I was laid off at the end of October from my position of 6 years, due to then employer's client base being 95% NYC/NYS government agencies. Those agencies got hit with budget cuts due to stalls in tax revenue, and as a result contracts dried up as well. Those 6 years were the most toxic and mentally/emotionally draining years of my life, and left me a different person than when I went in (long story short, text book definition of workplace sociopath for a boss).

After the first four years of holding up a smidge of hope that things would get better there, I decided to start applying elsewhere. I got quite a few responses from some well known organizations that I had wanted to work for. Passed their screener interviews, passed their technical assessments/take home projects, went through final interviews with a good number of them, only to get the email response of, "Thank you for interviewing with xyz. Unfortunately...". When following up for feedback, rarely were the responses substantial or in a couple cases, even believable.

Now, I totally understand that one will never pitch a perfect game, but man, when you go through 12 interviews at some solid places, where 7 of them seemed to go really well, and you left them thinking, "Man, I feel great after that. Pretty sure I aced it!", and even had the managers saying things like, "We think you're gonna be a great fit! Look forward to hearing from us in the next couple days", one would reasonably think they'd be receiving an offer soon after. Unfortunately, that was not the case for me, and after getting the last rejection response I called it quits. The emotional/mental toll of putting in so much time and effort into processes which in most cases looked to have favorable outcomes yet amounted to nothing, was just piling onto and worsening my existing state of feeling beaten down, and it wasn't worth furthering that.

Then came the layoff in October and I immediately began applying away. This time around I've been getting more responses than ever before during a job hunt, and once again with reputable organizations, again with many times making it through each step of their interview/testing process, again with having some great experiences and feeling confident about the outcomes, again with the overly positive/leading statements from managers, and again being let down each and every time.

The best was with a mid-large ad agency, where I passed the first interview, then was given a timed online technical where 60 minutes was allotted to write vanilla JS and build one toggle button whose text/styling would toggle, and a second button that replaced an href in an anchor... 60 minutes for that. I finished it in 5, then spent another 3-5ish minutes writing comments just to show attention to detail and care for potential others having to work with whatever I wrote. You know what the response was? "Sorry, but we're looking for someone who has a bit more technical experience". I shit you not. It was laughable.

To top it off, I've been ghosted a few times, which has been a new experience. One guy even had the balls to reach out to me a month later, after saying he was going to setup an interview with his team two days after we had what seemed like an awesome call, but then he ghosted lol.

At this point, after feeling left burned, I'm saying fuck it and taking a break from interviewing to work on my own projects for the time being, with the hope of becoming at least somewhat financially independent/less reliant on an employer. The application/interview process is such an incredibly disheartening process and I feel for anyone who has also been ran through the wringer.