Frankly, seriously consider a career change. The ladder has been pulled up for entry-level positions due to AI, interest-rates, etc. This will come back and bite us as an industry, but it’ll be 10 years from now and most people can’t wait that long.
I can’t speak for everyone, but 3000+ applicants for a single opening is typical at my org. The odds of any given individual getting in are essentially zero. Referrals get priority over everyone else, even candidates that are on-paper better qualified.
It sucks for everyone involved, especially for job hunters. But from the hiring side, truthfully, there’s no end in sight.
My 5 year plan is to move to the EU, but it's a process. You're not going to be doing it as your next job hop from the US if you haven't been planning for it.
The trick is to get a masters or MBA in the country where you want to live. Germany and Netherlands are excellent for this. You can find lots of jobs with no local language requirements.
The fun part is that I went the security engineer route instead of SDE/SWE. It has some pros and cons, but seems like it's one of the "high demand" roles that gets more traction looking at others who have moved abroad.
I also have friends and family in Netherlands, France, and UK who help me keep tabs on how things are going in various places and where might be better locations to target for an American with a technical background looking to just up and leave the US.
Bunch of services that can do captchas now. It’d maybe lessen the load on employers but then job seeking becomes pay to play. The candidate who can afford one of those services + automation beats out those who can’t. It’s already an arms race of sorts.
