[daok]

You should a little negative but I read you twice and there is some truth in your message. I am actually working in one of the popular FANG company. I receive solicitations every day (3-10). I have no time to answer everyone. I have over 15 years of experience and the few times I decided to reply I realized two things. First, once you start giving a range of compensation the discussion stop rapidly for 90% of the recruiters. The market is "hot" but for folks that are not that senior (or with lower expectation that I have maybe). The second thing is that when it goes well and we start the process that everything is super slow motion. Positive feedbacks but every step take weeks to move on. At a point where I lost any excitement. Hence, I suppose my field is not such in demand... that engineers with less years of experience get these positions faster than me since I am strict about my expectation. I might have the wrong conclusion here but I found that this "hot market" is not "hot" for the whole range of expertises and years of experience.

[decafninja]

I've been actively interviewing for almost the past five years. I recently concluded my job search and basically landed my dream job (or very close to it). However I was extremely picky about what I was looking for which probably made my search take so long.

If I was less picky, I could probably have gotten a new job at a decent, but not spectacular, company, with probably at max, ~3 months of active interviewing.

Likewise one of my friends is what I'd like to describe as a "master networker". The way he can easily and quickly network his way into a new job is shocking - often times without an leetcode interview. These jobs typically tend to pay at least above average (hedge funds). However the caveat is that he has to be very unpicky about the exact nature of the role, sometimes working with very boring or unsexy tech stacks for example.

[datavirtue]

I spent two years looking and then just threw in the towel and took a job at GE. They turned out to have a far more inflated view of themselves than was warranted or even healthy...so that only lasted a few years. Consulting now with one of the few boutique firms in my city...which has been fairly nice.

[lkbm]

Yes, I suspect there's a lot of title inflation going on in the industry.

I have a Senior title (at a "no name" company) and can probably get a Senior title elsewhere (I also get recruitment emails for those all the time), but perhaps only for some values of "Senior".

[Beaver117]

Of course there is. I recently rejected a "Senior" position for a "mid level" position because the latter paid much much better.