Job Hunting Used To Be Easy

I'm spoiled, no doubt about it. I used to listen to a career-oriented software development podcast where the running joke was that the most common advice for every user-submitted question was "quit your job." It was that easy to find a new one, one that would pay better, a guaranteed pay raise, and perhaps a promotion to boot. It was a common remedy with little risk that cured all manner of dissatisfaction, from toxic culture to mismanagement to stagnation. Staying in one place could lead to advancement, but not always. Besides that, the risk of failing to capture your market value was high. Now, the calculus has changed. If I could turn back time, I would slap myself and say, "Be happy where you are! You'll grow! Your pay is sufficient! Make it work!" Unfortunately, it's too late for me. Now I'm swimming in the sea of LLM-infested waters, tossed to and fro by poorly constructed coding challenges that reward swift implementation over thought-out solutions. Interviewers are rowing aroun