That advice is valid for dime-a-dozen coders working dime-a-dozen jobs, which, granted, is the majority of developers, but we're on Hacker News. The more specialized and deeply technical a role is, the smaller the pool of qualified people is and the really senior folks tend to know each other. Networking matters much much more in these smaller tight-knit communities.
I had to look for a job both in 2023 and last year. For me it was both a network and specialized skills.
Specialized skills for me was cloud + app dev consulting and working at AWS (ProServe) and even more specialized was that I was a major contributor on a popular official open source “AWS Solution” in it niche and I had my own published open source solutions on AWS’s official GitHub site.
That led to two interviews and one offer within three weeks.
My network led to offers where a former manager submitted me to a position at the company that had acquired the company we worked for as a “staff architect” over the technical direction of all of their acquisitions. They gave me an offer.
My network also got me an offer from a former coworker who was a director of a F500 non tech company. He was going to make a position for me to be over the cloud architecture and migration strategies. He trusted me and he had just started working there.
Last year, my current job just fell in my lap, the internal recruiter reached out to out to me and that led to an offer.
I also had another former CTO throw a short term contract my way to tide me over.
But on the other hand, my plan B applications as a standard enterprise CRUD developer working remotely led to nothing.
