[koblas]

Keep in mind that the layoffs earlier this year have still had a huge impact on the job market for software engineers. Many companies moved their hiring bar higher and have gotten more selective over their canidates. 2 years ago, if you pretty much had a pulse you could have jumped fields (yes, some jobs did require specialized knowledge).

Many Canadian companies are not doing "interesting" things so I can understand the perspective of being at the long end of the funnel on sprint tasks for a product that might not be getting huge marketing wins. You've already taken the first step at figuring out what's interesting to you. As others have said, start learning about some topic areas find the meetups over those topics and start networking and getting to know people in the field.

Lastly, interviewing is a skill.

[JohnMakin]

> Keep in mind that the layoffs earlier this year have still had a huge impact on the job market for software engineers.

People keep saying this like it's a fact but I've not seen anything in the employment data to suggest this is remotely the case. Tech unemployment is startlingly low, and even during some of the massive layoff months, tech was still adding jobs faster than it was shedding them. Last I checked, tech unemployment was at 1.5-2%, much lower than the national average (USA at least).

[sokoloff]

I think what I’ve seen is that with the near hiring freeze at Amazon and a substantial slowdown at Google means that the next tier down of employers are having their pick of candidates that they might have had a harder time landing when Amazon and Google were hiring 5-figures of SWEs every year. So, even if everyone ends up being employed, the selectivity could still be higher than normal. I know we amped up our thresholds for hiring quality.

[tracerbulletx]

My anecdote having just switched jobs is that It did not take long to get a new job, only about one week to get an interview, a month to complete the process and start and I had 2 offers. However I applied a bunch of places, and even with referrals, only a small fraction got back to me which 3 years ago when I last changed jobs almost everyone always did.

[myth_drannon]

Tech hiring is completely frozen. 2 years ago I had ~80% response rate, now it's 1%