Now programmers/software engineers are in a quite special position, especially in SV and similar locations, where it is a seller's market.
For most others it is about getting noticed, if a hiring manager has 100 CVs sent to him or her, how will you stand out? Baking a cake will not help you if you don't have a good CV/qualifications but it will help you get noticed and stand out.
Another way, which is just as silly as baking a cake is to buy adwords with the hiring managers name [1]. It is a novel strategy to get noticed.
Point is that it is much easier if you have a network to rely on for introductions, weak ties are very important when job hunting. So if you don't have any network to support you, you have to become creative in order to get noticed.