Too many juniors, too few jobs — and the real problem is somewhere else

I post a Flutter developer opening fairly regularly.

Within 2–3 days I get 200–300 applications. Not bots — real people.

The market is flooded with juniors and early middles right now. And it's genuinely hard for them:
— landing that first job
— standing out among dozens of candidates
— proving they're actually competent in an interview

But here's what most people miss.

Even once you get the offer — that's only the beginning of the trouble.

Here's what I see with almost every candidate. A developer can:
✅ build a feature
✅ wire up an integration
✅ get it to "work on my machine"

But can't:
❌ fit it into an existing project
❌ keep the architecture coherent
❌ hold to basic engineering principles
❌ think ahead

So you end up with a pile of code that's painful to maintain and grow. And the saddest part — a couple of months later, even the author can't read their own code.

Why does this happen?

Because the internet is packed with tutorials:
— complex animations
— custom widgets
— flashy UI tricks

And almost nothing about:
• how to organize code
• how to make architectural decisions
• how to think in projects, not screens
• how to write code that outlives you

Flutter isn't the problem. The missing piece is systems thinking.

And that's exactly what separates a developer from an engineer — someone who just executes from someone who's actually valuable.

In the next posts I'll break down:
— common architecture mistakes
— how to untangle messy code
— how to be useful instead of just cranking out code

If you recognized yourself here — that's fine. The only real question is whether you want to climb out.

Where are you right now — junior, middle, or senior?