Well, I’m employed again.
After seven months of take-home assignments, performative interview loops, and being ghosted by companies that asked me for feedback—I’m back working in tech.
Not because of some genius strategy. Not because I optimized my résumé with just the right buzzwords. Because some humans—actual humans—saw value in what I bring, and treated me like one of them.
The Layoff Lull
When you’ve been in software engineering long enough (manager or otherwise), you know how to ride out the chaos. You’ve seen reorgs, pivot fatigue, and “the vision” change three times in a quarter.
But nothing quite prepares you for the particular weirdness of job hunting from the outside. One minute you’re a leader. The next, you’re one of a thousand résumés in someone’s ATS, wondering if you’re even real anymore.
The silence is the worst part. Not the rejection—at least rejection is feedback-shaped. It’s the vacuum that eats at your confidence.
I was asked for feedback by companies who never gave me a decision.
I was “moved forward” to final rounds that never happened.
I was told how “impressive” I was by recruiters who went silent two hours later.
The Hiring Circus
The process has become its own endurance sport—long, confusing, and full of shifting goalposts.
I did:
Take-homes that took all weekend and never got reviewed.
Multiple-round interviews where no one could explain what the role actually was.
Back-to-back calls with people who hadn’t read my résumé—and still asked me to “walk through it”.
And panels where I was clearly the backup candidate, but we were all pretending otherwise.
The worst part? It’s hard to know where you stand in a system designed to avoid telling you. That does something to you. You start second-guessing every sentence in every answer. You lose the muscle memory for confidence.
The Job That Came Through
The one that did work out? It wasn’t flashy. There were no trick questions. No unpaid weekend projects. No “we’ll get back to you next quarter”. (Okay—there was a delay in the process. But the communicated it clearly and respectfully. Mind blowing.)
There were conversations. With actual humans. They read my résumé. They had questions. We talked. And then…they hired me.
Honestly, that shouldn’t feel revolutionary. But after seven months in the void, it kind of does.
What I’m Taking With Me
Now that I’m back, I’m carrying a few things forward:
A low tolerance for nonsense - The hiring process made me allergic to performative work. If it doesn’t serve the team or the humans doing the work, I’m questioning it.
More empathy than ever - Especially for candidates. The people who don’t get hired still deserve respect, closure, and honesty.
Clearer boundaries - Not everything needs a Notion doc, a Slack thread, and three retros. Sometimes we just need to talk and figure shit out. Like people.
We Can Do Better
I’ve said the before (shoutout to everyone following along on LinkedIn), but it bears repeating: Hiring is broken. It’s not just inconvenient or inefficient—it’s dehumanizing.
And most of us know it. We’ve just gotten used to pretending it’s normal.
If you’re a hiring manager, you have the power to push back on that. You can write clearer job descriptions. You can treat candidates like people, not puzzles. You can say “no” with kindness, and “yes” with clarity.
Or, you know… just don’t make people feel like they’re yelling into a black hole.
TL;DR: I’m back. Hired by humans. Back to work, more focused than ever, and unwilling to keep normalizing broken systems.