# Four Finalist Rejections — Five to Eight Rounds Each, No Feedback

**[TRUE STORY]** — by Candidate · via r/cscareerquestions

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.

*Source: [r/cscareerquestions · new post](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1wmhbum/senior_engineer_job_market/)*
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