Yea, whenever someone says "Just network, bro!" they never actually fully connect the dots between networking and walking into the office on your first day of work:

Step 1: Just have coffee with a hiring manager

Step 2: Hiring manager says go check out job #41102, and submit your resume. Good luck, bro!

Step 3: [???]

Step 4: You've got an interview to ace!

Nobody ever explains the [???]. They just assume that by magic, your online submission rises to the top of the stack of 1,699 other online submissions, avoids all of HR's filters, gets to the right person in the right department on the right team, that person has the authority to pick you out of the pile, and so on... There's a lot still out of your control in this process. It's not just Networking --> Job.

The ATS systems everyone outsourced to a few years ago are a big part of this problem.

HN has a lot of rich douchebags for which this is the case. Small circle = higher trust.

The rest of us have to figure out how best to rot in a low trust world created by these douchebags.