Inefficiencies of the in between time

This is a rant about having to wait for things to happen, and my general dissatisfaction with looking for a job.

---

I just finished the first year of my Master's degree, and I’ve been looking for a new job recently. One thing about spending time just applying for jobs and preparing for interviews that I completely despise is the waiting.

My mentor always tells me

You need to learn to handle the passing of time

I completely understand the premise, but there’s something in me that needs to keep moving. There’s so much more I could do, a lot out there to build, but I feel permissionless when I sit and wait for someone to send me a job offer. I can’t build a business, freelance, or just hustle to make money since I moved to the US, and I’m only authorized to work as a full-time employee for a company.

Hiring and the job search process are broken. Maybe it’s saturation, maybe it’s the market, but it feels like there should be a more efficient way to find something to work on. I definitely know that there are teams out there that are looking for someone with my specific skills and experiences to work with them, but the discovery process is broken. I don’t think that a 1-2 page resume gives enough of a signal to be able to decide if you want to work with someone.

A resume will tell you what someone did for work; it’ll give you a highlight of their biggest accomplishments with just enough context to show their highlight reel. But most good work isn’t done at work. A resume will never tell you what someone is learning, what curiosities they are exploring, what wheels they are reinventing. Tinkering doesn’t show up under the experience section, and in my opinion, it matters way more than years of experience or what company someone worked for.

I feel like I could be doing way more with my time. Looking for a job is a weird experience.

• Leetcode and problem solving feels like a humiliation ritual to measure how much time you have to cram solutions and problem patterns, and how much pain tolerance you have to keep going. I’m actually pretty good at it, but hate every single second I have to spend doing the grid 75 list.
• Applying feels like a really efficient way to turn your time into a generic response

  While we appreciate your interest in joining our team, we have identified candidates whose skills and experiences more closely align with the requirements of the role.

• Sitting through soulless recruiter calls, and antagonistic hiring manager interviews, where it’s less of an interesting conversation, and more of how well you practiced star responses to generic questions.
• If I have to sit through one more AI interview

Anyway, it’s the life we chose.