Personally, I think it's worse than 2000. There are so many more actually talented engineers now competing for each job. The dot com boom and bust cycle was famous for people being hired (and then laid off) who had little to no background in software. I don't see that being the case now.
It's possible my interview and other skills have declined, but after being rejected only once in the first 25 years of my career (when I was fresh out of school and terrible at interviewing), I've now been rejected from a half dozen jobs where I got to the panel interview. This included one where they said they planned to make an offer but ended up going with a different candidate. Another where it felt like a perfect match but then they never even got back to me. Another where I bombed a dynamic programming problem that leetcode puts at its most difficult rating. YMMV but I think it's tough out there.
This is my experience too. I hadn't been rejected from a job since starting work in the late 90s. Significant experience from coding (which I still do) to startup exec level. Multiple "it came down to you and one other" situations.
Jobs are in short supply, applicants are numerous. Most interviews are also with managers 10 years younger than I am which may be a compounding factor. That's not an issue for me, but I think it's easier for them to hire someone of a similar age.
I think its the AI screening...I don't have a ton of keywords in my resume, and for the last 1.5 years I haven't been getting shit for interviews, which is about when AI started getting rolled out.
I guess its back to good ol' keyword stuff the resume again. jfc
It feels that way, but I don't think the build-out in the late 90s can be compared to what we've seen in recent years. Many companies were coming online for the first time, and it was a mad rush. They were looking for any warm body that could spell HTML. Many weren't even trained in technology. There were plenty who went back to what they were doing before when they realized the party was over.
