[jaxtracks]

I'm on both sides of this right now, hiring senior engineers for companies I consult for, while considering getting back to full time technical focus in a staff/principal role.

When I'm hiring, I'm having to trudge through a TON of irrelevant resumes, and some super weird interviews with folks lying about their location or clearly relying on LLMs for answers to broad questions experienced folks with very general software knowledge should be able to talk about easily.

For getting hired, my resume acceptance rate was abysmal when I usually do pretty well, but when I actually get to talk to folks I can sense relief that I am who I say I am and have real experience. Offers are coming in at a range similar to 2021.

It's a very noisy atmosphere at the moment. I think folks experiencing the anxiety I felt at the start of my search should rest assured that there are real jobs for people who do real work. AI definitely isn't taking them. Getting face to face with the person who needs your skills is hard these days, but going through your network helps a lot and if that fails, persistence still works. If you need to hire, I've found going through my network to circumvent the applicant spam very effective for that side as well.

We're a community, and we can do a lot of good for ourselves and each other by connecting directly when our usual channels for placement are so unreliable these days.