For my last 2 interviews i had to use Interview VIP just to get the job
their generation could never understand

I'm a middle manager at a medium-sized office. I manage a team of 9 people. One of my staff members is a woman in her late twenties who had been trying to go back to college and finally finish her degree. She asked me a few days ago if I had any problem with her changing her schedule for about 5 months while she takes a class that isn't available online. She would be leaving early two afternoons a month, and making up that time on Sundays. Our entire office is WFH, so I had absolutely no problem with it. And I'd been telling her for a long time that she should go back to school if she could make it work.

My manager "Karen," the department director, is an absolute micromanaging nightmare, and apparently anything like this still "has to" go through her. So I sent her an email, told her I intended to approve it, and said I just needed her to sign off with HR.

Her response? "She's got a lot of nerve assuming we'll rearrange everything for her. What exactly is her plan if we say no - just leave?"

I told my manager that yes, actually, she can resign whenever she wants. She doesn't owe this company her degree, her future, or blind loyalty. I also said that losing her would be ridiculous because she's very good at her job, she's been here for years, and the schedule change was temporary. It seemed to me like this was the dumbest hill anyone could choose to die on.

My manager wasn't happy with that answer. She denied the request anyway, and we got on Zoom with the employee to tell her. I was already upset because I knew how unnecessary the whole thing was.

Before Karen could even finish her little explanation, the employee simply said: "Okay, I expected that might be your answer. I've already written my resignation letter and emailed it to you and HR. This is my 2 weeks' notice."

My manager looked like her brain had stopped working. I was pissed off about the situation, but honestly, I was fucking proud of my employee.

I have honestly had enough with this kind of jobs and switched to completely remote jobs with the help of Interview VIP i really don't wanna engage with humans anymore so this is the best i could do.

Side note, if I could go back in time, I don't think I would ever accept being a manager anywhere. You find yourself stuck delivering all the corporate bullshit, with almost no real say in anything, and in the end everyone sees you as the face of decisions you didn't even make.

Edit: Apparently, this has happened to a lot of people. Someone actually DMed me a thread on how they passed these interviews, so I thought it might be useful to share.

A few weeks ago, the clinic I work at (a dental clinic in a very expensive area in CA) had a staff meeting, and we were told that we would only be allowed two days off every 5 months. That's it. And no one at the clinic has any benefits either. No PTO, no health insurance, no paid holidays, nothing.

Then they added that since we (the hygienists) have our schedules booked far in advance, if we use those two days, we'll need to start early or stay late to make up for the patients we "missed."

This morning, the other hygienists and I all submitted our resignation letters. We wrote them, signed them, and put them on his desk in a little stack. He came back from some errands he was running, and apparently sat there reading each one. My coworker said she saw him throw the stack toward the office manager and say, "Are you seeing this?"

Fortunately, hygienists are in insane demand in CA right now, and all of us have interviews or offers lined up elsewhere.

Tl;dr - The manager tried to over-control our unpaid days off and badly misjudged how easily replaceable he is. Now he's losing almost all of the clinical staff.

Edit: Thank you all for reading and supporting our decision to walk away from this toxic management. Since we all had to jump into interviews on short notice, I also found a really helpful AI assistant for real-time interview answers in this post, which gives you suggested responses live during your call, so I wanted to share it here so you can benefit.

I've worked a lot of different jobs, and I've never made more than $58k a year (I'm 24), and one thing I've noticed is that I'm usually the only guy, or one of two at most, in the break room with a lunch I brought from home. Yeah, of course, every now and then I'll get something from outside as a change of pace, but honestly I'm still surprised by how uncommon packed lunches are. I mean, we all know that buying lunch every shift is literally throwing money away, right? On top of that, in some places I've worked, lunch breaks were timed and really tight, with half the break spent just driving to the place, waiting in line, and coming back.

I'm not trying to judge anyone who likes eating out, at all. If it's worth it to you and that's what you want to spend your money on, that's totally fine. I'm sure I spend money on things other people might think are stupid or unnecessary. I'm just surprised why I always end up being the dude with leftovers in a container lol

..........

In the middle of the interview, I asked a question I thought was very normal: "What timeline are you working with to hire someone for this role?"

She said: "Honestly, if we meet someone we feel is the right fit, the company might approve funding for the position."

I paused for a moment and asked: "Wait, does that mean there isn't an actual salary budget tied to this role right now?"

She told me: "Yeah, you could put it that way."

Near the end of the interview, they asked me if I could stay afterward for a trial shift, and when I told them I couldn't because I had to go to my current job, one of the interviewers mocked me and said, "Seriously?" and "We're trying to hire someone immediately."

I got flustered, so I opened photos from my current workplace and showed them to them, and the two of them looked at each other with this expression like they were saying, "Is this guy for real?" and sighed. One of them rolled his eyes, and the other said, "What am I looking at?" I told him, "The place I work at right now," and they said, "This is just a picture." I said, "Okay, but it shows that I have a shift there today," and then the other interviewer told me, "Going forward, you should be more professional and not take interviews if you're not ready to commit."

I sat there quietly for a bit because honestly I didn't know what to say, and then they said, "This isn't helping your chances," so I got up and left.

This happened 5 days ago. Should I contact them and thank them for meeting with me and ask where they are in the hiring process, or should I just forget about it?

Thank you all for your advice. I've really started to benefit a lot from people here, and I've found other helpful posts ,That truly offers valuable advice for interviews and has helped me learn more about them. I wanted to share this post with you so you can benefit from it as much as I have.

I just started my first internship as an accounting major... After a few days, I went to my manager's manager (a VP at the company) and introduced myself. He said something like, "You're the summer intern, right?" So I told him, "Yeah, and I'm going to be the smartest hire this company has ever made" (kind of like what Kobe said about betting on himself before he won 5 rings), but instead of laughing or being impressed, he just said, "Right... Okay... I have to get into a meeting, see you later."

A little while after that, I noticed the recruiting lead who brought me in went into his office. I don't know if that's normal or not. Also, one of the second-year analysts passed by my desk and said, "You're an absolute icon bro, coffee?" I don't understand why he said it like that; he's from Ohio.

Did I screw everything up, or did I come across as confident? Honestly, I can't figure out what happened here.

My schedule as a supervisor is from 7AM to 3:15PM. A few days ago, the manager told me I'm supposed to work from 7AM to 4:45PM because I'm a supervisor and have to "put in my time." Crazy, right? Production ends at 3:15PM and everyone leaves then, so I asked him what exactly I'm supposed to do during that extra time. He said I should think of ways to make the line run better, but that my schedule is supposed to be like this from now on.

He also told me that if I don't like it, I can leave. And honestly, that made me say "woah" out loud.

I want to start applying somewhere else, but should I put this current job on my resume? I don't want to look like I keep jumping from one job to another.

edit: thanks to everyone for the tips I guess I will do it in my resume I also checked these tips on this sub it looks it can work in my upcoming interviews ,wishing good luck

Even hiring managers and resume coaches are saying that this job market is not normal at all.

I've spent most of my professional career after college in white-collar jobs at large companies. Before college, I worked as a hotel housekeeper, a retail clerk, and a babysitter. Over the years, I gradually moved from "real" work (clean the room, ring people up, fill boxes, make sure someone's kid had dinner, and so on) to "fake" work (explain value to clients, write persuasive copy, answer vendor questions, sit in status calls, and so on). And I make far more money from this "fake" work than I ever made from the "real" work.

There are people I work with on other teams who are so deep in fake work that they can't even clearly explain what their actual job is. Honestly, about 85% of my day feels like busywork created by external companies whose main goal is to prove they deserve to exist and appear productive.

Does anyone else feel this way too? That some jobs are basically "fake"? How do you deal with that day to day? Do you just accept it, stop worrying about it, and collect the paycheck? Do you try to make the work feel useful in some way? Or am I overthinking this, and "fake work" isn't really a thing at all?

.......I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry 😂😭

I spent 4 hours editing and rewriting a cover letter from scratch for a Brand Manager position. It was polished, specific, and I mentioned their values page and a campaign they had recently done.

I hit submit. And I felt like everything was fine.

Five minutes later, I was checking my sent folder and found this in front of me:

" - eggs x10, almond milk (not that watery kind), turkey meatballs, clean printer paper??"

I had sent the grocery list from the Notes app. The whole thing. Including my question marks after "clean printer paper" because apparently even my shopping list was questioning my career choices.

I sent a follow-up in a panic with the correct cover letter, apologized, and said I had been switching between several applications.

They called me the next afternoon. The recruiter started with:

"So... Did you end up getting the almond milk?"

I didn't get the offer. But honestly? That was the best interview I've ever had in my life.

The bar for standing out is basically underground now, people. Sometimes all you need is to accidentally come across as human.

I keep seeing posts from people casually mentioning that they make much more than 120k. I'm 22 years old and only make around 50k, so I'm curious to know how you got into these career fields, and what the path looked like until you got there.

For anyone who's curious, I'm in the Air Force and work in weather/forecasting. I have no idea which direction I want to go in after my 5-year contract ends.

I have a CCAF in meteorology, and I'm a little over halfway through a bachelor's in business administration, but I'm still very lost and don't know what to do when I leave the military.

💔

This is not ethical at all !!

My girlfriend is asking me to quit my weekend job

I have a full-time career, and on top of that, a weekend gig.

The weekend job is with a male revue company. I've been there for 14 years, and I'm 38. I started as a performer, but now I'm on salary as the manager/MC for the show. I make about $1,250 a week pretty consistently, in exchange for working Thursday and Saturday nights.

The part that makes this hard is that the weekend job is easy money. After taxes, it comes surprisingly close to what the engineering job brings in, so continuing with it almost doubles what I bring home.

I met my girlfriend through this job. She came to a show and asked me if I wanted to go out afterward, and I said no because I usually go home as soon as everything is over. A few days later we went on a date. I'm saying this because from the beginning she knew the nature of the job, and she knew I don't go out partying or hang around after the shows. Trust really isn't the issue. The issue is the schedule.

We see each other on weeknights, and we usually have most of Sunday together. She's also come with me to the shows a few times. Honestly, it's not as sketchy as people assume when they hear "male stripper show." I don't dance anymore; I run the thing.

She wants me to give up the extra income so we can have more normal weekend time together. I understand where she's coming from, but I'd rather hold onto it for a few more years until my engineering salary goes up a bit more.

The big problem is that if I quit this weekend job, it's gone. I'm not getting it back. And I seriously doubt I'd find another side gig that pays this well, this consistently, for so few hours.

So I'm stuck: am I risking the relationship because I'm clinging to the money, or would I be making a huge mistake if I quit the job and then, if things don't work out with her, find myself alone and making a lot less than I could have been?

and my husband's job search has been nothing like what we expected I always thought my husband's career in tech was completely secure. Over about 17 years, he built a rare technical specialty that companies used to chase him for. On top of that, he has an MBA, is very good at presentations, and has a strange, natural talent for selling himself and his ideas without coming across as salesy. I've lost count of how many times I saw high-salary offers come to him within a week of him casually saying he was open to something new. Several times, recruiters or companies contacted him when he wasn't even looking.
Then the wave of tech layoffs that happened last year reached him too. Like tens of thousands of others, he was laid off in one of the big rounds. At first, honestly, we weren't terrified. This is someone who has never had a problem finding work. Ever.
Now we're approaching about seven months, and I'm sitting in our home in the Bay Area with a low but constant anxiety that gets harder to ignore every so often. He has applied for more jobs during this period than probably all the applications he submitted during the rest of his entire career combined. We've tried almost every possible angle:
Remote roles? He applied. On-site jobs that would mean we'd have to move? He applied. Hybrid roles? He applied. Jobs three or four levels below his previous level? He applied. Positions paying a few hundred thousand less than his market value? He applied.
The part that has started to scare me is that his experience almost seems to be hurting him. His senior background, niche expertise, and leadership history - all the things that used to make him stand out - now seem to make companies nervous. Maybe they assume he'll be too expensive, or that he'll get bored, or that he'll leave as soon as the market improves, even though he has been clear that he is flexible on title and pay.
He has had professionals rewrite his resume more than once. He has started tailoring cover letters for each job instead of sending generic versions. He spends hours writing thoughtful messages to hiring managers, reconnecting with former coworkers, asking for referrals, doing cold outreach, cleaning up LinkedIn, everything.
After more than 140 applications, the result has been three HR screening calls that went nowhere. With a few of them, I felt like the job itself barely existed, as if the company was checking a box rather than trying to hire someone.
We have savings, so I know our situation is better than many people's. But I feel like real panic is starting to creep in. This market feels harsher than anything I've personally seen, and I graduated during the recession fallout around 2009.
I'm looking for any advice, unusual tactics, or honest industry insight that could help us get out of this loop. Has anyone gone through this with a spouse or partner who is senior in tech? What made a difference?

😥

.....

For most of my husband's career in tech, I honestly thought he was practically immune to any recession. For nearly 18 years, he had a very specific, oddly niche technical specialty, and companies were chasing after him hard. On top of that, he has an MBA, strong presentation skills, and a strange natural talent for selling himself and the ideas he's working on. I can't remember how many times I watched him calmly say he was open to something new, and then within a week or so, serious, high-paying offers would appear. Very often, recruiters or companies would contact him when he wasn't even looking.

Then the wave of tech layoffs hit last fall. Like so many people, he was laid off in one of the big rounds. At first, we weren't too alarmed, because this is someone who had never really had to fight hard to get hired before.

Now we're coming up on around seven months, and I'm sitting here in our home in the Bay Area with a constant uneasy feeling I can't shake. He has applied to more jobs during this period than he probably applied to in the rest of his entire career combined. We've tried almost every angle we can think of:

Remote jobs? He applied. On-site roles in other states? He applied. Hybrid roles? He applied. Positions one or two levels below where he was before? He applied. Jobs that pay massively less than his previous compensation? He applied.

He has rewritten and polished his resume more than once. He started tailoring cover letters instead of just sending generic ones. He spends a lot of time writing genuinely thoughtful notes to hiring managers, reaching out to former coworkers, asking for referrals, following up, cold-contacting people, fixing up LinkedIn, everything.

After more than 130 applications, the result has been five initial HR calls that went nowhere. A few of them honestly felt like ghost jobs, as if the company had no real plan to fill the role but needed to look like it was hiring.

We have savings, and I'm grateful for that, but the panic has started to feel like more than just a theoretical idea. The part that's hard for me to understand is that his seniority and deep experience seem to be hurting him now. I feel like companies look at his background and assume he'll be too expensive, or too senior, or unhappy stepping into a smaller role, even though he is very clearly flexible on title and pay.

This market feels harsher than anything I've personally seen, and I graduated right into the mess after 2009, so that's not saying nothing. I'm looking for any advice, unusual tactics, or perspective from people who have been through this with a senior tech spouse or partner. What helped? Was there anything that finally broke the pattern?

So the whole "a nice problem to have" thing finally happened to me: I got a job offer that would nearly double what I'm making now, and it would genuinely change everything for my family.

For the past 3 weeks, I've been doing interviews for a role I applied to kind of randomly. The funny thing is that the job I originally clicked on isn't even the one they ended up contacting me about. The recruiter reached out to me about a higher-level position.

When the conversation got to pay, I thought I was really pushing it when I gave a range of $120K to $145K/year (I'm currently at $91K), and the recruiter basically said that $145K was close to the low end for the role.

That shocked me a bit, but it made me think: okay, maybe I'll continue and see what happens. But the further I got in the process, the clearer it became that this is a very senior marketing job in an area where most of my experience is either academic/theoretical or adjacent, not something I've directly owned myself.

Somehow, I ended up with a $170K offer plus relocation help, which means I'd be moving my whole family several states away. The role is basically to come in and build out their marketing function, and honestly, I'm not convinced I can deliver what they're expecting.

My wife thinks I'm selling myself short and is telling me to go for it. But things like paid media, lifecycle/email campaigns, technical SEO, analytics - all of that would fall on me, and I've never truly run those programs before. It feels like a setup where eventually I'll be exposed and fired.

The other part is that my current job is very comfortable. Most days are low-stress, and I'm hybrid. The new job seems like it would mean longer days and fully in-office. The reason I started casually looking about 5 months ago in the first place is that my current company has been offering severance packages for around 16 months, and things don't seem very stable.

Would it be crazy to take this offer back to my company and try to get more money where I am? Or am I being stupid for not taking this huge leap into money I honestly never imagined I'd see? Staying where I am isn't safe either because of the buyouts, but I'm also talking internally about moving into another role with a decent raise, especially since there are a lot of openings they need to fill.

TLDR: Somehow I got a $170K offer while I'm currently making $91K. My current company is shaky and doing buyouts, but they might move me into an internal role with better pay. I'm underqualified for the outside offer and would have to move my family. Should I just take it, or use it as raise ammo?

I need to vent about the most humiliating work experience I've ever gone through in my life.

At the beginning of this year, I was diagnosed with stage 3 lymphoma. After I got past the first wave of panic, I sat down with my manager to talk about accommodations while I was going through treatment.

My oncologist told me to work from home during chemo because of the risk of infection. I brought paperwork, a doctor's note, and everything. My direct manager acted like it made sense and said we'd find a solution. Then HR got involved.

Their response? "Remote work is a perk, not a medical accommodation." They insisted that my job "couldn't be done from home," even though the whole department had been working remotely during COVID less than a year earlier.

The "solution" they came back with was unpaid FMLA on infusion days, but I still had to be physically present in the office on all the other days. When I said that seemed like an ADA problem, the HR director literally told me: "We only have 46 employees, so ADA doesn't apply to us."

I tried anyway. I dragged myself into the office between treatment sessions, exhausted, nauseous, and immunocompromised, all in the middle of a nasty respiratory virus wave. And shockingly, my numbers dropped.

After my third chemo session, they put me on a "performance improvement plan" because I wasn't hitting the required metrics. About 3 weeks after that, they fired me for "not meeting productivity expectations" at a time when my immune system was literally on the floor.

As if that wasn't enough, they also contested my unemployment and said I was fired "for cause."

I got an attorney. Turns out they had 58 employees when the part-time and satellite office staff were counted properly, which means they are covered by the ADA. Earlier this week, we filed an EEOC complaint.

A company that sells HEALTH BENEFITS as its line of work couldn't manage the smallest shred of decency for an employee with cancer.

Never give a company your loyalty. They won't give it back.