Where are you looking? How many years experience do you have? What types of positions are you looking for?

Remote US, 9 years experience, backend IC.

I wonder if the remote work could be part of it. I have the impression many companies have grown weary of remote work since the pandemic.

That being said, I have a similar profile to you and I've been getting nearly no messages from recruiters even if I'm open to on-site work. The market's just difficult right now, keep looking!

Best of luck I hope you find a new opportunity soon.

esoteric programming language? Java seems to have lots of positions

Would you mind ballparking how many applications you've put out, and to what kinds of companies? That's super concerning to hear.

This is very surprising. I have a few friends who were laid off and landed jobs in a few weeks, many interviews (although exhausting), similar range of experience as you (~10 years)

Why do you think you're not getting responses?

I'm old enough that in a reasonable country I could be considering retirement, and switched into this line of work relatively late. I have no degree, in anything. Each of my jobs was in a different stack so I have no obviously apparent expertise.

A lot of reasons that should be reassuring to most of the rest of you don't worry I'm sure everything will be fine :)

Working in totally different tech stacks should be spun as a superpower. You're a polyglot, not wed to one technology, but can quickly and easily get up-to-speed on the best tool for the job!