The great displacement is already well underway?

I’m not trying to be unsympathetic in this comment so please do not read it that way, and I’m aware having spent most of my career in cloud infrastructure that I am usually in high demand regardless of market forces - but this just does not make sense to me. If I ever got to the point where i was even in high dozens of applications without any hits, I’d take a serious look at my approach. Trying the same thing hundreds of times without any movement feels insane to me. I believe accounts like this, because why make it up? as other commenters have noted there may be other factors at play.

I just wholly disagree with the conclusion that this is a common situation brought by AI. AI coding simply isnt there to start replacing people with 20 years of experience unless your experience is obsolete or irrelevant in today’s market.

I’m about 10 years into my career and I constantly have to learn new technology to stay relevant. I’d be really curious what this person has spent the majority of their career working on, because something tells me it’d provide insight to whatever is going on here.

again not trying to be dismissive, but even with my fairly unimpressive resume I can get at least 1st round calls fairly easily, and my colleagues that write actual software all report similar. companies definitely are being more picky, but if your issue is that you’re not even being contacted, I’d seriously question your approach. They kind of get at the problem a little by stating they “wont use a ton of AI buzzwords.” Like, ok? But you can also be smart about knowing how these screeners work and play the game a little. Or you can do doordash. personally I’d prefer the former to the latter.

Also find it odd that 20 years of experience hasnt led to a bunch of connections that would assist in a job search - my meager network has been where I’ve found most of my work so far.

It's hard to say for sure without knowing his whole situation, but I will agree with you that when I hear someone say they've submitted 750 applications, my first thought is that they're taking a machine gun approach, applying to a lot of jobs in a short time. I was always taught that you tailor your resume to the position you're applying for, and apply only after doing a lot of research on the company to know whether you are suitable for their position. I'm older than the author of this post, and applied for my most recent job at about his age—though it was a few years ago, before AI was really a consideration. In my entire life, I've probably applied to ~25 positions, made it to the final round 8 times, and been hired 6 times.

Knock on wood that he's wrong about the cause of his current frustration, because that means it's fixable.