I have been looking for a PT internship in NYC in the proptech startup field this past month. A lot of time spend on LinkedIn got me absolutely nowhere. I ended up reaching out to a family member who put me in contact with somebody they know at a startup I would have been interested in interning by.

This contact and I spoke over the phone and really hit it off and he asked that I’d prepare some example work. I did so and I got very positive feedback and then he connected me with the head of the company who is in charge of making the final say.

This CEO, who is very busy took some time to respond and had to reschedule nearly 3 times before we actually had our time to talk over zoom. However while we were emailing it seemed that he was interested in an intern (I mean hey, who doesn’t want free labor from somebody hungry for work). He even told me that he was looking forward to talk and that he apologized for postponing our meeting.

I join the meeting and he is looking down at his keyboard the entire time clearly working on something else. It didn’t feel like an interview, more like a confrontation. I felt like I was at my principals office in elementary school where he guilted me into confessing to what I did.

After explaining the role I’m looking for, he took two steps back and looked around the office and turned to me and said: unfortunately, we currently don’t have the resources to have an intern at the moment.

Like… ugh. I totally understand that this is reality but damn, I really thought I had this in the bag.

So now I’m back to square 1, reaching out via LinkedIn and cold emailing.

I then decided I’d use another resource I had by being in the city and I printed the attached flyer and mamilla envelopes and decided to go around the city to some startups and drop it off by them.

The first startup I went to, the doorman let me in and I went up to the HQ. And omg it was insane. Just a huge space full of people working. I felt like I was intruding on something, I mean I was.

I walked into the office and see a guy coming out of the restroom and I ask him if there’s a secretary I could drop off my envelope by and he told me to give it to a person he pointed to.

I went up to her and very nicely I said “excuse me, sorry to bother but I have some mail to deliver. I was told you would be the one I could hand this off to.” She was very kind back and took it and I went back downstairs and left the building.

I never have ever had the confidence to do such a thing but I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive before in my life.

Happens to be I also emailed a somebody there today and they responded that they aren’t hiring for PT/internship roles.

But I’m still proud of myself for doing something extremely ambitious.

Anyways I’m still on the hunt for an internship in NYC. DM me if y’all have any leads. Curious to know what yall think of my story 🙃

27k in student loan debt, homeless, no job, no savings, two SWE internships on my resume, useless cs bachelor's degree from 2025.

My parents kicked me out when I approached a year post graduation with no job. I wasn't getting any interviews, at all. I was working as a part time barista for $16/hour to bide my time but I abandoned that job when I was kicked out. I'm in a city where rents are 2000+ for closets. No reason to stay at that place.

My loans have obviously been defaulted on by now, I don't even have an active phone number for then to contact me with. No money.

I've been staggering, stumbling around gagging on nothing like a drug addict in the last week or so. I had a bike but someone broke the lock on it while I was sleeping outside one night.

Idk what I can do now. I can't get a tech job or use my degree for much of anything. I've been diving into trash cans for plastic bottles. I feel uncomfortable in my skin, I have no pride in myself, in my existence. I have no confidence anymore.

I'm sitting near a Starbucks curled up on a bench just watching the night go by. My life is over. I have no control but my future any longer. I want to end this.

It's been 7 months. I applied to everything that pops up on Indeed. I am 42 and have decades of retail and warehouse experience. Nobody would hire me. I had not a single call back. I finally got hired. I start October 25th. All the paperwork is in and it's official. It's not the best job but it pays well. And at least I have something. It's a crazy job market. It's been hell. I hear the people out there who have been unemployed for years. I don't want to jinx myself so I am literally knocking on wood. Wish me luck

I came across the job opening on LinkedIn. It was a fairly established company with international offices.

“(Tea, please!)” ruined my day I can’t lie.

I’m in China and I have been unemployed for 14 months. Actually I was laid off from last company.

I have a Master’s degree and have been searching for jobs constantly but no results. All the interviews and the selecting process make me exhausted. I need to put every effort into this process and the company, however, they just reject me or prolong the period and I think they are trying to find other candidates.

All I got in this 14 months is just rejection. Feeling hopeless.

I have some friends who are also unemployed for many reasons. But some of my colleagues also switch jobs successfully.

Anyway, I don’t know when it will end.

Some of the assessment questions were weird, for example:

Do you work too fast without thinking about safety more, or do you miss deadlines more? WHAAAAAAAAT. I DONT DO EITHER.

i’ve literally been without a job for the past 5-6 months because nobody is hiring me. I’ll do countless interviews and applications and nothing ever comes of it. u genuinely have to beg for a job nowadays or know someone in the company to get the job. i’m basically homeless right now and sleeping at friends houses because i lost everything. this is genuinely horrible. i am able to do gigs every here and there but i dont make enough to survive on my own at ALL.

If Domino's Pizza can have an online pizza tracker to tell you where your pizza is, I feel like companies should be able to do something similar.

I see so many posts talking about being ghosted, and I have experienced the same myself. Why can't companies help put people out of their misery and say "Sorry, no job for you. But here's a coupon for some pizza."

That way there are (hopefully) no awkward emails, no waiting endlessly. Just the facts.

I’ve been trying to apply for jobs these past few months—something involving computers, admin work, or anything flexible that I can do online while I continue school. I’ve sent out so many applications, but only about two companies got back to me to let me know they were moving on with another candidate. Mostly, I just get ghosted.At the time, I thought nothing was worse than never getting a reply back.

Until three days ago, when I heard back about a job I had applied for. The post made it seem like a normal admin job where I would help with tasks on the computer. It also listed a yearly salary, so I didn’t think much of it.They sent me a message asking me to pick a time for an informational meeting where they would go into detail about the company, the job, the training, and everything else. I scheduled a time and had the meeting today.

At the beginning, they talked about the job, the company, and what they do. I was getting a little skeptical by then, but I stayed, hoping I was just overthinking and that this really was the job opportunity I’d been trying to find.
The meeting continued, and at the end, they got into detail about the training, they pulled up a chart showing a few training bundles I could purchase, then later sent me a link to sign up and pay for those courses…I was just trying to find a job, this world is so cruel.

I need to vent about a wildly unprofessional bait-and-switch and free consulting extraction I just went through with Insight Global recruiting for a contract at BMO (Bank of Montreal).

They pitched me an incorporated Senior Data Architecture contract targeting $70/hr. That's a low wage for this role but it sounded like a solid fit, so I went through multiple interview rounds. Then, they asked me to do a massive, time-consuming case study and present my architecture recommendations directly to the bank's hiring manager.

This wasn’t a simple technical assessment. I spent hours building a complete 24-slide enterprise architecture deck (a 16-slide core strategy presentation plus an 8-slide technical appendix). I mapped out their data ingestion, ETL/ELT pipelines, audience segmentation rules, privacy compliance controls, incident response playbooks, and a full 4-week rollout plan.

During the video call, I noticed the BMO hiring manager immediately reaching for her keyboard the exact second I transitioned to a new slide. She was very obviously taking screenshots of my core presentation step-by-step as I walked through my strategy.

The presentation went perfectly. The feedback from the BMO Director was glowing. Then the Insight Global recruiter reaches out: "You were the strongest candidate, but they're going with someone whose rate aligns with the budget."

I was confused because I had never asked for more than the $70/hr listed on the job description. I emailed the recruiter back and said, "I really liked the team and the architecture challenge. If the other candidate falls through, I'll take the role at the original $70/hr rate."

The recruiter’s response? They admit the actual approved budget from BMO was only for a $50/hr T4A contractor all along.

Here is the part that really pisses me off. The recruiter explicitly told me they knew the budget was $50/hr T4A, but deliberately pitched me as a $70/hr incorporated consultant because they wanted to prove a point to BMO about current market rates. They used my unpaid labor as a free bargaining chip to educate their client, without ever telling me I was participating in their experiment. I wasn't looking to help an agency prove a point to a bank. I was looking for a job.

When the bank predictably said no, the agency just shrugged and walked away. Insight Global gambled with my time, and the BMO hiring manager walked away with screenshots of a free senior-level architecture blueprint.

If an agency ever asks you to do a massive presentation or a take-home project, demand written confirmation of the actually approved budget first. And if you do present, watermark your slides. Do not let recruiters and clients use your interviews to test budget elasticity and harvest free consulting.

Thought this should go here if it hasn’t already

I think one of the hardest parts of job searching is when a role genuinely matches your experience, but you still struggle to get an employer’s attention.

You read the requirements and recognise work you’ve already done. You have relevant skills. You can picture yourself handling the responsibilities.

Then you submit your application and hear nothing.

It can leave you wondering whether your experience is being overlooked, whether your application is communicating it clearly enough, or whether the hiring process simply moved in another direction.

Obviously, there isn’t one explanation for every rejection or unanswered application.

But I’m curious about something:

When you’ve been qualified for a role but didn’t get a response, what frustrated you most: not knowing why, feeling overlooked, or not knowing what to change for the next application?

i sacrificed plans that i made to spend time with my father who i never get to see because i thought i was having an important interview today. i’ve been looking for a job for the past 2+ years and this was really important to me, as i rarely even get interviews scheduled after sending hundreds of applications per month.

about 1 minute into the call, the person conducting the interview tells me “honestly, i only scheduled this meeting to let you know i thought you weren’t a good fit and to ask you why you even applied”

i was basically speechless, and extremely confused. i stated the requirements that were listed in the job description that i applied for, and how i felt my resume aligned very closely with those requirements.

he responds to me “yeah, that’s what i wrote in the description. but that’s not really what this job entails. i’m going to go ahead and end this call”

??? are we for real ? why even bother scheduling an interview with me if you already determined i wasn’t a good fit and “just wanted to let me know”? you could have easily just ignored my application but instead wasted my time and belittle me in the process. and now i feel terrible having cancelled on my father and don’t even want to talk about the experience.

i can’t deal with this bs anymore

I spent almost a month going through their hiring process. Four interview rounds, including a panel with the whole team. The final step was a paid take-home project. It was time-consuming, about 6 hours of my weekend. I finished it and submitted on time.

The recruiter said they’d get back to me within one week. One week passed, nothing. I followed up twice, no reply. Total ghosting. I moved on, assumed the role was filled.

Fast forward two months. I get a LinkedIn message from the same recruiter. They act like we never spoke. They ask if I’m interested in this exact same opening again. No apology, no explanation for the radio silence, no mention of the project I already completed.

I replied politely and told them I already did their take-home work and got ghosted. Their response? Just “oh okay, good luck with your search.” That’s it.

What frustrates me most is how normalized this is. They ask candidates to sacrifice personal time, then ignore us. Then they circle back months later like nothing happened.

Has anyone else had recruiters reuse the same job opening and pretend they never ghosted you after a full interview loop? I’m curious how many people have wasted hours on take-home assignments just to get ignored.

Hi guys, this is my first time posting on here.

Yesterday, i completed my second interview with a company and the hiring team seemed to really like me. They loved my presentation and the work i did for their assessment. Towards the end of the interview, the hiring manager even said that I’ll be hearing good news from HR.

So this morning, i got a call from the talent acquisition manager saying that they would like to offer me the job. However, the pay would be 35.2% lower than my current salary! When i asked why, she said that my current and expected salary is way higher than their range for this role.

I told her that for a WFH job (i was working on a hybrid arrangement previously), the lowest i can go is a 15% decrease from my current salary. She then said that this bump would be “impossible”.

I asked if i could speak to the hiring manager about the offer and the talent acquisition manager said that my hiring manager wouldn’t be the right person to talk to since she doesn’t know about my full benefits (which aren’t much at all). She later even added that since they are a big company hiring in Southeast Asia (where i am), the salary band is “deliberately made much lower”. She also shared that while the salary is low now, i might be able to get a get increment later on.

Later, she also mentioned that she would recap the offer on email, but she never did.

This is literally my dream job and i got along so well with the hiring manager and team. Please give me some advice :( thank you for taking the time to read this.

why do you have to ghost people after initiating a conversation with them? Why? Just say no we're not moving ahead with you. How hard is that.

end rant

Not that many of them ever really did, but I just got back into job searching after a long break and am noticing that barely any jobs these days are listing salaries anymore? It used to be that at least maybe 30-40% or so would list the salary and you could even filter by salary. Now the salary filter also seems to have disappeared?? Personally I dont even bother applying unless the salary is listed. Anyone else noticing this sharp decline lately?

Sorry, community, for sharing something so personal here. I don't really have an online community where I feel comfortable enough to open up, so I'm putting my thoughts here. Please don't mind.

I'm also attaching two of my previous posts for context.

Link 1: https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/8558709/2-yoe-300-400-job-applications-150-cold-jcrbu/

Link 2: https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/8562495/no-interviews-no-rejection-no-feedback-h-ytau/

Now, coming to the actual situation.

I'm genuinely starting to feel like I might not get a job anymore. It's been around 45 days, and I haven't received a single interview call. Not even one proper opportunity. And honestly, I'm starting to question myself. Am I a loser? Am I doing something wrong? Is there something fundamentally wrong with me that I can't see?

Let me explain how I got here.

Back in 2019–2020, I worked really hard to prepare for JEE Main and Advanced. My dream was to get into an IIT, NIT, or at least a good Tier-1 college with good placement opportunities. I wanted to study at a good college, get placed through campus placements, and build a decent life.

But things didn't work out that way. I ended up in a Tier-3 college, where even getting an internship was difficult. I finally got one, but after seven months, the company let me go.

Then came another 5–6 months of struggle before I finally got a job at a very small startup, people casually call a "lala company." I worked there, gained experience, and tried to build my career. Then that company also let me go in September 2026.

I'm a 2024 graduate from a Tier-3 college, with a 7 month internship and around 1.8 years of full-time experience in backend-focused full-stack development. Overall, I have almost 2 year full time of experience.

And yet, here I am.

For the last 40–50 days, I've been applying every single day, sending around 20–30 applications and 5–10 cold emails daily. Around 60–80% of the jobs closely match my experience and skills, while for the remaining ones, I sometimes feel my profile matches the requirements almost perfectly or even exceeds them.

Still, nothing.

Not a single interview in 45 days.

And the most frustrating part is that I don't even understand what I'm supposed to do differently.

Back in 2024, when I was looking for internships, most companies wanted candidates with at least one year of experience. Now that I've gained experience, they want 2+ years, preferably 3–4 years.

When will I finally be enough for these companies?

Sometimes an HR or recruiter calls, but it usually ends with, "I'll discuss your profile with the hiring manager and get back to you."

And then nothing happens.

Apparently, everyone now expects candidates to be excellent at DSA, development, AI, system design, and everything else. Even for jobs paying 6–10 LPA, you're expected to solve difficult DSA questions, explain system design, and sometimes build features through live coding while sharing your screen and explaining every line.

And sometimes, the people asking these questions don't seem to have much practical understanding of what they're asking about themselves.

I know this sounds harsh, but it's genuinely how things feel after going through interview experiences and reading countless job descriptions.

No matter what people say on LinkedIn, I know what the developer job market in India feels like right now. Most developers are doing the same kind of work I did at my previous company: understanding tickets, debugging issues, fixing bugs, and implementing features, often with AI tools.

I used Claude Code, Codex, and other AI coding tools too. Tasks that might previously have taken 1–1.5 weeks could sometimes be completed in 1–2 days with AI assistance, depending on the task. Sometimes less, sometimes more. AI helped me get work done faster, just as it's helping many other developers.

I understand that there have been layoffs, hiring freezes, and intense competition. The AI situation makes everything even more confusing. Looking at job descriptions, interviews, and LinkedIn posts, it sometimes feels as if everyone has built their own LLM, trained their own models, and become an AI expert.

Everyone seems to be doing extraordinary things, while most developers are using AI to make their regular development work more efficient, just like I was.

And when someone like me says they're not getting interview calls, the standard response is always the same: "Keep improving your skills."

Bhai, I KNOW.

I know I need to keep learning. I know nobody is perfect, technology keeps changing, and learning never stops in this field. There's always something new to learn and some skill to improve.

But does that mean I have to spend every single day learning, preparing for interviews, improving my skills, and proving that I'm good enough?

Don't I deserve to relax sometimes, too?

Don't I deserve to feel a little secure about my life, to believe that things are going in the right direction? To take a month or two off from constantly worrying about my career and just enjoy being alive?

I'm not saying I want to stop learning forever. I just want to reach a point where I can breathe, where I can genuinely feel happy from within instead of pretending to be happy in front of others.

I want to tell myself, "Okay, things are finally going well. I can relax a little now. I don't have to worry about everything all the time."

But right now, even imagining that feels difficult.

I'm genuinely tired.

People say you should focus on your skills so that when an opportunity comes, you can grab it. And yes, I understand the logic.

But what if the opportunity never comes?

What if I keep preparing, learning, solving problems, and improving my development skills but still don't receive a single interview call? How am I supposed to prove myself when I don't even get the chance?

I'm tired of constantly preparing for something that might never happen. I'm tired of trying to stay motivated when there's no feedback, no response, and no sign that my efforts are leading anywhere.

Bhai, how much more am I supposed to study? How much more am I supposed to learn?

I'm sorry, but I'm exhausted now.

I've spent the last six years, from 2020 to 2026, trying to build a better life for myself. Somewhere along the way, I feel like I forgot how to laugh.

You know that feeling when you genuinely laugh from within, when you're actually happy instead of just smiling on the outside?

That barely happens anymore.

I smile in front of people because that's what I'm supposed to do. I act normal because I don't know how to explain what's going on inside me. But internally, I don't feel that happiness anymore.

And I miss it.

I miss being genuinely happy without having to convince myself that everything will eventually be okay.

My dream was never to become extraordinary or earn crores of rupees. I just wanted a job at a good company, to earn at least ₹1,00,000 per month somewhere in India, and to live a decent life.

I wanted to travel sometimes, go on trips, visit cafes, take evening walks, work out at the gym, sleep peacefully, and enjoy life's little things without constantly worrying about money or my future.

I wanted to live like a normal person who doesn't have to think about their career every waking hour. I wanted to feel secure enough to enjoy life.

Is that really such a big dream?

I genuinely don't understand what I'm doing wrong or why nothing seems to work out for me.

I've been applying to jobs since my final year of college in 2023. There have been periods when I applied less frequently or more passively because I was exhausted or demotivated, but I have never completely stopped applying over these last three years.

Even now, I'm applying to roles where my skills and experience match the requirements, sometimes almost perfectly.

On LinkedIn, I send around 10 connection requests every day until I reach the weekly limit, usually within 4–5 days. When the limit resets on Monday, I start again. I've probably reached out to around 400–500 people in the last month alone.

But I haven't received a single referral that has actually led anywhere.

Around 50% of people don't respond. Some say, "Thanks for sharing," or "I'll let you know if I find something relevant." Maybe 2–4 people have offered to forward my profile to HR.

But so far, nothing.

No interview calls. No meaningful progress. Nothing.

And this process is destroying my confidence.

I used to feel confident about my development skills, problem-solving ability, and capacity to learn. I've solved a lot of DSA problems over the years and spent significant time improving myself.

But after reading interview experiences and seeing what companies expect, my confidence has almost completely collapsed. It feels like everything I believed about my skills and ability to learn has suddenly fallen apart.

Sometimes I feel like I won't be able to do anything meaningful with my life.

Maybe I'm a loser. Maybe I'm a failure. Maybe all those years of effort weren't enough and never will be.

I know these thoughts might not be rational, but when you keep trying for weeks and receive absolutely no response, it's difficult not to think this way.

And the worst part is that I don't even know what alternative I have.

People sometimes suggest government jobs, but everyone in India knows how difficult that path is. Competition is extreme, vacancies are limited, exams get delayed, paper leaks happen, and there are so many other problems.

Preparing for that path would mean starting almost from scratch, learning a completely different syllabus and exam pattern, and potentially spending another year or more preparing without any guarantee of success.

I don't know if I can handle that uncertainty either.

I genuinely don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life anymore.

I've tried to do everything people tell you to do: study hard, get a degree, gain experience, improve your skills, keep learning, build projects, apply for jobs, network, and stay consistent.

I've tried to follow that path.

And after all these years, I'm sitting here wondering why I still feel so far away from the life I wanted.

I don't know what the future holds, when I'll get another job, or whether things will improve next week, next month, or several months from now.

And that uncertainty is eating me alive.

Sometimes I just wish someone could tell me that things will be okay, and I could actually believe them for once.

I believe in God. I've always had faith that somehow things would work out. But even that faith is being tested right now. I'm scared that one day I'll lose that belief, too.

I keep praying, asking God to please do something, give me some direction, and let things get better.

I don't know what else to do.

Maybe this post won't change anything. Maybe people will read it and move on. Maybe someone will think I'm being dramatic or complaining instead of working hard enough.

I don't know.

I just wanted somewhere to put these feelings instead of keeping everything bottled up inside me.

I don't even know what I'm expecting from this post. Maybe some advice, maybe someone who has gone through something similar, or maybe just a little understanding from people who know what this job market feels like.

I know I need to keep improving and that learning is a continuous process. But I also want to feel that all this effort is leading somewhere. I want some stability, some security, and a chance to enjoy the life I've been working so hard to build.

I just wish I could understand why things have become so difficult and whether there's actually a way out of this situation.

Bhai, I don't know what is going to happen to my life.

I genuinely don't.

I don't know how things will work out when I'm not even getting interview calls, no matter how much I study or how hard I try.

I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this without feeling completely broken.

I just hope that somehow, someday, things get better. I hope I can smile genuinely again. I hope I can finally live the life I've been working towards for so many years.

And right now, I wish I had someone I could sit with, someone who would simply listen without judging me, so I could cry my heart out for a while.

I wish I could just sit there and cry, and cry, and cry, without having to explain myself or pretend that I'm okay.

Because honestly, I have so much inside me that I don't know where else to put it anymore.

I don't expect anyone to have all the answers. I just hope that by sharing this, I might feel a little less alone in everything I'm going through.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this.