Honest story time. I don't even feel like hiding behind a throwaway.<p>In 2020 my boss, and CEO suddenly passed away to cancer. I found myself (CTO) having to run an entire company, while I was already dealing with personal issues. I rose to the occasion, did the best I could while also I explored the possibility of selling the company, which felt the most sensible option given the context (which I am not going to explore here). After a year of the most intense work I have done my entire life, the majority partner (and inheritor of the boss' shares) decided they didn't want to sell after all. Then everything imploded, I went on a massive nervous breakdown and burned out to cinders. Months later, in later 2021, I left because I literally felt I would die of exhaustion. It was necessary to take a very long break.<p>After 18 months of a sabbatical and working on my health, things started to look up, and I was starting to get bored. I have been working as a software engineer for 17 years, as employee and later consultant, and as a fully self-taught person I believe I am pretty darned good at it. What follows is 6 months of fruitless job search. Hundreds of CVs sent to no response. People telling me "it's the market", "it's your resume", "it's because you have too much experience", "it's because of Brexit". Silly phrases to explain the state of tech job search. In 6 months of job search, I felt I was crashing back into a second burnout and needed a change.<p>For the past year and a half I have been working on launching a business because it's the only avenue left to me, and only chance to avoid going through the meat grinder again. With crappy jobs on Upwork at $50/h, some underpaid consulting here and there, and UK universal income I have managed to keep a roof over my head, launch a business but still far from being financially secure. It is fucking exhausting, yet somehow job search is even worse than that.<p>If a person with this much experience like me is unable to find a bloody job, I loathe to imagine what juniors go through.<p>If I hear one more person say "the economy is not so bad" I'm gonna force them to look for a job the good old way, through the cosmic joke that job boards are.<p>Something is utterly broken in hiring, in recruitment, in the entire job market and no one is at the wheel. "The economy is not so bad, look at this chart", they tell you.