u/Secure-Lavishness546

posting so nobody else makes the same mistake. citadel quant analyst final, 4 of 6 done, last 2 were a partner round and a final pricing case. paid for ghostcoder a week earlier because someone in this sub mentioned it. dumbest 49 bucks i ever spent.

interview 5, partner round. overlay crashed at minute 8. just stopped responding. tried to relaunch mid-round, nothing. spent the round flying blind on the exact questions i'd subscribed to get help on. partner caught me looking off-screen during the relaunch attempt and asked if everything was ok. lied, said the laptop was lagging. she let it go but the round was already cooked.

interview 6, pricing case. relaunched ghostcoder before the call. worked for 12 minutes, crashed again. same behavior. gave up on it and ran the case as best i could. rejection email 5 days later, no specifics.

emailed support that night. nothing for 4 days. eventually got back a generic "our team is looking into this." emailed again a week later. nothing. they have a discord, posted there, got muted by a mod for "spam." they actually muted me for reporting a bug. anonymous team, no twitter, no linkedin, no accountability.

resubscribed to cluely two weeks later for a different loop. 4 rounds with it, zero crashes, support replied in 12 hours when i had a mic config question. signed the offer 3 weeks ago.

if you're picking between overlays just go cluely. price difference is 5 bucks a month. the difference in reliability is the difference between the offer and the reject.

Anyway, after four years in the same place, management decided to "adjust" my salary about three months ago. They convinced me with a new salary that had "unlimited potential," but the truth is, there wasn't enough work for this system to function. I decided to give it a fair chance, but I found myself earning barely a third of what I used to. It was below the poverty line.

After the first very low paycheck, the owner literally told me: "Wow! You're handling this really well!" I was working my ass off in a difficult and specialized job, requiring a lot of physical effort and technical skills, and this was my reward. So I decided to look for another job, got an interview at another company, and they hired me on the spot. I'll start a new job with a good, competitive salary, real benefits, and they even offered to pay for any new certifications. The work is still exhausting, but at least I'll be able to live a decent life. When I submitted my two weeks' notice, the owners looked at me as if I had grown horns. They were completely shocked. I explained that I simply couldn't live on the salary I was earning. Not once did they acknowledge this truth.

Instead, the conversation immediately turned into a guilt trip. It was all about them and their personal investments, and how much they had sacrificed. No counteroffer, nothing. Just a lecture. At one point, I asked them: "Is it possible for a smart and hardworking person in my position to live a good life here?" The owner said: "Of course!" I simply replied: "Well, it seems you need to find that person, because I can't do it." The rest of the meeting was them and my supervisor genuinely worrying about how they would manage without me, and I just sat there listening. Anyway, as you might expect, the whole place is collapsing like a house of cards. The panic is real. It turns out my departure was the straw that broke the camel's back, causing almost everyone else to resign as well. The entire team is leaving. There's almost no one left to keep things running. Honestly, for a long time, I undervalued myself and didn't realize the importance of my role.

It feels good to see how central I was to the place. I'm sharing this story for anyone who feels trapped in a workplace: know your worth. Don't let a company that doesn't appreciate you make you think you don't deserve more, because you do. And you can use tools like the ones shared in this subreddit to help you prepare and find answers during interviews.

interviewcoder.co/download