The alternatives have been understood for a long time. Look at What Color Is Your Parachute? by Bolles and Who’s Hiring Who? by Lathrop, for example. I haven’t applied for a job in decades but I have found continuous employment. I know plenty of other people in this business who do the same.
A person with little or no actual experience will find it difficult to get attention from employers, but that’s not a broken system nor is it specific to software dev jobs. There’s no shortage of inexperienced applicants, which is why they get little response from employers.
Anecdotally, when I listen to young inexperienced developers I think they have an inflated idea of their prospects and value in the software dev job market, which is something we programmers do to ourselves. I don’t know if the OP is new to the business or has years of experience, but someone with years of experience should have contacts and friends and connections to leverage.
Talking to people in-person at meetups, being curious about what they are working on, listening attentively and following up.
> Do you think that you consider sending a CV to be unproductive exactly because the process is dysfunctional (in the way OP points out and in other ways)?
Yes. Thats why the parent comment is suggesting that you not spend much time engaging in it.
What if the company you're interested in doesn't present at meetups? What if you don't attend meetups? What if you do but you're rarely interested in the speakers? What if you're interested but you don't establish rapport? If all things align well, how many relationship like this can you realistically maintain and rely on when you need a job? How many people can realistically do this in parallel for the same contact at the company?
It really sounds like the advice is to be constantly schmoozing so that you have contacts when you need them. I don't get how that's a more productive way to match company with employee than sending your details to companies that are looking for people. Getting a job through your network clearly works for many people. I just don't think it works for everyone and wish that we had something more honest and efficient.
Options:
A. Reach out to one of their recruiters on linkedin
B. Ask someone you already know (classmate, TA, professor, etc) if they know anybody at the company.
C. Release your attachment to this particular outcome. There are other fish in the sea.
> What if you don't attend meetups?
Go to other social events. If you are still in uni then definitely work on problem sets together. If you are not in uni then find some other community of people trying to learn something.
> What if you do but you're rarely interested in the speakers?
If the particular speaker is boring, then sigh and take notes on how not to give a boring talk.
If the topic is habitually super scattered and unclear, find a more focused meetup.
If you cannot muster curiosity about the topic, then consider improving your sleep patterns or changing to a different subfield.
> be constantly schmoozing so you have contacts when you need them.
Nope. When you are not actively job searching, you should be occasionally nerding out about something with people so that you explore your shared interest in category theory or good API docs or whatever. Also, with a small small circle of those people you like for weird reasons, you should be playing League of Legends or Settlers of Catan and talking about colonoscopies and the shittier parts of life.
> I just don't think it works for everyone and wish that we had something more honest and efficient.
The goal of networking at its worst is just to quickly get a job and make money. The goal of networking at its best is to create the conditions for honesty so that you build teams with healthy trustful working relationships. The latter is much harder and requires courage from all involved.
What alternatives do you have?
Do you think that you consider sending a CV to be unproductive exactly because the process is dysfunctional (in the way OP points out and in other ways)?