I recently had 4 good offers on the table at the same time and it was unbelievably stressful for me, I don't ever want to go through that again. I don't see the value in applying to even more companies and increasing that stress further...
When I took my current position, I had only one offer. I was moving cities and my response rate was lower than I'd like (some jobs explicitly requested locals), plus I had a shorter window in which to jump ships.
Needless to say, I wasn't negotiating from a position of strength. A nice bump, for sure, but I could have done much better. I regret having to move so quickly.
But now that I have a strong name on my resume, companies are lining up to interview me and this time around I can pit their offers against one another.
Sure, having to pick companies might be slightly stressful, but knowing you got the best deal is an amazing feeling.
I benefit from a lot of privilege and circumstance, but any company making me an offer probably knows that not having another offer right now doesn't weaken my hand, at any moment i'm only a few days away from another offer if I really want it.
So yeah, I suffer from anxiety-related issues, I'm going to choose the route of less stress.
Not a Devo fan, are you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass
> With multiple offers you are guaranteed to be able to get higher pay, more time off, and/or better working conditions.
Actually, you aren't. You are, however, free to pick one of many offers, and one of them may suit you better than the others. Perhaps you can negotiate better offers, but this doesn't mean that a potential employer may be willing to present a better counter-offer.
You're somehow assuming that salary is the only relevant parameter in choosing a job, or even that all jobs are equivalent in career growth and creating more job opportunities. Some jobs are dead-ends and career killers, even if they pay more. This sort of stuff needs to be considered.
But... I bet the author is right about this mass application technique lowering his stress. He's gaming the system and not applying through his network, there's no great reason to care deeply about any of the offers, and he has so many offers that it's not risky to mess some of them up. You get to be detached and learn more about the application process by doing dozens of them at once.
It reminds me of this Moth podcast story about the guy who data mined for dates on OK cupid. https://themoth.org/stories/data-mining-for-dates Worth the listen, but he reported being a lot less invested in individual dates, and seeing interesting patterns in the process. It did add some stress, but a different kind of stress than he had with one-date-at-a-time.
So you're right that maybe the mass approach is better for avoiding this feeling, although it's hard to imagine taking it unless I was already out of work and could invest the time in such a high number of potential interviews.
Basically, all 4 options had variables that appealed to me, and there was no clear winner.
The fundamental issue was that my dream job doesn't appear to exist in London right now, the kinds of things I want to work on all seem to require moving to either SF or NY. So I was essentially having to work out which job would most progress my skillset and experience for 2-3 years from now.