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> 2. You held very senior positions. I think a lot of people don't like hiring people that were more senior than them. So that CTO is being held as a negative. They are not saying "Hey I get the experience of an EM and a CTO in a Senior Engineer for a bargain salary", they are worried you will overshadow them. This is sub optimal behavior for companies.

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Not only is there the overshadow worry, but there's the overqualified for the position.

You were CTO once, and now you're a IC again... are you looking for a CTO position still?

I had an experience (post dot com crash) where the team hired a senior engineer... who left the team within a year to be an engineering manager somewhere else in the company and our team was back to interviewing for the position again.

From our team's perspective we wasted the time interviewing and onboarding a person when they job-hopped (even within the company) in under a year. Despite being qualified as a senior engineer it wasn't what they wanted to do.

To that end, overly qualified candidates are similarly risky to hire as under qualified ones.

I've also been in situations where someone in a senior or management position is hired with previous Big Tech or startup experience and tries to make the regional retail company's internals into a Big Tech engineering department which ended poorly for everyone involved.

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To your third point, the desire to stay on the coasts and around Big Tech companies is also a thing. Being willing to move to and within the midwestern states (some companies have return to office... others don't want to create a tax nexus in another state - if you don't hire anyone in California or Colorado you don't have to follow those laws... so hire everyone in one state and only deal with one state's payroll tax and insurance options).

> I had an experience (post dot com crash) where the team hired a senior engineer... who left the team within a year to be an engineering manager somewhere else in the company and our team was back to interviewing for the position again.

Same reason I struggled to get a job at McD's or Home Depot years ago when laid off. They knew I'd be gone ASAP and that I probably wouldn't eat shit the way the local rube demographic would. These are crappy service jobs but they still want you to stick it out for at least 6-12 months.

Yes region matters

My career started in the south and then we moved to Seattle - it feels like everyone is laid off in Seattle - I could probably find something in the south again

can't comment on west coast but from perspective in NYC, i think the market for SWEs willing to work in office here is very good. might be different since there's lots of different industries hiring for SWE roles in addition to typical tech "startups" here.

i've noticed that folks who want to work remote having a tougher time if they're looking for tech jobs. makes sense if you look for jobs at a local non-tech company, you might have better luck.

generally seems like remote jobs have the most competition so if you can find jobs localized to your market, you will have more luck there.

So hire me then. I only apply to in-office jobs in NYC and only get an immediate No. No interviews. I'm as qualified as OP.

Yeah I get that I have all sorts of resumes (tailored to the job I apply for) and I took off the CTO and now am using Sr AI engineer

Still very very hard to get noticed

4. Overqualified can also be seen as you are seeking this job purely temporarily. While continuing to seek better. You may be gone within weeks. A more alert project might seek to use your experience at low cost for that little while. But a harried manager already had a problem and might see it as now having two problems.