I think my interview/offer ratio is somewhere below 1%. One factor that you probably guessed is I have very low social skills, well documented in my psychological evaluation that I did to diagnose my ADHD.
I started learning programming about as a preschool kid, in the 8 bits era, then did some Visual Basic desktop apps, C, .NET, embedded C payment devices, vehicle plate recognition systems, backend of payment systems, android programming, etc.
Changing that much was probably a bad thing, as a senior any position I attempt I’ll be competing with people that is focused on the same stack for years.
All the best positions ask for fluent english and my pronunciation is not that good, and I’m 44 years old now.
There is no chance I’ll move up to management because of said social skills.
First take some time to actually define the lifestyle you want. It’s very easy in today’s world to get tunnel vision on your career. But once you have financial stability more money doesn’t necessarily make you happier. Trying to move up the career ladder could prevent you from enjoying life. That’s where the saying “money doesn’t make happy” comes from.
But if advancing is important to you there are still ways to achieve this. Consider moving abroad for a few years. Especially the middle east has ton of good job offers and since many people you will work with there aren’t English native speakers your pronunciation shouldn’t hold you back. UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain all have a very vibrant expat community. They are more likely to value your experience and offer you a higher position. Then after 2-3 years you can go back with a stronger CV.
Or you can consider picking up a remote job, move to a tropical island and enjoy a more relaxed life. That’s what I did (not as a programmer but still remote work). A salary that barely let’s you survive in the west let’s you have a very comfortable lifestyle. You only have to consider the visa issue but for most countries that means just leaving for 1-2 days every 90 days. And with the extra spare money taking short flights/vacations is easily doable.
Both option obviously depend a bit on your social life.
I only have very limited knowledge about programming. But I do know that some languages are fairly new. So you switching around isn’t necessarily bad. Just focus on something that’s fairly new and then you are on a level playing field.
And if you haven’t done so yet. Spend a few bucks on a professional CV writer. If your interview rate is so low there is a good chance your CV is bad. The job market is crazy at the moment and getting tons of rejections isn’t uncommon. But with 20 years of experience it shouldn’t be that bad.
I already live in a low cost country, so moving to a cheaper place wouldn’t work
Some professional help is probably a good idea. My CV is probably not a big part of the problem, it’s getting me those interviews, maybe it gets me interviews for the wrong jobs. As I’m never sure what I want to do, I could make it look like I am all about stack X, and in the next morning I feel like I want to do some Y, and I get a call from someone that wants something to be done on K, on which I only had experience in a 3 months project and left some mention of it there.