Mind

So, me and my friend recently decided to switch jobs, and our experiences were extremely different. So much so, that it has me really questioning my entire life. Some background: * We both have similar years of experience (nearly 6 years) * My friend has his CPA * We both started looking roughly around the same time (around the mid point of this year) My experience as a Software Engineer * I spent the first 2 months grinding LeetCode, System Design and brushing up on OOP concepts. I've done this before, so it was mainly a refresher / review * Did Grind75 * Skimmed through Alex Su's System Design books * Went through HelloInter view's System Design * Did Grokking the Object Oriented Design Inter view * I've applied to roughly 150 positions (tailoring my resume per job application, hence the "low" number of applications) * I've heard back from 25 different companies * 20 of these companies had an initial OA * On average, 2 LeetCode mediums with the occasional LeetCode hard * Sometimes had a light system design quiz as well * The remaining 5 had a more typical phone screen inter view, where I was asked some behavioural stuff and 1-2 LeetCode questions (mediums, sometimes hard) in a live setting * Overall, I made it to the onsite for 8 companies * On average, I had roughly 4 rounds of inter views per company * 1-2 rounds were pure LeetCode, generally medium / hard questions * 1 round System Design * 1 behavioural round, with deep dives into my past work experience and real world working knowledge * Occasionally also had an OOP round * I made it to the last round with 3 companies, but was unfortunately not chosen every single time * I am still currently looking for a job My friends experience as an Accountant * Prepped behavioural questions using the STAR format about his work experience * Applied to 8 different companies * Heard back from all 8 * His inter views were all 1 round each, with an initial recruiter screening first just to go over his resume and career goals / why you want to join this company * His on-site inter views were generally 1 to 1.5 hours long, where he was asked common behavioural questions (tell me your strengths, weaknesses, etc) and just talk about his past work experience * He had offers from 6 of them, and accepted the highest paying one ($130k) Overall, I'm just mind blown by the complete and utter lack of prep that my friend had to do. Like... it's just astonishing to me. He barely even had to search for a job to get one. How has your experience with with job hunting as a SWE? How do you compare it to other fields? I know this is just anecdotal evidence on my part so maybe it's not always this easy for accountants or other fields