Please don't feel so bad. I'm an old timer ... in the old days (prior to 2004), we'd get programming jobs after a 30 minute conversation. Despite official infla

Please don't feel so bad. I'm an old timer ... in the old days (prior to 2004), we'd get programming jobs after a 30 minute conversation. Despite official inflation numbers, salaries 10-15 years ago are the same as the glorious 100K+ job of today. What started as something Microsoft would only do (full-day interviews and puzzles ... the latter they stopped because it was pointless), was adopted by Google (because they want to raise the collective IQ ... snicker), and now done by most tech companies. This is a trend, and like other stupid trends of today (e.g. scrum/agile, microservices, devops), these will go away. I have two suggestions: 1) Don't equate your sense of self-worth to your tech employment. This requires making friends outside of tech, and pursuing hobbies. If you need medical help, get it sooner rather than later (anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc. are a lot more common than you would think). 2) There are thousands of tech companies out there. It is BS to say smaller companies are worse than the big 4 tech companies. You seem to be someone who cares about making a meaningful contribution. I respect that and share that with you. I strive to earn my pay every day. In truth, I fail many days, and some days I feel I earned my pay 100 times over. So it evens out. One final note ... some interviewers are assholes. They make you feel like shit. A youngin will take it, but older folks know how to spot it. My last Google interview, I had 4 interviewers who were professionals and one complete ass-hat. I considered making the HR person know about said ass-hat but decided against it. If I encounter such an ass-hat in the future, I think I will tell HR so the person's damage may be contained. For my part, I'm not interviewing at Google any more (this was my n'th interview with them and frankly, I'm tired of it even though it seems they are not). Anyways ... be happy my friend ... life is a precious gift; tech moves constantly - it is brutal but it is fun.. check out the stories of people like John Bardeen, Robert Noyce, the Whatsapp founder, John Carmack, etc. Even the great achievers have had to go through tons of crap.