this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2026
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I've been job hunting for months and you won't believe how often I've had the exact same reply of "ohh this doesn't reflect your skills we just wanted someone who matches our expectations more" ITS INSANE.
Don't fucking sugar coat it just tell me what's wrong so I can improve further applications ongg. But if you're searching for someone with 5 years experience with <specific technology/field> and I bring 8+ and I'm still not good enough, I don't believe you.
Apparently they don't tell you because then you could sue them over it.
So they give a generic reason that doesn't really have any metrics. The problem is that it's useless as feedback.
I’ve been job searching for 2 years (I was employed) then I got canned. The job market sucks even with the experience they’re asking for.
I've almost given up entirely. I think I've applied to every job I could find. Never thought I'd enter early retirement involuntarily like this haha
The job market isn't nearly as bad as the job-seeking process. Hiring managers don't actually know what they want or what their businesses need done. Software is so hyper-specific and skills so conditional that you either needed to be onboarded straight out of college or get incredibly lucky in your job rotation to land on the one critical bit of information all the demand revolves around. Automated tools and services ingest a ton of spam that HR still needs to sift through. Recruiters are as happy to lure away your staff as help you find new people.
The jobs are out there. But it's an absolute fucking mess to find them.
My god, I feel so seen. I’m coming up on a year unemployed. The job market really is that fucking bad
What they probably meant was "we already decided who was going to get the job before the recruitment process began. It's someone we already know and like."
Or "we weren't actually hiring anyone for the position, but we have to keep running interviews so that our competitors don't know that"
There was a job I applied to that wanted the exact thing I had done at my last job. Same tech tech. Same early startup. Same kind of project. They rejected me without even a phone screen for "someone more in line with their needs".
There's no incentive for them to do a better job.
Had the almost exact same thing happen. They wanted me especially because of the knowledge from my previous company. 3 interviews. Then, riight before they were gonna give me a coding challenge, I got the "uhm akschually naww" email.
There's something especially soulcrushing about that. Makes you prefer the ghosting or the "we went with the better candidate" bullshit
Honestly even coding challenges now... Do they even make sense anymore? You can teach people if they don't have the right stack, but if they are a dick...
Most coding challenges are stupid. You'll have a job that's just working on a basic ass API in front of the database, and they'll be like "can you solve the traveling salesman problem?". You don't need to know if I can pull fancy algorithms out of my ass. You need to know if I can cover the basics and take feedback.
Though the last code challenge I had was "can you remove duplicates from this list of integers?". I was like, "can I just convert it to a set?' and they were like "...ok". Didn't get the role, but the pay was bad, it was in office, the company is surprisingly politically conservative, and they're rewriting their codebase "to support AI development". So maybe that sas for the best.
Lol "can i just convert it to a set".
I imagine someone felt really smart for finding that question and you just ruined their day.
Our interview process has the candidate implement a couple (extremely simplistic) API routes, with the specific approach left up to the candidate. It's more about having something they can talk through and evolve than it is about us looking for any specific approach.
Basically it exists as a way for us to have a starting point for talking about scalability topics, asking the candidate how they would evolve their implementation as we scale up the system. Does a pretty good job of giving us an idea of how they think through system design problems.
No joke, when we do interviews we have candidates give code review feedback. One of the pieces of code is a poorly written but functional “find the unique numbers” function. We have had ONE candidate say, “Just throw them in a set.” And in our separate chat where we discuss candidates, we were like, “Finally someone gave the right answer.”
(Not that there’s a wrong answer when code reviewing like this, but I was waiting for someone to come to that solution.)
I think the main thing for doing a coding challenge is to talk through your thought process and work style.
Right, buy what if I get anxiety about the whole thing, start tellibg myself how bad I am at this, and panic inside my head so bad I can't read the words on the screen?
honestly no clue, in my journey I've not once been asked to actually do a coding challenge yet.
I talked general stuff with the Google guy (pingpong balls in a bus et al) but no coding challenges.
I guess I have truly left the realm of hard coding (at C) as it's all "solve this excellent infrastructure requirement and then rip out your brain and grab the crayons because it's in yaml and fucking ansible" now.
I've done a few coding challenges so far and hated all of them
They might be using monitoring services to reveal your recent salary, and rejecting you based on what they imagine you'll accept relative to another person
A friend of mine is convinced they all feed into sketchy private data broker systems, and reject candidates based on personal and political stuff. Algorithm determines you're kind of a lefty? Reject.
We have like no rights here in the US with regards to labor, so they can basically do what they want so long as they cover half of their ass.
Damn that's a conspiracy theory I'll believe.
Also, I know for a fact they look you up on social media. I wonder if I keep getting rejected because I'm not active on any of that Facebook crap.
Yeah I'm probably suffering a little because I don't have any real social media, and my GitHub is all private contributions for work. I should probably do some free work to show off there but I resent that
I did free work on GitHub once. I made a porn mod for a video game and released the code on github under an alt account.
Sometimes I seriously think about whether I should tell employers:
"Have you contributed to any open source projects?"
"A little bit of Piefed stuff, but mostly gooning."
I worry whether I should create a Facebook account just in case I need it for this reason... but then I remember that I'm not that desperate! (Though I will not judge anyone else who is.)
I'm lucky enough to have a name that's hard to lookup and also lucky enough that no one has pressed the issue to give them links.
I applied for a job that asked for a very specialized, specific skill set, that at the time, literally only maybe 3 people in the world could have had (new endangered species stuff) I got rejected with an auto reply. One of those listings they have to do even though they had a candidate. I should have pressed the issue because looking back, I think they would have been required to interview anyone qualified.
I been searching for almost year. I got a few interviews but it has been a constant stream of thank you for applying.
My linkedin just shows me jobs from months ago.
I went through a lay off in 2024 and another in 2025.
I am so sorry, my dude. I feel your pain as I struggled for quite a bit as well, my wife almost lost all trust in me during that period of time and it honestly was soul crushing af.
I hope for all the best for you, I can relate to that. Lost 3 clients as a contractor during 2022-2025 and currently work only with one single client and things aren't going too well financially for him but I try to keep myself optimistic.
I often ask at the end of in-person interviews what I could improve upon. I normally get some good constructive feedback.
Same 😭 job description says they want 3 to 5 years experience. I have 22. They went with someone else 🤷♀️ been job searching since March and not a single bite.
🔥🙂🔥
I might not even go back to uni at this rate, absolutely no fucking jobs in any field of tech.
Seriously. I got rejected and I'm thinking I have 10 years of experience and a master's degree in this shit and that's not good enough?? It'd be nice if they told us what else we were supposed to put on the application.
I interviewed at a place I have actually worked at before. Twice. I applied to a position on one of the teams/project that I contributed to significantly. Seemed like a safe bet to get me out of my current toxic job. In the end, I was rejected for not having the experience they were looking for. Like what?? I literally wrote a good portion of the code in that project. What does that even mean?
Generally, they are terrified of giving more feedback than absolutely necessary. They might incur an accusation of unfair hiring practices. Similar story on 'references', confirm only employment dates, never provide a qualitative assessment, good or bad.
Oh man, I remember having an interview with a hungarian team for a videochat platform (I wasn't fully aware that its related to videochat or pornography until the end of the interview), the technical lead corrected me on what CORS is, and he did it wrongfully. I opened mozilla docs for CORS and proved to him that I was right, he told me that using external sources during interviews is forbidden and rejected me. This was quite a few good years before covid happened and I am so glad I didn't join that shit team.
Honestly that just sounds like a small dick mega insecure asshole and it’s probably for the best you didn’t join that team. If you got the job they prolly woulda blown their lid off every time you corrected them
when i was last searching so many people told me how nice my resume is and yet i was still passed over.
I always tailor my resume to a specific job application, but then I habe mever had to fire off more than a handful of resumes at a time. Incredible how different job markets are for different professions!
I hear you; I've been looking for a new job since December, and increased the range of my search since I was forced out of my old job in May. The market is hella rough out there.
However, there was one position I interviewed for where the recruiter actually gave me feedback on where I fell short compared to other candidates. It was incredibly refreshing compared to the form letter rejection.
What helped for me was to talk to people/companies with whom I wasn't applying for a job. I'm looking for a junior swe role (in this market). I've learned a few things from replies I got from actual applications, but I learned most by networking. For example, I went to this agency that only works with seniors, but I had a really great conversation. The guy was interested in me as a developer, but he couldn sell my lack of experienve to his clients. We had a great conversation about software, careerpaths and also about my job hunt. He gave some tips te rewrite my cv and how to stick out during applications. Since that day, I've gotten twice as many callbacks. No job yet, but i've got good prospects.
ya, networking is my achilles heel