Is Rust a Hacker News Bubble?

Yes, according to the job market, there’s a significant disparity between Rust’s online (Hacker News) hype and its real world adoption. I conducted an analysis of approximately 200,000 tech jobs from January 1st to April 30th, 2025. Rust was found in only 5.6% of software development job listings, indicating a clear disconnect.

The Hacker News Phenomenon

If you’ve been following Hacker News over the past few months, you might think that Rust is the most popular programming language. A quick search of Hacker News story titles from January 1st to May 2025, showed that Rust comes 4th after AI, LLM, and Open Source. Here is a quick overview of the numbers.

AI: 13,658 stories

LLM: 2,617 stories

Open source: 2,401 stories

Rust: 1,349 stories

Python: 1,035 stories

Golang: 116 stories

While the numbers might suggest that Rust has achieved mainstream adoption in the industry, it’s important to consider the broader job market context. Do these discussion trends truly reflect real-world usage?

Reality Check: The Job Market

To test this hypothesis, I analyzed 196,684 job listings for software development positions in the USA using the Fantastic Jobs platform. The search criteria were “Software Developer” jobs posted between January and April 2025.

Fantastic Jobs is a comprehensive job scraper that consolidates listings from multiple sources, including LinkedIn, various Applicant Tracking Systems (such as Ashby, Breezy, Eightfold, Greenhouse, and more), and direct company pages. It indexes millions of job postings enriched with AI, providing a broad overview of the current job market.

Here is a breakdown of the top 15 programming languages found in job ads. I looked for direct mentions of languages, and did some mapping too. For instance, if the job ad has react or angular, it was mapped to javascript.

Rust was found in only 10,978 listings (5.6%), sharply contrasting its online prominence. Also, 60% of these jobs mention Rust along with C++ in the same job ad.

Then, I considered comparing Rust jobs to those in the other languages; here are my findings.

Rust vs. Java

While Rust appeared in 5.6% of job listings, Java was present in 87,553 postings, accounting for 44.5%. This indicates more than eight times the demand for Java. Despite ongoing predictions of Java’s decline, it continues to dominate the requirements for enterprise development jobs.

Rust vs. C++

Likewise, C++ was found in 54,197 job listings (27.6%), five times more often than Rust. Although Rust is considered a modern, memory-safe alternative to C++, the extensive codebases and ecosystem of C++ continue to create substantial job opportunities.

Rust vs. Python

Python came first with 99,836 job listings, accounting for 50.8% of all jobs analyzed. This reflects its usage in various fields, such as data science, web development, scraping, LLM, Deep Learning, and automation.

This isn’t surprising, given that Python is used for most development related to large language models (LLMs).

Coexistence, Not Replacement

Interestingly, 3.2% of all job listings mentioned Rust and C++ together, suggesting that Rust is more often used alongside C++ rather than replacing it entirely. Similarly, 2.8% of listings mentioned Rust and Java, indicating complementary adoption rather than wholesale migration.

This trend might aligns with the microservices architecture paradigm that many companies have adopted. Or it could be a migration process from other languages to Rust.

Organizations often maintain legacy systems in established languages while developing new microservices in more modern languages like Rust. A single company might simultaneously maintain Java backend services, C++ performance-critical components, and Rust microservices for security-sensitive operations—each leveraging the strengths of its respective language.

Why the Bubble?

Several factors might explain this disconnect between Rust’s HN stories and its job market representation:

• Early adopter bias: Hacker News has lots of early adopters and cutting-edge practitioners who explore emerging technologies before mainstream adoption. Making them focus on potential and innovation rather than current market realities.

• Hiring lag: There’s typically a delay between technology adoption and corresponding job market shifts, as organizations need time to commit to new technologies and develop hiring pipelines for newer skill sets.

• Risk aversion: Established enterprises, which create most programming jobs, tend to be conservative in adopting newer languages without proven track records at scale. This trend has intensified in the current economic climate, where tech hiring has become more cautious, and many companies have reduced R&D spending. With tighter budgets, many organizations focus on maintaining existing systems rather than investing in newer technologies, regardless of their technical merits.

What Does This Mean?

Is Rust overrated? Not necessarily. Its technical merits are real, and its growing adoption shows it’s finding its place in the ecosystem. However, job seekers betting exclusively on Rust expertise might face a more limited job market than expected. This is due to the challenges of convincing risk-averse enterprises to adopt newer languages, the lag between technology adoption and job market shifts, and the current economic climate’s impact on tech hiring. These challenges are important to consider when evaluating Rust’s job market prospects.

It’s important to note that this analysis represents a snapshot rather than a comprehensive view of the job market. Different industries, regions, and company sizes may show varying adoption rates for Rust and other languages. Also, job listings don’t always capture internal technology transitions or experimental projects that have yet to result in hiring. Considering this broader context is crucial for job seekers and technology enthusiasts to make informed decisions about their career paths and technology investments.