I wrote a reply to a person who was having a similar problem in another forum. I'll copy my post here. I am a ML Engineer working at a big Co with 15+ YoE. Thi

I wrote a reply to a person who was having a similar problem in another forum. I'll copy my post here. I am a ML Engineer working at a big Co with 15+ YoE. This is how things are going for me: * I started looking in September last year. So far I had 3 complete loops. One rejected me and two down leveled me. * Although recruiters reach out a lot, more than half of them ghost me. * When I started looking I used to ask for salary bands. Most companies top of band was around half of my current comp, so I declined. Now I'm saying yes to just about anything, just to prove to myself that I can get a job offer. * Particularly in the ML space, requirements from companies are simply insane. One company was hiring a role doing exactly what I'm doing in the same domain. They rejected me because they wanted someone who was an expert at all of software engineering, data science and this particular domain, and apparently I'm not good enough. Oh, there is also this company who rejected me at the screening phase because I had "only" 6 years of experience with their particular technology instead of 8. Draw your own conclusions about how good or bad the job market is.