A few days ago I wrote a LinkedIn post about how the job market has changed for senior engineers. The short version: the application funnel is broken, the work has shifted upstream, you compete by being legible to the right people before you need them. The post traveled further than I expected. What I keep returning to is not the data. It is what the post made visible, in me and in the engineers who answered.
The volume nobody names
There is a clean version of the visibility argument that goes something like this. Write publicly. Build in the open. Show how you think. Opportunities follow. The version is true. It is also incomplete in a way that matters.
What gets left out of that version is the volume. The actual texture of doing this work is not one polished article a month while you sip coffee and contemplate your career. It is articles, and LinkedIn posts, and engagement on other people's threads, and showcase projects on GitHub, and open source contributions, and the open-to-work tag, all happening in parallel with the actual job search. Applications. Screening calls. Recruiter conversations that go nowhere. Technical assessments. Take-home tasks that eat a weekend. Panel interviews with people who have not read your CV. System design rounds. Behavioral rounds. Follow-up emails. Rejection emails. The occasional silence that is somehow worse than rejection.
