"Lots of picky"
American companies front-end static pickiness for rando applicants. A snapshot a month ago by a non-technical HR associate indicates the ideal applicant would be experienced with the following list of 25 emacs extensions, prefer while loops over until loops, have memorized everything in Knuth but use none of it on the job, and wear a size 10.5 shoe preferably eee width.
The real world dynamic work experience over the past couple decades is someone comes to with some sob story about "one of our execs went golfing with one of their execs and I know you've never used freetds or mssql but you need it up and running and integrated with out stuff by the end of the week" "what is it?" "I don't know but just get it connected as best you can". Another classic was being on rotating pager duty and getting midnight calls about a product I literally did not know existed, I mean I'm used to handling problems with no training or documentation, that's to be expected, but I didn't even know we were selling this thing. Both stories are true and honestly not very surprising. This is pretty much how "real world" IT works AFTER you're hired. And I'm extremely good at that, its like a giant self solved puzzle, so I don't mind, but I assure you, no one interviews rando applicants for that, even though its the most important part of keeping the job.
Mostly I get work from old coworkers and the first month is just like six months of normal change rate rolled into one, its not really a big deal. Its a forklift upgrade. I've worked thru several of those, a new job is just a forklift upgrade along with a new chair. I could walk into any dev job on the planet and be productive in a month and stay productive there as long as I want. I know three people that experienced up front picky because I got my current gig because I know some folks and HR had to go thru the motions, so they sat thru insane tier interviews that I skipped. Hours of HR style "You reach down and flip the tortoise over on its back, Leon." and it goes on and on.