Orgs got hyper-efficient at classifying applicants and terminating their candidacy for highly opaque and variable reasons.

Suddenly a growing subpopulation of workers exists in a survival lottery of being either unqualified for any offer or getting multiple $500k+ offers.

Outside of that zone, workers are job-hugging, under-employed are retraining, and the undergrad pipeline is getting flushed. Labor costs are not getting reduced, they are simply getting amortized like a balloon mortgage. (Rip-off your grandchildren, at scale)

Hopefully the foolishness of gold rush thinking will soon conclude, however briefly, and sober business can resume.

P.S. the navel-gazing ‘what is a good engineer’ is performative time-wasting nonsense, just stop, we have a probationary period for new-hires, use it like it’s not your first hire