I was talking to some recently about a gig they've been applying for, and they've been getting rejection emails in tens.
He's almost too tired to check these emails, he applies regularly to these tech gigs and he didn't get them not because he wasn't good enough but because of under-exposure on his part and oversaturation as a result of having many people applying for the same job at the same time.
Funny enough the internet, places like LinkedIn are terrible places to connect jobs and clients or employers and employee.
Linkedin is filled with people with PhDs, and some of these people aren't qualified enough to do some of the jobs posted by employers, but their PhD status automatically qualifies them, leaving the non-PhD folks who are actually qualified with not chance of getting the job.
Places like Fiverr and Upwork are better, but the racism is too much. Jobs are lineup for people in places like the US and Canada but not for people in India, Pakistan or Ghana.
This segregative attitude is actually why the most qualified people are not given jobs, because of their location, race, colour or country.
So this automatically still means that skills are not the only thing that automatically gives you a job, you can be overqualified for a role but someone in Germany or Canada gets better opportunities than you, This is the case with the person I'm talking about
My Experience
I have experienced my own fair share of issues like this, while it's not tech, it's mostly physical jobs.
Most of the times healthier people have been selected in my place, and I didn't blame the employer; people want stable people for ever business even when they've actually not given you any opportunity to prove how stable you can be..
It made me remember myself in 2011 I think. I applied for a job somewhere and some of the people I went with actually got the job, but I didn't get it.
The sadness and the disappointment that happened to me was overwhelming, I spent weeks in physical and emotional sadness, and decided to do the best for myself by working harder.
So basically this now boils down to an individual to build themselves, manufacture opportunities from scratch, make it while faking it or by any means necessary.
The job world expects you to be up and doing. Except you're a creator or owner with a functional business or skill that's generating an income, you're still going to encounter the unfair advantages that comes with jobbing in 2026.
Now people lie or inflate their qualifications to get some of these jobs, some people are even using other means like seeking for referrals from back doors and all that, and facing these rigged levels of playing field means that you need to be an even bigger fighter to survive.
Unfortunately, people aren't built to constant fail while still keeping the level of confidence they once had, we're built to function continuously well if we get some level of rewards for the efforts we put in, but reality says otherwise; it doesn't care.
In conclusion
Short term disappointment are underrated, they can blind you to the things that can become possible in the future, you see pain and disaster, rejection and frustration and the only thing that seems fair is to give up the chase.
I think the logical thing to do is to keep pushing it. Giving up means failures, lack, want and a bleak tomorrow.
Today is the time for building the platform that tomorrow requires to thrive, but we must be dogged in our resolve. A lot of things will happen in your journey, but except you want a future where you're poor and cannot afford the basic things of life, then you have to be dogged and never give up.