I am not. I have been applying on and off for about five years now. A few years ago I got a bunch of interviews up in Boston, but employers/recruiters eventually see that I have been out of the industry for awhile and pass me up for a more appropriate hire. This past summer I did some applying and I got to the third interview stage, talking to the CIO, and he was going to tell me a month later whether they'd be advancing. I called them a month later and they were on vacation, the in-house recruiter told me she'd put the ball in her court and be in touch with me; ghosted me, of course.

The fact of the matter is that after so many rejections, I can't convince employers that I am worth hiring. I haven't meaningfully progressed very much in the past five years, and I hardly have the opportunity to do so now, even if I had the energy.

I know that I'm incompetent. I know that I'm less incompetent than some other programmers I've worked with, so I feel like there should be some kind of shitty job available for people like me. Triplebyte and Hired don't seem to offer roles in my area, which I cannot leave because it's the location of my social safety net.

At this point, interviews seem like a waste of time. I feel like I'm in a catch 22. In order to ever pass an interview again, I need experience; but in order to get experience, I need to either pass an interview and get a job, or work on side projects. And... I've been trying to do both for years, to no avail.