He quit a big-tech job he described as toxic, and spent the next ten months looking. By the end of it: thirty-three companies, 105 rounds of interviews, nine on-sites. He kept count. The count was the only thing that kept still.
Early on, a social-media company made him an offer. He turned it down because of the location. He was not desperate yet, and he thought another would come. What followed was nine months of almosts — processes that went the distance and ended without an offer.
By the last stretch he had given up hope. He says plainly that he would have taken anything. The offer that arrived came from a quant hedge fund: good work-life balance, pay about the same as the job he had left. Not a compromise he had to talk himself into. Somewhere he would have chosen at the start, before the market taught him not to be picky.
He calls it luck and says it felt unreal for a while. It reads less like luck and more like a man who kept going long after the counting stopped being useful.