Job seeker spends weeks on interviews and unpaid assignment before realizing the tech job they applied for never actually existed

Are companies hiring employees or just collecting emotional damage at this point?

A growing number of frustrated applicants in the Reddit community r/jobsearchhacks have started sharing stories about so-called "ghost jobs," where companies appear to run extensive interview processes for positions that may never have truly existed. One post from Reddit user @Millennium_Pi especially caught people's attention after describing a four-round interview process that included a brutal, unpaid assignment, only for the company to suddenly claim the role had been frozen after weeks of interviews and encouragement.

Part of what made @Millennium_Pi's experience resonate so strongly with readers in r/jobsearchhacks was the amount of unpaid effort involved. Modern job seekers are increasingly expected to complete take-home projects, presentations, personality tests, and multiple interview rounds before even knowing whether a company is seriously hiring. After months of job searching, discovering that a role may have simply been reposted over and over again can feel less like rejection and more like being professionally scammed.

The growing discussion around ghost jobs has also highlighted how disconnected online hiring has become from real human experiences. Some companies allegedly keep positions active to collect resumes, appear successful to investors, or prepare for future openings that may never happen. Meanwhile, applicants are left spending entire weeks emotionally invested in opportunities that disappear the moment interviews end, creating even more distrust toward already exhausting hiring systems.

At this point, many online job hunters have become deeply suspicious of companies that repeatedly repost identical listings every few weeks without ever seeming to hire anyone. Stories like the one shared continue fueling broader conversations about transparency, unpaid interview labor, and whether modern hiring practices are quietly becoming one giant test of emotional endurance instead of an actual search for employees.