Job Hunt

The 2026 Job Hunt

After finishing up at GitLab in late June by accepting Voluntary Departure due to the Act 2 announcements in May, I hunted for a new full time job. Like thousands of others in this industry. I don't think my experience is particularly noteworthy, but it is interesting to write down.

TL;DR: 3.5 months, many interviews, many words written, and I now have a full time job again.

By the numbers

Over approximately 3.5 months:

  • Companies: 26
  • Applications/Positions: 29
  • No response to application: 6
  • Rejections with no chats: 5
  • Failed to complete a technical stage: 1 - but seriously, this one was absurd, and I'm still annoyed by it.
  • Ghost: radio silence after various stages: 2
  • Rejection after some number of interviews: 5
  • Weird edge cases: 2
  • Still in-flight when another offer accepted: 1
  • Offers: 4
  • Number of interviews: 42
    • With women: 9
    • With women in technical roles: 2
  • Most interviews:
    • At one company: 10 (2 positions, to be fair, although it got messy)
    • In a week 4 day period: 9
    • In a day: 5
  • Interviews at the accepted company: 5 (twice with recruiter, including the one making a verbal offer, so perhaps more accurately 4).
  • Recruiter initiated contact: 2

Narrative

Observations

Many of these matters are not unique to me, but they're worth repeating.

Cold-applications tended towards silence or rejection based solely on my CV/Cover letter. They're not a complete waste of time, but the success rate for a positive (or any) response is fairly low. The job I got was actually my second attempt at that company: the first one was a cold application and got no response. The second was a friend passing my details on via LinkedIn (spit), after the recruiter contacted them, and that's what turned into a series of interviews and offers.

References (formal or informal) were the most reliable way to get into an active pipeline, although still not 100% and still not the only option. I understand why, and I'm not salty about it, even if it is kinda sad. In a globally connected world, with thousands of engineers floating around, many looking for remote work, the sheer number of potential applicants is high and I imagine the firehose of applications on recruiters is immense, with many (most?) being spam, and a glut of highly qualified people to choose from. I was probably filtered automatically or by a speed-reading human because my CV didn't have the right keywords in the right order, and that's ok, because false negatives on selection still leave their active list full of plenty of potential, and a false positive (allowing someone through who is not fit for the job, perhaps only discovered after several hours of interviews) is potentially expensive.

And sometimes I was rejected after interviews, for reasons that seemed spurious or mis-informed to me. But the same criteria apply: unless they're scrambling for rare talent, a false-negative (filtering someone out) is far preferable to a false positive. I'm not aiming for C-level, I'm "just" another engineer. So while rejection stings, I can see why, and I won't lie to myself; it is about me and my specific experience, but not always something I can or should change, and that's fine. I filtered what jobs I applied for based on my own personal criteria (often ethical), just like they filtered me. It's the same in romantic relationships, where just because you like them doesn't mean they have to like you. The job interview process (at least where I am in tech) is looking for mutual fit.

I sometimes see people talk about asking interviewers how they "could have interviewed better"; I've occasionally received those questions at the end of interviews I have given at previous jobs. Other than some real edge cases where the candidate was unprepared for any type of interview, it's often not about how "well" the candidate interviews, particularly in technical interviews. Or, it's not that they could/should have done anything different. Any reasonable series of questions lets the interviewer build a picture of the capabilities and personality of the candidate, and the goal is to find a ground truth independent of their ability to interview, otherwise we start selecting for "can interview", a problem made manifest by the leetcode interview style. There's often a million subtle signals, like whether they know when to say "I don't know", vs blustering through with incomplete knowledge? Can they go deep into a question, or stay surface level only? Can they change their mind when necessary?

Aside: I received one piece of flattering feedback from an interview series which said that my ability to change my mind in a systems design interview due to constraints and presented logic was noteworthy. If it actually is (noteworthy), then we must live in an opinionated hell-scape of an industry. I know some such people exist, but I thought they were the rare ones. Maybe I've just worked with mostly better people?

The process was incredibly sporadic; I had periods (days to weeks) with nothing in flight (after rejections, with no more applications in progress), up until near the end when I ended up with 6 active and plausible/likely applications at one point (which was brain-meltingly confusing at times). Getting to 4 offers at the end, within a short period of time, was a complete surprise after the early weeks of slowness and rejections.

There are also far more NZ-based or originated companies doing fascinating work, and paying quite well, than I realized. There's also more than enough companies doing all remote (global or locally) to let me keep doing so for the indefinite future.

And finally, this whole process is exhausting; I'm an introvert, and while I don't mind talking to people, particularly ones I already know, it requires more energy than it would for an extrovert. The week with 9 interviews (5 in one day) was shattering to my energy levels; so many new people where I had to be 100% on the whole time, presenting my very best self, and picking up on every single social clue I could while also doing my best technical work. I am so very glad this is over, because I'm not sure I could keep it up much longer.

Gender

This one deserves it's own section. I am cis-het-male. I know tech is a sausage fest and has far too much misogyny, but that is deeply sub-optimal and the situation remains fucking dire. The women I have worked with in my career are usually the outstanding engineers on the team, better on average than the men on average (even if they often doubt themselves, typically because of aforementioned sausage fest/misogyny). I value the diversity of view-points that come from mixes of gender (and orientations, culture, and any other dimension that offers variation from western white male nerd), because it reduces group-think and the boringness/toxicity of "bro culture". In the job-hunt context specifically, I have heard stories from women engineers giving interviews about how it is absurdly easy to spot the misogynists simply by putting a woman in a position of power to decide their fate in a short-form interview; for best results, make it a 2-person interview and watch who the candidate talks to most. I'm told it is enlightening and distressing in equal measures. It says something non-complimentary about this industry that only 21% of my interviews with anyone, and 7% of the non-HR/Recruiter interviews, were with women. I think (hope) I'm one of the good ones on this spectrum, but simply having a woman interview me even once would have been such a simple step for a company to discover this and be able to ensure they (one position at a time) filter out the jerks.

This has to change, even if it takes yet more decades than it already has. I'll do my best to encourage it, wherever I am, becuase this shit is important.

Conclusion

It's done. I'm done. I have a job, now I get to focus my attention on just that. I'm so glad.

With luck and a tail wind, this is the last time I'll have to do this particular process. Next time: I'm retiring, maybe do some contracting if the mood takes me.

Wish me luck.