You submit your application over the web, and you don't even get an acknowledgement. Or you give it to a friend who works in high tech, and weeks go by and nothing happens. There may be several reasons why it's so difficult even to get a hiring manager to look at your resume, despite your successful work history, but one of them is all-important. Though it influences the attitudes of nearly everyone I know who works in high tech, few of them seem to be aware of it. An insider is, very simply, someone who is working in high tech, at any position, no matter how lowly it may be.
Outsiders are everyone else.
So it's as if high tech workers consider themselves to be members of some kind of exclusive club. When you go after a job in high tech from the outside, you're trying to become a member of the club. But of course, there is competition for that job from within the very company you're seeking to join, as well as from persons working in other high tech companies. There's a constant movement of persons from one high-tech company to another, as individuals seek to get more money, gain more responsibility, or join a company that's booming. It's usually said that what hiring managers want is to get someone who can do the job without training - in other words, hit the ground running.