My predictions for 2025 + opportunities to work with me

Hey,

I'm Sergio Pereira, and this is the Remote Work newsletter 👋

Last week I told you about my New Year resolutions for 2025. I reckon I’ve dived headfirst into a busy start, onboarding new clients, and kicking off the year with existing ones, as a Fractional CTO.

There's very exciting stuff going on, I'm hiring several positions for different clients, all remote, some full time and others Fractional. I'm posting a few opportunities below, at the end of this newsletter. Check them out.

In today's newsletter, I'm laying out my predictions for 2025, in tech, startups and remote work. I think we're living through a time of deep transformation of our industry, with lots of opportunity, but also lots of change.

These are my 5 top predictions for this year:

1/ An explosion of new startups being founded

AI tools like Cursor, V0, and even ChatGPT, coupled with no-code workflow tools like Zapier are lowering the barriers for launching new software products and even services. Going from zero to one is more accessible than ever, even for folks without any technical knowledge.

US startups would frequently pay $50k-$100k for the implementation of an MVP, and that would entail a team of several engineers working across a few months to make the product ready for the first clients. Nowadays, for simple products, a non-tech founder can generate working code with Cursor, glue it together with some workflow tool, and have a (barely) working MVP that's ready to test market demand. This will cost a few hundreds of $$ at most.

This started happening over the last decade with no-code tools, but those would be very limited and required a hard refactor once customisation was needed (usually very soon). Now, these clunky MVPs can last longer, be more customised, and Founders have these AI tools to help them figure out bugs and code feature extensions. It has never been this easy to become a Startup Founder.

2/ More layoffs in big tech

Big tech companies are continuously seeking cost-cutting measures to maintain (or increase) profitability. I see them continue the reduction of managerial layers and leveraging AI to enhance productivity of individual contributors, including Software Engineers, so they can operate with leaner teams.

These tools also allow Software Engineering teams to produce more and faster, which will cause companies to build more sophisticated internal tools which can render many people redundant across customer support, marketing, etc. I see a huge arms race as companies seek to build AI agents and LLM-enabled solutions do achieve these goals. There's a big hype in all this of course, not all such efforts will create solutions that replace teams, but some will do, and others will partially do it. There will also be companies doing layoffs and hiring new employees at the same time, as they try to realign with their new roadmaps. 

Interestingly, many of those laid off from big tech will leverage their experience and become Startup founders, which I predict will be a big contribution to the startup ecosystem growth predicted in point 1.

3/ Rise of the Product Engineer role

Traditionally, tech teams are divided between those who define what and why a product should be built (Product Managers) and those who determine how to build it (Software Engineers). As a continued trend in 2025, we'll see these roles converging more and more. This will result in Product Engineers who have both product vision and technical execution skills.

While most companies won't officially create this new title, it will be a common expectation from most Software Engineers, Product Managers and other adjacent roles in between. In contrast, Managers who can't execute will continue being easily made redundant. And Engineers who can only write code will be competing against code generation tools like Cursor (they'll win for now, but it's an uphill battle as LLM models become continually better).

The natural evolution of any Software Engineer is to gain awareness of the product they are building, the client who's going to buy it, and the underlying business opportunity that this unlocks. Simlarly, the evolution of a Product Manager (or any business stakeholder for that matter) is to learn how to leverage these powerful new tools to execute on their product vision and business goals.

This hybrid role will reduce average team sizes across tech, reduce process complexity, reduce time spent in meetings, etc. Teams become more lean and fast paced, not just in startups, but as a global expectation.

4/ The big remote work divide continues

Big tech has returned to the office in mass, their culture in 2025 is exactly the same it was in 2019. They haven't changed learned how to operate remotely, and reverted to the old way of doing things. Many people left because of this, as they seek remote work opportunities, while others are ok or even excited to return to the office culture they've always known. 

On the other hand, Startups are remote by default. I'm seeing this since 2021, Founders don't long for the office costs, and they'll continue preferring to hire them remotely, especially in countries with low cost of living. The barriers didn't only reduce on the tooling size, remote work allows Founders in high cost of living regions to hire in more affordable places and skip office lease costs altogether. It's cheaper than ever to start a business. And what I'm seeing as a Fractional CTO is that startups continue their remote culture even after they are funded and/or profitable and as the team grows. The costs and risks of moving into an office are huge (main one being that most of the team would leave), and for most startups I work with there's simply no need to do it. They have a healthy remote culture, they are building product that clients happily pay for, and they just continue doing that as they grow.

Interestingly, this same divide applies to the adoption of AI tools. Many enterprise companies are banning these tools, and on the other hand I see many startups pushing people to use them and paying those expenses and a performance boost for their teams.

5/ Normalisation of Fractional Jobs, Fractional careers and teams composed of Fractional workers

I'm seeing lots of new projects in this space (some not public yet), from job boards, communities, recruiting agencies, etc. Interesting times ahead.

There's huge appetite from the talent side (I have dozens of people in my DMs every week asking questions about leaving their full time job and trying a fractional career). There's still lack of awareness from most companies, but I see significant momentum especially in startups (where limited funding pushes Founders to hire experienced professionals on a part time basis, rather than full time).

If it proves anything, I'm having the highest demand ever for my Fractional CTO services, and I'm working at startups where all or most of the team is engaged on a Fractional basis, both C-levels and individual contributors. This wasn't a thing at all just a few years ago.

Now, opportunities in my teams (or teams close to me)

As I said above, I'm now hiring for several clients, several opportunities, most of them don't yet have a public job description:

• Backend Engineer (Python), for ETL data flows, LLM integrations, and automation at large (2 different opportunities) - Fully remote - One full time, another Fractional

• AI Engineer, to build AI Agents and RAG pipelines - Fully remote - Project based

• Backend Engineer (.Net), ideally with some experience in blockchain architectures - Remote in Europe/LATAM - Fractional

• Mobile Engineers for both native Android and native iOS apps - Remote in Europe/LATAM - Fractional

• Frontend Engineer (React.js) - Fully remote - Fractional

• Smart Contract Engineer (Solidity) - Fully remote - Fractional

• QA Engineer (mobile apps and crypto wallet flows) - Fractional

If you're interested in any of these roles, simply drop me your CV/linkedin and a quick intro paragraph, as a reply to this newsletter email (or a DM on X/Linkedin). 

In case you're looking for a new job, have a look into JobsCopilot and the Remote Jobs Braintrust. Hundreds of people are using my tools to find jobs, and I'm happy to help as many people as possible.

Thanks for reading this newsletter until the end. You can read all past editions here. Make sure to share it with your friends and colleagues so they can read it too.

See you next Friday,

Sergio Pereira, 
Startup CTO & Remote Work Lover