Four senior-engineer processes, four runs to the finalist round, four rejections. Each loop had run five to eight interviews.
On the most recent one they flew out for an in-person onsite: a coding interview they thought they had aced, a system-design round they rated themselves 85% on, and two values-based interviews they felt good about. The rejections came back as generic, formatted emails, with no explanation from any recruiter.
Their conclusion: you have to be a hundred out of a hundred, perfect, just to compete. The bar, they said, has risen simply to be employed — and they asked whether anyone else was seeing the same thing.
Four deep processes, and the closest thing to feedback was the silence between them.