On not getting a job

a tech hiring fiasco, circa 2024

I spent the last three months of 2024 interviewing and I did not come away with a job.

In fact, I didn’t even get an offer.

The last time I went through this process in 2021, I had three offers for engineering leadership roles after ~6 weeks of interviewing. When I felt excited about a role and interviewed well, it was a solid indicator of progression. This time, it was nearly impossible to guess.

I was rejected at the final stages by two companies—Boxt and CircleCI—with zero feedback. I had to chase both of them to discover this outcome. CircleCI made matters worse by telling me the feedback was “really positive” a few days before evaporating into thin air, being chased by me and then remembering to hit the Greenhouse reject button. My automated rejection email was delivered shortly after. I followed up asking for actual feedback but never heard back.

It’s a shame because many of the people who interviewed me seemed like smart, kind engineering leaders that I’d enjoy working with. But the hiring process deflated this good impression. I often wonder if engineering leaders realise what’s happening outside of their interview bubbles.

It’s not hard to get this right. I understand talent teams have a lot going on, to say the least. But one or two sentences of genuine feedback make a world of difference. Most of these processes involved four or five interviews and many hours of preparation. Taking the time to write a tweet-sized piece of feedback in an email is not asking much. Failing to round off the process leaves a lingering, bad taste.

There was more fun. I got rejected for a Head of Engineering role after solving a checkout challenge but not making my solution extensible enough. I got rejected for another “people-first” EM role, which apparently required a low-level algorithm test—the most deplorable I’ve endured to date. I didn’t do well; I hadn’t spent the requisite week on HackerRank remembering all the array methods I only learned to pass interviews. But still… is this really getting companies the right candidates? One company took getting the right candidates very seriously, with their nine-stage interview process, the longest I’ve ever seen. I liked the company, so I continued, but it didn’t work out.

I got rejected at CV stage more than ever before. I worked nearly two years at GoCardless but couldn’t even land an initial screen with Monzo, something of a sister company. Recruiters were another struggle. One silently vanished after a final-stage rejection; others never followed up after initial conversations.

Of course, there were justified rejections, too. I bombed my first system design interview, which was a shame because I was genuinely excited about that particular company. But they sent a couple of paragraphs of great feedback, so I was able to course-correct.

At another company (GoodStack), I was pipped at the final hurdle by someone with more relevant experience. They jumped on a call with me to give me that feedback. I’d been excited to work there and, after the initial punch of the rejection, found myself liking the company even more for how they’d handled it. I’ll continue to follow their progress. The same can’t be said for CircleCI—you’ll find my review alongside their other EM candidates on Glassdoor.

In the end, only one company remained.

The interviews were hit-and-miss. In one, I nearly left the call early because the interviewer was so curt that I had to reverse interview them to figure out what questions they were asking.

In the same process, another interviewer admitted they’d barely slept and then spent 10 minutes explaining something they’d just launched. I hadn’t asked for any details and had read all their release blogs. Few things are more frustrating than being ready for an interview only to watch the time fritter away whilst someone rambles or can’t decide on a question, asking 4 at once instead.

I persisted with this company to the fourth stage. After a week of silence, I chased them and got my final automated rejection email with zero feedback. The email told me they’d love to keep my resume on file. I told them I would not love that. A day later, I got some great feedback—via a LinkedIn DM. Whatever is going on inside that company to force someone to respond outside of an email chain… I just don’t want to know. The feedback was good, though, and I thanked them for their time.

I sat in the rubble at the end of it all and scratched my head. I have significant experience as an engineering leader and founder. I helped raise $40m in my last founder role. I’ve worked in anything from 3-person startups to 800-person Fintech unicorns. I’ve built a side project that was acquired. I’ve built engineering teams and cultures from scratch, I’ve managed multiple teams, managed managers and I still write code. I’m also an accredited coach. And I couldn’t land an Engineering Manager role.

Mentors and friends told me it’s a buyer’s market, with intense competition for roles. I’ve heard the term “bloodbath” used on more than one occasion. It’s hard not to take it personally sometimes.

That said, if I’d endured another month or two I’m sure I would have landed a decent role. But did I still want to? More on that next week.