@picandor It doesn't really help that everyone and their dog have some useless college or university degree. So the job market gets saturated with applicants that might not have the FTE for it. Take for example the gaming course here in NL that works scores of students into a burnout so they can get used the crunch later in life. The narrow 300 students down till 50-75 students. So after 4 years you have 50 burned out game designers, animators, artists, level designers, modellers, environment and lighting technicians and a couple of coders. Wasted thousands if not more in student loans for a local market that can only facilitate 2 new FTE annually. Fuck that. Usually the coders find a job, because that's hard to do and the skills are needed, not dime in a dozen like the other students.

Then you have recruiters that fill in positions with a game of paint-by-numbers, asking stupid shit, not knowing the material they are looking for. So you end up with some recruiter asking 10 years experience with tech the guy made 7 years ago, or asking the CTO of a competing product if he can do some engineering job in the basement.

Then there is the free labor from interns, but that is addressed elsewhere in this thread.