People are applying to dozens or hundreds of jobs at once? How is that possible? I'm generally only considering 1 new employer at a time, and the most I've ever done concurrently was applying to two companies in CA at the same time.
How could there even be dozens of companies that you'd want to work for at any given time?
Maybe it's different in SF but out on the east coast I've seen people be passed for the wrong version of jQuery on the resume, or literally "not enough eye contact". Applying to jobs out here is kind of a crap shoot where you shotgun out to a ton till you get past enough bullshit to be given in person interviews where you can actually demonstrate your skills
I interviewed someone recently with FTP on their CV. Now, running a big FTP site, that's CV-worthy. Contributing to an open-source FTP client, that's CV-worthy. But no, this person literally listed being able to FTP a file as one of their "skills"...
Are you kidding? Most people don't care where they work. And why should they? Most places are the same, especially--but not exclusively--for lower paying jobs. Is there a big difference between working at McDonald's or Burger King? Hell, there isn't a big difference working at various tech companies. Most people just don't want to starve and be homeless. You can apply to one employer at a time. And if they don't respond? How long are you going to wait for them to respond? Till your money runs out and you can't buy food or pay rent? Beyond that, while you're sleeping on a park bench with all your worldly possessions? I mean, surely, if you don't need to eat or have a roof over your head, then you have the luxury of applying to one or two companies at a time. The rest of us don't have that luxury. And really, all it requires is emailing your resume or filling out online forms. It's not that hard to apply to multiple places at once.
You could look at all postings over the last month, from many different online sources and in 2 - 3 of the top tech cities. You could probably do it just by looking in a single city.
I wasn't doubting that there are hundreds of companies who would be potentially interested in hiring someone with my skills.
I was puzzled that I would be interested in working for so many different places. I now realize that some people seem to simply not care where they work, at least at the apply-for-job stage. That was the piece that I was missing.
How could there even be dozens of companies that you'd want to work for at any given time?