My experience is not like that at all and I feel like it's messed up in a weird way. I applied to dozens of companies recently and I never got a positive response, mostly automated rejections (both small-ish and larger companies).

The only companies that I ended up in talks with were companies that contacted me and none of those went anywhere (yet) for different reasons. Some of these companies are really cool though.

I am thinking a lot about whether I might just be much worse than I thought (feel free to look at my "Who wants to be hired?" posts in my post history).