Have an upvote, was going to post the exact same reply. The tech interview process is so irritating, so friction-filled, and ultimately so random in outcome that it doesn't seem worth it for maybe a ~1% bump. Grind leetcode. Apply at 100 companies. Get 10 call backs. Go through the whiteboard hazing rituals and ghosting. Maybe get 1 offer. Back when I was 25-30, maybe I'd expect a double-digit percent bump for all that work, but now, I'm pretty much at the ceiling, and the great pain of interviewing just doesn't seem worth it.

I had one unforgettable experience where the company strung the process along for 3 months. And then they forgot about it. Called me back to restart the interview process. I tagged their emails as SPAM (accidentally, but in retrospect correct) and moved on.

The last one was 2 quick phone calls the same week. The third call was what laptop I wanted and where should the send it.

Exactly that. Interviewing has become so ridiculous, it's not worth it. One has to wonder if there isn't collusion among larger companies to make the process so painful to reduce employee turnover and consequently also salaries.

I was working in tech in the 90s and interviewing was just a chat on what I'd like to do, what they need done and if it looked like a match, let's do it. And I'll argue that jobs were more technically difficult then (assembly language, C, kernel work, attention to optimization since hardware was slow, etc) compared to the typical job these days of gluing AWS components together for yet another CRUD app functionally identical to every other.

Interviewing at top tech companies hasn't changed much in at least 30 years. One of my first job interviews, in the early 90s, I had to sit in front of a computer and write some assembly. Probably did it in on the computer because the company didn't have a whiteboard. Personally I've been suspicious of any company that just did a chat for an interview

That's very different from my experience. In the 90s I interviewed for a top research labs organization (Bell) and for the highest flying tech company (Sun) and both interviews were very casual chats about interest and goals. Got offers from both, accepted both.

Full-time job to look for another job...while you work your full-time job might I add. I get home and gag a little when I look at my computer. The last thing I want to do is paperwork when I get home from slave labor. cough I mean work*...

I want to give a different experience, been through job interviews recently in Europe for a software development job, and it was a breeze, I just put the #opentowork tag on LinkedIn and applied for just one job.

At the end I got 5 offers to choose from out of the 8 companies I was doing interviews with, and I would've probably got all 8 offers if they didn't give a time limit to get back to them.

All of this took me about 2 hours a day of work, but I have to admit that these are all startup/medium level companies, if you're looking to get into FAANG that's another story.

+100

+7000