Here's a Google Maps link. Anyone know what's up with it? Must be some sort of spot they own or something, just curious. There's almost always 3 or 4 of them there, and there was like two dozen or something when I drove by a bit ago.
I was laid off in 2024 and had been with my company for 9 years. In that time, I rarely interviewed and never seriously sought leaving. I started immediately throwing out applications and realized how awful I was at interviewing. I spent a lot of time practicing, and got a surprising amount of bites, and ultimately it only took me about 3 months to find something. Now, I'm looking for something new for reasons that are kind of irrelevant. I'm getting bites fairly regularly, usually juggling around 3 companies at a time which in and of itself, seems like a miracle in this market. But I have kids, my wife also has a full time job, and I'm going 4, 5, 6+ rounds with all these companies. It seems like I'm pretty much making it to the end with almost all of them, but just can't land anything. I even had one fly me out and stick me in a hotel before rejecting me, and the position is still posted 4 months later.
I know I should be thankful I'm even getting this far with the way things are for most people right now, but it's really shaking my confidence. I know I have things to work on, and I'm trying to do just that, but something about actually getting to know these people and companies and teams, before being ultimately rejected is just starting to feel devastating. I only had one where I felt like I was truly out of my depth (I'm senior and this was for a lead-level position so... wasn't surprised on this one). Most I feel like go solidly, but then of course no one gives you feedback. I'm in a weird place where I've worked remote for most of these years and for only two companies, so I don't have a ton of close dev friends I can chat to about things and what I may or may not be doing well. I'm in general not incredibly confident in my answers but I try to shake that off in an interview setting as best I can. I think my live coding is solid enough, and can discuss the tradeoffs of tech decisions well. I really don't know what exactly I'm doing wrong, and with the opaqueness of the industry, how do you figure out areas of improvement? I'm pretty ambitious and I'm always trying to improve my skills so obviously I'll keep that up, but like it just doesn't seem to be translating to the interviews themselves.
I have one that's 4 hours long next week and I genuinely don't know what I'm going to do if I don't move on, I can't keep devoting this much time to this. Especially when I just saw the same position get reposted today 🙃 I'm tired, as a lot of us are. I hope this post at least leads to some good discussion, I definitely needed a place to vent but welcome any feedback I can get at this point.