The Long Middle of Leaving

The hardest part of job switching isn’t preparation. It’s the in-between, where nothing has worked yet, but you’ve already stepped out of your current rhythm, expecting that it will.

The last time I switched, the opportunity came to me. There was a buffer, a sense that even if I didn’t get everything right, it would still work out. This time, I’ve had to build that process myself, and that has changed how it feels to be in it.

I didn’t know this when I started prepping in December. Back then, I was more worried about preparation than the interviews themselves. The formula felt straightforward: go through system design principles rigorously, get comfortable enough with LeetCode that patterns become second nature, and the rest should follow. I hadn’t really done this kind of structured prep before, so I treated it seriously. I skipped traveling during my winter break—something I almost never do—and stayed back to focus, convinced that a disciplined start would make the rest easier.

By mid-January, I still didn’t feel ready, but I applied anyway. I know my pattern: performance anxiety peaks during interviews, and the only way to get through that is exposure. Practice helps, but real interviews force you to confront it in a way preparation alone doesn’t. What I hadn’t accounted for was how little preparation alone guarantees.

The job market is strange right now. Between AI reshaping roles and the inefficiency of platforms that are meant to simplify hiring, there’s a certain irony to the process. I still managed to get a few interviews, but didn’t make it through all rounds. In hindsight, that’s expected—very few people do on their first few attempts—but it doesn’t feel that way when you’re in it.

February was where it all started to feel heavy. I was home, attending five weddings, while trying to keep up with prep, interviews, and the emotional residue of both. There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from constantly switching contexts - learning, performing, evaluating yourself, and then doing it all over again. By the end of it, I was drained.

Around the same time, I had already started pulling back from work, operating on the assumption that this phase would be short-lived, that things would work out soon. That assumption didn’t hold.

March made that visible during the feedback cycle, where I rated lower than I ever have. It wasn’t unexpected if I’m being honest, but it still forced me to confront the trade-offs I had been making.

Now it’s April, and the challenge feels different. It’s less about whether I’m preparing enough and more about whether I can sit with this prolonged uncertainty without letting it spill into everything else. I find it difficult to create a stable boundary between work and interview prep; shifting focus to one makes the other feel neglected, and the imbalance amplifies anxiety. Knowing that this is a choice I made doesn’t make it easier, because ambition doesn’t cancel out human nature. For a while, I thought the goal was to handle that pressure better, but that assumes it’s something you can get rid of.

What helped instead was shifting the question from “Why hasn’t this worked yet?” to “What’s the next smallest thing I can do?” Breaking the process into smaller, manageable steps doesn’t remove uncertainty, but it makes it easier to move through it. It also changes how I see the entire experience. At some point, I realized how familiar the problem at hand was. This was exactly like a product problem!

There’s discovery in figuring out which roles fit, execution in prepping and interviewing, and iteration in learning from what doesn’t work. Just like any product cycle, planning matters, but so does leaving room for unknowns. You prioritize, and in doing so, accept that some things will slip. Sometimes timelines stretch, and outcomes don’t align with expectations because there were variables you could never fully account for.

I don’t think I’m at a point where it all feels resolved, but I’ve started to understand that being better at this doesn’t mean eliminating anxiety or uncertainty. It means continuing despite them, without letting them dictate every decision.

Growth, like everything else in this process, is iterative.