I'm glad you had a relatively good experience but for many mid "average" software engineers, this is absolutely the case.

And by "average" I mean:

- did not go to prestigious college

- do not have 8 years of specialized experience

- have not worked at faang level company

- struggle to do multiple leetcode hards in an interview

- are not cheating with ai tools and/or straight up lying about experience

i can, with full confidence, tell you that the reports of these developers sending out hundreds (if not thousands) of applications without any progress is absolutely the norm at this moment.

You don't need to believe me, just look at the data. There's been hundreds of thousands of software developers laid off in the past years and not enough job openings to make up for it.