u/yumcake

Sharing because while misery loves company, it's important to still believe in the possibility that things can turn around. Lots of stories about things getting worse, but it's still good to remember that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Laid off in Dec'25 at Associate director/Sr. Mgr level. Sent around 120 applications, went through about 15 interviews almost all of them clearing HR, and dying after the hiring manager round. 6 months in I hadn't gotten to 1 second-round interview, while some of them were asking for 3-4 rounds and case studies.

This past week I cleared 3 interview processes in parallel so I'm able to get counteroffers.

1. You don't need to be a good candidate for all the roles, you just need to be a great candidate for the specific role, and if that role isn't currently available, you don't have a good shot at getting hired. The 3 roles just happened to be a very specific niche fit to my experience.

2. I probably got taken out of the running from applying for less senior positions. They didn't trust me to stay in a lower role for long (which is correct, I would have kept looking).

3. There genuinely do seem to be a lot more job postings nowadays. I would skim the new ones everyday and it feels like the volume of postings has ticked up in the NJ/NYC area (even though the pool of unemployed is still large).

4. I wasted time the first 2-3 months by using job boards like LinkedIn. Total dead-end because of the ridiculous volume of ghost jobs. My resume response rate became quite high after dropping LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and indeed entirely. I was reliably getting 1-2 interviews a week after sending about 9-12 applications a week. Dramatically worse than what job searched was like 10 years ago, but way better than LinkedIn.

5. I think my higher interview rate was because I only applied to roles opened within the last 48 hours, and every resume was tailored to match the job description. Use any AI tool you want, but all of them suck unless you refresh your context window regularly and review for adherence.

I'm still probably coming out of all this with a paycut, maybe 20% less than what I made before, but maybe the counters can improve that. However I might also be fully remote! I found that the majority of my interviews were for fully remote positions. I had assumed those roles would be flooded because it's open to the entire country, but again, they want a super specific experience fit. So since my problem was finding a job posted that matched me, searching remote roles really increased the chances for an interview.

Anyway, good luck to all of us. Keep focusing on your inputs and try not to worry about the outputs.

Saw a streamer upgrade a Defend which was surprising to me, and I started trying it and it did feel like it saved a decent amount of chip damage in the hallways of Act 1 (A9+). Assuming you don't have any priority upgrade cards yet, and you're just looking at a bunch of unexciting commons, how do you guys think about prioritizing a +3 block upgrade over a +3-4 damage upgrade? I heard that overgrowth tends to favor damage vs. the underdocks because of the elite fight designs, anything else I should be thinking about?