It's been hard, over 60 applications for dozens of different companies, but I only got to the end (pre-offer stage) one time. All the positions I have applied to are compatible with my experience and the technologies I have used, maybe except for two positions for a Staff/Management position, which I agree were a shot in the dark, not because I don't have experience managing, but that wasn't my primary job at past companies.
The only weird part of this whole process is that, out of the applications I submitted, most (around 70%) were rejected before the first interview, which makes me wonder if I may have submitted my resume incorrectly in some way. Recently (around 2 months ago), I discovered a website called (Roadmap.sh)[https://roadmap.sh]. I have been using that to study things like software architecture, management, and a few other things that I do have experience with, but never studied from the ground up, and it's been great. It even has an AI tool where you can build your own study roadmap.
Most recently, I also started to focus on applying my knowledge to personal projects, the first one was this blog, which I decided to write from the ground up just to do a very simple project from scratch, and yes, I know there are plenty of blog platforms out there which I could have used, but I wanted something of my own. The other project is still going, it's something that will help a friend of mine who is a father and needs to manage/organize/search for activities for his daughter (we live around Vancouver, there are PLENTY of activities, but searching for them sucks). This last one could, potentially, become a paid service, and I'm aiming for that, but for the MVP 1, it will be quite simple, but not simple enough that it doesn't solve any problems.
It's been a while since I have been thinking about building something of my own, a small product that could bring me some income without depending on anyone else to make decisions, and maybe using it as a playground to test new technologies. This idea is not new; another friend and I tried for a while to bring a product to life in the sector of mental health sector, but there are HUGE barriers in terms of legislation and regulation that impeded the project from moving forward. Which is a bummer, mental health is a sector that is growing fast at giant steps, but without knowing the right person and having money to burn, it's very, very hard to move forward.
I have talked to many recruiters in the last few months too, but I'll be honest, they don't do shit to help you, most of the time they only serve the purpose of cashing out from you when you get a job, other than that, they don't help at all, they don't bring any knowledge, and most of the time, they only speak buzzwords like you're interviewing for YCombinator haha. Not saying all of them are like that, there is always people willing to help, but maybe I talked to the wrong ones.
I think that the fact I'm not an expert in anything, but can do a lot of things well, doesn't help me either. If I were an expert in just one field or technology, maybe it would be easier. I always got proud of myself for being able to solve different problems in a good, fashion way, this helped me during the time I had my own company, but it seems nowadays it's not something that other companies are after. I can be wrong, tho, and maybe I have talked to the wrong people. If you stop to think about it, in general, it should be good to do many things well (like managing projects, code, and being able to interview new hirings), but that doesn't seem to be the case nowadays.
Anyway, it's been a journey, unfortunately, not a pleasant one.