I sympathize with the author. I have been through this as well. I&#x27;m still going through this, really.<p>I&#x27;ve been rejected many times. And every time, I come away from the process annoyed and disappointed, but certain that I would have been useful to them had they hired me. I research companies thoroughly before going into interviews, and don&#x27;t waste time interviewing for positions that I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d be interested in &#x2F; qualified for.<p>I also have decent GitHub activity, handful of open source projects that demonstrate my abilities. When I started my new job search I assumed that this mattered, but in my experience it really doesn&#x27;t. I still get asked extremely basic questions that I&#x27;d hoped my GitHub would eliminate. In some instances the company that rejected me had some open source projects, and it made me feel better about myself to see their poor code quality.<p>Nevertheless, I am also starting to have doubts about the industry. I&#x27;ve wasted a lot of time on take-home challenges, introductions, technical phone screens, on-site interviews, etc. to be rejected without explanation. As an introvert, it&#x27;s all very exhausting. Why should I, as a computer programmer, have to be an amazing socialite that my colleagues would like to vape &amp; play air hockey with? I just want to work on interesting problems. I&#x27;m not stimulated by extravagant team lunches or interrupting meetings to play with the company dog. I&#x27;m not stimulated by fancy windows and games and snacks and toys. I&#x27;m happy to have technical discussions all day long, but I really don&#x27;t want to work in a frat house.<p>I feel like there&#x27;s a lot of pressure from the industry to be someone I&#x27;m not. Also, it seems like the Joel Spolsky idea about only hiring exceptional programmers (at the expense of risking a merely &#x2F;good&#x2F; hire) has seriously penetrated the industry, making the system highly risk-averse in terms of hiring. I feel like no amount of prior job experience or open source work will make a difference. Every time I interview, it&#x27;s a clean slate, and if I don&#x27;t nail _everything_ it&#x27;s a certain no-hire. Even if I did well in prior interviews with the company, they simply won&#x27;t risk it. I would really like to know what the reasoning is, but they never provide feedback.<p>I will say that I&#x27;ve been hardened by the experience. I&#x27;m better at pitching myself, making appointments, talking to people in a structured way, preparation. I think if any startup founders lack experience as sales(wo)men, there&#x27;s plenty of opportunity to dial-in your skills by pretending to be a job candidate strictly for practice.