Whenever I read job search war stories such as this article, I keep wondering if these are sent from a parallel universe of some kind. Six job offers? That's in

Whenever I read job search war stories such as this article, I keep wondering if these are sent from a parallel universe of some kind. Six job offers? That's incredible! I mean that literally: I have a very difficult time believing such stories because they never jive with my own experience. The below is taken directly from my "Job search - 2017" Trello board. (I always use Trello to organize a job search because without it there's no way I could keep track of every company I've applied to.) Companies I've decided not to pursue due to obvious red flags: 15 Companies that have rejected me explicitly (without regard for stage of process): 15 Companies that have ignored my application entirely: 25 (including all of the so-called "top companies") Companies that have invited me for an onsite interview: 8 (of which one was a remote-mostly team that did a video conference interview in lieu of onsite) Offers received: 4 Of the 4 offers, one was laughably low; another was for a management position that would have precluded any programming (bad for my career); and the remaining two were both attractive and presented a difficult choice. This was the first time in my career of 15+ years when I had more than one offer to choose from. This job search took place after I got laid off unexpectedly, and took two months of job searching on a full time basis. The various phone calls, meetings, interviews, etc. took place in a solid chunk of time from 9am to 5pm, sometimes seeping into the 7-9pm time frame whenever I was doing a call with a busy person on the West Coast. Somehow I also managed to do half a dozen of take-home projects, the longest of which took me two weeks of all-nighters to complete. To summarize: I wish someone would show me which bus to take to the parallel universe where folks get to choose from six different offers. Here and now, I feel incredibly lucky to have my current job, and dread the day when I might be forced to seek another.