This will be at least the fourth such downturn I have seen in my career:

- the 2000 Dotcom Bust

- the 2008 recession

- the 2020 pandemic recession

- Now

The short answer is that no one really knows what will happen. A lot of companies are reading the tea leaves - and regardless of what anyone tells you, that's really all it is - and trying to figure out how to make the best moves given rising prices, rising interest rates, a pandemic that, though mostly tamed, still presents challenges and potential dangers, war in Europe, etc. Back in March of 2020 when I was still actively looking, I went through the same thing you are now - companies who were super eager to hire me all of a sudden stopped the interview process and circled the wagons. And these were the FAANGs.

My advice here is to keep looking, but start working on something on the side that will generate revenue. Working for a company feels like a safe move until the economy contracts and they ultimately decide what they think you're really worth. In every one of those previous downturns, I felt like my sense of self worth diminished along with every rejection or ghosted call - and I suffered a LOT of those. This last time around in 2020, I finally gave up entirely and became an independent technical strategy consultant - basically doing what I've always done, but under my own banner instead of someone else's.

It took six very hard months until I had a solid client base and consistent enough income to survive - I had to borrow money from some folks during the time to pay the mortgage and healthcare, which was humbling, but it worked. I also have a mortgage, a wife, and a teenager to support, so I really had to get a solid income flowing fast - there wasn't a lot of room for error.

If you get a job before you figure out your side gig, great! But maybe keeping working on the side gig because it's nice to have something to fall back on. If you get the side gig running, but it's not making you enough money and you get an offer - take the offer, but make sure you keep building out the side gig.

I was probably about your age when the first Dotcom bust happened - I had been out of college only two or three years at that point - and I gotta tell you, that was frightening. When I got my first job out of college, I was hot shit. I put my resume on Monster.com on a Wednesday and by the following Friday I had received about 100 calls, 10 job interviews, and five solid offers. When the bubble burst, not a single person or company returned any of my calls. For nine months. A smarter man would have spent that time trying to build something to make money, to be independent from the vagaries of corporate America and economic cycles over which he has zero control. I was not that smarter man then - it took 20 years and at least three more cycles for me to finally figure it out.

Be the smarter (person). Keep applying and interviewing, but spend the rest of the time you would otherwise be working building something for yourself to generate revenue. Could be code, could be an online class, could be selling stuff on Etsy - doesn't matter, so long as it's something you can sustain and that can eventually sustain you if worse comes to worse.