I'm one of those people who apply like at two, three jobs and get offers from all of them. The phone screen is the most important IMO, that and a good recruiter

I'm one of those people who apply like at two, three jobs and get offers from all of them. The phone screen is the most important IMO, that and a good recruiter. People get all pissy about it and treat their recruiter poorly, which is highly unprofessional. The biggest problem right now from the hiring viewpoint is that there are a lot of "senior engineers" with 2-3 years experience expecting a high salary, when you can easily find good remote programmers working in other countries who are not going to be asking that sort of money. I think now that remote will become the rule, then it's an even bigger disadvantage for those who are looking only to code and that's it. What I think will happen more and more is that the only developer who will work inside the company is the lead developer, and the rest of the team will be all remote. Soft skills are King. Of course, you could go live abroad and work contracts. Not a bad life honestly. I think about it a lot these days. For those junior devs and mid level devs, highly recommend this, especially if your first language is English.