r/Employment

I had an interview set up through the assistant manager at 2:30 at the Tractor Supply branch near me. I arrived about seven minutes early, and the cashier told me it would just be a minute or two, so I said okay, no problem. I was early anyway, so I figured I could wait until maybe 2:38.

After sitting and waiting for 18 minutes, I asked another supervisor if they knew what was going on, and I was told: "She'll be out right away, just give her another two minutes."

When it got to around 27 minutes, I decided my time was more important than that. I went back to the supervisor I'd spoken to and told him that making me wait almost half an hour for an interview they had scheduled at their own store was unprofessional, and that I was leaving.

They got upset and went into defensive mode, telling me: "She's on a call with the district manager, that's why it's taking a while." Honestly, that didn't feel like a real excuse to me. If you've scheduled an interview, you're supposed to have that time cleared, or at least come out and explain what's going on instead of leaving someone sitting there waiting like that.

In the end, I felt like it was good that I stood up for myself and spoke up instead of just sitting there quietly like I probably would have done before.

Thank you all for listening to my experience. I'm glad I held my ground and left, and I also found some useful information about interview red flags in this post, which I wanted to share so you can benefit.

I've gotten completely mixed reactions to this, so I'd like to know what people think.

At the start of this year, I finished my degree in computer science. Since then I've been doing contract work with a fairly decent company, but it's not somewhere I see myself staying long term. My contract ends in about another six weeks, so I started looking for a full-time role.

The annoying part is trying to fit all these interviews into my schedule. Almost every application I send gets a response, and recruiters keep filling up my LinkedIn inbox too. So I made a rule for myself: if they don't bring up pay within the first 20 minutes, I ask. If they can't give me a clear answer, like a real range or an actual number, I politely thank them and leave.

Most places have been normal about it and just answer. But some of them go into the same dance of saying things like "compensation depends on the right fit," or "salary shouldn't be your main focus," or the classic nonsense of "we're like a family here." Out of about 14 interviews, I've walked out of 5 because of this. And I don't feel too bad about it, because I'm already in late-stage talks with another company and waiting on an offer from them, so if a place can't even tell me what ballpark they're in, I don't see why I should keep wasting my time with them.

A few nights ago, I met with a small local tech company. A recruiter had contacted me because I was apparently a match for almost everything they wanted, and I had also built a parser for the language they use a lot, which is Go. From what the recruiter said, I was one of their strongest candidates.

After about 20 minutes, compensation still hadn't come up, so I asked. The interviewer told me it was "poor etiquette to talk about salary at this stage." I smiled and told him I disagreed, and that I wasn't interested in continuing if they couldn't even tell me whether they were competitive or not. He started talking about how they're an early-stage company and that I should care about the mission and all that stuff, so I did what I'd done before: I got up, thanked him for his time, and left.

After that, the recruiter started blowing up my phone with calls, asking what I had done and who I thought I was. Apparently the guy interviewing me was the owner, which I didn't know because he hadn't introduced himself that way. It seems he got angry at the recruiter because of my attitude. Then the recruiter made a vague post on LinkedIn that was clearly aimed at me, even though he didn't use my name.

So now I'm wondering: was I out of line here, or is refusing to sit through interviews without a basic salary range normal and within my rights?

Edit: Thank you all for reading and sharing your thoughts. I'm glad I didn't waste any more time on companies that hide basic pay, and I also found some useful information about salary negotiation strategies in this post, which I wanted to share so you can benefit.

I was talking to someone who works roughly in executive-level management. He said that getting and keeping a senior job is often about who you know, and whether the other people at that same level like having you around or not. He also said that people in these roles are usually not necessarily more competent than the people who report to them.

Is this true most of the time, or was he just being pessimistic?

Last Friday I lost my job because of a "reorg." They told me the usual line about how "this has nothing to do with your performance." And then, to make the pain even worse, they offered me 3 weeks of severance if I helped one of my now-former coworkers settle into my position.

I can't even describe how awful this feels. I don't have a large nest egg set aside, and I don't have enough savings to stop working. Retirement isn't an option for me.

My mother passed away 5 months ago this week, and the only thing I keep thinking about is that I want to talk to her and hear her tell me what to do.

This morning I immediately applied for unemployment, and then started updating my resume again. I did the practical things, but honestly, what I mostly want is to hide under a blanket and not deal with any of this.

How do I get through this? Who is going to hire me at 64? Has anyone been laid off when they were older and come out okay on the other side? What did you do first? Thank you.

I had a really good interview at the start of this week, and by the time we were wrapping up, I was almost sure they were going to make me an offer. So when they asked me about my current total compensation, I inflated the number and told them I was earning more than I am.

They came back with a 38% increase over the salary I had "adjusted," which in the end turned out to be about a 72% increase compared to my real package.

Was that the most honest thing to do? Definitely not.

Do I feel guilty? Honestly, no.

I'm not saying everyone should do this, but in my case it turned out better than I expected. I hope it works out for you too if you're in the same situation.

So at the start of this week, I arrived about 8 minutes before my shift started because the roads were weirdly empty. I didn't think it mattered. I went in, put my stuff down, checked a couple of emails, and waited for my actual start time.

After that, the manager pulled me into the office and gave me a warning for "unapproved overtime." Like... Excuse me? I wasn't trying to squeeze extra money out of anyone. I just wasn't in the mood to stand outside like some lost NPC until the clock hit the magical minute.

What's annoying is that they're always nagging us to come in early when someone calls out or when they need help covering the floor. But when you come in early, suddenly it's a policy problem. Tbh, I feel like they've been looking for any petty reasons to write people up lately.

So yeah, apparently I'll be waiting in my car until the very last second I'm allowed to be inside the building.

Has anyone else dealt with this absurd logic at work?

I have written the test. Interviewed twice. Submitted documents including payslip, CV, and degree certificates. Is it an implicit way of saying “you are the one?” Or just another documents collected?

I notice between my coworkers that one of the biggest differences in pay is coming by how independent they are working.

People capable of solving their own problems and also being capable of self teaching and sitting and researching their problem will get lots more responsibilities but also higher paychecks.

Even if quality of work is similar it's honored if they can do it themself instead of asking multiple times the supervisor.

On the flip side I see lots of low paid who don't seem to grasp this concept and instead wanna do something over perfect and to achieve that ask their boss for every minor detail. Most of the time the boss didn't even thought about having their a specific preference.

Partial it's kinda good if some people go submarine and emerge after multiple hours with a solution instead of yapping every questions which pops up in their head.

As the title says. I have EDS which can cause joint pain and one of the triggers is stress. I disclosed this and this is the response I got. Is this legal? From what they told me during the interview, the job is no more stressful than my previous jobs which I was able to conduct without issue.

“Following our recent discussion, I have spoken with the Operations Director regarding the information disclosed on your Medica Disclosure.
Having carefully considered the nature and requirements of the role, we have concluded that the position can be particularly demanding and stressful at times. Given the circumstances outlined in your disclosure, we feel that the level of stress and pressure associated with the role may not be conducive to your wellbeing and could potentially have a negative impact on you.
As a result, we do not feel that proceeding with your appointment would be appropriate at this time. This decision has been made after careful consideration of the requirements of the role and the information provided, and is not intended to reflect negatively on you as an individual.
We appreciate your openness and cooperation throughout the process and wish you all the very best for the tuture.”

I did a very similar job for years with no issues at all and I made this very clear.

I’d been actively applying for a month now for remote accounting roles and weren’t able to land any interviews.

I've been worried about this since this morning and I can't get it out of my head.

I applied for a job about 12 years ago and eventually got accepted. In the application, I wrote that I was in the process of finishing my community college program, and honestly, that was true at the time. But shortly after that, I failed out, didn't finish, and never went back.

Now, after all these years, I'm doing very well in a field close to tech. I'm not rich or anything, but I make enough money to live on, and I've built a good career here. Recently, they talked about moving me into a better role, but part of the process is that they update my employee profile on their site with the degree I supposedly "earned."

I'm worried that they think I completed it, and I feel sick when I think about it. I'm scared because in my area, finding good tech jobs isn't very easy, and I don't want to destroy my career because of something from years ago. I should be ready for any meetings or discussion, how to do that?

What's the smartest way for me to handle this?

update: I found this subreddit about how to handle difficult meeting and interviews, and it really has countless amazing tips. Do you think they will work out in my case?

I would like to start looking for a new role as the one I am currently is quite toxic : want approvals on everything I do, wants the work done their way even though my way gives the same outcome, and just bossy

I wanted to know if anyone had backdated their dates on resume to make it look like they have worked with the company longer and to kill off the short contractual jobs? For example, I started in April but I want to back date it to January so not have shown I have worked in the company longer.

I also want to do this because I have had many short term jobs I.e 3 months then got a 5 month job etc

Thanks

Hey everyone. Our CTO ran a small and interesting "experiment" recently, and honestly, it was very useful for the entire engineering org. I'm curious how people here would feel about something like this, and how it might go at the place where you work.

Every engineering manager responsible for at least one full team of devs got the same assignment:

"Ask your tech lead for a simple coding ticket, one that a relatively new engineer on the team could comfortably finish in a sprint. It should be something that makes you go through most of the normal workflow: run the app locally, debug, write tests, ship it, and make sure it works properly after the release."

The idea wasn't to see whether the managers could suddenly go back to being senior ICs again or not. It was more to make them better feel what the engineers are dealing with, especially when those same managers spend half their week in meetings and then wonder why a "small" ticket is blocked.

I gave my manager a very simple change: remove a field from a JSON response returned by a specific internal API endpoint. He finished it in about half a day, which wasn't surprising. I enjoyed nitpicking his PR a little, but of course I wasn't expecting perfect code or anything. The funny part was more seeing him get the same comments we usually get.

But in other teams, it turned into a much bigger mess than anyone expected. It became clear that some managers are genuinely disconnected from the day-to-day work their teams do. Not just forgetting syntax or being unfamiliar with the repo, but confused about basic things like how local debugging works, what a breakpoint is, where the logs go, how tests are usually run, and so on.

So now the CTO is clearly reviewing how we interview engineering managers and looking at the bigger picture, which is honestly kind of funny, but probably should have happened a long time ago.

What do you think about this? Could something like this be useful at your company, or would it just create chaos?

I had always heard to leave short stints off resumes when job hunting but with technology and the increased thoroughness of background checks, is that a viable path anymore?

I'm not actively looking for work right now, but I was looking about 8 months ago, so my resume is still on several hiring sites. I still get job alerts in my field because I like to know what's out there in the market.

Right now I'm a gig worker. I move from job to job, but I'm in a union. On average, I make between 95-130k a year. And through the union, as long as I'm working regularly, I have fully covered health insurance, a retirement account, and a pension. Honestly, I'm very happy with what I do. The only downside is that moving from gig to gig can make things feel not very guaranteed, so every now and then I look at something more corporate and stable in my field.

A recruiter sent me a message through a job site I'm on. It was an office role from 8-4 and suitable for my experience. She sent an email saying she was excited to speak with me and wanted to schedule an interview. After a few emails, the job seemed reasonable enough for me to at least hear them out. I also did the usual checking to make sure it wasn't a fake posting or some weird scam.

Before we got to scheduling anything, I asked her what the pay range was. She came back with one of the things that annoys me most: "What compensation are you looking for in a position like this?" A shitty tactic either to lowball someone who doesn't know better, or to pressure someone who knows their worth into saying a lower number.

Since I don't need this job and truly don't care, I told her honestly: "Right now I make around 110k/yr with a retirement plan and pension. My health insurance is also covered with no premium coming out of my pocket. So the offer would need to beat that in some way for me to be interested in interviewing."

What I got after that was a ridiculous and rude email. I'm not going to post it word for word, but the general idea was:

"That is far outside the budget for this position and frankly not a reasonable expectation. We will not be moving forward with you as an applicant after these demands. Going forward, I suggest making yourself more attractive to employers by adjusting your expectations to better match your qualifications. You won't be successful with this attitude."

Girl, I literally just told you how much I make right now. If that's not in your budget, fine, no problem at all. But don't come lecture me about my value because your job posting can't compete. FFS

I'll answer a few things I keep seeing repeated so I don't have to keep writing the same reply over and over.

"How do you have benefits that good as a gig worker?" - UNION. I said that in the post lol. I can explain the boring details of how it works if people want, but yeah, unions are great. Stop believing every scary thing companies say about them...

"Do you make 95k/yr or are you just guessing from one job?" I'm basing that range on what I reported on my taxes over the last 4 tax years. The lowest year was 93K, and the highest year was 128K.

"Do you seriously think a corporate job would match what you make doing gig work?" Honestly, idk. That wasn't really the point.

"Report the recruiter" I filed a complaint through the hiring site.

Happy to answer anything if people are curious. Thanks, everyone.

I’m annoyed because I don’t have a job. On July 28, 2026 I had to resign from my job due to a mistake I made that could’ve gotten me fired. I’ve been job searching for the past two weeks and gotten nothing. Yesterday I was on my way to my hotel that was outta town for a job interview and while I was driving a get phone call and they told me that they won’t be able to move forward with the application process because I had a temporary license from another agency that I had resign from and they’re not able to transfer it over which doesn’t make any sense honestly. I was honestly annoyed and I asked about what can I do and they said that I go to a school to get my license or I have to wait 2 years to apply again which I thought it was unfair because I never got to go to school to get my permanent license. But oh well I have other appointments lined up next week too. I had one job interview already but I didn’t really liked it to be honest. I been really wanting or needing a good paying job because I have a truck that I need to pay for and I have someone living at my old apartment that pays me rent of course but I still pay rent to the apartment because I can’t afford to break my lease there which made me end up staying with my mom. I currently do door dash to get some money but it’s not enough to get by and be able to move out again. But yeah I hope this makes sense.

Yeah. Pretty much exactly what the title says.

I'm having a really severe flare-up of hives and eczema, and my doctor suspects it might also be psoriasis. It's gotten to the point where any fabric touching my skin hurts. So for work calls, I've been joining Zoom audio-only while lying naked on the cold bathroom tiles. I know that sounds extremely ridiculous, but honestly it's the only way I can get comfortable enough to work and do my job.

This morning I was in a somewhat important meeting, with about 110 people on it. After maybe 35 minutes, I somehow hit the camera button on my phone and showed way more boob than anyone at work ever needed to see, for about 7 seconds before I managed to turn it off. Nobody said a word.

My manager knows what's going on with my skin, thankfully, and messaged me right afterward saying I could leave the call, that they would delete the recording, and that I shouldn't stress or panic over it.

But guys, I feel like I'm going to physically get sick from embarrassment lol. I've had 3 panic spirals so far, and I'm so ashamed and genuinely don't even know how I'll be able to show my face at work again.

I know some people will probably find this funny, and maybe one day I'll laugh about it too, but I'm pregnant, hormonal, in pain, and barely holding it together as it is because of the whole skin situation. It feels absolutely awful right now. Please tell me people forget workplace disasters like this? Any kind words would seriously help me.:(

Title: 15+ Years’ Experience and I Still Can’t Find a Job — Losing Hope

I’m honestly at my wits’ end with my job search and could really use some advice.

I had to resign from my previous job in May 2025 due to urgent overseas travel. I didn’t have enough leave and my employer wouldn’t allow unpaid leave. It was a really hard decision because it was genuinely the best company I’d ever worked for.

Since returning, I’ve been applying for jobs and studying a Cert III in Investigative Services to broaden my options. I have 15+ years’ experience in insurance claims management, a degree and an MBA, and I know my skills are transferable.

I’ve had interviews and calls and even secured a job in January, only for the position to be changed afterwards. I’ve also had several applications where I was told the role had changed or was no longer available.

Most applications are just rejection after rejection, and honestly, I’m losing motivation.

I’m open to investigations, fraud, compliance, auditing, government, disputes, risk — anything where my experience could transfer.

Has anyone else been in this position? What did you do to finally get your foot back in the door? I’d really appreciate any advice because I genuinely don’t know what else to change.