I've been able to get something like 25 interviews in 2 months despite having long gaps on my resume and nothing especially impressive to my name. So I suspect you might be going about this wrong. I haven't gotten an offer yet, that's another story, but getting the interviews hasn't been hard. Applying in NYC/SF, senior-only.

I think another big change is the offer rate. I've had plenty of interviews in recent years but almost no offers.

So what do you attribute your success in getting interviews to? What are you doing right, or better than other people?

I honestly have no idea. The last place I worked is pretty well-known. Not big tech, but a recognizable name to most people. I send out a lot of applications: those 25 interviews are the result of 150 applications in the last two months or so. And then I have my linkedin set to be discoverable and looking for a job. Basically just fiddle with the options under Visibility and Data Privacy in the linkedin settings and a bunch of people start reaching out to you immediately. I also think I have a nicely formatted resume, really readable.

So are the majority of these applications the result of recruiters finding you via LinkedIn, or have you been applying direct as well? What application path have most of the interviews come from?

Both equally. I apply to a lot of stuff on BuiltIn, mostly.

Thanks!

In my experience anyone who went to Ivy+ or worked at Big N never has any problem getting a job.

I did not go to an Ivy, but I did go to a recognizable engineering school in the northeast (not MIT.)

So, NYU?

Location has always been a huge factor in these discussions. There are usually significantly less opportunities outside of hubs. It’s a cart/horse problem- because companies go to those hubs to hire due the talent pool.

Senior level is doing the heavy lifting here.

Isn’t the person with 14 years experience at least senior? Or are you saying senior is low level enough to get interviews?

Yes, I’m not speaking about the person with 14 years of experience.

I’m saying that looking for senior level roles is much easier than roles that aren’t quite senior yet.

IMO it’s just depression for tech. Back then 33% of total employment got gutted, which is probably better than tech today or in a few years when big techs start AI gut.

I don't know. The company I work at is inviting candidates for interviews, and we have to make compromises because we can't get the exact profiles we are looking for. Something about your comment does not add up to me.

Locality. People want to work close to where they live and not all places are bustling with all kind of activity. I suspect you're hybrid or on site only, right?

not GP, but we're hybrid but remote-first and 80% is remote and we have the same experience. Getting juniors is easy, getting seniors+ is very difficult.

The model I am mentioning matches with this. Speaking from my own personal experience as well, when you're junior and young, you can move anywhere, especially if you're ambitious. As you gain experience, you also settle down a bit in your life, you have a wife, kids, a house. Their jobs and schools. Moving then is a _big deal_.

Of course, there are other factors that make juniors more abundant on the current job market, namely, most companies don't want them.

That absolutely makes sense, but I'm not sure it is the reason. I mentioned we're remote first: we hire _everywhere_. I've been with this company for 7 years, and haven't traveled to HQ even once, and have worked from home or a spot of my choosing (but honestly, that spot is almost always home!) every day, that's how remote first we are - nobody has to uproot their life to work with us.

But it's still extremely hard to find senior+. I'm sure our tech stack plays a role, and naturally senior developers are much less common than juniors. But whenever I hear about the job market being super hard, I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe.

AI is not replacing anyone from my perspective, but AI might become our only hope at some point, because we're growing aggressively. I have to keep mediocre people because I can't even replace at that level easily - the only ones I'm pruning are the ones that are net-negative contributors.

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood your original post then, I interpreted "hybrid, remote first" as... You can be remote most days but you _need_ to be in office a couple of days. This just goes to teach mea hybrid model has _a lot_ of variants.

Back to the point, I think I'm pretty senior, mostly embedded SW, thankfully I still have work, but the job market seems to havecratered. I have friends that are pretty good that are looking for jobs for about half of year now.

I'm incredibly curious now what is your tech stack. And how do you guys view people looking to switch tech stacks.

We're very boring, our stack is PHP/postgres/mysql. A lot of Symfony, a lot of Symfony-style-code on top of Wordpress (mentioning that usually puts people off but it's all PHP in the end, and you can choose to write clean code on either).

Lots of people see PHP in general as a dead end career-wise and WP specifically as almost an insult, so there aren't many that advanced their skills and have continued to work with PHP (or Wordpress, but I believe that an experienced PHP developer has no trouble picking up WP).

We're generally very neutral on how someone arrived where they are, we don't require certificates or degrees, we focus on experience and skills. I wouldn't hire someone who isn't experienced with at least one side of our stack though (unless they're extremely good) because it takes time from other developers to upskill them and that's the one resource we don't have.

I won't disclose where I work though as that would dox myself and I much prefer anonymity.

Looking for a remote-only job in 2026 is a big handicap, though not impossible.

Sometimes it looks like the longer you're looking for a job, the harder it gets for some reason. That's unintuitive for me, as you should be getting more confident in interviews etc

Companies take your unemployment length as a negative signal

"He's been unemployed for 13 months? Why doesn't anyone want to hire him? Must be something wrong with him"

It's typically easiest to find a job when you have a job.

Maybe. Probably? But I also sense a fallacy here. I could get a new job tomorrow. Maybe it took me 8 years to find that job and I didn’t realize that because I was employed the whole time.

Does that make sense?

People wonder why something was picked over before committing to it, that's all it comes down to

Focus on what you can control, and you can control the perception of that. If you are interested in money, professional validation, and corporate structure, go that way.

You can try to alter the cultural fundamental assumptions when you're done.

I didn't come up with that idea, it has been passed down through generations of workers, and by multitudes of co-workers.

That sounds like poor signaling in that you think you are doing all the correct things but all evidence points to the contrary.

Instead of focusing on the trends you might try to look at qualifications like education, certifications, security clearance, skill expertise, open source contributions, and so forth. Trends are a gravity. I recommend distancing yourself from the crowd to uniquely stand out. Then as edge case opportunities open recruiters come to you.

To some recruiters, there's this sweet spot between 5 and 10 years experience where the applicant good / independent enough to hit the ground running, not too expensive, and still young enough to put up with company bullshit.

This right here is the answer. Also a big part of the reason for ageism, which is BS but so is corporate life in general.

A big problem we have is a the sheer volume of AI slop resumes, fake applicants and people trying to cheat on interviews. We had to close a req for SWE because we had so many “people” (read: automated applicants) clogging up the pipeline. You effectively need a referral

Referrals are also getting games. If your company has a referral bonus, then I promise you pretty much every single referral you have looked at, is from a guy who DIDNT know the guy. I applied to 20 Big Tech companies last month. All from "referrals". Check out teamblind.com if you don't know (Be careful. The site is like a tech version of 4 chan. Well maybe not THAT bad.) The whole game is messed up.

Most people are far more honest. I have never given a referral without knowing the person and what they can and can't do.

Sure, you can always find a website with someone shady on it. But that's always been the case.

Both of these views are consistent with each other. Most people are honest and issue few referrals. But the few people who are dishonest issue loads of referrals. Therefore, most of the referrals a company gets are from dishonest people.

Same for vacancies: half are fake, almost all are filled with ai slop.

Also for me. I cannot even get interviews anywhere. Enjoyed a really senior role at my previous position

Wow, that stinks. Are you just doing freelance in the meantime?

I don't think it's very silent?

Maybe people just have their fingers in their ears but this has been a problem for years now

Where are you located? What part of the industry?

Silent?

You guys keep trying to put a pillow over our face.

Are you based in the U.S.?

EU/UK

Have you considered roles in the EU countries that have been going gangbusters for US offshoring (Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia)?

Do you think they would like to consider $60k annual salary there?

The market in the EU is strange, it doesn't matter where you live. Every role is being advertised as a remote one, over 200+ applicants and it's virtually impossible to get noticed.

I blame this on people spamming fake AI CVs 24/7, no one is going to review hundreds of CVs.