Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

I can only assume you've not experienced the black dog up close, or had someone close to you suffer. For those of us who live with it, it is a truly terrifying thing, that can cripple you to the extent that mere breathing seems like effort.

I'm not being a dick to you by the way, just highlighting that cavalier responses such as yours is why Depression has the taboo it does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETC82KEplac

Apologies, but I did just find it funny. You can't help being good at things and nice enough to post encouraging replies!

It's because I got burned-out (due to the trash tech culture).

I felt like not recognizing myself as the guy who achieved the most vertical growth curve in the company. And I was sure I couldn't do it anymore in any place else.

I was sad thinking about the past, "how good I was" and much more sad thinking about "how good I will never be again".

Depressed people forget to live the present, they just think about past and future, it generates a lot of fear, avoidance, procrastination... you are simply putting all your energy where it can't help you.

The present time is your life, live it! The Sun rises everyday. I remember what liberates me about fear was read the phrase:

"Until now, you survived the worst days of your life."

You are strong enough to keep surviving. And think, I know you really don't wanna die, it just seems the only way to reach peace, but it's not.

I like to think the Ironborns:

"What is dead, may never die!"

You have only one life, you can always give up and try again every day. (you're already dead, huh?)

This death thing I'm talking about it's like a germans like to think:

"Don't take life so serious, you will not escape alive".

Talk to your wife, be open, don't be afraid. If she doesn't understand your situation, what you suffering and doesn't support you, leave her. You deserve better.

Try to remove fear from your life. Fear are ruining your career, your dreams, your relationship.

Life is a miracle, don't waste your time, follow your dreams. It's real, you can believe you will succeed, you can believe you will fail, know what? What you believe will become true.

Seems like some guru shit but it's true, I know, you will know.

Live the now, fuck the rest.

(sorry my bad english)

Also, I work on multiple problems at once so I have to do a slow context-switch, and fill my brain's cache with the working-set of the problem (usually by googling stackoverflow etc.) and then solve it quickly, before dumping the cache.

As I developed more wisdom, I usually don't keep small details in my long-term memory, but only repeated patterns and useful details.

Interview questions are more appropriate for a simpler time when programmers were more single-threaded in their heads. They are also heavily biased towards the programming issues of the 1970s and 1980s...doing all of the things which were left out of the standard libraries...recursion, dynamic programming, sorting algorithms, string parsing, set theory, data structures etc. In my humble opinion interviews should focus on questions of style--take this code, refactor it. Refactor it again given new constraints. Multithread it. Make it secure. Refactor it given that you cannot touch this non-optimal code that someone checked in in a hurry and cannot be removed in a short time frame. Etc.

First, you are not in a good place mentally. Your self esteem is pretty low and that is the reason you feel like such an outcast at work. Since you're at a big 4 company, odds are good that you have an Employee Assistance Program available to you for free. They can get you set up with a therapist where you can start exploring these issues. The therapist is prohibited from sharing any of this with your employer. Unfortunately, most EAPs only cover a few sessions. In my opinion, though, the benefits of therapy are well worth the cost.

You have to get your emotional issues figured out before you can find the kind of fulfillment you're looking for. Even if you get another job, you will just wind up repeating this same scenario at the next place. I don't doubt that the work culture may be terrible, but the emotional issues you have going on are a core reason you're dealing with this stuff. Your boss is right, you are too nice. Part of being a healthy person is having healthy boundaries. You give and give and give, thinking that it's going to make people like you, but it has the opposite effect because it's just not normal. The end result is that you get excluded.

Second, software hiring is TERRIBLE. It's not just you. I just spent three months searching for a programming job. I got rejection after rejection (usually for doing poorly on those fucking logic puzzles) and it really made me start to doubt my level of expertise. I started making changes to what I was looking for. I changed the target seniority level. I started to lower my salary requirements. Then...boom. I landed a job with the right seniority level for my skills and a salary right at my original target. Now I'm working at the type of company I want, and I'm going to be moving forward in my career. I'm incredibly lucky (and thankful) this opportunity came along or the software hiring process would have convinced me that I simply didn't have the level of skill I thought I had.

Your ability to solve a puzzle is (usually) not indicative of your ability to solve real world business problems. The exception, I think, is at those big companies like you're applying to. So, you need to get better. Fortunately there are a ton of resources out there. If it's important to you to keep working at a huge tech company, then this is the only way to get in unless you have a personal connection. Read some books. Study like it's your job. Eventually stuff will start to make sense.

You have to believe in yourself in order to keep the job search going. That ties into your self esteem. Seek out some counseling, and start studying those brain teasers. You'll get to where you want to be.