In my experience its terrible for juniors, and tough right now for senior devs. I'm applying for Snr SRE/Devops roles -- I maybe get a 50 percent response rate

In my experience its terrible for juniors, and tough right now for senior devs. I'm applying for Snr SRE/Devops roles -- I maybe get a 50 percent response rate since my resume looks good. Get the call with the recruiter -- bla bla bla - we will submit your profile to hiring manager and typically ends there. Its like they are playing games and intentionally messing with you. Somewhere in the process I fall between the cracks, and its rinse and repeat. Its time consuming and you basically do free work (take-homes), or even assessments as part of the application. Very morale reducing. Seems like the jobs in demand are for principals/leads/ or management roles. A year ago with less experience it was much easier to get final round interviews. I've cast a wide fishing net, applying to jobs on Linkedin, through Slack channels, and posted on Hackernews. But to be frank, basically it goes nowhere. I'm using my time to upskill and read books on tech topics, take video boot camps, and sharpen my coding skills. Its hard to stay motivated without an incentive really. Seems like techies are disposable at this moment and requires a huge ego check. It sort of baffles me -- tech jobs are abundant and I'm not picky --- like trying to work as a game dev at a AAA studio or be a screenwriter in Hollywood. BS and recruiting hell seem to be the norm now