[ahlatimer]

1. Where are you/they? I got a ton of recruiter spam when I lived in SF and a fair amount now that I live in Austin (the majority of which are companies that want me to relocate back to SF). I received 0 when I lived in El Paso, TX (where I'm from). If you're in an area that doesn't have a hot tech market, you're likely going to have a harder time finding a tech job.

2. What technologies do they specialize in? I see lots of job posts for Rails and React and relatively few for COBOL. I see a lot of jobs for Java, but a higher percentage of those are of the lower paying variety. This is likely location dependent and is a bit of a catch-22.

3. Are they any good, but perhaps more importantly, are they able to demonstrate that they're any good in an interview setting? There are a fair number of truly bad programmers out there. There's also a fair number of programmers who may be good but are unable to demonstrate that in an interview. Interviewing is hard to get right -- everyone has their own take on it, and it's rarely backed up back actual data.

The people you see getting tons of offers probably have the right combination of location, resume, and interview ability. If I had to pick the single most important factor in getting a lot of offers, it's location. If you are in an area with limited tech jobs, the number of offers you can get is obviously going to be limited as well.

[Chris2048]

In my hometown, I couldn't even get a job in a computer store, let alone software development. :'-/

Getting a career at all without a CS degree required moving away..