Many people are bad at evaluating themselves. I've seen countless posts by juniors apparently "grinding hard" to get a job, and you just take 1 look at their resume and everything makes sense. Zero research on how to write resumes, zero prep, projects are garbage, shotgunning on indeed without some creativity etc.
Can you define both what "horribly wrong" looks like and what "not horribly wrong" looks like? Because I can't.
The problem with a "proven track record" is that nobody believes what you write on your resume and nobody wants to bother looking at your code. That leaves hiring on "feel" and I have no idea what somebody needs to put in their cover letter and/or resume to "feel" right to a recruiter, an HR rep and a hiring manager all at the same time.
That's nonsense.
It's quite straightforward actually: go through the CVs of engineers working at top companies and look how their resume looks different from yours.
Chances are that they're actually selling themselves properly, using lots of jargon, using strong action verbs, and following the advice that has shown to work for the last decade.
If you're feeling generous, you can email it to me at soft.desk0874@fastmail.com. If not, no hard feelings.
My record is impeccable. I build highly reliable software fast both as part of a group or as a solo freelancer. Much of my work is in the public domain on GitHub so it's easy to verify all this and check my code quality, automated tests and PR review history.
One question though: how many of those years 10 years have you worked in a full-time position?
None of this has ANY effect on competent software engineers. Most of my peers keep getting massive offers left and right. Nothing has changed for them.
This is the job market equivalent of "it works on my computer."
Shopify laying off 10% of their workforce could have an effect with Ruby developers.
Maybe in your part of the world or the industry. I know at least a few excellent people with excellent track records and previously excellent career paths who have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time since COVID and its aftermath, just like I did in the GFC and the Dot Bomb before.
They say pride comes before the fall. I imagine that over the next couple of years some relatively young developers who have coasted along on the wave of tech growth through the 2010s and never experienced a big bust in the industry before are going to learn that those nice salaries and equity-backed top-ups aren't nearly as valuable or guaranteed as they've become used to.