I'm not the author, but I went through a similar process looking for a job when I moved to a new city. I had ~120 applications over the course of a month, with

I'm not the author, but I went through a similar process looking for a job when I moved to a new city. I had ~120 applications over the course of a month, with a surprisingly similar funnel at each step. Managing the process wasn't too hard. I simply kept a spreadsheet updated with contacts as rows, and columns with dates for every step of the process including first contact, second contact, phone interview (s), coding challenges, on-site interviews. However, you're right when you say "once you hit the 20 applications mark, it's impossible to know to which companies you applied for." Early on in my application process, I wasn't applying to nearly enough places, because I wanted to hear back from someone before moving on to the next. A good friend of mine gave me the advice "You should be reaching out to so many people, that when you get a response, you'll need to go back to research who it was from." It's a weird mode to operate in, but once you realize that as a new-ish dev the process of getting a job is very much a funnel like the one in this post, it's a strategy that makes a lot of sense. I would highly recommend anyone looking for a job to follow the advice in this article, it matches very closely with my experience. Especially resonant were the points about making contact with real humans, and also to push tons of companies into the pipeline.