Garbage. I focused on roles that were a good fit for my resume , and initially at around what I had previously been making, and progressivley lowering as time went on , but to no avail. Recruiters almost immediately vanished and never returned. It was very unpredictable. Some months I might get a handful of interviews, most months radio silence. Interviews were weird too. There was a lot of not progressing past first round, which was usually understandable, but also a lot of ghosting after making it to final rounds and hearing good feedback. The same jobs would be posted, then deleted, then posted again.
There also seemed to be a lot of unicorn hunting, even in generalist positions.
To be fair though, it could have been a lot easier. Particularly early on, I had one criteria, I wanted to stay remote and I sure as hell didn't want to move. I was ready to accept less money, but it was no use.
Eventually everything caved in and I took a new job and had to move. Only got it because of a referral, and arguably I was less qualified for it than the numerous jobs I wasted months applying to and interviewing for. It's hybrid with three days remote, but rumor is management plans to claw back despite worrying about retention and many of the developers claiming it's one of the things that would retain them.
I really hate this field. I would kill to get out, but that seems less and less likely every year.
> 2. Take the time to level up on one or two foundational skills whose barriers to entry are combinations of tenacity and intelligence, or tech stacks that are very close to a foundational skill. Something like "Fart App Framework" is not a foundational skill because it becomes obsolete in a very short amount of time. Things like mathematics, statistics, hard sciences, cryptography, security, etc. will carry you through the rest of your career and create a moat.
I've understood this for a long time, and especially over the last year of unemployment it's seemed more and more relevant, but I've never been able to figure out how to do it.
The thing about building your career on "Fart App Framework" is that it's feasible to break into it no matter your background. This sector of software development does not have a lot of gate-keeping, not only in the sense of academic credentials, but also in the availability of entry level work. It's not uncommon for someone to be able spend some time learning "Fart App Framework" to the point where a company considers them skilled enough to employ them.
But for most of the suggested foundational skills I don't think I've ever seen entry level work available. I've definitely seen jobs for developers in the hard sciences, statistics, etc., but more than often they're looking for an established domain expert, with an established history in a particular niche. My understanding is that the early experience in these industries is gained through things like getting the right internship or going through the academic post-grad grind, things not usually accessible to people outside of academic institutions.
To expand a little more concretely, I've occasionally seen over time job listings in some of the suggested areas. Most commonly, I see jobs looking for a developer in [hard science]. The impression I get from most of these jobs is that they're looking for "[hard science] PhD who can write code" or at least "Developer with 10+ years of experience writing code for [hard science]". The often tend to be more specialized that just [hard science]. While I could hypothetically spend years of my life trying to learn and work on projects in [hard science], at the end of the day without any relevant degree, "real experience", and with my professional history (and thus majority of my resume) screaming "Fart App Framework developer" am I really ever going to be competitive with people who do have those things? The market is much smaller than that for Fart App Framework developers anyway. I've focused in hard science here, but I think the same about mathematics, statistics, cryptography, etc.
Security seems to be the biggest outlier. I don't want to waste too much space talking about security work and its many forms, but in any form, it seems to be much more accessible for people without a "correct" background, more like general software development.
