I ended up stepping away pretty early because the working-time expectations and timezone mismatch didn’t line up with what I was looking for. The role was Netherlands/EU based, and the schedule they described was oriented around working with an EU team in the evening—roughly 6–10pm—several days a week.
Since I was in AEST, that meant the hours would be awkward and unsustainable for me, and the overall culture felt like it would be hard to mesh with. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the idea of the work; it was more that the day-to-day setup didn’t fit my situation. I never received an offer, and honestly it felt like a basic alignment issue rather than a skills or process issue.
> 1 year
Easy Negative Sydney
I applied for an e-commerce infrastructure software developer role and the process dragged on for weeks without much momentum. Eventually, I was asked to complete an assignment that split work between the backend and frontend: a backend part in Laravel and a frontend part in Vue, involving matrix multiplication.
The assignment also didn’t spell out the scope clearly, so I ended up making calls myself about what “good enough” would mean. I worked long hours to finish, and the whole experience felt heavier than it needed to be. The tricky part was that I was basically only in touch with the recruiter; I didn’t have anyone inside the company to ask for clarification when requirements were ambiguous.
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