# Eighteen Months of Leetcode Rejections — Then a Job That Tested the Actual Work

**[WIN]** — by Candidate · via r/cscareerquestions

Eighteen months, and the same shape nearly every time: a screen, then a puzzle. The candidate, two years into their career, kept losing roles to coding exercises — not to the work they would actually have been doing.

The opening that finally broke the run was different in one specific way. It was a company that asked the candidate to show their skills the way the job itself would: by doing the exact work they would be hired to do, instead of solving problems invented for the interview.

They got the offer — for an intermediate role, no less. The candidate’s summary was almost a shrug. All it had taken was one company willing to look at the real thing.

*Source: [r/cscareerquestions · viral post](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1wnlyfc/15_years_later_i_finally_got_a_job_offer_how_i/)*
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