(2026-09-17) Pereira Dealing With The Broken Job Market

Dan Pereira: Dealing With the Broken Job Market. I have a confession for you. I’ve never received an offer for any job I applied to. Not even a single time

how do you perceive the job market right now?

What changed is something else.

Today, many candidates leverage AI to apply to as many jobs as possible. How they do it varies, but they apply to 10x more positions than they’re used to. Inevitably, companies had to invent ways to spot the “best fitting candidates.” Guess what they’re doing? Using AI to filter out the misfits. In summary, you use AI to apply, and companies use AI to filter you out. AI talking to AI. That’s a game of mediocrity, and nobody wins.

Let me start with my failures and lessons that came only later.

The Software Architect Dream

I never wanted to be in product. All I wanted was to be a software architect. I knew none, but I wanted it very hard for whatever reason.

Eventually I got my first opportunity in a completely random way. I found a job portal in Brazil, created my profile, and got approached by a recruiter. The position had nothing to do with software engineering, but it would get me closer to people doing it, at least I believed. I was supposed to be a field technician, working with network and cabling in the only factory in my hometown. I took the job.

As I started, I got my desk in a shared room with three software engineers

I felt I was into something the job market couldn’t give to me. Back then, I couldn’t name it, but today I can. It’s relationship building.

I worked in this job for roughly a year, and then something happened. The software engineering team needed to grow, and they already knew me.

A few years in, I got a promotion, took more responsibilities, and hit the wall. There was nowhere to grow. No architect position in sight, though for my hometown standards I was doing pretty well

I think I was playing the wrong game altogether

The Business of People & Relationships

fast forward to 2026, I never became a software architect, and I have no regrets about it. But I learned something else, something that most people are missing. Hiring is more a business of relationships than you imagine.

I became a product manager without knowing what that was. In an English immersion course in a country house, after a presentation, Leandro Fengler, a CEO came to me and invited me to work with him as a product manager. The thing is that we spent a whole week together, learning about each other, and he saw something in me I didn’t see. And I took the leap, and stayed in product.

Today, I realise that the best opportunities will come to you depending on how you build your relationships. How open you show up to people around you.

I haven’t worked for the fancy companies, big tech, or other prestigious ones. But I had a lot of fun over the last two decades.

My two lessons for you:

Build relationships, because it’s more a business of people than qualifications

Whenever you’re afraid and excited at the same time, take the chance.

one small thing you can do this week. Think of one person you enjoyed working with and haven’t talked to in a while. Send them a message, but don’t ask for anything, just to reconnect.