> the easiest time to get a job was quite recent, in the back-half of COVID

Things can be easy or difficult at different parts of the hiring funnel.

Towards the end of covid, it was easy to convert a resume into interviews, and successful interviews into a job.

But in the 1990s the tech industry hadn't yet invented the five-interview, live-coding, culture-fit, hiring-committee gauntlet. If a hiring manager liked your resume there'd be one interview, and it wouldn't involve any coding.