night. Good people who made reasonable career moves based on market signals, they’re going to get caught in the undertow. Mid-career professionals who pivoted to AI because that’s where the opportunities were, they’ll be competing with each other in a suddenly flooded market.

The Second Wave: Return to Fundamentals

After the panic selling comes the rebuilding. And this is where it gets interesting. Companies will remember that they actually need people who can build reliable systems, understand customers, drive revenue, and solve real problems. The fundamentals that got lost in the noise.

I predict we’ll see a hiring surge for the roles that got neglected: product leaders who can identify actual customer needs, engineers who can build maintainable systems, operators who can scale businesses profitably. All the “boring” stuff that actually makes companies work.

But here’s the twist: the best candidates will have learned from this cycle. They’ll be asking harder questions about sustainability, about business models, about whether a company is building something real or just riding trends. The power dynamic shifts back toward talent that can prove value, not just promise innovation.

The Third Wave: Mature AI Integration

Eventually, after the dust settles, we’ll enter the actually interesting phase. AI will get integrated into businesses the way cloud computing did, the way mobile did. Not as a separate initiative or department, but as a tool that makes existing roles more effective.

The hiring then becomes about people who understand both the technology and the business application. Not AI specialists operating in isolation, but product people who know how to leverage AI for better user experiences, engineers who can integrate AI into robust architectures, leaders who can identify where AI adds real value versus where it’s just expensive overhead.

What Smart People Are Doing Right Now

The folks I respect most in this moment? They’re the ones building real skills underneath the hype. They’re not ignoring AI, but they’re not abandoning everything else for it either. They’re staying curious while remaining grounded.

I’m watching engineers add AI tools to their toolkit while still mastering the fundamentals of system design. Product leaders experimenting with AI features while staying laser-focused on customer problems. Executives exploring AI applications while maintaining disciplined budgets and clear ROI expectations.

These are the people who’ll thrive when the market corrects. Because they’re not all-in on the trend. They’re building careers on foundations that outlast any single technology cycle.

The Path Forward

Here’s my honest take, the kind I’d give you if we were sitting across from each other with something strong in our glasses: this correction is coming, and it’s going to be painful for a lot of people. But corrections always create opportunity if you’re positioned right.

For companies, the opportunity is getting back to basics. Building teams around solving customer problems, not technology trends. Hiring for judgment, adaptability, and proven ability to deliver results. The companies that maintained balanced teams through this frenzy, they’ll have a massive advantage.

For individuals, the opportunity is differentiation. The market’s going to flood with people who have “AI experience” on their resume. What’ll matter is whether you can demonstrate real impact, whether you understand how to apply technology to actual problems, whether you’ve built things that created value beyond just implementing the latest framework.

The Cowboy Code in Crazy Times

You know what cowboys understood that seems lost in all this? The value of steady over spectacular. The importance of knowing your terrain. The wisdom of not putting all your hopes on a single bet.

I’ve built my career on the belief that people matter more than trends. That relationships outlast market cycles. That integrity means telling someone the truth even when hype would be more profitable. And I’ve watched that approach prove valuable over and over, especially when markets get crazy.

So here’s what I’m telling everyone who asks, whether you’re hiring or looking: build for the long game. Stay curious about new technology, absolutely, but stay grounded in fundamentals. Maintain relationships with people who share your values. Keep developing skills that transcend any single trend.

Because when this bubble bursts and we rebuild, the people who’ll matter most aren’t the ones who rode the highest wave. They’re the ones who were building something real the whole time.

That’s the truth as I see it, no sugar coating, no corporate spin. The storm’s coming. But storms always pass. What matters is what you’re building that can weather it and what you learned while it was forming.

Stay steady out there.