I have around 13 years in the business but I suck at socializing and I'm thankful this hasn't been the case for me, I would be broke if I depended on acquaintances to find work, instead I just have landed positions by applying to offers found at LinkedIn and elsewhere.

You don’t need to socialize - a recruiter reached out to me and I let him know that I wasn’t in the market, but the guy who had sat next to me for 3 years (open plan offices FTW!) at my last job would be perfect. We weren’t terribly friendly but certainly got on professionally.

Interesting. Literally every job I’ve gotten was either through a recruiter or cold outreach.

How far along are you in you’re career? The first 15 years I was recruiter or responding to ad, but after 20 mostly network.

> after 20 mostly network.

I suspect the importance of networking and the likelihood of ageism are often related.

It might also be related to industry size. I've done games and robotics - both relatively small industries compared to "web".

13 years so maybe

And I'm 2 cold outreach, 1 recruiter, 1 from network.

Everyone's experience is different?

The problem being that when you muck up the interview, you get outed as a quack to someone you know.

flopping interview != quack

Everyone knows that interviews have high false negative rates (depending on your hiring criteria). You have to mentally guard yourself that interviews are not a complete judgement of you; they are at best a small pinhole view into your capabilities.

Early in my career I was an ace at learning just enough to talk the talk in an interview (I was playing the risky game that I'd have the chops to learn the skills when I needed them, which thankfully I always did)

I had a boss who was incredibly good at this strategy. She would take the time between the interview and job start to learn what she needed to know.

> The problem being that when you muck up the interview, you get outed as a quack to someone you know.

The downvotes you got were undeserved. For most job markets: If an ideal candidate is interview-disabled, their odds of being hired are dismal.

For me personally - if I refer someone and they mess up the interview, I wouldn't take it as them being a "quack". If I referred someone it's likely I thought they could do the job fine, it's just that they didn't do a great job convincing my coworkers - and that's okay.