I’m curious if it’s just me or not. I’m an SE with 10+ years of experience, mostly in full-stack with a wide variety of languages and stacks, and my last title was at the “staff” level. I’m almost 40 years old; not sure if age discrimination is much of a thing (my interviewers have been mostly around my age or younger). I’ve been looking for a job for months. I’ve been applying to just about every job posting where my skills match on LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter (mostly just the Easy Apply option lately, so I can send more applications out). I’ve even been applying to positions that just require 2+ years of experience; I’d take any job (except defense or big tech). I’ve probably sent something like 400 applications out at this point. I’ve gotten a few interviews, and think I did OK, but I guess not good enough since I was still rejected. Is this normal?
The last time I was looking for a job (2021), I only sent 20 applications out, and landed a job on my first interview. I also tried Upwork for a couple weeks, but wasn’t able to land any contracts. I think everyone there is either looking for very cheap devs in the developing world or rockstars with tons of contracting experience and large portfolios.
About 15 years experience. I normally have a new job within a month or 2 of looking.
This time it took me 6 months, a pay cut and applying to everything under the sun daily to get anywhere. It’s not just you the job market is ass right now.
Yeah; took me a full year (granted, half your experience but still); once the husband joined me in applying to jobs around the clock did I start to make any headway (and that was still another 4 months). It was brutal.