I've been curious why frontend tools/projects are so often monetized and commercial but backend tools rarely are. Why is that? Since frontend is more art than science?
I was thinking about getting one of these to replace my 6+ year old XPS 13. Did you compare this to the new XPS 13 Plus? It looks like for Linux laptops, these are pretty much the only two good options. How's the battery life?
I just really don't understand how the industry adopted these ridiculous practices. I'm lucky that I get a ton of recruiters reaching out once I toggled my LinkedIn to say I'm open, but I don't understand what they expect other than me to say "I guess I'll message you in 3 months after I take on an unpaid second job of learning how to write algorithms I never once used in the last 15+ years of my engineering career to solve problems that are meant to just trick me". You would think they'd want to make it so that engineers did have the option of evaluating other companies at any time, rather than having to prepare endlessly. If I decide I want a new job now (which I did a few weeks ago), I can't do anything about it for a while (unless I'm one of those who practices LC all week rather than learning much more useful things).
No point in ranting further about this.. everyone is well aware.
There's of course some companies that don't subject you to this nonsense, but the list is really limited, and just finding out who they are has taken me many weeks and many phone calls. But a month of that plus trying to "learn" everything required for all of these interviews has made me burnt out and bitter (just like you said). I don't want to jump through these ridiculous hoops and play this stupid game... but what's the alternative?
Then that time comes to change jobs but even after 10+ years of experience, you now need to grind Leetcode out for months just so you have a chance of getting through pointless tech screens... how do you avoid burnout from that alone, and how do you even get through the process if you're burnt out to begin with?