Trying to think through this more carefully because the gap between "qualified on paper" and "actually getting interviews" seems way larger than it should be for a lot of people, and the explanations I keep seeing don't fully account for it.

The standard advice is: LeetCode, good resume, network, apply to a lot of places. That's all fine. But there's clearly something else going on because plenty of people do all of that and still hit a wall, while others with comparable or weaker technical backgrounds seem to get traction faster. The delta isn't always obvious from the outside.

A few things worth pulling apart here. Is resume filtering actually happening on content, or is it more about formatting and signal density in a way that has nothing to do with actual skill?…