I wonder, if somebody has not a happy story, but an ongoing story of failures in job search - would he write such a story? Or we hear only from those who succeeds? Or, assuming that everybody eventually succeeds, those who take years to find a position won't write about it, as they are too exhausted or embarrassed?

7 months deep, hundreds of applications, blah blah, so to answer your question, for the most part people in this particular situation don't write public stories about it.

1) It can feel like it will sabotage your chances even if it raises awareness of your situation. Firstly because you cannot help but "call out" some of the hiring practices/people, and secondly because, well, must be something wrong with you if no one is snapping you up, right? Which leads into...

2) A lot of really obnoxious folks like to pounce on this and "blame the victim", and then reference stuff like this post to show how "it must be your fault", etc, and "ain't nobody got time for that". It's hard enough to deal with impostor syndrome kicking the brains in without inviting the mob to kick as well.

3) It's depressing to think about it, much less to write all that down where it becomes an objective thing that cannot be ignored. Especially if you've tracked everything in detail (I have). Much more pleasant to sell off your belongings and pretend you're just embracing minimalism and forget about it.

4) Feels a lot like begging, and there are many complicated reasons why people mostly don't like to do that.

People write them - they just don't gain traction. You also don't tend to write them with your name attached because that literally throws your own name down the drain.

People are also not interested in hearing troubling stories because everyone has a troubling story. They want to hear how you succeeded because they want to emulate that success. They want to learn the "one small trick" that will lead them to finally getting the job of their dreams.

I've heard / read stories from people who tried really hard and failed to find jobs (both within tech, but unfortunately more common outside of tech). Unfortunately they don't get as much traction as people prefer to hear stories with a happy ending

If you ask for it... I've been hunting for a job for more than a year now. Well, perhaps not hunting as I haven't sent out nearly as much resumes during that time as the author of this story. Though when I do apply, I usually also get to an interview.

The interviewing causes a lot of stress to me. Even though I have never failed a coding interview, I utterly hate doing these. (Thankfully I've never had any hard leetcode problems thrown at me - I would have failed miserably.) I have also been a lot on the other side of the table, though I found even that to be a big source of stress to me. I personally believe these coding tasks are only good for filtering out the bad candidates - you can't use them to find great candidates. The last big company I worked at gradually steered towards harder and harder coding problems, until one day I just pulled out of the interviewing process as I felt that I personally would no more get hired.

I wish more companies would be more flexible in their interviewing process. Like, I have several open source projects which mostly revolve around various forms of static code analysis - why do I need to prove that I can write fizzbuzz?

Recently I had a pretty nice coding interview where the main task was not about me writing code, but instead reading the code that a junior developer had written and helping him sort out why the code doesn't work and how to improve it. This was the most real-work-like task I've experienced, I even found myself enjoying it.

Most of the rejections I've had have been along the lines of: "While we find your technical skills excellent, you don't really look that motivated / we think we might not have the right kind of challenge for you."

So, I'm in a bit of a dilemma. If I would strive to send out more resumes, most of these jobs are likely something that I'm not overly excited about, and so I will get rejected because I don't look committed enough. But if I try to look for a dream job, then that will likely never happen. I feel like I'm doomed either way.

During this whole job search I did get one offer, but I rejected it, as I heard rumors about the owners of the company being complete assholes. (Like monitoring workers through security cameras to make sure they're working at their desks.)

Thankfully I've had enough savings from my previous employments and I tend to live a fairly cheap life. Nevertheless, my savings are starting to run low now, which adds pressure to finally find a job. Well, I still have the option of selling my second house (so I'm still far from being financially ruined).