Everyone had to start doing that to get through the often dumb-as-a-brick ATS system filtering that became farcical - I remember applying for one position that was around building care and management systems for pregnant mothers - EHR, practice management, claims benefits, etc., all of which I had over a decade of experience in. "Name something that might stand you out from the crowd." "In addition to all this I've also delivered 12 babies as a paramedic". Twenty minutes later "we are looking for candidates whose experiences and skill sets are more closely aligned with the role we are looking to fill". That was my push to realize "I need to do something to ATS optimize my resume and plan otherwise I'll be unemployed for months."
> Employer-wise, everyone wants a unicorn that will lick their ass but isn't willing to pay
"Principal Product Manager. Must have 10-15 years experience, much of it in healthcare domain, including leadership and team ownership. Salary range: $90-130K".
Yup.
In Europe C# fills the role of Java.
You're just in an American echo chamber.
Now the number of senior C# engineers in Europe who couldn't fix a broken deploy on IIS or SSL cert problem on a windows server? That is rather high in the windows field too.
(and speaking of LLMs, those can actually be a wonderful teaching aid - but they don't seem to be bothered by their lack of knowledge and so don't even try to take advantage of them)
I bet the guys are good at Leetcode though, or whatever bullshit interview process that hired them. This is in a Western European company that has adopted all the "best practices" possible, and places high importance on career progression, and these are considered senior SWEs on track to become engineering managers.