Ask HN: Am I unhireable?

I think you're being a little paranoid. It's the market right now; everywhere is laying off or looking for ways to reduce headcount. This just isn't a good time. Despite that:

> After probably a few hundred applications (mostly SWE but some product) I've only received first interviews from maybe ten?

This has been my experience since internet applications became a thing. There's no incentive to curate active job postings by the people who post them, so many of these are duds.

> I've managed all of four interviews that have gone all the way to the final round - only for me to be passed over.

Nothing about you really stands out as problematic, but in my own opinion your heavy startup/crypto background makes you seem like someone only interested in money/getting rich quickly.

You might be a great candidate, but I'd fully expect you to check out if a better offer even looked in your direction. Given a choice between you and a more-conservative candidate, I'd pick them.

You're not fucked and there's nothing for you to change. It's a game of impressions. Just keep trying until you make the right one. That's difficult right now given economic conditions.

> I'm at a point where if I cant even get a basic SWE role I might just work at a Fedex store to pay rent

That'll be counterproductive.

If you get desperate, go find some office job through a temp agency. Downplay all your credentials and forget the crypto stuff. Avoid call center work, take literally anything else in an office, apply your skills to automating some nonsense, and you can possibly negotiate your way into something better. (Or not, but if you need to wait the economy out it's steadier work than retail if you need full-time hours.)

One crypto position probably wouldn’t raise eyebrows like having Mindgeek on your resume wouldn’t, but having multiple crypto roles probably would imo. Not that OP has indicated they have multiple crypto roles unless I’m parsing their post incorrectly.

And as to why, it’s an industry full of scams and a lot of wishful thinking that I wouldn’t think would help actually build out a stable business. You might have worked at only the “good ones” but given how modern hiring works with regards to hundreds of applications, I probably wouldn’t spend the effort to check the quality of those firms.

> You might be a great candidate, but I'd fully expect you to check out if a better offer even looked in your direction. Given a choice between you and a more-conservative candidate, I'd pick them.

Something about this seems... off to me. Yes, many of us are in tech because it's our passion. But I can almost guarantee that at least most of us work for companies _for money_, because _we need money_. And when people talk about money, in general, they're wanting _more of it._ How out of touch with reality do we think people that hire staff are? Even more than that, how do we gauge what a more conservative candidate looks like? I don't exactly put in my resume or cover letters (when I bother to write one) "I like money." But I can tell you that I very much do. Actually, nothing quite makes you start liking money the same way that growing up poor does.

Anyway, this rant wasn't necessarily focused towards you, so much as that line of reasoning, which I've seen before. In particular, "I'd fully expect you to check out if a better offer even looked in your direction." If we're discussing similar (or better) workplace culture and benefits, an offer for more money will usually do this. There aren't too many engineers in tech that are providing a company value out of the kindness of their hearts, they want a pay check, the bigger the better.