I agree with Rahul here. When I was working in Facebook (2011-2017), there was a lot of growth, but even with that, some projects in backend engineers "seemed to dry up", especially when people were busy fighting fires. Good engineers tended to dig into the fires and operational work and find the patters and root cause them. And define work for themselves. I have seen many promotions with such projects. 

Define your own work. 

Founder at Other

Yogi Sharma

This is such an important topic: balancing current job with the new job search. In my career coaching work with engineers and PMs, this has come up at least tens of times. 

I have done it myself when I was leaving my FB job in 2017. I got 5 offers (including Uber, LinkedIn, Pinterest) over a period of 3-4 months. And then decided to take neither. :-) 

Also, I have done the same with many people I work with. 

The basic idea is a simple one: start small and adjust accordingly. 

Daily habits are the key here. Can you spend 15 minutes preparing for the job search every day? If no, can you spend 5 minutes? The point here is not to make a huge progress, but develop a routine that you can adjust. Once you start to see the benefit and emotional gains, the effectiveness in the time you spend tends to come. And one starts to "create time" too. 

The biggest block people run into is: it seems so simple, so it must not work... so they don't even try. 

This is a story I wrote on LinkedIn which you might find helpful: <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yogi1_coaching-timescarcity-work-activity-6953571231191199744-lE_m?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop>

Happy to discuss further if it would help you. 