Job Hunting Used To Be Easy

I'm spoiled, no doubt about it. I used to listen to a career-oriented software development podcast where the running joke was that the most common advice for every user-submitted question was "quit your job." It was that easy to find a new one, one that would pay better, a guaranteed pay raise, and perhaps a promotion to boot. It was a common remedy with little risk that cured all manner of dissatisfaction, from toxic culture to mismanagement to stagnation. Staying in one place could lead to advancement, but not always. Besides that, the risk of failing to capture your market value was high. Now, the calculus has changed. If I could turn back time, I would slap myself and say, "Be happy where you are! You'll grow! Your pay is sufficient! Make it work!" Unfortunately, it's too late for me. Now I'm swimming in the sea of LLM-infested waters, tossed to and fro by poorly constructed coding challenges that reward swift implementation over thought-out solutions. Interviewers are rowing around me in their employment boats, taunting me with life preservers. All I have to do is recite the mantra "details-shmetails" and play the game. I need to slap together rote solutions. I need to parrot opinions about the usefulness of NgRx signal stores. I need to add details to my resume that a software engineer should not be expected to know, like the percentage of revenue growth “Feature A” generated, ignoring the cost, of course. I need to boast about my AWS experience, as if it carries more weight than my lengthy Azure experience. As if they're not direct competitors offering the same features to win business. Have I used AWS Lambdas? Yes, and I've used Azure Functions. Have I used EKS? Yes, and I’ve used AKS too. The list goes on. I know that I’m a gem. I like to pore over code bases, read documentation, spin up pet projects, understand the business I serve, and share what I learn. I temper all of this with a desire to increase revenue and minimize cost. Unfortunately, I’m a horrible salesman, unable to sell myself to the next would-be employer when it really counts. I know there are solutions out there for me. I can practice coding challenges and answer system design questions. I can review common interview questions and embellish my production support experiences. I can play the game, and I’ll probably land a job, but when I climb into the boat, I think that my soul will be left behind, floating face down in the water.