What SWE job hunting is like right now

I'm a contractor, things were strange during COVID. I worked on project rewrites that got abandoned, and made the mistake of doing test consulting for companies that had never tested before. I will never do that again.

It used to take two-weeks max to find a new position. It's now been two months, and I have no leads. I will call out the exact situation I've run into.

I have received nearly 20 calls from a dozen different recruiting firms all for the same two back-fill jobs at Charter in St. Louis. I interviewed with them once, and it's not a match. .NET, Knockout, and TSQL... They weren't interested in me either. I'm not exactly offended by that.

I get two calls a day about Charter at this point. I've been told, "they just finished a round of interviews, and didn't find anyone." At this point, I have to ask straight away to anyone that calls me about a position, "Is this for Charter?" It's always yes, and I always say, I've already interviewed and I'm not interested.

One of these firms told me they don't want to work with Charter anymore because they've basically gone through everyone, and still haven't hired for these two back-fill positions they've been interviewing for. And they seem to be the only company in the city that's hiring. Or pretending to hire, because they've been giving everyone the runaround for months. I asked to add a note for me in their system that I don't want anymore calls for Charter. They added it and told me they have a shared system with a few other organizations.

That same firm told me they are focusing more on remote positions instead of St. Louis. Which is the least safe city in the country, which includes financial security.

I've always struggled with St. Louis overall. Enterprise is ancient here. When I'm told, "But we have Boeing, Centene, and Bayer!" I have to groan a bit. I'm not talking about tech stack, it's all old as far as I'm concerned, I'm talking about mentality. Nobody tests, CI automation is unheard of. And everyone rolls their eyes at the web. These companies want to build web applications, but they don't want to use the tools of the trade, they want to use desktop tools and pretend browsers don't exist. It's like building a skyscraper with nothing but wood planks and screw driver. I won't get into that at the risk of a much longer rant.

This place feels like a barren wasteland. But I know people in other areas are struggling to find work too. I'm open to move at this point, but I haven't decided which market to focus on. Is there anywhere that's actually growing right now?

They are more documentation driven. Every line of code and every change is meticulously documented and reviewed. This is the pre-agile, pre-automation way of doing things.

Doesn’t Bayer’s Ag division have a data science org out of St. Louis

yeah I occasionally meet recruiters in the midwest for jobs in the midwest, and they don’t seem to understand how ridiculous and nonstandard their approaches are to anything. the recruiter or the organization with the role.

Are you just looking for local to St Louis? How much experience do you have? Do you have a broad skillset or are you pretty focused? Each of these things has a huge effect on your job search, and you didn't really mention any of them.