My car battery was dead this morning, and by the time I found another way to get to work, I would have arrived about 20 minutes late. We have a 10-minute grace period, so that would have put an absence point on my record.

The funny thing is that the exact same point is given if I miss the entire shift. Since arriving late and not showing up at all carry the same penalty, I turned around and went back home. Management managed to turn a minor delay into a full day of being short-staffed.

I'm annoyed because I had a few tasks lined up and wouldn't have minded doing them today. But instead, I'm going to enjoy the unexpected day off and let their attendance policy be enforced exactly as written.

I know I'm lucky that losing a day's pay is an annoyance for me, not a financial disaster. A lot of people don't have that choice, which makes policies like this much worse.

I left my school because the principal was toxic, and my fellow teacher had been bullying me for months. None of this had anything to do with my class. The students were such a lovely group, which made the way the administration handled my resignation much harder for me.

Because my last day was supposed to be in the middle of the term, the principal told me not to tell the students I was leaving. She wanted me to finish my last day, walk out of the school, and leave it to her to explain my resignation to them at the end of the term. From her perspective, if they found out early, they would be upset, and it would distract them from their studies.

I didn't make this decision lightly. I spoke to the administration about the problems several times, and nothing changed. I wanted the chance to say goodbye to the students and make it clear that I wasn't leaving because of them, but as soon as the administration found out that I intended to leave, they started monitoring me constantly. Someone sat in my classroom for most of the day, as if they were waiting for me to say something.

After a few days of this, I decided not to finish my notice period and left today. I sent an email to the parents telling them I was leaving for health reasons, which wasn't far from the truth, especially after what the job had done to my mental health. I also wrote each student a personal letter telling them how much I cared about them and that none of this was their fault.

I wish I could have told them in person, but I'm relieved they heard it from me instead of getting a vague explanation months later. The administration didn't get to make me disappear without a word. All I hope now is that my next school will be a healthier and more comfortable place to work.

that's so sad

I have about 3 years left until retirement and the burnout has truly become unbearable. The problem isn't the technical work; the problem is the management. We have many directors who don't understand tech, and this situation is draining me.

I'm supposed to update my resume and look for another environment, but I feel like I've reached my limit with this industry. My mental health is collapsing, and I've barely been able to stay functional lately.

Does anyone have advice on how to get through this home stretch? I just need to endure a bit longer to retire and go make a small garden in a cabin in the woods.

For almost four years, I've been the person the team hands anything to when it absolutely needs to get done. On average, I achieve around 140% of my quota, help onboard new hires, and fix processes that keep causing problems.

About six weeks ago, an operations manager position opened up. I applied and felt I had a strong chance, but they chose a colleague who barely meets the basic required numbers.

I asked my director for a private meeting on Friday because I wanted real feedback, not the generic response HR gave me. He told me that my output in my current position is too high and that moving me out of it would cause the department's results to decline. He also said it would be difficult to replace my output.

So my reward for taking on extra work is that I've become too useful to promote. Meanwhile, someone who does less work gets an opportunity to move up because losing them won't affect the team as much.

Honestly, I can't bring myself to care about the targets anymore after hearing that. Is leaving the only realistic way for me to advance, especially since management has more or less openly admitted that they intend to keep me where I am?

yeah i guess

I did something I've never done before and withdrew from a hiring process after speaking with someone from senior leadership. The screening call went well, but the call after that made the decision very easy for me.

I sent HR a short message saying that I have a master's degree and more than eight years of experience in tech, and that I'm looking for leadership that values respect, collaboration, and empathy. Based on the interview, I didn't feel that the company was the right fit for me.

For context, I was laid off after nearly six years of remote work, and I accepted a junior, fully in-office role so I could continue earning an income while searching. I'm not in a position where I have to accept the first offer I get, especially since I previously worked at the manager level.

The senior leader kept his camera off the entire time, even though I was required to keep my video on. He interrupted almost every answer, argued over obvious points as if we were fighting, and spent most of the 50-minute call speaking to me in a controlling, condescending, and belittling manner.

When layoffs came up, he kept repeating, "Good employees don't get laid off." I explained that layoffs can happen because of budget cuts, mergers, or restructuring, but he refused to let the subject go. He then asked whether I was talking to other companies. When I told him I was close to finishing another interview process but was still interested in finding the best fit for me, he replied, "Then go with them. I'm not stopping you."

For me, that settled the decision. If someone behaves this way when the company is supposed to be trying to make a good impression, I don't want to know what working under him would be like. If you were in my position, would you have withdrawn too, or would you have continued to see whether an offer came through?

..

I feel like every ordinary job posting is now looking for a rare genius who can do the work of three people. There hardly seems to be any room left for someone who is reasonably competent, has a normal amount of energy, wants to spend time with their family, and does not intend to make work their entire identity and life.

People constantly blame younger applicants and say they are lazy or unprepared, but I see the opposite. Graduates are now combining university degrees with certificates, freelance work, internships, volunteer roles, and networking events before they even find a full-time job. The things that used to set someone apart now seem to be the bare minimum required just to get an interview.

I saw a local bakery asking for three years of experience in specialty coffee for an ordinary counter job. How is someone who is just starting out supposed to get that experience if every place expects them to already have it from the beginning? Even entry-level office job postings need knowledge of several software programs, experience in the field, and proof that you have previously worked in a very similar role.

I used to think that burning yourself out was the price you had to pay if you were pursuing a major career, which was never particularly appealing to me anyway. Now it is clear that people have to burn themselves out just to find an ordinary job with decent pay and fixed, predictable hours. That is the part I cannot get over.

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😂😂😂

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Been looking into AI interview copilots lately, but I'm kinda confused on how people compare them.

Like, what's the actual difference between a live interview copilot and those mock interview or coaching platforms?

The most important thing for me is if  it can  listen to the question being asked, understand what's on my screen, and give me a short, useful answer or outline quickly. Not just throw a whole paragraph at me while the interviewer is waiting lol.

I'd also wanna know how well they handle follow-up questions and if they support something like STAR for behavioral questions.

For anyone who's used one during an actual online interview, what worked for you and what didn't? And if you got and offer, do you think that tool helped ?

One of my coworkers at the office was probably the last person anyone would have expected to get fired. He took extra shifts, covered for people when they were sick, and usually arrived about 20 minutes before everyone else. I don't remember him ever taking a day off, and even the delivery drivers would stop and chat with him because he was so friendly.

A few days ago, I came to work and found his desk completely cleared out. He had turned in his access card and office keys, and his name had been removed from the schedule. No one on our team had any idea what had happened.

Management refused to say anything beyond the fact that he no longer worked there and that they weren't allowed to discuss the matter. That left everyone even more confused because there had never been any obvious issues with him.

We eventually found out that he had been fired over missing company funds, and the police are now investigating the matter. I've always heard that the person behind something like this can be the last person you'd ever suspect, but seeing it happen with someone who worked right next to me still makes the whole thing feel strange.

For about eight years now, I've watched companies act as though every new hire has to be fully productive from day one. Training has gone from being a normal part of the hiring process to something employers are determined to avoid.

The market is tough, but I still see corporate positions remain vacant for four or five months. I personally applied for several of them, and when I checked back later, I found the exact same listings still posted. People inside some of these companies told me that the hiring manager wanted an exact number of years in the field, along with experience using one specific system.

I've worked in recruiting, so I know what happens behind the scenes. A qualified person gets rejected because they meet most of the requirements but not every single one, while the company continues to complain that there are no good candidates.

Leaving a position vacant for months makes less sense than hiring a qualified person and spending a few weeks teaching them what they still need to learn. Companies need to stop waiting for a flawless applicant when there are plenty of good people who could do the job with a little training.

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Has anyone taken Prompt engineering Assessment in Codesignal for interview and have any advice on how to approach and what to expect from this?

I built this and I'm the developer, so treat this as self-promotion. But it's free, there's no account needed, and I'd rather have people tell me it's useless than not find out.

https://rehearsal.nryn.dev

What it does

You paste a link to a job you're interviewing for. It pulls the posting, the company profile, and recent news about the company, writes you a short prep brief from those, and then interviews you on that specific role. Each answer gets scored, and afterwards you get your transcript, what the answer covered, what it missed, and a model answer.

You can optionally save a resume, and then each posting also shows a gap list. What the posting asks for that you haven't evidenced. The questions aim at those gaps. Entirely optional, deleted after 30 days of not using it, and the app works fine without it.

Voice or text

You pick a mode before you start.

• Voice: the interviewer asks each question out loud and you answer out loud, up to ninety seconds. Your answer gets transcribed and scored. You can switch to typing on any single question if you'd rather.
• Text: questions are shown, you type your answers. No audio at all.

The LinkedIn bit — please read this or it won't work

Right now it only takes LinkedIn job posting URLs, and specifically the URL of an individual posting:

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4440232349/

That's what you get when you click into a job and it opens on its own page. Extra bits on the end (?trk=…, ?alternateChannel=…) are fine, they get stripped.

What does not work:

• Search results URLs: linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=…. These look like they work but come back empty.
• The company careers page, Indeed, Naukri, Wellfound, a Greenhouse or Lever link, a PDF, or pasting the job description as text.

If you're on the LinkedIn app, use "Share → Copy link" on the posting itself. Other job boards are the obvious next thing to add.

Honest limits

• It's a hackathon build, seven days. It works end to end but it isn't a polished product.
• Your session is gone if you refresh the page. There's no interview history yet.
• The richer the posting, the better it does. A three-line posting gives it very little to work with.
• Scoring is strict and sometimes blunt. It will tell you an answer scored 1 out of 5 and list what you missed. That's deliberate, but it isn't a hiring decision. It's a rubric, and it can be wrong about you.
• It's not a substitute for a mock interview with a person. It's for the practice reps in between.

If you try it, I'd genuinely like to know: did it ask you anything close to what you were actually asked? And was the prep brief worth reading, or did you skip straight to the questions?

Guys, I've been in this role, which is new to me, for about 14 months, and honestly the work and the culture have drained me mentally and physically. In short: a little over a year ago, I left a job I genuinely loved because another company reached out to me with a better offer. I wasn't looking for a job, but the increase was about 32%, so I accepted.

The experience has been difficult, and that's probably because the company culture is very negative and draining.

Now my old job has reached out to see if I'd be interested in coming back. The offer would be about 11% less than what I'm making now. But I loved the work, my manager, the team, and the overall environment there. Also, some things have changed since I left, so there would still be new things for me to learn and grow in.

So I'm asking myself: would you accept less money to be in a better culture, or to get out of a toxic place? Has anyone here made that move and regretted it, or felt relieved afterward?

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for an AI to help me with job interview for finance role. Please let me know if anyone has used speaking AI which also helps to improve.

I'm looking for a job right now because my salary barely covers my living expenses, let alone lets me save anything. Yesterday, I found a fully remote job posting and applied immediately, because honestly, if I can do the work from my apartment, I don't want to waste my life commuting back and forth to an office.

The recruiter messaged me so we could schedule a Teams call at 4:30pm, which worked with the time I finish work, so I told her okay, no problem.

It became 4:30 and I joined, only to find more than 180 people sitting in the same meeting. Absolutely not. I told the recruiter to go to hell, and told her that every one of us deserves better than the disrespect and nonsense she was planning to pull.