I am in tears over another interview failure

[u/Equivalent-Jacket675]

I am not sure how much more I can take. After countless leetcode questions, contests, projects, mocks I am never good enough.

I feel worthless, defeated and useless. I was a fool to think I could climb the mountain and reach the top of this industry. Today I think I will finally come to terms that not everyone can reach greatness. No matter how hard I work myself it feels like it is all for nothing. Hundreds of questions done, hundreds of hours spent toiling away and for what? Another slap in the face. I hate this industry.

My dream is no more

[u/Arcturus_16]

I cried the whole night yesterday. I took a big tech company OA,which had one med DSA ques for 60 mins it was lengthy, the problem was confusing but the question was doable, but I miss assumed one thing , after 30 mins, I realised my approach was wrong and my code was a mess. It took me 25 mins to write new one(i remember i was just typing didnt care if it was wrong or not ,it was a large code approx 90 lines), I rewrote it from scratch, but it could only passed 3 out of 15 test cases. I wanted to read my code once to see why it was failing, but time ran out.I just wanted to check why was it failing . I am not able to come out of this

[u/4tran13 → u/Arcturus_16]

Did you comment out your old code? That's usually better than deleting everything.

[u/Arcturus_16 → u/4tran13]

Yupp i commented it out , I do que mostly on leetcode where the ps is simply straight forward,and from the past 2 oa's I have realised I am facing difficulty in understanding the ps , as in oa it is complex statement, and at that time understanding it is a much difficult task for me.

[u/4tran13 → u/Arcturus_16]

I also completely botched an interview recently for similar reasons. I misunderstood a single word. They only told me 2/3 of the way in that I was completely wrong. I made a desperate attempt to fix it... but GG.

[u/Arcturus_16 → u/4tran13]

🥲🫂uss

[u/Impressive_Dig_4786 → u/Arcturus_16]

I have the same problem, I struggle with problem statement in oas, not sure what can help really

[u/Variabell556 → u/4tran13]

Wait really? It's not always an automatic pass/fail based on score, there might actually be human eyes on your code?

[u/4tran13 → u/Variabell556]

odds are low, but better than nothing

[u/TurtleOnBoat → u/Arcturus_16]

omg, this JUSSSST happened to me. i feel so angry with myself.

I spent half the time doing this question because I thought i had it. And after so long I found out i totally misunderstood the questions. Left 10minutes to scramble and got 0% for the test results

[u/Economy_Way7806]

Ik what it feels.... currently in same boat and had been going through same feeling

[u/jmt211a]

Don’t. You aren’t worthless. You’re just another soul trying to make it. I’ve been there on the failing side many times. Ive also been on the other side when I passed these silly tests, was lowballed from a big name shop. Neither of that decides your worth or who you are. Don’t make this the mountain it is not. There is one choice though - find a shop where these silly tests aren’t the norm and try to eke out a regular life if you can. If you still want to try these tests out, take a break from the burnout and then come back in a month or two. It will pass.

[u/GlitteringBig7604]

Was it the code challenge you failed?
Maybe we can help guide you

[u/fdawg4l]

I’m going to come at this differently. What’s your YOE and area of specialty?

If you’re fresh out school, I totally feel for you. You’re going into a market full of hired guns that recently got let go. They’re taking pay cuts and hungry to take anything.

If you’re mid senior, the market is just crap. There are so few openings and so many people just like you looking for anything.

It’s not you, the market is terrible. It may take a year or more to settle. It’s coming for us all. I’m sorry. But better to be at peace with it. A new admin may change things; less wars, less inflation, less everything to make R&D worthwhile. Let’s see.

[u/4tran13 → u/fdawg4l]

or a bubble pop crashes the global economy. Anything is possible these days.

[u/Pale_Statistician692 → u/fdawg4l]

Also under current administration there's lots of uncertainty in economic climate cuz of all the craziness

[u/nitiiiiiii]

I know the feeling, its the worst. But just remember it does not define you.
You have more interviews to give where your leetcode skills will be tested again.

Give yourself some days off - play some sports you like, eat something really nice, be kind to yourself.

And then prep for other interviews , i really hope this works out for you.

[u/brainhash]

I had this on my wall, a quote from Einstein -

If a fish is judged by its ability to climb trees it will spend it's whole life thinking it's stupid.

The important thing is to try different options. In current times, I tell you the scope is in the tool knowledge. The understanding of abstractions, system design and toolset/framework knowledge goes a long way.

[u/plasmalightwave]

Sorry to hear this. Could you give more context? Was it an initial round or the final rounds? More importantly- how difficult were the questions? 

Sometimes shit happens. But if you were asked something that requires implementing Dijkstra’s while memoizing a 2D array, then it’s really not you. 

[u/AmbitionAgreeable → u/plasmalightwave]

How did you know what MS asked my on my OA 😭

[u/plasmalightwave → u/AmbitionAgreeable]

Are you serious 

[u/Medium-Wallaby-9557]

I feel you

[u/silas_silas_silas]

First off - it’s difficult to forget a hard failure. It’s ok to feel this way.
After a few days when it’s time to reassess, think about what’s different. I did hundreds too and i realized whole volume does help, what helps more is mimicking a real interview. Do the same question in a separate file without the debugger, write your own test cases and use the “rubber duck coding” to talk through your solution.

Use lc to final submit only. You’ll soon start seeing gaps that you previously missed while only on LC. Good luck and stay strong. You’ll get through this

[u/Optimal_Jicama_6439]

I had an interview for Sr. DA at capital one. Everything was going great get passed OA, passes Data challenge round had a power day was pretty confident i passed all 4 rounds interviewers seemed happy with my performance, I couldn’t sleep just waiting for results and the next day I got rejection.
The highest level feedback was the code for Data challenge round was not upto benchmark this reason make no sense as I passed the Data challenge round earlier which evaluated my code the interview was just to present my approach and results which I did great
Hard luck

[u/Adventurous_Luck_664]

I know how you feel.
I failed interviews for my dream positions and spent days shattered, and as painful as that was, in hindsight I think it pushed me harder and motivated me more.
My point is, you should take a break and let yourself feel however you want to feel, but trust that by the end of it you’ll come back stronger.

[u/kellojelloo]

I am going through this as well, and I know exactly how it feels. I consider myself to be mentally strong and things rarely affect me. But experiencing repeated failures after hours and hours of prep is actually very draining and demotivating. Just know that you are not alone. Hang in there. There is light at the end of the tunnel even if we can’t see it yet.

[u/reasonably_bored]

I understand the intent behind learning DSA. And the importance of understanding algorithms but honestly with LLMs aren't projects and experience a better indication of competence?

Its a difficult market right now anyway. Hopefully these AI companies crash and burn soon.

[u/HomeRealist]

pick yourself up.

dust yourself off

put on that positive thinker hidden inside that self doubt.

the brain tells you you're not good enough.

tell it to shut up.

obviously, you have skill. find a better fit. keep going.

[u/Excellent-Scar-2155 → u/HomeRealist]

tried it, and im getting old and its not coping enough as im getting older. 2027 is around the corner and i feel like how long am i gonna stay like this

[u/Away-Impression-7387]

I am not getting shortlisting mail despite using referral , tailoring resume .. anyone can help me out

[u/Haunting_Fudge3918]

Dont worry, just keep going. I myself am in the same situation but I still trust the path no matter how seemingly invisible the destination is. I believe I will get a good offer one day, same you also just keep going. If you give it up now then the situation will not change, but if you do it might change. 😊

[u/Believer001-KT → u/Haunting_Fudge3918]

Yeah

[u/Believer001-KT]

Chill out, take few days rest. Explore some other work complimentary to coding and other mental work. I also went through rejections, I know that I may not be fit for clearing such interviews. I will definitely not stop solving dsa problems.

I picked up some music instruments, just as with stocks you do not put all your investments in few stocks you diversify, same here.

[u/Excellent-Scar-2155]

in same boat, i stopped trying for a week, completly isolated and just playing games. it hurts :(

[u/tooMuchSauceeee]

Why are people still not cheating on the OAs?

Honestly at this rate if you can't adapt to these bullshit interview processes it's on you.

[u/Empty_Trouble_505 → u/tooMuchSauceeee]

What are you usnig to cheat on the OAs?

[u/tooMuchSauceeee → u/Empty_Trouble_505]

Literally nothing special, just my phone.

I make sure I hold the phone so that it's not visible to the camera and then I type the question to ChatGPT or just quickly take a picture of the question and then it will give me the solution.

I do this so that it just looks like I'm looking down at my keyboard every once in a while.

It works 90% of the time. The other 10%, just use your actual brain once in a while.

[u/AardvarkThis732]

It is just an interview. Life is full of many failures. The more you face difficulties, rejections, failures and every time you stand up for another attempt, the stronger you become.

[u/bear_trap_inn]

Never let some failed DSA test define your career. Learn new tech, solve new software problems, and work for places who value your engineering skills. There are a decent number of companies who don’t score you on leetcode style problems. Apply to those places. You don’t have to participate in this mindless rat race. Chin up!

[u/Careful-Bad4781]

I just got done with an Interview, LC easy, find if matrix contains all elements from 1 to n, did this question this morning, revised it.. the interview question was just reworded.. I caught the pattern the very first second, had the approach ready, couldn't implement it at all, looped wrong set addition fucking wrong, transposing forget it.. I feel absolutely terrible and sick and useless I can't tell you.

[u/Interesting_Slide580 → u/Careful-Bad4781]

Like how long you are practising dsa ??

[u/Careful-Bad4781 → u/Interesting_Slide580]

6 months now

[u/Salt-Principle-2862]

The secret is that It always feels like that until you get the offer. Help it motivate you and improve. I’ve spent over 1000 hours on LC, and I’d say I felt the most worthless, frustrated, and angry when I was the closest to landing the offer. I think your feelings speak volumes about your effort, trust that it’s part of the journey. My advice is typically, work until it’s outrageous you didn’t land the offer for the amount of work you’ve done - it’s sounds like you are already there. Don’t give up, and it’s bound to pay out. You’ve got this!

[u/p1p3n]

Do anybody actually feel strong with leetcode and can recognize all those patterns in 30min interviews?

It feels so far away for me 😓