I just really don't understand how the industry adopted these ridiculous practices. I'm lucky that I get a ton of recruiters reaching out once I toggled my LinkedIn to say I'm open, but I don't understand what they expect other than me to say "I guess I'll message you in 3 months after I take on an unpaid second job of learning how to write algorithms I never once used in the last 15+ years of my engineering career to solve problems that are meant to just trick me". You would think they'd want to make it so that engineers did have the option of evaluating other companies at any time, rather than having to prepare endlessly. If I decide I want a new job now (which I did a few weeks ago), I can't do anything about it for a while (unless I'm one of those who practices LC all week rather than learning much more useful things).
No point in ranting further about this.. everyone is well aware.
There's of course some companies that don't subject you to this nonsense, but the list is really limited, and just finding out who they are has taken me many weeks and many phone calls. But a month of that plus trying to "learn" everything required for all of these interviews has made me burnt out and bitter (just like you said). I don't want to jump through these ridiculous hoops and play this stupid game... but what's the alternative?
My current strategy is lowering my expectations and being willing to engage in different work.
What you are describing that I feel in the same boat on is the impossible whack a mole game we are trying to play. It's like a dart board on an always moving target.
It's impossible to catch that objective, you just need to practice / focus on what you are good at and try to look for opportunities that need these skills. It's hard for me because I don't want to work with PHP anymore, but I get a lot of recruiter spam for it. Maybe I could even be ok with a PHP dev based job if the people and structure around the work was reasonable and humane.
My goal right now is to focus on my strengths, try not to be too self-critical when the few opportunities I do see don't match up. It's a waiting game I just wish there was more that I could do proactively.
I'm currently going through this right now. I gave myself a month to "study" for the tech interviews, but I find myself demotivated and can't muster the time or the effort to go through them. I'd do one or two Leetcode problems, but that's it.
I just really don't understand how the industry adopted these ridiculous practices. I'm lucky that I get a ton of recruiters reaching out once I toggled my LinkedIn to say I'm open, but I don't understand what they expect other than me to say "I guess I'll message you in 3 months after I take on an unpaid second job of learning how to write algorithms I never once used in the last 15+ years of my engineering career to solve problems that are meant to just trick me". You would think they'd want to make it so that engineers did have the option of evaluating other companies at any time, rather than having to prepare endlessly. If I decide I want a new job now (which I did a few weeks ago), I can't do anything about it for a while (unless I'm one of those who practices LC all week rather than learning much more useful things).
No point in ranting further about this.. everyone is well aware.
There's of course some companies that don't subject you to this nonsense, but the list is really limited, and just finding out who they are has taken me many weeks and many phone calls. But a month of that plus trying to "learn" everything required for all of these interviews has made me burnt out and bitter (just like you said). I don't want to jump through these ridiculous hoops and play this stupid game... but what's the alternative?