Every job I have ever landed, I've had to go through the full HR rigamarole, from finding the posting through multiple rounds of interviews. I've never quite been able to make a friend--or even acquaintance--that has subsequently been able to backchannel me into a job. I've had several interviewers say directly that I appear to be one of the most technically qualified candidates they have, but after I walk out the door, I never hear another word from them again, not even to say they picked someone else.

The hiring system is broken. And the damage is at least in a load-bearing member, if not the foundation itself. There is no financial pressure for anyone capable of fixing it to actually do so. And so we suffer as entities with far more political experience glide smoothly among the sharks, depressing our wages today, and tomorrow, they quietly dismantle the dreams of young people passionate about our field.

It sickens me to the point that I feel like there are no good employers left in the U.S., in any field. I have no reason whatsoever to buy a house, befriend my neighbors, and invest in my local community, because at any moment my gracious employer (or their new owners) could decide to fire everyone and move out. That would leave me again in the position where I have to also move, just to find a job not quite as good as the one I just had.

And now that I am in one of the few locales recognized as a "tech center" in the U.S., I find that most of the jobs here are military-industrial complex tax-leeching jobs, where industry best practices are routinely ignored, because the primary goal of the contractor is to produce billable hours instead of permanent solutions, and the overseer-boss got his job via military good-ol'boy networking rather than having one inkling of competence.

What's the solution? I don't know. But making me retype my entire resume into your stupid web forms to better facilitate its automatic rejection for lack of required hidden keywords is completely antipodal to it.