June 22, 2026
Resume Games: Now With Extra Pain
Jobs and Software Is Fucked
Even veteran coders say hiring is a mess, and the comments are pure rage
TLDR: A laid-off software worker says today’s hiring process is packed with ghosting, unfair tests, and artificial-intelligence-fueled nonsense. Commenters mostly agreed the market is awful, but a few sparked drama by blaming candidates, bragging about rising pay, and even arguing over the blog’s date format.
A frustrated game developer with about a decade in the industry went viral after unloading on what he says is a brutal, demoralizing job hunt: endless applications, silent recruiters, multiple late-stage rejections, and testing hoops that feel designed to break people. His biggest complaint? Companies now make applicants jump through locked-down coding exams while everyone suspects cheaters are just using whatever artificial intelligence tool is hottest this week anyway. In plain English: the people trying to play fair feel like they’re losing.
And the crowd in the comments did not hold back. One veteran with 15 years of experience said they used to get interviews from half their applications and now get rejected everywhere, with recruiter messages drying up so badly that the silence itself feels ominous. That set the tone: less “keep your chin up,” more collective scream into the void. But there was also delicious side drama. One commenter sniped that if you can’t remember how to make a basic list in a programming language, maybe that’s on you. Another swerved completely off the jobs crisis and launched a mini-meltdown over a date format, because this is the internet and no grievance is too small when morale is already in the basement.
Then came the twist: one person claimed senior roles contacting them are offering higher and higher pay, while another wondered if artificial intelligence specialists are now living in a totally different economy. So the real soap opera here is whether the market is dead for everyone—or just for everyone except the chosen few.
Key Points
- •The author says they are a software engineer with about 10 years of experience, including roughly seven years at Blizzard, and were laid off in June 2025 with the rest of their team.
- •The article describes a six-month job search that included final-round interviews, early-stage rejections, and many applications that received no response.
- •The author says recruiter follow-up often ended in silence even after lengthy interview processes and discussions about other roles.
- •The piece identifies coding assessment platforms such as CoderPad, HackerRank, and AI-proctored exams as major hiring filters in software recruiting.
- •The article argues that expanding use of AI and automated screening is worsening hiring conditions, especially for junior or newly graduated engineers.