I got laid off for the first time back in September (surprise!) and it took a giant toll on me emotionally. For the last 10 or so years I’d managed to muscle my way through engineering jobs despite not having a formal degree in CS. I’ve had the immense privilege of working at some really cool companies, working my way from the front of the frontend through the bowels of the stack and (for a brief moment) into the cold heart of bare metal. I’ve worked on product, systems, support tooling, growth/sales pipelines, billing, and miscellaneous developer workflows. In that time, I’ve written code in Ruby, JavaScript, TypeScript, Golang, Elixir and (some) Rust and worked with some crazy intelligent people. I’ve given talks internationally and written blog posts about various deeply technical pursuits. While I’m by no means an expert at all or many of things, I share this to say that I have a chunk of experience under my belt.
And yet. I’m struggling to find my next thing—I’m not sure what to work on next, or where to do it. I’d foolishly assumed going into my job search that it couldn’t be that hard to figure out what to work on because clearly, I’d done it before and hit the ground running. My experience in the industry should speak for itself right?
But this has been far from reality, my job search has been exceptionally gruelling and soul crushing. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I wasn’t quite prepared for the sheer amount of preparation and studying I’ve had to do for interviews and the overwhelming rejections I’d face (and continue to face) in this process. I’ve been hammering at leetcode despite my utter distaste for it, pushed myself to read and learn things at breakneck speed—hello database internals and virtualization. Time and again I’ve tried hard to prove myself technically in processes designed to wring you out to dry.
It feels like an excuse to say that the industry is at fault here. But as I read about the recent trends in the industry (post ZIRP anyone?), it’d be hard to deny that it is indeed to blame. Compared to how it was ~4 years ago when I was looking (ZIRP times), startups seem a lot more ruthless with hiring. Tiny startups (<10 people) are putting candidates through 8 hour long onsites and live coding tests akin to the lengthy, formal processes common to [insert big tech company name here]. There’s now a higher demand for individual output and companies (at least to me) seem to be feeling the pressure of having to prove how the next hire will directly impact company growth. Roadmaps are tighter and capital is limited. Investors could just as well invest in bonds which are less risky and deliver higher returns than tenuous startup potential.
From a business perspective this is great. Tighter margins force more accountability for output and efficiency. However, it denies the fact that tech is inherently human, and building something innovative and new is always a process marked by imperfection and inefficiency. It’s a reflection of our creativity to push boundaries. The process of trying to hire with such granular efficiency ignores this reality. In startups, you need the person who learns fast, thinks on their feet and is adaptable—not someone who can take a test really well.
Given market conditions, perhaps this goal is far too idealistic and hiring for this type of person is an impossible task. But perhaps this begs the question, are interview processes for startups adapting to the right problem? Market demands aside, are startups truly assessing the traits that matter most in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment? Maybe the problem lies not in the candidates, but in how they’re being evaluated. Perhaps the process needs to focus less on theoretical exercises and more on real-world situations, offering work trials or reviewing candidates’ past projects to gauge their actual problem-solving ability and potential for growth rather than how they perform under arbitrary code while we breathe over your shoulder pressure.
Sure, I’m biased—after all, I’ve always been a nervous test taker. But I do know this: the startup world isn’t about acing exams or following a perfect blueprint. It’s about adapting on the fly, and staying resilient in the face of uncertainty and aggressively chasing product market fit. If the industry post-ZIRP keeps focusing on testing for technical perfection, it might miss out on the people (humble brag: like me) who can and have made an impact in past roles. Maybe the key to the next best hire isn’t in finding the perfect fit but in recognizing someone’s potential and taking a chance on their eagerness to grow and build something great. Because at the end of the day, tech is about people—and that’s really all we’ve got to rely on when the money finally runs out.