Ah but those next 30 are also already 'established' companies that can now afford to be very, very selective about next hires. There is an "invisible" start-up

Ah but those next 30 are also already 'established' companies that can now afford to be very, very selective about next hires. There is an "invisible" start-up scene with thousands of companies where they're simply dying of thirst re: engineering talent. "invisible" in the sense of not on mainstream tech media. (even mainstream tech media covers around ~150 startups regularly). The HN jobs thread has many jobs, did you check the monthly postings? By the way 30-40 is not a lot of companies to apply. I have friends out of Harvard & MIT that regularly apply to 60-70 places.