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 AI coding simply isnt there to start replacing people with 20 years of experience unless your experience is obsolete or irrelevant in today’s market.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.

i get where you are coming from. i tried 5 versions of my resume in the last year. talking to recruiters. shotgunning resumes. hand crafting one-off cover letters. I have tried many approaches. you can guage my resume for yourself. the current strategy is to pander to people who are mainly looking for ai-dev skills https://shawnfromportland.com/Shawn_K_Resume_2025-4.pdf

If you're up for some unsolicited feedback from someone who has read a lot of resumes:

This is one of the more chaotic and difficult to parse resumes I've seen. Can I suggest you try returning to a standard resume format where you simply list jobs in chronological order with short bullet points underneath each one?

You lead your Professional Summary with a point about using AI coding tools and the #1 skill you list in the skills box is "Vibecoding". It's good to keep up with AI-assisted tools, but putting "Vibecoding" in your resume is an instant turn off for most people. Vibecoding is associated with poor software quality, not professional development. I'd remove that word from your resume and never put it back.

Your job duty bullet points are very wordy but convey little at the same time. You have 3 jobs in a row where you "Built award-winning state of the art web experiences" but I have no idea what technologies you used, what your role was on the team, what the websites actually did, how many users were served, or any other useful information. At minimum you need to list some technologies.

Your entire personal brand is "shawnfromportland" but you apparently live on the other side of the country? I understand the attachment to your username, but you have far more "Portland" on your resume than "New York". If you're applying to any local jobs, the Portland branding is an obstacle for anyone scanning 100s of resumes who doesn't have time to consume every little detail and resolve ambiguities.

Using 1/5th of the page for context-less name dropping of skills isn't helpful. Delete that box and list specific skills in specific jobs. With 20 years of experience it's impossible to know if each skill you list is something you read a Wikipedia page about or used at 5 of your jobs.