Six: The number of hours spent on one round #3 take-home test.
Three: The number of round #1 (recruiter) interviews in the past week.
Two: The number of rejections in the past week. One of them was from a company I was comparatively interested in.
Two: The number of take-home coding tests in the past week. One I did well on (I think I aced it…) but they chose to pass on me. The other one I didn’t do well on because I got hung up on the right calls to make for JSON serialization in Django.
Two: The number of round #2 and round #3 interviews in the past week.
One: The number of round #4 interviews in the past week.
I did a six-hour coding test. I think I did well. My code worked and was well structured, and I am reasonably certain that the Python and SQL code were as efficient as possible; if not, they certainly weren’t terrible. So imagine my surprise when I receive a perfunctory, “we’ve made the decision to not move forward at this time,” email two days later. After a candidate makes a substantial investment in interviewing there should be more substantial feedback than, “kiss off.” Tell me how my implementation or coding style didn’t pass muster!
I guess it’s possible another candidate did slightly better than me in some way that just tipped the scales. Maybe they were smarter about a dict initialization… But what are the chances? Yeah I’m not objective. 🙂
I didn’t submit many applications last week as there were other activities afoot. I did chat with two new recruiters/headhunters. I’ll get back to application submission in earnest this week.
Seek Nuance 
You’re *too* good for them my friend. For instance, you’re a human being. It’s a tough time for humans. Hoping you’ll meet one soon in this process. You’ll recognize them by the brain between their ears and the heart behind their ribs.