You mention that job listings get hundreds of replies, yet just a few pages back we have an article [1] about the short supply of developers in Silicon Valley. What gives?
Silicon Valley wants the best and brightest. This filter is opinionated based on the company.
If you're looking for work at VMWare, your Rails and MongoDB experience won't be needed. They want C/C++ guy who can hack Linux kernel or write device driver.
If you're looking for work at Facebook, they want someone who knows PHP and C/C++ and probably have provided patches to MySQL or memcached. Or they grab "idea" people like Lars (from Google).
You should also "own" that domain (compiler, AI, optimization, OS/Kernel, Networking, DB/Data-Mining, business-app, ERP/CRM/Enterprise).
This is scary because it forces you to:
1) Put your eggs in one basket: domain
2) And put more eggs in another basket: technology
3) Stay up with the latest in (1) and (2)
This left you no room to breathe. To break this cycle you probably have to get out there and do something on your own (meaning: your own business/company)
I don't know. One doesn't exclude the other, I suppose. I have heard about developers being in short supply as well. Notice that they are not saying "nobody replies to my job posting", so it's quite possible they get lots of replies, they just end up picking none of them, for whatever reason. Maybe it's hard to filter through all the replies effectively, maybe they are too picky, maybe the job is unattractive to competent developers, maybe it's something else. It's hard to say.
All I do know is that I have heard the other story as well, i.e. people who are hiring are inundated in replies.
If you're looking for work at VMWare, your Rails and MongoDB experience won't be needed. They want C/C++ guy who can hack Linux kernel or write device driver.
If you're looking for work at Facebook, they want someone who knows PHP and C/C++ and probably have provided patches to MySQL or memcached. Or they grab "idea" people like Lars (from Google).
You should also "own" that domain (compiler, AI, optimization, OS/Kernel, Networking, DB/Data-Mining, business-app, ERP/CRM/Enterprise).
This is scary because it forces you to: 1) Put your eggs in one basket: domain
2) And put more eggs in another basket: technology
3) Stay up with the latest in (1) and (2)
This left you no room to breathe. To break this cycle you probably have to get out there and do something on your own (meaning: your own business/company)