[anon50118810]

Do Toptal placements feel like FTE positions elsewhere, meaning you work on a team with other people and work of varying levels of specificity is assigned to you after a ramping-up period on an existing codebase? Or it is more like what I understand Upwork to be, where you individually hustle for one-off engagements to create standalone projects?

The general advice I was hoping for was about hiring for jobs at the lower end of the market, since the jobs I've been applying to have been inaccessible to me. For example I asked a month ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33696004 regarding "regional trucking companies and retail chains", "How are these companies trying to find employees?" I would really like to have a discussion on how hiring works for these companies because I'm definitely open to that work, updating legacy line-of-business or payroll software or whatever it happens to be.

I agree with your other advice, though I recommend that anyone seriously searching apply to many more than five jobs a week.