My degree is in Art, with digital media which was very niche at the time. That's where I sparked interest in web dev although there are other interests in there.

I like some DIY electronics stuff, Arduino, AVR and such. Integrate it with PC building perhaps. Putting out feelers for that type of work is even more of a longshot than my typical web dev work.

My current "work" routine is sending out my resume to online groups every week or so, and a few applications and call it a day.

Travel isn't possible right now. I don't have to pay for housing, but neither do I have a large pile of money to sit on. That means I am partially living on welfare

I would try the former option once more, since, I already spent a few thousand on a tech interview course 2 years ago and it hasn't helped.

How can I get hired when I am now tired of being competitive? The mass layoffs weren't even the tipping point for me. I've been applying to jobs non-stop since 2021 and interviewed at many places, and getting no offers. I faced the burnout sometime early last year.

Even in the more "chill" jobs you are expected to pass multiple rounds, be among the best among the candidates.

I just want to be average in the candidate standings, for an average dev job.

This is a real difficulty of being competitive in SWE. The general industry moves so fast that one must often hustle so much to remain competitive as to risk burnout. This is particularly bad for those with competing life priorities (e.g., families, health, etc.)

My suggestion would be to find some niche that allows to you not face that constant hustle. Look for the Venn diagram where you can add a lot of value, but the competition isn't as fierce. For example, if you are both good at coding and understand, say, physical systems like HVAC, you can focus on an industry like building automation that doesn't iterate as fast. Or maybe you really like aviation and can develop CFD models. Point being, it's much less competitive when your field requires two complementary, but distinct, knowledge bases.

Sub-question: what happened to Facebook "Apps"? The things that connected to an API for developers to create (mostly) whatever they want for info or entertainment.

I remember when people would hand me business cards advertising themselves as a Facebook App developer but that work has seemed to vanish without a warning.

I want to say some point they got sued for letting/"letting" certain app devs scrape everyone's data, crawl friend of friend data, which was then immediately sold/dumped/repurposed for abuse they locked down their API