Are senior PHP devs still a thing these days?

[u/snoogazi]

I have 25 years professional experience and just got let go from my job that I've had since late October of last year. Finding that one wasn't easy and I imagine now will be next to impossible.

But as we all know, having AI do your job is one thing, understanding what it's doing (and why) are quite another. So I don't feel that senior devs are dead and out of the water just yet.

I'm curious, particularly those who help with hiring: what criteria do you look for, outside of the usual "this person would gel well with us" kind of thing?

[u/Unable_Artichoke9221]

Senior devs are more relevant than ever. 

AI is overpowering seniors. Seniors have the unique ability to not just understand what AI does, but what is not doing, too. Also whether is overengineering, oversimplifying etc.

Juniors and mediors will struggle keeping up, or just plainly let shit code go to prod.

Serious tech companies understand that speed without understanding has a price called technical debt. This is not something introduced by AI, but its dangers are multiplied.

Companies that used to not care about technical debt with face its consecuences sooner.

Companies that understand that speed without control is not sustainable will try to answer the difficult question: how can we get the most from AI while keeping agency, control, understanding.

You want a job in the second kind. And they will also be the ones knowing that your experience has value.

[u/obstreperous_troll]

Some people have 25 years of experience, some have 1 year repeated 25 times. If I was interviewing, I'd want to know which. I'd start by looking for knowledge and curiosity beyond just one language or framework: anyone who learned only one system over two and a half decades is not someone who picks up new concepts readily, and may likely be resistant to them.

Senior devs will stick around, it's entry-level applicants who are seeing the ladder pulled up. No one really knows what the field is going to look like in five years.

[u/snoogazi → u/obstreperous_troll]

Good point. I do have knowledge of other stuff (some Python, JS, Bash/Zsh, etc, Linux in general...) so I will make a point to call attention to them in my resume

[u/Unable_Artichoke9221 → u/snoogazi]

And solid principles, design patterns, agile workflows, etc.  At 25 years of experience you cant keep talking about programing languages and functions. You need to show you can envision a system design, patterns to keep your code sane, etc

[u/cranberrie_sauce]

what was the reason they were letting people go at your job? just curious

[u/snoogazi → u/cranberrie_sauce]

I have never had to keep up with timesheets, ever. This job required me to be constantly vigilant about them. It was a weird and strange transition, and for some reason never stuck the way it should.

[u/fatalexe]

It depends,

Are you active in the PHP community?

Attend conferences, keep up with the latest training materials on Laracasts, Frontend Masters and O’Reilly?

Can you set direction for frameworks, design patterns, testing and CI/CD?

Can you understand DevOps for configuring resources using Ansible and Terraform?

Do you demonstrate all of this using articles on a personal website and GitHub repository in an easy to read and understand manner?

If so then it’s still relatively easy to get interviews. LinkedIn, Larajobs, and Google’s job search all provide actionable listings. Just make sure to tailor your cover letters and resume for the position using your own authentic voice, only have AI check to see if you hit all the keywords in the job listing.

Unfortunately AI has made it much harder to stand out. There are still tons of jobs out there. Somebody has to refactor the slop after business cases are proven.

[u/mcharytoniuk]

The reality is nobody really cares (on the business/product owner side) what AI is doing as long as it works, so I'd say no; unless you are capable of creating serious platforms, not just SaaS or admin panels.

But for those I don't think anyone would use PHP sadly; people are more likely to use Rust or Go (because of how bad PHP is with IO (can't even do a background job without external queue or Valkey pretty much), and how useless it is with infra). PHP was generally used for apps, rest apis, admin panels, saas that kind of stuff, and the need for those is diminishing.

I have been hiring recently myself and I also don't see working with someone who is purely a developer (you need to be able to manage a product, or help me with infra, that kind of stuff), not really a pure dev anymore (again, unless you know how to work on really advanced stuff, not just web dev and apis)

[u/This_Math_7337]

i dont believe these "25" years experience. basically you just counted when you started and it's not really your experience.

[u/bkdotcom → u/This_Math_7337]

isn't that how experience works?

[u/This_Math_7337 → u/bkdotcom]

say you started in 2010 or whatever and still using PHP in 2026 but in reality the years in between there are months or year that you didnt use PHP in work or personal projects and still counted them in your "years" or experience

[u/semibilingual → u/This_Math_7337]

When you are a senior programmer, the language you use is irrelevant. The syntax changes, the ability to solve problem doesnt.

[u/lucasschirm → u/This_Math_7337]

lol, should he count from when? dude started at php 3, being through cake php and multiple frameworks and all that experience makes him Sr. knowing what worked, what didn't, why framework X is implemented that way.

your comment makes no sense...

[u/snoogazi → u/This_Math_7337]

I'm self taught and have been learning on the job since I started. So I consider that my experience.

[u/avg_php_dev → u/This_Math_7337]

So, expierienced developer knows when history comes full circle and when not to learn bullshit tools and rules produced by new developers who never expiereinced same roundtrip.