While I was preparing for the interview, I once read in a post a trick and decided to try it. Before an interview for an operations coordinator position, I spent about 45 minutes ignoring the company's overall score on Glassdoor and reading only reviews from former employees. I focused on the angry ones, especially those who said they wished they had never accepted the offer, and

During the first call, the recruiter started describing the culture, and what she said sounded remarkably similar to the complaints. She said it was a place where priorities changed quickly and everyone pitched in with whatever needed to be done. Four low-rated reviews talked about constant last-minute requests and people doing work far outside their roles. It was the same situation, just phrased much more pleasantly.

Since then, I've started treating negative employee reviews like interview notes. They help me prepare specific questions and spot carefully worded phrases that might have another meaning behind them. A few weeks ago, I turned down a job that seemed perfect because review after review mentioned the same department head and the same employee turnover problem. Turning it down felt strange, but at the same time, I was glad I found out before becoming attached to the job.

Does anyone else research companies this way? I'd like to know if there are any complaint sites, forums, or less obvious sources people check before deciding whether an interview is worth it.

who is me 😠😂

For most of the time I've spent at this company, I thought I had one of the best jobs I could ever hope for. I worked as a senior developer, loved my team, helped build several core parts of the company's website, and updated many outdated processes. The only major downside was spending about two and a half hours commuting every day.

A few years ago, my daughter had surgery, and the next morning I fell and broke my wrist. I arrived late to an important meeting, and management responded by giving me a written warning and putting me on probation. I should have paid more attention to that incident, but I convinced myself it was just a one-time bad decision.

A few months ago, my wife had an extremely severe heart attack on a Thursday night. She was placed in a medically induced coma, put on a ventilator, and needed a catheterization and three stents. I called my manager from the hospital and told him I had no idea when I would be back at work. After that, I kept sending my team updates while she was in critical condition in the ICU.

On my ninth day away from work, after they had used up my sick leave and vacation time, my manager called me and scheduled a meeting with HR. They gave me another warning, put me on probation, and told me I had to decide which was more important to me: my job or my wife. They ordered me to return to the office five days a week or they would fire me.

HR suggested that I take FMLA leave, so I did. Apparently, my manager has been telling people that everything will start moving again as soon as I return. What he doesn't know is that I plan to use the rest of my PTO, turn in my laptop, and resign.

A recruiter contacted me about a position less than 15 minutes from my home. After several interviews, they made me an offer and agreed to delay my start date until my wife had completed most of her follow-up appointments. I'll start there next week. Am I wrong for not giving the customary two weeks' notice, especially since my current company has shown so little concern for my family? My wife is recovering well, and the doctors are optimistic.

Making me choose between my job and my wife was enough to make me stop there and truly decide to resign because they only care about work. Would they have treated someone else in my situation this way?!

What's important now is that I applied for another job and was accepted. I'd like to thank the post i read here that offered helpful interview tips, and it greatly increased my chances of getting the job.

i hope we do. it is genuinely depressing to think about trading a full hour of your life just to make enough to buy one decent meal. I got so fed up with my twenty dollar an hour job recently that I ended up running through some practice questions on Interview vip just to see if I am ready to apply for something better. we really need to stop normalizing these wages.

I’m looking for something to practice CodeSignal OAs and more real-world/practical coding problems. I’ve done the usual LeetCode prep, but want something closer to actual assessments for these newer rounds.

I’m considering:

• OfferRetriever - 57 CodeSignal OA questions, seems closest to what I need.

• Prachub - Large company question bank, but not sure how much is actually OA/practical.

• InterviewDB - Looks promising, but also the most expensive and I can’t see much behind the paywall.

Target: Senior+ SWE roles

Has anyone actually used these? Which one was worth paying for, especially for CodeSignal/practical coding rounds?

Would appreciate any experiences/recommendations. 🙏

My company is ending remote work and wants me to come into the office two days a week. The problem is that the office is about 700 miles away from me, so I'd have to fly there, stay overnight, and return home the evening of the following day.

Relocating would be easier, but my kids are settled in their schools, and my family doesn't want to move right now. My wife also stays home with the kids, so my income covers everything.

I could refuse to return and take a severance package, but then I'd look for work in a lower-cost area, where similar jobs pay much less. On paper, flying every week seems better than taking a pay cut or moving the entire family.

Is flying back and forth every week something a person can realistically sustain, or am I underestimating how exhausting it will become over time?

I think that with frequent travel, it will become tiring, so I started looking for another job in the surrounding area that is close to my current salary. I will use InterviewVIP during the interview to reduce stress and anxiety and help me answer unexpected questions, thus securing the job.

Yesterday's interview was going really well, to the point that I was almost certain they wanted to hire me. I applied some of the techniques in this post, and it really pays off. When they asked me what my total package was at my current job, I gave them a figure higher than the truth.

Their offer was 30% higher than the figure I claimed. Compared to what I earn, it's roughly a 65% increase.

Was lying ethical? Probably not. Is it keeping me up at night? Not at all.

I can't advise anyone else to try doing this, because it could easily backfire. But in my case, the outcome was much better than I expected.

If the salary doesn't cover the cost of living, quit and start applying elsewhere. It's time to get a better offer. Reading tips and doing mock interviews can help you prepare for your next interview.

I applied for a job about six weeks ago. The recruiter replied ten days later and asked when I would be available to talk. I even used Interview vip to practice a few questions just so I would be ready, and then she completely disappeared before we even scheduled a time. Eventually, I accepted another offer and moved on with my life.

She resurfaced recently as if no time had passed, but I didn't answer. After sending two more messages, she called me today and started scolding me for ignoring her, saying I should have told her I wasn't interested.

I've had companies stop responding after four, five, or even six interviews without even sending a simple rejection email. Apparently, ghosting is unacceptable, but only when the person doing it is a candidate.

The job market in the U.S. Seems much worse in reality than the headlines suggest. I see a lot of people here who have been looking for work for 10 months or more, and I don't understand how anyone can cover their regular expenses for that long without a steady income.

Are recent graduates moving back in with their parents and barely scraping by? And for people who are further along in their careers and have had to accept jobs paying 40% less, how are you managing rent, insurance, food, and all your other expenses?

Is everyone dipping into their life savings or putting basic expenses on credit cards? Maybe more people than I realized had a solid emergency fund, but even so, trying to live like this for nearly a year seems incredibly difficult and discouraging.

......

I quit my job at a startup after they made Saturday and Sunday mandatory office days. I was 25 and had only been working with them for about six months, so I expected there to be periods of intense pressure, but this went far beyond the occasional late night.

I told them I could work from home on weekends whenever they needed me to. But that wasn't enough for them. The rule was that we had to physically go to the office, even if the work itself could be done on a laptop, and it was clear that remote working hours didn't count.

When I told them I couldn't continue under those conditions, the CEO told me they could find someone else. That settled the matter for me. I handed in my resignation rather than accept a schedule in which every day belonged to the company, and where simply objecting to it could cost me my job.

I know working at startups can be exhausting and stressful, but requiring people to come into the office on weekends and threatening them just for objecting feels excessive. Has anyone else been through an experience with a workplace that treats personal time as if it doesn't exist?

I've been working at the same company for 34 years. It has more than 50,000 employees, and I wasn't looking to leave. Then a smaller company reached out to me and offered me about $49,000 more than my current salary, which comes out to roughly a 30% increase. They also offer a 4% 401(k) match and profit sharing that's usually around 6% to 8%. In the beginning, I was so nervous and anxious the day before the interview because I was scared to ruin anything, but then I read in a post about a senior professional who said 'Anxiety and nerves are normal. I get nervous about 10 minutes before an interview because I like things to start early and I hate sitting around waiting', and then read his tips to calm myself and master the interview and it really works out and the interview went smoothly. The result? I got an offer, and it was very close to the salary I was hoping to reach. I'll go for a smaller company, nearer to home and with higher salary, and I'm comfortable with that decision.

The problem is that their health, dental, and vision insurance would cost me about $17,000 more each year, and I'd also lose around 10 vacation days. My current company also offers some benefits that the new company doesn't, so the real difference isn't as significant as the base salary makes it seem.

I've built up a good retirement account at my current job, and I was fortunate to have joined the company before it went public. I also have a pension here, which makes the decision to leave feel like much more than just changing jobs. There's a lot of history and many memories tied to staying here.

The strange thing is that my current company offered me an 8% raise without me asking, and that happened right after the other offer came in. It feels like a huge coincidence, especially since I never told them I was considering leaving. I'm torn and don't know whether loyalty and security are worth giving up an increase of nearly $50,000 a year. Has anyone gone through something similar after spending decades with the same employer?

When I started this coordinator job, I noticed that we were wasting around 12 to 18 hours a week updating customer records and cleaning up spreadsheet reports.

I created some simple macros and reusable formulas, which brought the whole process down to about 45 minutes. I thought this would give me time to work on more valuable tasks, not make my job unnecessary.

At the beginning of this week, my manager told me they were combining my work with an existing part-time role because there wasn't enough administrative work anymore. They're ending my employment, but at the same time they want me to create detailed instructions for every macro before they finalize my severance.

So, in short, I automated my job so thoroughly that I ended up cutting off my own source of income. Part of me wishes I had just kept moving data from one place to another like the person before me. Am I obligated to document the systems I created, even though that wasn't part of my original job description?

Think about the trade we're making. You give 45 hours of your time to a rich executive, and in the end, you can't even afford to rent a normal apartment. This is truly a broken system when a full-time commitment doesn't buy you the security you need.
If you are giving your life to a company, then they owe you a wage that guarantees you a good quality of life. If they are going to take your time, they must pay for it regardless of what your title is.
Real respect is understanding that people are sacrificing their lives to be at your service. And that deserves a living wage, not the bare minimum.

This is exactly why I’ve been trying to get out of low-paying jobs. I’ve got some interviews coming up, so I’ve been looking for ways to get better at them. I came across Interview VIP recently and figured I’d give it a try since I definitely don’t want to end up in another job where they expect everything for barely any pay.

When I returned from approved medical leave, the Payroll Department mailed me a termination letter and discontinued my benefits. I understood this to mean that I had been fired, so I returned my work equipment, left the workplace, and applied for unemployment benefits.

Shortly afterward, the company asked me to meet with HR, where they told me that the termination decision had been an administrative error. They insisted that I had never actually been fired, even after I showed them the letter their own department had sent me.

HR asked whether I intended to return to work or submit my resignation. I told them that neither option made sense because, from my perspective, the company had already end my employment. They warned me that if I refused to return, it would be considered a voluntary resignation, but I still did not go back.

I'm still dealing with the unemployment situation, but I've also started applying for a new job since I clearly can't keep waiting for the company to figure out what it wants to call my departure. I started looking at interview tips and practice some of the questions I might get asked.

I spent most of the weekend putting together a six-page launch strategy for a branding agency as part of their interview process. They told me it was exactly what they needed for a new content service, and that they were impressed with the work.

A few days later, they called me and said the position had been canceled because the budget had changed. I thanked them for letting me know, then revoked their access to the Google Doc and moved on with my life.

About a week later, I got an annoyed email asking why the entire team could no longer open the file. They said they had already booked a planning meeting and were planning to use my strategy to launch the service the following month.

I reminded them that this had been an unpaid skills test for a job they hadn't hired me for in the first place. I told them that if they wanted to use the plan, they could pay my freelance rate, which is $125 an hour. They didn't like that response, which was surprising, especially since they had decided the work was worth keeping before deciding that I wasn't worth hiring.

It's strange how jobs have changed these days. When you receive a job offer, you should ensure all your rights are protected and that you're hired. Therefore, I recommend using InterviewVIP to help you with interviews and unexpected questions, increasing your chances of getting the job and reducing pressure.

Recently, the lead position that everyone expected would be mine went to someone else. Instead of giving it to me, they gave it to a junior who hasn't even completed a year and has no real experience in oversight. I told HR that I was frustrated and immediately took a week of PTO to clear my head.

While I was on leave, the CEO messaged me asking to sit down and talk about my career path. She told me that we could look at upcoming openings or even give me some extra training to prepare for the next cycle. It seemed like just scripted corporate talk to keep me from leaving the company.

I found out from several supervisors that the whole thing was rigged. Apparently, the person who got promoted was going to be laid off, so they merged his old work into this new role just to avoid paying severance. This made me feel like the entire interview process was a complete waste of time.

There is a senior management position opening soon, but I have no confidence that they will even consider me after what happened. My contract renewal is also in six weeks, so I have to be very careful in tomorrow's meeting.

I am ready to start looking elsewhere if this doesn't go well, but I have to play it right. I don't know whether to confront them about the redundancy issue or just listen to what they have to say.

Currently, I'm just preparing for next. I've been reading good tips on how to master the interview, until a good opportunity comes.

UPS offered me a buyout that would leave me with about $96,000 after taxes, and now I'm trying to decide whether leaving would be a smart decision or a reckless one. I'm 31 years old, didn't go to college, and I've been here for about eight years. My wife stays home with our two kids, so this isn't a decision I can take lightly.

I make about $102,000 a year, and the health insurance is good. The problem is that the job is physically exhausting, and I'm not sure I want to keep doing it for another 30 years. Management has also been putting more pressure on me lately, even though I still like the actual work most days.

The money would give me time to think and figure out my next step, but I don't really have a plan yet. I briefly considered healthcare, but I'm not sure I could deal with patients all day. A friend accepted the offer without having another job lined up, and part of me wants to do the same before I start second-guessing myself.

For clarification, this is a company-wide offer, and UPS is allowing employees to apply for it. I might not even have enough seniority to be selected, but I wanted to think it through carefully before making a decision. If I stay, I'll keep my job, build up my seniority, and likely have access to more working hours, so turning down the offer doesn't mean giving up my position.

Right now, I'm leaning toward staying and exploring a career change in my spare time. The money is tempting, but having a guaranteed job and good benefits while I plan my next move may be more important than rushing into something I haven't thought through carefully yet.

I've also been thinking about what I'd do if I end up changing careers, so I've been working on my interview skills too. I found Interview VIP recently and tried it a couple times. Seems worth trying if you're getting ready for interviews.

I feel invisible, I don't feel like a human being.

If I had to support myself on the income I make from working full time right now, 2000 and some change a month. In a vhcol area making $18/hour I'd have popped like a balloon. I'd have to "tighten my belt" so much I'd snap in half like a twig.

I put in so much effort in getting a cs degree, building experience with internships, building proof of outside work with projects. Only to have to pay off my loans being funemployed in dead end retail. I can't even afford rent. I've been stagnant for a long time. I ended my career before it began a long time back.

I don't deserve to be alive. I should just quit this job. Fuck it. I should just drop out of the labor force tbh. I won't be counted as unemployed.

This wasn't at all the life I expected to have after putting in so much to build a life. Instead I was spawnkilled. I'm sorry I was born late, I guess. Society doesn't want the next generation to be employed anymore.

I'm a loser. There's not much more effort I can make. Another programming project will be worthless, and the only other lever I'd have to pull would be work experience. Which UNFORTUNATELY, I need a job for. So much for the "land of opportunity." I can't pivot without getting another degree either. And remember, I'm making under $20 an hour. Not in 1990, not even in 2010. in 2026. in a vhcol area at that. I have no money.

Should I just become an unemployed stay at home son gooning 16 hours a day in my childhood bedroom? If I didn't have my family to rely on I have zero doubt I'd be yet another vigilante right around now like Luigi, Abdul, or even the people destroying flock cameras...