# Five Years at Meta. Five Interview Loops. Zero Offers.

**[TRUE STORY]** — by Software engineer, formerly Meta, via r/developersIndia

A software engineer who spent five years at Meta expected the job hunt to be challenging but not impossible. After being laid off, they committed to a punishing routine: six to eight LeetCode problems solved daily, more than twenty applications submitted per day, every day, for four months. The effort did not go unrewarded. Five companies invited them through full interview loops. Five times they made it past the phone screens, the technical rounds, the system design gauntlets, the behavioural interviews with hiring managers who nodded along. Five times they reached the final round.

The result each time was the same: no offer.

"I am not sure what I am doing wrong," they wrote on Reddit, the exhaustion palpable in every line. The post drew hundreds of responses from engineers who recognised themselves in the story. Skilled, experienced, grinding past every gate only to find there was no gate at the end, just another automated rejection email and a job reposted the same afternoon.

Some commenters pointed to interview performance: perhaps the LeetCode grinding was producing rehearsed answers that failed to convey genuine problem-solving. Others argued the problem was structural. Ashby data cited in the thread shows the average technical hire in 2026 requires 17.6 interviews, up 52% from 2021. "The process is filtering for stamina, not skill," one commenter wrote. "Five loops and zero offers is not a you problem. It is a market problem."

The engineer is still looking.

*Source: [r/developersIndia via News18, 5k upvotes](https://www.news18.com/viral/5-years-at-meta-5-interview-rounds-0-offers-laid-off-techie-asks-reddit-what-am-i-doing-wrong-ws-l-10261623.html)*
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