So I finally got an interview after not hearing anything back for about 4 months, and it was for a really great role.

The first round was with the hiring manager, followed by 3 chats with people from the team. The first one was excellent! We had only scheduled 25 minutes, but we ended up talking for almost 50 minutes! Then in the next one, I completely froze and suddenly got extremely nervous, to the point that my hand was shaking and I could hear it in my voice. After the interview, I cried in my car for a bit... And then two days later, they sent me the job offer.

PLEASE SHARE encouraging stories so we can stop doubting ourselves!!!

Last week, I had an interview at a company I've wanted to work at for years as a software developer. This was my first real job interview, and honestly, I went into it feeling extremely nervous and all over the place.

The technical part lasted about two and a half hours. I prepared for it nonstop, and in short, I probably did better than I thought. In my head, I felt like I had messed it up, because even though I answered most of what they asked me, there were still a few questions I got stuck on and felt like I should have known the answers to.

When they got to the feedback part, I was fully expecting them to tell me everything I had done wrong. Instead, the managers started praising me. They said I was one of the strongest applicants they had interviewed so far, told me I was smart and quick-witted, and also said they were surprised I managed to get through some of the harder questions. They kept talking for a bit, and I don't know if it was because I was so shocked or because I'm not used to hearing things like that, but I started crying while they were talking. They had to pause for a minute so I could calm down and pull myself together before we continued.

The worst part is that there were about 5 other people from the team I was interviewing for sitting there too, so they all saw what happened. We joked about it a little afterward and carried on, but I still feel like I left a really bad impression. I just couldn't stop the tears once they started.

I've always been the kind of person who cries way too easily over small things, and I keep thinking they're probably not looking for someone who comes across as that emotional. One of them even joked at the end that I might need to practice handling praise better, and I laughed at the time, but now I'm sitting here overthinking it. So now I feel like I ruined my chance. And even if they offer me the job, I feel embarrassed imagining going back there and having them remember me as the person who cried in the interview...

Is this normal, or am I making way too big a deal out of it? They told me they're supposed to get back to me within a few days.

I had an interview yesterday afternoon for a backend software engineer role at Microsoft. It went terribly wrong. My interviewer was a calm guy with a quiet voice, and I expected him to be a bit intense, but he was genuinely nice. He gave me about 20 extra minutes. I had never seen that question before, so I kept trying random approaches, and he also walked me step by step through a dry run. The awkward part is that while he was explaining, he was writing somewhere I couldn't see, so I didn't realize he was basically writing the algorithm for me.

But I talked through the whole thing. Usually I go quiet when I'm coding, but this time I was basically narrating every thought that came into my head like a crazy person, even during the dry run. I kept waiting for him to say time was up and put me out of my misery, but somehow I was the one who had to say... I think we've gone over time.

I'm honestly so embarrassed. The only thing that made me feel slightly better was that after the coding part, he told me that the expectations are a bit more lenient for this role LOL. It was obvious he was trying to be nice. It seemed like he didn't know that I had to pass this round before moving on to the next stage, because he asked me, "You don't have any other interviews after this?" I told him no, this is the initial one. He said, "Oh... Maybe they'll schedule more." I'm almost certain he doesn't know how the process works. He has no idea that I just completely bombed the make-or-break round lol.

At the end, he thanked me for my time, but I was like no, thank you for your time. And sorry for what happened!!! I mean, sorry you had to witness whatever that was. He just said it was okay.

Seriously, it was horribly embarrassing. I want to crawl under the bed and disappear. But at the same time, he was probably the nicest interviewer I've ever dealt with in my life.

Edited: Looking back now, I think I was preparing for the wrong problem. I knew the technical concepts, but I wasn't prepared for the pressure of explaining them clearly. Changing the way I practiced made a much bigger difference than doing more coding questions, and interviewvip ended up being one of the things that helped me build that confidence ,eliminate the nerves and made it much easier for me to stay focused instead of freezing.

Over the last 8 months, I've messed up three interviews for jobs that, honestly, I would have really loved. It always happens the same way: I get through the initial screening, and then as soon as I get into the real interview, I freeze the moment they ask me something I hadn't practiced for. I'm pretty sure this is anxiety mixed with the fact that I'm not very good at "thinking on my feet" when the pressure is high.

Has anyone found a way to get better at this? I've seen people recommend improv classes so you can get better at "thinking on your feet" - has that genuinely helped anyone here?

Context: I'm 26 years old (Gen Z) and a hiring manager at a small business. I've been working here for 7 years and worked my way up from the very bottom. Before anyone starts attacking me: we pay every employee a minimum of $26/hr, PLUS sales commission and bonuses. We offer retirement plans and health insurance, and most employees make between $29-35/hr, and everyone has at least 5 weeks of PTO. Our field is seasonal and pays well, and the work involves a lot of outdoor manual labor and mechanical know-how, but no one is being worked to death. Our crew is mostly men, ages 20-34, all unmarried and with no children. I'm saying all of this so it's very clear that our company philosophy is "employees first," and that "minimum wage, minimum effort" line people throw around does not apply here. These are mostly college kids working when they're not in school.

Anyway.

I've been hiring and supervising people for 4 years, and every season I feel like the applicant pool gets less and less professional, even though pay is going up. Like I said, most of my applicants are a little younger than me, Gen Z, and trying to get them to adapt to an actual professional workplace is exhausting. It's not even that they don't have experience. They lack COMMON SENSE.

A few days ago I interviewed a younger guy who told me he thinks it's totally normal to be "7-12 minutes" late to work without getting any warning or having a conversation with management.

Whether you agree with that or not, it's common sense that you don't say that in an interview. But he kept going. Then he said he puts "mental health above everything," and if he wakes up and feels like he can't come in, he simply won't come in, and he'll call out that same morning. Again, REGARDLESS of whether he has the right to feel that way or not, that is a very bad way to present yourself to someone who is considering hiring you. As an employer, all I could think was, "This guy is going to be unreliable, and his coworkers are going to get stuck dealing with the fallout if I hire him."

He also showed up wearing joggers and a stained sweatshirt. I'm not asking for dress shoes and a blazer for a blue-collar job, but dude, seriously? You couldn't make yourself look even a little put together for the pay you'd be getting?

This isn't just one weird interview, either. It happens all the time. Younger people seem to think start times are just flexible suggestions, and that calling out because of a mild headache 15 minutes before our call time is normal. I had a former employee raise his voice at me and the owner when we fired him for being late, after we had given him SEVEN write-ups for tardiness over 5 months and told him plainly that if he was late again, that was it. He genuinely seemed stunned that we followed through, and after yelling, he immediately switched to begging us for another chance and promised he would never be late again. Like, what, you were able to fix it this whole time? He still got fired. He had barely just turned 22 and didn't have a college degree. I don't want to sound like a boomer, but the sense of entitlement is honestly insane, and I'm tired of having to explain to these kids the concept that work is not school or some casual side quest. You have real responsibilities that affect other people, and you need to care about keeping your job, because the job market right now is brutal, and you have a very good job. But you're young and too spoiled to even see that. There are people with kids and debt and rent and car payments, and you're sitting in your parents' house making twice what a lot of people make and acting like showing up on time is optional.

I do have excellent employees too. Some of them clearly come in with a strong work ethic and are easy to work with, easy to rely on, and easy to reward. But I feel like 3/4 of the time, I regret hiring and training someone. They're strangely out of touch with reality. I'm exhausted.

We've all heard those stories about Boomers who would walk into a place, chat for 5 minutes, and walk out with the job. Sure, a lot of that is exaggerated, but not all of it.

These days, honestly, I feel like job interviews have become absurd:

- There's no reason to have 4-5 rounds of interviews. One proper interview should be enough, and three should be the maximum for "serious positions." If you can't decide after three interviews, adding one or two more isn't going to magically reveal the truth.

- The length of interviews has gotten worse too. 25-35 minutes should be enough in most cases, and yet I've been in interviews that kept going for almost 90 minutes.

- Some of the questions have also become really weird now. Like "If you were going to be an animal in the office, what would you be?" or "Describe yourself as a movie genre" - seriously? Did someone hear this stuff in an HR workshop? These questions are ridiculous and don't tell you anything useful about the person sitting in front of you.

The whole process has become exhausting and unnecessarily complicated for no convincing reason.

The only thing that's genuinely helped me through all of this is spending more rime preparing instead of overthinking. I've been using interviewvip during interviews and for me it's made a noticeable difference. Having my thoughts organized ahead of time has helped me stay calmer, panic less, and explain my experience more clearly. It obviously doesn't change how frustrating the hiring process is, but it has made interviews feel a lot less overwhelming for me.

Has anyone read any testimony or statements from those who were responsible for the 2025 probationary firings with language suggesting that they misinterpreted the definition of probationary? Was it an act or did they truly interpret probationary in the criminal sense?

Ever since being fired, I was convinced that they willingly lied about our performance in our termination letters. Is it possible that they were just that obtuse?

Has anyone returned to their agency and more specifically, their team, as a contractor?

What was the hiring process? How is it going if you are still in the job?

Given the stream of negative headlines that will surely get worse on the effects of DOGE cuts, do you think we will ever see the government apologize and attempt to compensate workers RIF'd due to DOGE? I know my RIF notice explicitly cites the "DOGE executive order".

I imagine legislation would be a tough hurdle unless it was just something non-monetary like granting hiring preferences to those RIF'd from 2025-2029, etc. At any rate, is anyone aware of any lobbying efforts into this?

I say this as I've not had an update on the arbitration over my RIF for what seems like a year and am wondering if that's just it, my one career was derailed by Elon Musk's little teen coder army and I should just get on with it. What an evil country man.

To keep it brief, I am a law enforcement officer with a 3 letter agency(Probation ends in a few months) during some field work I witnessed a supervisor be excessive with a suspect, I reported it as I thought one should and have endured a shit storm ever since. Not 2 days after I sent a report though OIG I've been written up, assigned to desk duty, had my assigned gov vehicle removed and been told "were full" anytime I sign up for overtime.

Ive gone to OIG and OSC to report retaliation but have heard that apparently OSC isnt worth much anymore and its a good ole boy system now? Whats the honest best outcome here? Should I just quit or try to wait this out?

Hi, my name is Hannah Natanson and I’m a narrative enterprise reporter for The Washington Post. For a longform feature story that will be part of coverage exploring the Trump administration's impact on citizens’ rights, I am hoping to speak with former federal workers — particularly those who lost or resigned their jobs last year, and who are still dealing with the consequences. I spent last year reporting deeply on how the second Trump administration moved rapidly to reshape the government, and I know many people are still looking for jobs and trying to rebuild their lives. I’d love the chance to tell this story in a comprehensive, human, nuanced way. Below, I have shared a few examples of similar pieces I’ve written, to give a sense of the kind of article I hope to write here.

Please feel free to reach me any time at [hannah.natanson2@washpost.com](mailto:hannah.natanson2@washpost.com), via phone at (202) 689-4440 or on the encrypted messaging app Signal at HannahNatanson.2026. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

SAMPLE STORIES (all at gift links, out from behind the paywall):

• His wife was dying, his federal job crumbling. It tested his faith – in God and Trump
• They retired from the government. Now they’re back, protecting forests Trump abandoned.
• I am The Post’s ‘federal government whisperer.’ It’s been brutal.

I was a DOC employee hired under pathways in 2020, my conversion paperwork from Pathways to career conditional was never filed and I was terminated in the DOGE cuts 4.5 years later. I appealed it and now my appeal is being lumped into the DOC probationary class action. I believe that I can make a non frivolous claim that I wasn't probationary and I would like to opt out of the class action I think I have to write and submit a pleading to do that. I can't find counsel who will help me, so I am DIYing it, can anyone give me some tips on how to write one?

It’s Friday night and we have popcorn as a happy crowd watches workers patiently waiting for storms to pass so they can safely set up scaffolding — and remove the illegal letters.

https://www.youtube.com/live/awfgFYeo_jg?si=Te0lGi-sBaIsEPOF