If you get comfortable working with in a small company with small scope, you could be working yourself into a hole. That's what happened to me. Now I need to dig my way out and into a bigger company with better financial stability and bigger scope.<p>Main reason I want to do this? Being involuntarily jobless for a year time sucks. And I'm no fresh grad. I'm someone who's been doing this since 2007. If the average programmer with several years experience doesn't have trouble getting job offers, than I am most likely below average. Despite working on personal projects, I don't feel competitive anymore.<p>Now there's a problem with that. The companies most likely to solve my problem won't hire me. The ones that are more willing to hire me are the kind of companies that will keep me in that rut of being below-average. I'm mostly blind as to where are the "happy middle" companies that combine the better of those two things. And I don't know the "right" people to refer me to better jobs so instead I cold-apply everywhere.
First it is generally a tough problem. There is more room at the bottom than there is at the top. Many people become entrepreneurs because they don't see any way up in the firms they work for.<p>At a big company you might feel you are not making a big impact, as for stability, all of the time I see headlines like "Intel lays off 10,000 engineers."<p>Feeling bitter about things won't help you get a job, at least if that attitude comes across in your communications with them.
It's possible the issue isn't your programming skills, it may be your job-getting skills; they're not the same skills. It's possible to be really good at your job and have a hard time getting a job.<p>So it's worth trying to figure out why companies might not hire you, instead of just presuming it's your skills (unless you have evidence otherwise.)