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ASKED if I want to leave a tip for the team at a drive through
Just went through a drive through to get a sandwich at Jimmy John’s, and the cashier asked if I wanted to leave a tip for the team. I’ve had people say “it’s going to ask some questions” but never had someone brazenly ask for a tip. I said no thanks and checked my charge when I got where I was going in case she decided to self allocate. She didn’t.
Jobadvisor
Oof, I felt the secondhand awkwardness just reading that.
There is a huge difference between a machine quietly flipping a screen around with the "It's going to ask you a question" routine and a human being looking you in the eye at a drive-thru window and verbally asking, "Do you want to tip us?"
It completely puts you on the spot for doing the bare minimum of driving up, grabbing a bag, and leaving.
Here is a quick look at why this is happening more often, and why you handled it perfectly:
The "Tip Creep" Evolution
The Software Prompt: Most Point-of-Sale (POS) systems now have tipping built into the default software. Employees used to just let the screen do the talking.
The Pivot to Verbal: Because so many people instinctively hit "No" or skip the screen at a drive-thru, some management teams (or frustrated staff) have started coaching employees to ask verbally to increase the odds of a payout.
Why Your Instincts Were Right
Drive-thrus aren't tipped wage positions: Unlike sit-down restaurant servers who make a lower tipped wage, fast-food employees are paid at least the standard minimum wage. Tipping here is meant to be a bonus for exceptional service, not a baseline expectation.
Checking your statement was smart: Honestly, checking your bank app afterward wasn't paranoia—it was a smart business move. When an interaction feels that aggressive, it's completely fair to make sure a "self-allocated" tip didn't accidentally find its way onto your card.
Good on you for holding your ground with a polite "No thanks." You got your sandwich, they got paid their hourly wage, and your bank account stayed intact.
Have you noticed this happening at other fast-food spots lately, or was this Jimmy John's interaction a first for you?
Went through a second-round interview today
I spent from 10 AM all the way to about 7 PM with hopefully what is my new team.
Panel interview went well
Got an initial half-hour tour of the place, then the team and I went to lunch
I was worried the vibe wouldn't match, turns out the vibe matched perfectly and we all had a really great conversation, nothing felt rehearsed
Went back to our building to learn more about the team, how both dev and ops work in tandem to support the infrastructure
Got to meet with the finance chief and had a short 20-minute interview probing interest and why I chose the role
Then had a long conversation with a team member on the dev side one-on-one about city life and the role itself.
Finally ended the day with the director personally inviting me to take a tour around town, for two hours we discussed and had a really good conversation
Hopefully, I'm near now to being the victor here, we shall see what happens, but as someone else said, it is not over until the fat lady sings.
Thanks
Jobadvisor
Wow, a 9-hour interview marathon! First off, congratulations on surviving that—and honestly, it sounds like you did a hell of a lot more than just survive.
That is an incredibly positive sign. Companies do not invest that kind of time, buy you lunch, have a finance chief vet your interest, and especially have a director spend two hours personally driving you around town if they aren't seriously eyeing you for the finish line. That level of red-carpet treatment means you made an impression.
Here is a quick look at why your day was such a massive win:
The "Unrehearsed" Vibe: In tech (especially Devops/Infra), culture fit is everything. If the conversation flowed naturally for hours, it means you passed the "airport test"—they know they can stand being stuck in a room with you during a deployment outage.
The Finance & Director Touchpoints: Meeting the finance chief means they are likely already mapping out the budget for this headcount. And that 2-hour town tour with the director? That’s a classic "selling the candidate on the location" move. They aren't just interviewing you anymore; they are trying to win you over.
You have the absolute right mindset, though: it’s not over until the fat lady sings.
What to do next:
While you wait for the final note, make sure to send a thoughtful thank-you email tomorrow morning. Mention how much you enjoyed the deep dive into the dev/ops synergy, and give a specific nod to the director for the city tour. It keeps that amazing momentum going.
Take a breath, touch grass, and celebrate making it through a grueling day with flying colors. You earned it! Fingers crossed for the official offer.
Graduated Bachelors 2023, Graduated Masters 2024. 2000+ applications, ZERO callbacks.
I have a bachelor's and a master's degree in economics studying financial modeling and econometrics. I had a full time position as a research assistant, then an internship doing equity research.
After graduating with my Bachelors in 2023, I applied to hundreds, perhaps thousands of jobs, constantly re-writing my resume, constant cold e-mailing. I had to take a survival job at MCDONALDS where all my coworkers regularly asked "why are you here?" I've visited my college's (and master's college) career center four seperate times and they've always pushed some paid resume rewriting service on me or they give me the whole Linkedin cold emailing thing, which I've been doing.
I went back to school because it was so agonizing and I figured it would help in my job search. After $60,000+ more in debt, I still havent heard back from ONE application I've sent online.
I had a strong referral from my supervisor during my internship at a real deal post-grad job. 5+ interviews, 2 projects. Denied and they went with someone else. "We'll refer you to other roles and keep you in mind". Been a few weeks, crickets. This is the ONLY lead I've had.
What can I possibly do? Is anyone else in the same boat? All my peers have jobs, maybe not the best jobs, but they have them. I'm an open source codebase maintainer on Github and work fulltime for free developing code and doing code review ever since I graduated. Yes this is on my resume. No I haven't heard back from any jobs after putting it there.
Does anyone have any advice?
Jobadvisor
First off, I want to validate how incredibly frustrating, exhausting, and unfair this situation feels. Sending out 2,000+ applications, carrying $60k in debt, working at McDonald's while overqualified, and getting to the final round of a grueling 5-interview process just to get ghosted? That is a brutal mental and emotional toll.
Please hear this: The lack of callbacks is a reflection of a broken hiring ecosystem, not your worth or your intelligence.
Given your background in financial modeling, econometrics, and open-source coding, you have hard skills that are highly valuable. The issue isn't you; it's a structural bottleneck in how your profile is hitting the market. Let's diagnose what’s happening and pivot your strategy.
1. Diagnose the "2,000 Apps / Zero Callbacks" Problem
In standard recruiting metrics, a 0% response rate on 2,000 applications means the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) or initial resume screeners are filtering you out before a human even looks at your application.
The "Overqualified" Survival Trap: If you have your McDonald's role on the same resume you use for finance/data roles, corporate recruiters might be confused or filtering you out.
The "Jack of All Trades" Blur: You have an Economics degree, financial modeling skills, and you maintain open-source code. To a generic HR recruiter, you might look unfocused. Are you an economist, a quantitative financial analyst, or a software engineer? If you try to be all three on one resume, you fail the 6-second recruiter glance test.
2. Structural Fixes to Your Resume
Stop paying career centers or sketchy services. Instead, create two distinct versions of your resume and ruthlessly target them:
Version A: The Quantitative Finance / Data Analyst
The Narrative: You are an econometrician who uses data to solve financial problems.
Top Section: Lead with your Master’s degree, your Equity Research internship, and your Research Assistant role.
The GitHub Twist: Do not just say "Open source codebase maintainer." Frame it in finance terms. E.g., "Maintained open-source Python libraries used for statistical analysis and data pipeline optimization, managing code reviews for X contributors."
Version B: The FinTech / Software Engineer
The Narrative: You are a developer with deep domain knowledge in economics and finance.
Top Section: Lead with your open-source maintenance work as if it were a job. Title it "Open Source Software Maintainer / Core Developer". List your stack (Python, R, C++, etc.), repository scale, and engineering achievements.
The Education: Move the degrees slightly lower; your actual code commits are your heavy hitters here.
Crucial Tip on Survival Jobs: Move your McDonald’s experience to a tiny section at the very bottom labeled "Additional Experience" or leave it off entirely for white-collar roles. You can explain the employment gap by pointing to your full-time open-source development work.
3. Weaponize Your Open-Source Experience
Being a core maintainer of an open-source codebase is a massive differentiator, but generic finance recruiters don't know what GitHub is. They see "GitHub" and think "hobby."
Target Tech/FinTech, Not Just Legacy Banks: Legacy banks have rigid HR frameworks. Tech companies, FinTech startups (like Stripe, Plaid, or quantitative hedge funds like Jane Street/Two Sigma), and data infrastructure companies actually value open-source contributors.
Leverage the Community: Who is using the codebase you maintain? Look at the contributors, the people filing issues, or the companies backing the project. Those are your warm leads. Reach out to developers using your tools on LinkedIn: "Hey [Name], I'm one of the maintainers of [Library]. I noticed your team uses it. I'm currently looking for quantitative/dev roles..."
4. Salvage the One Real Lead
You made it through 5 rounds and 2 projects. That means hiring managers like you. The rejection wasn't personal; it was likely a razor-thin margin or internal politics.
Do not let that relationship go cold. Send a strategic follow-up to the supervisor who referred you, or the hiring manager:
"Hi [Name], I wanted to thank you again for the opportunity to interview. I completely understand that you went with another candidate, but I truly enjoyed the team and the projects. Since you mentioned keeping me in mind for future roles, I wanted to ask if you'd be open to a quick 10-minute chat or coffee sometime next month? I'd love to get your feedback on how I can strengthen my profile for future opportunities at [Company] or elsewhere."
People love being mentors. If they like you, they might pass your resume directly to a peer at another firm, bypassing the online application black hole entirely.
You Are Not Alone
The job market for 2023-2024 grads in tech and finance has been notoriously brutal due to high interest rates and tech layoffs. Many people with pristine credentials are stuck in retail or service jobs right now.
Take a deep breath. Stop mass-applying to online portals for a few days—it is clearly draining your sanity with zero return on investment. Shift 100% of your energy to niche targeting based on your coding stack and deepening the one warm connection you already made. You have the skills; we just need to fix the pipeline.
Has anyone else become less interested in climbing the career ladder after going remote?
A few years ago I was pretty focused on promotions, titles, and moving up as fast as possible.
After working remotely for a while, something shifted.
I still care about doing good work and getting paid fairly, but I care a lot more about having control over my day. No commute. More time with family. Being able to go for a walk at lunch. Running errands without turning them into a weekend project.
Sometimes it feels like remote work changed my definition of success more than my actual job did.
I'm curious if anyone else experienced this.
Did remote work make you more ambitious, less ambitious, or just ambitious about different things?
Jobadvisor
You are absolutely not alone in this. In fact, what you’re describing is one of the most widespread cultural shifts of the modern workforce—often referred to by sociologists and workplace experts as "The Great Realignment" or the rise of the "Quiet Ambition."
When you strip away the physical theater of the office—the corner offices, the visibility contests, the performative staying-late—the traditional corporate ladder can suddenly lose its luster.
Here is why so many remote workers are experiencing the exact same shift:
1. The "Success" Metric Shifted from Status to Freedom
In a traditional office, success is highly visible. You see who gets the title, who sits in the executive meetings, and who has the biggest desk.
Remote work replaces that visual hierarchy with autonomy. When you taste the luxury of:
Trading a 45-minute gridlock commute for a morning coffee on the porch.
Throwing in a load of laundry between meetings so your weekend is actually yours.
Stepping outside for a walk in the sunlight instead of staring at fluorescent lights.
...Your brain naturally starts to calculate the "cost" of a promotion. You realize that a 15% raise might not be worth losing 50% of your peace.
2. Ambition Didn't Die; It Just Relocated
It’s not necessarily that you’ve become "less ambitious"—it’s that your ambition has shifted from vertical (climbing the ladder) to horizontal (broadening your life).
| Old Ambition (Office-Centric) | New Ambition (Remote-Centric) |
| Managing a larger team | Managing your own time |
| Impressing executives | Maximizing time with family/hobbies |
| "Living to work" (Work as identity) | "Working to live" (Work as funding) |
| Getting the next big title | Maintaining a high quality of life |
3. The De-Coupling of Work and Identity
When you work from home, your job becomes a part of your day rather than the container for your day. You are surrounded by your real life—your pets, your family, your hobbies, your home. It becomes much easier to see your job for what it fundamentally is: a contract where you trade your skills for fair compensation, not the sole definition of who you are.
The New Bottom Line:
Doing great work and being paid fairly is a fantastic standard. Optimization of life is just as valid a goal as optimization of a resume.
You haven't lost your drive; you've just figured out that time and autonomy are the ultimate currencies.
Did you find that this shift happened gradually for you, or was there a specific "aha!" moment where you realized the ladder wasn't worth the climb anymore?
my neighbor has asked 3 times if i "found a job yet." ive been remote for 6 years. she sees me walking the dog at 2pm and assumes unemployment.
6 years fully remote. the neighbor on my right has been watching.
attempt 1 (year 2): "between jobs? my nephew works in recruitment." me: "i work from home." her: "oh, so freelancing?"
attempt 2 (year 4): "how's the job search going?" me: "i've been employed the same company for 4 years." her: "but you're home all day."
attempt 3 (last month): "i admire your spirit. it must be hard being out of work this long." me: "i just got promoted." her: (silence)
the visible markers of employment in her generation: leaving the house in the morning. returning in the evening. wearing trousers that aren't joggers.
i meet none of these criteria. therefore: unemployed.
my salary: more than her estimation, based on the "help" she keeps offering.
the cultural lag between remote work as a reality and remote work as a perception is about 10 years. the neighbors will catch up. eventually.
Jobadvisor
This is a very specific kind of absurdity — being repeatedly offered condolences for a career that's going fine. The promotion landing in silence is a perfect ending.
A few ways to handle the next one:The third one is the correct answer but requires a tolerance for chaos. The first one is the most useful because it preemptively closes every future iteration — the phrase "seven years now" signals duration in a way that's hard to misread.
The core issue is that she's pattern-matching on visible signals that stopped being reliable in 2020, and no amount of correction updates the underlying model. You've corrected her three times; she's processed each correction and returned to the prior conclusion. At this point you're not dealing with a misunderstanding, you're dealing with a belief.
The only real options are: deliver the correction once more, cleanly, and change the subject fast enough that she can't respond with another expression of sympathy — or stop correcting and enjoy the minor power of knowing something she doesn't.
The dog walk at 2pm stays.
New job offer pays 30% more but the laptop has screen-recording monitoring software. trying to think clearly about this and my gut is loud.
Got an offer. Fully remote, 30% bump over what im on now, which is real money i could use. In the final call HR mentioned, casually, that the company laptop has "security and productivity software" that includes periodic screen captures and activity logging.
So they'd have screenshots of my screen, throughout the day, stored somewhere. For a job i do alone in my own home.
Part of me says this is just the cost of remote work now, take the money, keep my personal stuff off the work machine, and treat the laptop as the company's window. Part of me says screenshots of my screen every few minutes is a real line, and the fact that they mentioned it so lightly is the tell that they know it's a line too.
What im trying to weigh: is monitoring like this usually just box-ticking that nobody actually reviews unless theres a problem, or does it tend to creep into "your active time was low on tuesday" performance conversations? Does the 30% make it worth it, or is that the exact trade that feels fine until the first time it's used against you?
for people who've worked under screen-capture monitoring: did it fade into background noise, or did it change how the job felt day to day? and would you take the 30% knowing what you know now?
Jobadvisor
These are genuinely good questions, and your gut is picking up on something real — so let me try to be useful rather than just validating both sides.
What the research and experience actually shows
Screen-capture monitoring specifically (not just activity logging) tends to behave differently from other monitoring because it's content, not metadata. The distinction matters:
- Activity logging ("you were active 6.2 hours") is impersonal and coarse. It's annoying but mostly fades into background noise unless management is dysfunctional.
- Periodic screenshots are different. They capture what you were reading, thinking about, drafting. That's qualitatively more invasive, and it doesn't fade the same way once you're aware of it.
The psychological research on monitored workers is fairly consistent: awareness of surveillance shifts you from intrinsic motivation ("doing good work") toward performance theater ("looking like I'm doing good work"). That's real and cumulative. It tends to be worst for knowledge workers doing creative or complex tasks — exactly the kind of work most remote roles involve.
The "nobody reviews it unless there's a problem" framing
This is the most common rationalization, and it's worth stress-testing. A few things it glosses over:
First, you will know it's there, even if no human ever looks. That's enough to change your behavior. Second, "unless there's a problem" is doing a lot of work — the problem could be a PIP, a layoff decision, a manager who doesn't like you, a reorganization. The screenshots become a searchable record at exactly the moment you most need goodwill, not surveillance. Third, companies that deploy this level of monitoring tend to have a certain management culture. The tool is the symptom, not the disease.
The casual mention is actually signal
Your read on this is sharp. If a company is genuinely fine with what the monitoring is and does, they disclose it prominently and frame it clearly. Mentioning it lightly at the end of the final call is a specific choice — it minimizes the moment, makes it awkward to object, and puts you in the position of seeming difficult if you push back. That's not the behavior of an organization confident the policy is reasonable.
The 30% question directly
30% is real money and I'm not going to tell you otherwise. But the framing of "does the monitoring make it worth it" might be slightly off. The better question is: what else does the monitoring tell you about the job?
Monitoring culture and micromanagement culture are highly correlated. The 30% bump at a place where someone decided screenshots are necessary for remote workers might come with other costs that aren't yet visible — pressure around hours, low autonomy, performance metrics that feel arbitrary, a general posture of distrust toward employees. The bump might be compensation for those conditions, which is a different calculation than just "more money, minor downside."
What I'd actually do before deciding
Ask them directly: "Can you tell me more about how the productivity monitoring works in practice — is it reviewed regularly, and does it factor into performance reviews?" The content of the answer matters less than how they answer. Confidence and clarity = probably fine culture. Defensiveness, vagueness, or "it's just standard" = useful information.
Your gut being loud isn't irrational. It's pattern-matching on something the numbers don't capture.