[throwaway57273]

I left my job in 2021 to create a startup that raised $6-7 million and in late 2022 I exited for about $2.5 million. I wrote about half or more of the code. I consider myself a very proficient full-stack engineer and I know typescript, react, databases, and Rust, among other things. Over a decade of experience.

I’ve since decided to apply for two different software engineer jobs (since I don’t want to make another company yet) and didn’t get an offer for either. No idea why but I think it has to do with the technical interview. On one I didn’t even get past the first screen.

I amusingly find it harder to get a good software engineer job (let’s say which pays $200k+) than to create a company and raise millions (at least in the bubbly 2021 market). The technical interviews are just ridiculous and almost feel like a mild form of harassment. It’s like just because I don’t ace whatever esoteric code exercise they come up with, I’m ineligible for the job.