I've also run into the industry specialization roadblock a few times. Got turned down by a fintech company after multiple interview rounds because I did not have banking industry experience, for example. I guess I get it as a tie breaker but I've operated in a PCI compliant environment for years, seems like that should count as relevant experience? Also if you're going to dumpster candidates without banking experience why on earth did you waste several hours of your staff's time giving me tech screens?

Job hunting has always sucked. But it feels particularly busted at the moment. The process is miserable. If you've coasted to an easy hiring in the last year, you're either amazing (and hats off to you!) or got very lucky.

I'm putting more time into cleaning up my LinkedIn profile since that's been my most reliable route into hiring pipelines (other than referrals and networking).

Semi related, holy hell do companies have a lot of interview rounds these days. It seems pretty standard to spread 5-6 Teams calls over the course of a month. I get that these are high salary, high impact roles and you want to get it right. But this feels really excessive. And I'm not talking about FAANG tech giants here. It's everyone, from startups to random midsize insurance companies.

In hindsight I am very glad Origin was not overly litigious and didn't send the FBI to my house for "hacking" their game.

Not saying one style is good or bad. But it's definitely changed since the 80s and 90s, when every game came with a printed 50 page manual full of crucial information. Which often doubled as copy protection. I remember firing up King's Quest 6 and having it challenge me to type the 15th word in the second paragraph on page 26 or whatever.

  void refreshConnections() {
    ssOutput =
        popen("ss -atun4 | grep ESTAB | awk '{print $6}' | cut -f1 -d\":\"", "r");

    if (ssOutput == NULL) {
      printf("Failed to run ss command\n");
      exit(1);
    }
  }

That's not meant as an endorsement, just saying it's not "making a comeback" any more than Taylor Swift is in music. It's The Thing right now and has been for a while.

I did have fun with it but ultimately I think I was too young and innocent to appreciate the game. Every time I felt like I was getting my feet under me, someone would murder me and steal all my shit. I think at one point I even got my own house... until someone murdered me and stole the key, leaving me penniless. It was a very griefer friendly game, and if you weren't one of the griefers, look out.

Eventually I got involved in the UO emulation scene and became the maintainer of a popular emulator for a year or two, and ran a private server with some Canadian tech bro (not that we had that term in the 90s) who had a bunch of money and hardware to spare. That was some of the most fun I've ever had in gaming.

More power to everyone who can play MMO's in a way that doesn't resemble a crippling drug addiction. I've learned that I cannot, lol. And my point isn't to disparage gaming friendships or relationships, it just was not ultimately for me.