Well, I live in Dallas. I have been fishing in Dallas and Austin over the past several months and can't get any interviews. I would like to know where all these "desperate" companies are and what domains they are in.

You must be doing something seriously wrong if you are a dev in Dallas and haven't found anything after a couple weeks.

I live in Fort Worth, I was in the market last month and I got flooded with offers for interviews from the North Dallas area (Addison, Plano, Frisco). Not talking about these "urgent requirement" emails from indian recruiters, this is actual local recruiters I have dealt with before.

My background is pretty much like OP: I learned to program BASIC on the C64 and dropped off college, the difference is I did all that in South America. Since I came to the US in 1999 I haven't had trouble finding a dev job besides being unemployed for 6 months after the dot-com bubble.

What's your skill set and background? I hired a dev team a few months ago in Dallas and it was incredibly difficult to find qualified candidates, of whom only a few made it through the tech interviews (and I'm not that tough an interviewer) -- twenty resumes (from a very good headhunter who culled out marginal candidates) meant a dozen interviews meant one hire. I'm not in the hiring market right now (and may not even be in an industry you're interested in), but if you want to shoot a resume to careerbasetx at gmail (it's a throwaway account) I'd be more than happy to take a look at it, for whatever that might be worth.

Thanks, I'll do that. For the record, my professional programming experience is about 2/3 real-time embedded signal processing code, 1/3 NLP research and prototyping. I have also had a straight EE role that involved some embedded and test set code.

I think I recall getting you an interview. (at http://advancedsecuritylabs.com/ in Florida) Did we not give you an offer? Did you reject an offer?

We could easily put you in San Antonio or Austin. We might even be able to do Seattle or Cambridge (near Boston), though those are tiny offices.

If I remember right and we did reject you, try a different office.

First sentence: "Did we not give you an offer? Did you reject an offer?"

Third sentence: "If I remember right and we did reject you..."

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Where do I even begin with this.

I am a dev in Dallas and I am constantly inundated w/ recruiters to the point of annoyance. Based on my friends' anecdotal management/employer-side stories across several Dallas companies, it is definitely an employee market right now. Many companies are paying hefty salaries/bonuses to move people in from out of state.

During my unemployment spell in 2010-2012, I got lots of recruiters talking to me, and I even had some interviews come out of that.

Guess what? The employers were pickier than the recruiters.

I've learned to deeply distrust recruiters: they are known to make up lie after lie just to throw as many names in front of an employer as possible on the off chance one of us gets hired so they can grab their commission. They'll ask employers to interview blatantly incompetent candidates (including myself: I was absolutely not competent for some of the positions recruiters tried to get me) just because they're that desperate.

Then, when I was looking for a new job in 2014 (employed, but unhappy at my then-current position), I got innundated with so many recruiters lobbing utter shit at me. This time, I could afford to be picky, and I wasn't afraid to say to some of the shadier ones, "never contact me again". I had multiple recruiters try to offer me a six-month contract in another state, despite my profile on every job site saying both "unwilling to relocate" and "full-time only, no contracts". I had recruiters try to get me positions that required twice the amount of experience I had in technologies I've never touched. I had one recruiter repeatedly send me calls and emails for a position I explicitly told them I wanted no part of the first time he contacted me, and he didn't stop until I sent an email saying "please cease and desist from contacting me again, or I will take legal action against both you and your firm" (I should've also called his firm's HR department, but c'est la vie...).

Oh, and now that I'm happily employed at my current employer, I still get frequent calls from recruiters. I legally changed my name (first, middle, and last) in June 2014, but most of the recruiters calling me ask for me by my old name, and I'm at a point in my life where even hearing my old name causes me emotional distress.

In short: recruiters are sleazy, and being contacted by recruiters has no bearing on whether or not you'll actually get a job.

There are different types of recruiters. Some are those worthless spamlords, who pester candidates with irrelevant jobs and submit worthless candidates to hiring managers.

But the good ones look for good matches and good candidates, and don't waste people's time with junk. One recruiter placed more people on my team, with a much higher hit-rate, than any other one I dealt with; when I was interested in changing positions, I let him know, and after a month in which he didn't bother me at all, he pointed me toward an opening that was a perfect fit for me.

If you build up relationships with recruiters, you'll learn which are which, and how to ignore the Robert Halfs and Manpowers while still getting the benefit of the good ones.

Recruiting these days seems like what real estate agents were from 2000-2008. Lots of people were cashing in on the wave. I feel the same thing is happening now with tech recruiting. Because of that there's so much crap out there that just taking the time to filter is an exercise in frustration.

I had one recruiter call me and sell me on a position as a portal developer. At the end of the call he finally asked "by the way what is a portal?" He was dead serious. I was livid.

Well the quick answer is JavaScript is needed everywhere.

I'd bone up on that, and learn angular inside and out as well as a couple of other JavaScript frameworks for good measure. That's what gets me hired as a C# developer in php, ruby, and java shops where I can then gradually show them I know UX, devops, and other little valuable things. The trick is that the hot thing in short supply will change this time next year and you'll need to keep a finger on the pulse of it and learn that if you're looking to job hunt.

Hence the reason I said "web and mobile development-centric" in the post that started this sub-thread.

I'm actually writing a UI in Angular right now or a Java-based system I wrote. I hate it. It is a pain I'm going through because I need a UI for this prototype, but there is no way I would want to do this full-time.

Let me put it like this: If you're an unemployed developer writing sob-story posts about how it's impossible to find a job, I'm going to assume that you're not wedded to a particular tech stack and are willing to work on the technologies that are in-demand.

Absolutely. If I found myself out on the street tomorrow I would suck it up and take an Angular job if it came along. Beggars can't be choosers. In fact, I'm glad I have that flexibility if I really need it someday.

Honestly I don't tend to use angular with pure .net stuff. Razor and Linq handle all the templating for a single page app and data piping. Really all I'd add to the standard environment is something like this ( https://github.com/SignalR/SignalR ) so you can get real time data and refresh the page without postback.

For node work you really need it, but if you're using .net you're running a framework on top of your framework. So kind of more of a pain in the ass than you need to deal with for most things.

I designed the system as a set of (mostly) REST services, with the goal of keeping it as flexible as possible. Not only is the UI completely separate from the system, it is actually optional. The system is designed so that our current or future customers could slot it into an existing, larger analysis system if they wanted to.

Ah, yeah definitely need something like angular then. Very cool sounding project.

If you hate it, why are you using Angular?

Angular gained a lot of popularity by being an earlier contender at the time it was released... React is on the rise now, and may overtake it... Angular2 is more like React and a departure from it's prior take.

Businesses move slowly, and new project uptakes on technology is usually 3-5 years after initial release... .Net was out int 2002, but it wasn't until close to 2005 that it really started getting popular... jQuery was 2006, and almost an exception, but still not really strong until 2009... 2009 started Node, but it didn't start to shine until 2012-2013... it takes a while.

As it stands, at this point Angular is out there and a lot of current jobs are using/require it... if you can't sell a better option (polymer, react, etc), then you're stuck with it.

I'm in Seattle and am getting lots of contact from recruiters in DFW and Austin, and not just the usual LinkedIn spam BS. My background is heavy on DevOps and I've got about a 50/50 split on .NET and Java.

I can corroborate this, though more from the LinkedIn side of things. Out of every twenty LinkedIn messages I get, probably six are SF, four are Boston (I'm local), two each are NYC and DC, and two or three are between DFW and Austin.

(The last couple are usually Idaho or Nebraska or one of the other corporate-fief states.)

Depending on the town and your specialty, you might be surprised. Not every place outside of the typical hot spots is corporate-fief. Specialization means you can have a good job market without the crowds causing traffic jams and running up the cost of living.

For example, you might not expect much good in Melbourne, FL. You'd be wrong if you happen to like low-level code (assembly, reverse engineering, vulnerability research, embedded development, etc.) or EE stuff. There are both larger companies (Harris, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, and the http://advancedsecuritylabs.com/ part of Raytheon) and lots of startup-ups.

Since a specialized area (like Melbourne, FL doing low-level stuff) doesn't have too many nerds outside that specialty, the cost of living stays low. You can get a cheap house within a mile of work and there isn't much traffic.

I said what I get, not what does or doesn't exist. =)

What are the corporate-fief states? What does that mean, or what is that in reference to?

Roach-motel markets: you can get in, but you can't get out. More technically, monopsonistic or oligopsolistic factor markets, where the number of employers is small and thus control hiring in the local market. (Though I would expect Nebraska to be fairly competitive in hiring, given its surprisingly large number of finance and insurance companies.)

That's another possible way to look at it, but wasn't what I meant. The companies I know that went to Nebraska (or Idaho) pretty much had everything handed to them and they're not exactly states known for being big on protection of the middle and lower class. (People in favor of the approaches taken by these states might call them "business-friendly" climates; I think being friendly towards corporations, in an age where people cheer them for being amoral, is kind of stupid.) Monopsonic/oligopsonic concerns are another one to keep in mind, though.

If you're relatively competent and current in .Net (C#) or Java, you should be employable in the southwest (Dallas, Houston, Phoenix etc)... There's a lot of business programming in those cities (I'm in Phoenix)... it isn't exciting, or front end centered for the most part, but tends to be consistent (except the year following 9/11 was pretty harsh).

I don't know your background, but would suggest going with a modern Java framework, or ASP.Net MVC and build something... go through the latest Apress or O'Reily book on the subject in question... At the same time start going to user group meetings locally. This will tend to get you at least in the door as far as interviews go... from there you're on your own.

Yes, some places you won't get past H.R. without a degree, but I've been at this for a couple decades now, and as long as you get current or keep up, you should be employable.

I'm in Dallas as well, and I can back you up. I was unemployed for two years from 2010 to 2012 after getting laid off because all my experience was specialized experience that didn't transfer to other companies well, and being unemployed so long took a huge toll on my mental health.

I've found employment since (and even changed jobs over the new year), so it's definitely something one can recover from, and for all I know the job market might have changed since then so things are better now.

My experience with fishing in Austin is that they love you when you're not in Texas. If you're in Texas, you don't exist to them, so you don't get an interview.

I put my resume online 10 days ago (I live in Austin). I've had over 200 companies/recruiters call me. There are a ton of software engineering jobs in Austin and all over. I've gotten over 30 calls for jobs in Dallas, San Antonio, Plano, etc.

Anyone saying there are no jobs in this area has a crappy resume or no skills

Just curious, what kind of place did you put your resume online?

I have definitely got that impression. Over the past few years I have seen a parade of articles about "missions" from Austin to the Valley to try to recruit people, yet they seem to think Dallas and Houston don't exist.

I didn't get that experience at all, and I moved from College Station.

Are you open to Houston? I can provide suggestions on where to apply there.

Absolutely. I have made a few attempts to break into the oil and gas industry there, since my wife is affiliated with the industry.

same thing in Ohio.