Job ads in general are very depressing if you're somewhat older and more experienced. There are about 6 bandwagons rolling along, with various ropes tied between them. If you're not a fan (or you even dislike) one or two of those wagons, chances are one of the other wagons you can accept is tied to it.

Node.js, Docker, DevOps, TDD, Agile, blah blah blah. Yes each of those can be quite useful in the right situation, but it is a symptom of lack of experience (particularly where management and tech leadership is concerned). A good many of the actual jobs and work environments is probably being held back or otherwise limited by the companies' need to have some of the more common popular tools in their list. But they don't know that, and there's no point arguing it. If the job still attractive, one's best hope is to get in there, get some seniority, and quietly start moving things in the right direction. Or maybe you find out that their buzzword-soup is actually seasoned right for their situation...

But to be fair, part of our problem industry-wide is the so many choices we have. You could argue that choice is good, but it creates fragmentation which eventually self-organizes into bandwagons. The huge question is, "In the end, are we better off?" I greatly suspect the answer is, "Not much..."

I sympathize with you and have also found this frustrating, but note that job ads are first, speculative, and second, seen as marketing material. Many ads will list fads because they think it makes the company seem like it's on the cutting edge and they believe it will attract candidates. Most such companies will end up not doing anything significant with the tech.

"In the cloud" has become such a thing these days that companies that explicitly avoid the cloud on the technical side end up writing job ads that say things like "help us transition to the cloud!" I don't know if this is now considered standard marketing/HR mumbo jumbo or what, but just like a resume, a job ad should not necessarily be taken at face value.

Those very definitely depend on where you're planning to take a job, and what part of the field you plan to work in. Upon your suggestion, I went and scrolled through some job ads and was satisfied that "most" were still not yet Dockerized.

Here's what I tried: https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=software+engineer&l=New+York%2...