Please stop the coding challenges

In the short term. And then the entire industry experiences some kind of a technological shift, as it will for many more cycles, and you're jobless as early as the first wave.

It's ridiculous how developers mindlessly accept that you should constantly be learning to keep yourself relevant, but keep it shallow by just jumping from one tool to another, instead of encouraging deeper knowledge of generalizable patterns that stay relevant across waves of technological disruption.

Exactly. I managed to ride a nice maybe 8 year wave as an "OpenGL expert" but the industry moved on and I didn't go more general with 3D graphics to climb out of my niche. I haven't been in that industry since the OpenGL waterline crested and went back out to sea. Learned that lesson.

Be a generalist. Yes, deep specialists exist and yes, some of them have successful careers based on their deep specialty, but betting on specialization is like a high school kid planning to be a MLB baseball player.

Embedded C and C++ should be good for at least another 20 years or so (except AI will take over by then).

Ruby is so god awful yet so many successful companies use it as the bedrock language there's always going to be jobs maintaining the piles of crap it leads to.

that's what i am trying to explain in every job application. but almost every job description expects multiple years of experience with a very specific tech stack. so far being a generalist with senior level experience did not yield a single positive response, let alone an offer.

Yep. Craftspeople take their craft seriously, sweat the details, learn the patterns, go deep.

And that’s complimentary with marketing oneself as Ruby/Rails dev or whatever else the market needs at the time.

So frustrating. Keep trying! You’ll find someone who values your background.