Panic at the Job Market

I had no idea it had gotten so bad. 4th of July was talking with my brother-in-law. His daughter just got some awesome job working for an insurance company (they do commercial insurance) and she had over EIGHT interviews she had to go through, which involved not one, but two days where she spent the day at the company.

I could not believe it takes companies and managers this much work to try and hire someone new. She was fresh out of college, and I was stunned that she stood in there and kept going back for the next interview.

As an aside, I've found the same thing at the very large corporation I work at. The company has made it all but impossible to move laterally to another team you might find interesting and to grow your skills. We have an internal job board and they have lengthy lists of requirements and if you don't meet every single one, you won't get a whiff of an interview. They seem more bent on more outsourcing and contracting at this point. So not only lateral movement is all about impossible, moving up is even harder for the same reason - they're only looking to hire unicorns that come from other FANG companies or on the similar order.

I can't remember a time when I was a developer I had so few people reaching out seeing if I was interested in roles at various companies. At the time I thought it was just a gold rush that seemingly never stopped, even when I thought it would. Even during C19, I still had recruiters contacting him asking me I was interested in remote contract work. Post C19 and everything has dried up. I'm not getting 10 emails from recruiters, I'm not seeing interesting or great roles anywhere that haven't already had 100 people apply. Everybody in my networks are just staying where they are and waiting out the storm so to speak - so no leads from that area either. I apply for a job here and there and never get a response or confirmation they've moved on.

It looks like the writing is finally on the walls that the party is over huh?

I would go in for a front-end role and people would start asking me about .Net and show me .Net code and ask me see I could figure out why the code didn't work or troubleshoot some Python snippet.

I thought I would never walk out of an interview. When I walked out of three of them because of stuff like this, I kept asking myself if I was being unreasonable. I came to find out talking to other dev friends, this was becoming fairly common and I have no idea why.

All of the big corporations I worked at always focused on specialization. You a DB gyy? Then that's all you do and you're an expert. Front-end guy? Sure, know some design, but client side stuff you should be an expert. Now? Feels like, "How many roles can I hire one person for?" is the standard bearer.

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them."