In either case the leet code nonsense is probably unavoidable so worth some time as well.
Have you tried who's hiring and who wants to be hired posts here?
I've had mixed experience with HN who's hiring. Frankly I'd be uninterested in working for anything earlier than a series C startup. I'd frankly rather work for a company with steady and strong revenue and a culture that's sustainable.
Not looking forward to the leetcode nonsense, but it would probably take a few months to get up to speed where I could pass interviews.
Given my resume is sort of all over the place (many 1yr stints) curious of your thoughts on where I should look? I'm tempted to primarily aim for product roles since pure IC roles just make me dread working at this point.
Thanks for info, is this part of your challenge? You stated you want a normal job and tech salary, but is it that you really don't want or enjoy coding?
In either case, I'd recommend prioritizing your wants, e.g. location, technologies, role to help you narrow a list of potential places.
The market does suck but there are jobs and with CS degree and some experience I honestly think you'll be just fine. Don't worry about the short stints and just have a reasonable explanation about this if asked.
Not wanting a pure IC role definitely doesn't mean you don't enjoy coding. It usually means you don't want to be stuck building things that are unimportant. When you're working at a company that's making mistakes and you've the experience to know better, it's painful just sitting idly by. I know a lot of people can switch off their care factor, but some of us can't.
For example, I love coding, in the past 3 months I built an unofficial companion app for The Bazaar, an upcoming game. I built a back-end (Next.js, Vercel, Cloudflare, Supabase, PSQL), front-end (React), insight platform, packaged Windows and macOS desktop apps (Electron), reverse engineered the game (C#/Unity) and its networking layer. I was processing 300,000 player events a day.
https://bizarre.gg/runs/00493ccf-5b96-523c-beb4-06e8154cc158 (view on desktop, click on the right)
I was recently forced to shut down this project by the game company (as were other 3rd party devs working on stuff for the game). I was offered a role at the game company, which they reneged on at the last moment.
Perhaps because in my role acceptance email, I wrote about how I am keen to take ownership (in the accountability sense) and get involved with developer advocacy, tech blogs etc. I suspect this spooked them because they "don't hire beyond Senior", which is obviously an absurd practice that's typically put in place by inexperienced/insecure leadership. Typically companies justify this with "we promote within", which is a massive disservice to your staff, because it just means your staff never have access to mentors to help them grow.
I took a 4 year time out there and now I'm back at a startup. I think what I'm learning now is if I can survive a couple of years and pack my brain with a bunch of new shit I'll be able to get a very nice and chill consulting gig until I retire, if I want that. People want your beautiful and experienced brain and a lot of the shit you potentially have worked on or thought about is more relevant in the current and the future than in your past. A lot of the world is slow AF, you might be ahead.
You can find similar types of roles that those folks I listed above are hiring for within other large companies, sometimes. Some of those large orgs have a small army of consultants and managed services to keep relationships intact when a client decides to try out a different vendor for part of their stack. I spent my time helping clients figure out how to be successful with a competitor to help us keep the existing business we had. It gets weird, but it's out there and I admit I kind of fell into it, but it was because I blindly applied and they were very excited about my past experiences.