This matches my experience as well as a sr. Ruby/Python engineer (NE USA based) The market was pretty barren in late 2025, but wasn't too terrible in Jan 2026

This matches my experience as well as a sr. Ruby/Python engineer (NE USA based) The market was pretty barren in late 2025, but wasn't too terrible in Jan 2026 and I progressed nicely through two interview processes. Got an offer from one. Made it to the final round with the other but timeframes did quite not align. shiny new budgets I was curious about this aspect. Lot of companies have fiscal years (and, presumably, budgets) that do not start at the same time as the calendar year.