My dream is to have a little consulting company, taking care of maintenance of existing systems, perhaps refactoring, migrations, etc.

Yeah, I think we'd all like to get there.  I actually built this nifty little software product that I'm about 90% ready on, but that last 10% as you know is the bear.  I'm hoping to try to sell this thing, but ... just need to find time somehow to finish it.

I think there's *some* truth to this, but it's way, way overblown. 

Yeah, I'll have to disagree here.  Currently, Indeed.com is the top job posting board, and they definitely pre-filter resumes when they get them in larger numbers before "presenting" them to the actual people working in HR.  So you definitely have to hit all the "key words" in the job posting if there might be a significant number of applications for any given posting.

Yes, AI is used to pre-screen.  Then candidates are presented to employers.  Doesn’t mean employers are hiring them.  There’s 2 issues at play.

Sure, but, as mentioned, if you don't make it past the AI screening, then no one in the employer's HR will even see your resume, and to them it's as if you hadn't even applied.  This comes into play when there's a job opening to which a thousand, or hundreds, or even several dozen people apply.  Not only are HR unwilling to sort through them, they're generally not even competent to do so at the detailed level.  So they rely on Indeed (and others) to pre-filter the resumes and only send to HR those that pass their screening.

That's all I was saying, where it's important to read the job description in great detail and make sure that every "key word" on the job description is present on the resume you submit, even if it's loosely mentioned, where you have a section listing all the technologies you're even somewhat acquainted in or heard about.  I'd put a section on the resume that says something like:  "Other Technologies to which I've been exposed:  A, B, C, D" ... where you would list them by name to match the job description, yet without claiming any degree of proficiency in it.  Very rarely does an employer strictly require proficiency in everything on the resume, but the AI is stupid, and we should try to outsmart that nonsense just to make it through that first gate and onto the employer's desk.

That reminds me of a national math exam I took in High School.  I was not even in the top 5-10 at my Jesuit High School in math (but was TOWARD the top), with some Oriental kids being math geniuses.  Yet after the test results came back, I was the only one at my school who made the cut to the next level of exams, which surprised me because some of these guys were much better than me at math.  So I asked around and found out that those dummies did not factor in the scoring system of the exam.  We were told ahead of time that you got, say, 3 points for every correct answer, and they deducted 1 point for every incorrect answer, and that the score you needed to make it to the next round was, oh, a 25 (it might vary from year to year but it was generally within a 2-3 point range each year).  So I went through the test and answered ONLY the questions I was 100% without a doubt sure of.  I found exactly enough of them where it would put me safely above the cutoff range, and everything else I just left blank.  Meanwhile, those other guys tried to finish every single question, and got so many of the harder ones wrong that the deductions brought them down to below the threshold.  Moral of the story is that sometimes you have to apply a diffent kind of smarts.  You might be the best, say, programmer in the United States, but if you can't get your resume past the stupid AI garbage by outsmarting it, then no one will ever know.

So my only point was not to let the AI garbage thwart your job prospects.  AI is stupid and can't find nuances like, "well, I don't see the word 'Angular' on this resume, but man this guy has tons of experience that's very similar and he could switch to 'Angular' ... from, say, 'React' (similar tech) in a heartbeat".  No, AI is stupid and is looking for the WORD "Angular" ... so put the darn word on your resume, but in such a way that it's not dishonest and you're claiming a degree of proficiency that you don't actually have.  That's why I recommend to everyone submitting resumes to just have a summary "Other Technologies" section where you put down pretty much anything you've ever even heard of ... but especially every key word that appears in the job posting.

I usually start from that pesky 10% :-) and most of my contributions/ideas were very successful, including Python based kernel for a telco automated testing I created in 2006 and was still in use 12 years later. Most projects I witnessed failing, was because of that 10%.

I've built lots of stuff that's still in use, including an online docuмent management system I wrote in the late 1990s.  I'm not sure what you mean by starting with 10%.  That was a reference to the old 80/20 and 90/10 rule, where you can write the vast majority of the actual functionality but then get mired down on the final details to turn it into a product (look and feel stuff, licensing, automated installation, docuмentation, setting up a website to sell the product, collect money, issue licenses, manage updates etc.)  So I'm not sure how you would "start" with that stuff without having a product to package, license, and sell in the first place.

I'm talking here about my own product that I can sell and turn into my own business.  Marketing / sales is by far the most challenging aspect of it.  It's a great product ... just have to figure out how to sell it (with limited funds).

Matthew
Just a suggestion if it's something you are up for, many small nursing facilities need full time IT done both on site and remote, and a niche is actually in LTC where facilities may be running old cobbled together systems that need consistent new patchwork. For example a facility using PCC can't really interface with LabCorp. It can be a nightmare for a smaller company, because they might not have any idea how to find something simple like a lab list, a few small jobs would probably give you enough experience to devise a way to do things that would provide big value, and most systems are essentially patches. You could probably do two full time jobs, one onsite and one remote without too much hassle. It's usually scheduled weeks and the usual password resets. The easiest way to get in is probably a small company where you end up essentially running the whole thing yourself 

Any updates?

No, no updates yet. I've applied to about 1,350 jobs though since January.

We keep praying.