I was laid off in January. Since then, I’ve been grinding through one of the most demoralizing job searches of my career. I need to ask, is anyone else experiencing this?
The Gauntlet
Let me paint the picture. I’ve made it to the final round of interviews 8 times. Not first-round screens. Not second-round cuts. Final rounds. Eight of them.
Each one looked something like this:
- ✅ Technical phone screen
- ✅ Hiring manager interview
- ✅ Observed live coding / programming challenge
- ✅ System design interview
- ✅ Cultural / values interview
We’re talking 5+ hours of interviews per company. Not counting the prep time. The LeetCode grinding. The system design review. The company research. The mock interviews. Conservatively, I’ve put hundreds of hours into this job search since January.
And every single time? Rejection.
The Response That Broke Me
I get it. Rejection is part of the process. But here’s what’s actually killing me. This is the kind of response I keep receiving:
“The team truly had a difficult decision to make, but they ultimately felt another candidate’s experience was better aligned with the project work ahead. That being said, they had positive remarks to make overall about your experience and performance, and if we had another role suited to your skills and interests, I am quite confident we would have landed at a different decision.”
Read that again. What does it tell me? Absolutely nothing.
- What was the “project work ahead”?
- In what way was the other candidate more aligned?
- What specifically was positive about my performance?
- What would I need to do differently to win next time?
It’s a corporate non-answer dressed up in warm language. It’s designed to make me feel okay while giving me zero actionable information. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was AI generated.
I’ve Pushed Back. It Doesn’t Help.
I’m not passive about this. Every time I get a rejection, I go back to the recruiter and ask directly:
“I really appreciate the opportunity. To help me grow as a candidate, could you share any specific feedback from the panel. Areas where the other candidate stood out, or anything I could improve on?”
The response is always some variation of the same non-answer. Sometimes they go quiet entirely.
I understand there are legal reasons companies avoid giving detailed feedback. I understand recruiters are juggling pipelines and don’t always have direct access to interviewer notes. I get it logically.
But emotionally? After pouring 8+ hours into a single company’s process (evenings, weekends, rescheduled plans), getting “we went with someone more aligned” feels like a slap.
The Real Cost Nobody Talks About
Here’s what the lack of feedback actually costs candidates:
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. If I bombed the system design round, I’d want to know, so I can practice. If my communication style was unclear during the coding challenge, tell me. If there was a skills gap I could close, I’ll close it. But when every door shuts with the same non-answer, you start to wonder: Am I bad at this? Or is the process just broken?
After 8 final-round rejections, I genuinely can’t tell.
I’m Not Asking for Much
I’m not asking for a detailed performance review. I’m not asking for legal liability. I’m asking for one honest sentence:
- “Your system design answers lacked depth around scalability.”
- “We needed someone with more hands-on experience in X.”
- “The team felt the culture fit wasn’t quite right, particularly around Y.”
That’s it. One real sentence. Something I can act on.
Instead, I’m flying blind. Preparing the same way for the next final round, with no idea whether I’m making the same mistakes over and over.
Is Anyone Else Seeing This?
I can’t be alone in this. The tech job market has gotten brutally competitive, and companies have the luxury of being selective. But has the feedback loop completely disappeared?
I’d genuinely love to hear from other engineers:
- Have you made it to final rounds repeatedly and been rejected without feedback?
- Have you ever actually gotten useful feedback from a recruiter after a rejection?
- For anyone who works in hiring, is there a way to actually get real information out of this process, or is the wall intentional?
Because right now, I’m putting in the work, making it further than most candidates, and still coming home empty-handed with nothing to show for it except a tighter LeetCode streak and a growing frustration with a hiring process that feels increasingly performative.
If you’ve been through this, or if you’re in it right now, I’d love to commiserate in the comments. And if you’ve cracked the code on getting real post-rejection feedback, please share. The rest of us need it.
Top comments (0)