Four rounds of interviews over two weeks with nothing but excellent post-interview feedback and got rejected out of nowhere with no actual feedback. This is the farthest I've gotten in 6 months of looking to get out of my current dead end only to be shot down just because reasons after being told everything went great. What a kick in the junk.

I’m honestly surprised by how emotionally draining tech job hunting has become. Between rejections, ghosting and endless applications it starts feeling like a full time job with no paycheck. Curious how people are staying motivated during longer job searches because some days are definitely harder than others. Like… it’s strategy, it’s tactical, it’s interviews. Just endless.

Is it true that staying after accepting a counter-offer is career suicide? My current company matched a competitive offer I brought them, and now I’m torn on whether to stay. They suddenly found the budget to give me the exact $25k raise and title promotion I’ve been begging for during the last two performance cycles.

Do you think the tech industry doesn’t care about referrals anymore? I have been networking aggressively and got a couple referrals to apply for two separate job openings, but I didn’t even end up getting an interview. My resumé and experience was vetted by the employees who provided me their referrals. Have you ever had such an experience?

I keep hearing that networking is the key to finding tech jobs but I genuinely don’t know how people do it naturally without feeling fake. Are people mostly meeting through online communities now or are in person tech events still worth attending?