Sounds like you've had good luck, but you're saying you know it hasn't happened to you because of documented social phenomena in the industry.

It’s not luck, it’s focus....

1. Don’t randomly submit your resume to job boards. I have always used local recruiters who submit my resume and have a vested interest in staying in contact with both me and the hiring manager.

2. Don’t waste time having your resume submitted to jobs that you don’t have the must haves. I’ve been on both sides of dealing with recruiters - the candidate and the “hiring manager”. A good recruiter will talk to the hiring manager about what the must haves and the nice to haves are. You can also talk to the recruiter to see if you have the must have skills.

3. Keep in touch with recruiters even if you aren’t looking. They will usually put you on a mailing list with the job openings. You can find out what the market wants. I have a few recruiters that will give you a salary range in the mailing list.

Once you know what the in demand technologies are at the salary range for which you are looking, focus on those.

4. Make sure you live in a market where the jobs are. In over 20 years and 7 job changes, it’s never taken me over three weeks to get a job, usually with a bump in salary that I am looking for and the technology stack. I’ve sacrifuced major salary bumps when changing jobs for a better tech stack/shorter commute before.

Again,I’m no special snowflake. I’m just a “senior full stack enterprise developer”, Architect, or consultant depending on how the wind is blowing.

I’m not only not White I am not young (mid 40s).

If you have untempered interest in your profession, there's likely some overlap in who benefits from your training, but largely I think it makes more sense to consider your _employer_ to be the main benefactor of your skills, not you.

No, I’m just as much the benefactor of my skills as my employer. Increasing my skill set and staying marketable gives me the ability and optionality to change jobs - and usually for higher pay. I don’t have an “untempured interest in my profession”. It’s just a means to make money. But to continue to be competitive and to be able to ask for an increasing salary. I have to keep learning.

After all, when you're hired you don't have agency to change the direction of the product with the other workers, you don't have total control over your working environment, the technologies you choose, your schedule, etc. You may have input into these things, but in a legal sense your employer is the arbiter of these conditions, and ultimately you develop skills not simply to build the things you like, but to make yourself marketable to people who set the terms for your ability to earn a living.

The company I work for isn’t the main determining factor on me earning a living until I retire, my marketable skillset is. If my job closes its doors tomorrow and I have a marketable skillset and a healthy network, I can make calls and usually get another permant job or at least a contract gig in less than a month. Not bragging, anyone who has my not so rare skillset in my market can do it.

You do have agency if you have the skillset. I can’t choose the product I work on, but I chose the technology I wanted to work on by choosing the company I work for. I get to choose the how based on “expert power”. I haven’t been questioned about the how in four or five years across three companies. I’ve had to champion my position but if it made business sense, no one stopped me.

Once the technology I’m using starts getting out of step with what the market wants, it’s time for me to change jobs.

I also haven’t done but one “whiteboard coding interview” in the past 10 years, numerous interviews and 5 job changes.

I’ve done one pair programming in an IDE test and plenty of white boarding of architecture.

My last two jobs I was asked basically how would I go about solving thier real world architecture issues - yes I’m still 60-80% a hands on developer.