"Having hired over 500 engineers personally in my career, if your resume came across my list, I would definitely pass."

Heh.A job seeker with three FANG companies on their resume does not give a shit if this random person would bin their resume.

You'd be surprised. Anecdotes what they are, I know a stunningly-capable dev with an ROTC accelerated BEng degree and a BSc+MSc chaser, an international resume including Snap, FB, Apple, A-I shops, instruction, leading teams; it's heroic.

Been out of work for months after a start-up imploded and ghosted the dev and didn't send the RoE nor apparently also tax withholdings and all manner of retroactively-shady stuff. Start-ups are risky, kids, even if the idea is amazeballs-great.

It happens in this job and this market. It's happened before, and it will happen again if we live or have lived long enough.

Also, I'm trying to imagine a scenario where having needed to hire 500 people, personally, in a single career isn't embarrassing.

Consider a career that spans more than a year.

At my last dotcom, a vPBX 10 years ago, they were hiring 2 people a day for a year. Every damned day. The niche was huge and they were gutting the local market of sound and kernel and Kafka and mqtt people. Very minimal ditching, all new nerds.

So that's 700+ in just a year. And people work at their jobs for often far more than that: sometimes they make a career out of it, my dude.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."