u/Old-Obligation-5615

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

SWE/SRE background, ~7 years experience, applying across engineering and adjacent roles. Laid off earlier this year in a company-wide cut.

I tracked everything since the layoff, so here is the actual funnel:

- 240+ applications
- ~50 companies replied with anything human at all (screen or better)
- 33 reached a first round
- 9 reached a second round
- 4 reached a final round
- 1 offer, which stalled in negotiation
- Everything else: rejected at resume screen, req closed, or ghosted

Mostly just wondering if others are in the same boat. The numbers made me question myself a lot until I laid them out like this and realised most of it never even reached a person. Curious how everyone else's search has been going this year, and how you are holding up.

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

SWE/SRE background, ~7 years experience, applying across engineering and adjacent roles. Laid off earlier this year in a company-wide cut.

I tracked everything since the layoff, so here is the actual funnel:

- 240+ applications
- ~50 companies replied with anything human at all (screen or better)
- 33 reached a first round
- 9 reached a second round
- 4 reached a final round
- 1 offer, which stalled in negotiation
- Everything else: rejected at resume screen, req closed, or ghosted

Mostly just wondering if others are in the same boat. The numbers made me question myself a lot until I laid them out like this and realised most of it never even reached a person. Curious how everyone else's search has been going this year, and how you are holding up.

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

SWE/SRE background, ~7 years experience, applying across engineering and adjacent roles. Laid off earlier this year in a company-wide cut.

I tracked everything since the layoff, so here is the actual funnel:

- 240+ applications
- ~50 companies replied with anything human at all (screen or better)
- 33 reached a first round
- 9 reached a second round

- 4 reached a final round.

1. one ended after a direct chat with the CEO of local SME ( over budget )
2. one where HR and the engineering team both recommended moving ahead, then it came back "too senior", which we all know means over budget
3. one where I passed the technical and HR rounds, then a chief product officer in the final panel passed on me, never got a reason

- 1 offer, which stalled in negotiation ( relocation )
- Everything else: rejected at resume screen, req closed, or ghosted

Mostly just wondering if others are in the same boat. The numbers made me question myself a lot until I laid them out like this and realised most of it never even reached a person. Curious how everyone else's search has been going this year, and how you are holding up.

I want to ask something sensitive but real.

I’ve been interviewing for senior SWE roles in Singapore, and across multiple interviews I noticed a pattern.

For panel interviews, I often get combinations like:

• 1 Indian non-local + 1 Chinese local
• 1 Indian non-local + 1 Malay local
• sometimes both interviewers are Indian non-locals

What I noticed is that the local interviewers usually ask proper senior engineering questions. Things like system design, production experience, incident handling, tradeoffs, reliability, architecture decisions, debugging approach, and how I’ve handled real-world infra issues.

But some of the Indian non-local interviewers tend to ask extremely niche questions. Sometimes it feels like textbook memorization, or very specific one-off scenarios that only make sense if you happened to face the exact same issue in their previous workplace. It doesn’t feel like they are testing senior engineering ability. It feels like they are trying to catch candidates out.

I’m not saying all Indian interviewers do this. I’m also not saying interviewers should avoid hard questions. Senior SWE roles should absolutely have tough interviews.

But when the pattern keeps repeating, it makes me wonder: are some foreign interviewers gatekeeping local candidates from senior tech roles in Singapore?

Especially in tech, where a lot of teams already have strong foreign hiring pipelines, I think this is a fair question. If the interview process is controlled by people who ask random niche questions instead of evaluating real engineering ability, locals may be filtered out unfairly.

Has anyone else experienced this in Singapore tech interviews?

For hiring managers here, are interviewers given a standard rubric? Or can each interviewer just ask whatever they want?

And for other local candidates, how do you deal with interviewers who ask very niche questions that don’t reflect the actual job?