i lied my way into this job. turns out the job description lied more than i did.
4 months in. handing in my notice this week.
context on me, 4 yoe, bounced around 2 startups you haven't heard of, decent at backend but I completely freeze in live coding. bombed 5 loops in a row earlier this year on questions I could solve at my kitchen table in 20 minutes. by the time this role came up i was desperate.
the posting was for a "senior backend engineer, distributed systems, go + rust." specifically called out "greenfield architecture work," "shipping to prod week 1," "ownership of core services." salary was 18% above my last. i wanted it bad.
bought interview coder the weekend before the loop. used it in every technical round. 3 coding rounds, 1 system design, 1 behavioral. offer came 6 days later. and I signed.
day 1. onboarding. my "senior backend" role turns out to be 60% incident response, 30% writing status page updates for customers, 10% actual engineering that goes straight to an offshore team who rewrites it anyway. the "greenfield architecture work" is a 7 year old java monolith nobody has the nerve to touch because the original architect left in 2021 with no documentation. the "ownership" means i'm on call every third week for a system i had no hand in designing.
week 2 i brought up the gap on a 1:1 with my manager. he laughed and said "yeah the recruiter uses old postings as templates, dont worry about it, you'll grow into it." grow into it. i was hired as a senior.
week 6 a friend in hr told me 4 of the last 6 hires onto this team quit within 10 months. one guy lasted 11 weeks. nobody gets to the greenfield work because the operational load never clears.
so here's where i landed. i lied in my interview. i used a tool to make myself look sharper than i was in a live round. and they lied in the posting. they used a template they knew didnt match the job because they needed to fill the seat before q2 closed. we both got what we wanted short term. neither of us is the good guy here.
honestly i dont feel bad anymore. im not ruining some noble hiring process. the process was rigged on both sides before i walked in.
signed an offer at a smaller company last week. honest job description this time, pay is the same. used ic again for the loop last week.