I got laid off and realized how broken tech hiring is
In February, I got laid off from a small startup due to budget cuts. I’m a senior developer with 20 years of experience, and until now I had never really struggled to find a job. Recruiters used to reach out regularly, and opportunities were always there. This time was different. After more than 100 applications, I started noticing patterns that didn’t make sense. The same companies reposting the same jobs every day. Listings with hundreds of applicants that never seemed to close. Automated responses, but no real follow-up. At some point, it felt like I wasn’t applying for jobs anymore, but feeding a system. Resumes parsed by algorithms, filtered by keywords, reduced to a score. No human interaction, just signals and pipelines. Then came the interviews. Weeks between each round. The same algorithmic problems, disconnected from real-world work. The kind of questions that reward practice, not experience. I started questioning everything. Not just the process, but how developers are evaluated today. It feels like the system is optimized to filter people out, not to find the best ones. I don’t think I can fix it. But I had to adapt to it. Curious if others here have experienced the same thing recently. Btw this is happening now in Canada, so I guess it s the same in the US. 9 comments on Hacker News.
In February, I got laid off from a small startup due to budget cuts. I’m a senior developer with 20 years of experience, and until now I had never really struggled to find a job. Recruiters used to reach out regularly, and opportunities were always there. This time was different. After more than 100 applications, I started noticing patterns that didn’t make sense. The same companies reposting the same jobs every day. Listings with hundreds of applicants that never seemed to close. Automated responses, but no real follow-up. At some point, it felt like I wasn’t applying for jobs anymore, but feeding a system. Resumes parsed by algorithms, filtered by keywords, reduced to a score. No human interaction, just signals and pipelines. Then came the interviews. Weeks between each round. The same algorithmic problems, disconnected from real-world work. The kind of questions that reward practice, not experience. I started questioning everything. Not just the process, but how developers are evaluated today. It feels like the system is optimized to filter people out, not to find the best ones. I don’t think I can fix it. But I had to adapt to it. Curious if others here have experienced the same thing recently. Btw this is happening now in Canada, so I guess it s the same in the US.
In February, I got laid off from a small startup due to budget cuts. I’m a senior developer with 20 years of experience, and until now I had never really struggled to find a job. Recruiters used to reach out regularly, and opportunities were always there. This time was different. After more than 100 applications, I started noticing patterns that didn’t make sense. The same companies reposting the same jobs every day. Listings with hundreds of applicants that never seemed to close. Automated responses, but no real follow-up. At some point, it felt like I wasn’t applying for jobs anymore, but feeding a system. Resumes parsed by algorithms, filtered by keywords, reduced to a score. No human interaction, just signals and pipelines. Then came the interviews. Weeks between each round. The same algorithmic problems, disconnected from real-world work. The kind of questions that reward practice, not experience. I started questioning everything. Not just the process, but how developers are evaluated today. It feels like the system is optimized to filter people out, not to find the best ones. I don’t think I can fix it. But I had to adapt to it. Curious if others here have experienced the same thing recently. Btw this is happening now in Canada, so I guess it s the same in the US. 9 comments on Hacker News.
In February, I got laid off from a small startup due to budget cuts. I’m a senior developer with 20 years of experience, and until now I had never really struggled to find a job. Recruiters used to reach out regularly, and opportunities were always there. This time was different. After more than 100 applications, I started noticing patterns that didn’t make sense. The same companies reposting the same jobs every day. Listings with hundreds of applicants that never seemed to close. Automated responses, but no real follow-up. At some point, it felt like I wasn’t applying for jobs anymore, but feeding a system. Resumes parsed by algorithms, filtered by keywords, reduced to a score. No human interaction, just signals and pipelines. Then came the interviews. Weeks between each round. The same algorithmic problems, disconnected from real-world work. The kind of questions that reward practice, not experience. I started questioning everything. Not just the process, but how developers are evaluated today. It feels like the system is optimized to filter people out, not to find the best ones. I don’t think I can fix it. But I had to adapt to it. Curious if others here have experienced the same thing recently. Btw this is happening now in Canada, so I guess it s the same in the US.
Hacker News story: I got laid off and realized how broken tech hiring is
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Reviewed by Tha Kur
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March 22, 2026
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