The Bait-and-Switch/Knock the Applicant Down Game
It's past three months since I've been laid off, and while I've had a few answers to applications and some interviews, still nothing. No offers, just rejections, and frankly my neurodivergent ass is tired of it.
The problem that I'm having is the performative bullshit that tech companies have adopted that involves going through more than two interviews.
I just went through three rounds of interviews only to be told that I wasn't qualified for the role when in fact I actually was. When I pushed for feedback, I got told something completely different—instead of the mid-level role that I had applied for and interviewed for in the first two rounds, suddenly with the third interview, it became a senior role and they decided that I wasn't qualified.
That was very interesting—and when I think about it, not surprising. I've heard from some colleagues about employers playing the same game. Advertising for a mid-level developer position, but then turning around and claiming that they're looking for someone senior.
Essentially, someone that they can overwork and underpay.
That being said, what I suspect happened is that I intimidated the balding, slightly younger than myself, male CTO with the amount of technical knowledge that I possessed—sorry, but I can't dumb down my 14 years of professional experience just to make some soft-handed beta male feel superior.
Tech seems to be filled with beta males but I digress.
Anyway, that being said, while the rejection did sting—it wasn't surprising considering what I'd read up on the company on Glassdoor shortly before the third interview.
Long story short, I would have been walking into another situation like the one I was laid off from. A company that claimed to support DEI initiatives on paper but were really only doing so to make themselves look good. And like the company that I just left, this company had hired women and people of color, but when the economy got rough, turned around and laid them all off, leaving just their majority white and male staff.
And that comes to the heart of the problem I've had with DEI—it's nothing more than window-dressing and a means for companies to both make themselves look good and to dodge responsibility while still actively maintaining the barriers that keep women and poc out of stem roles.
