Had one interview with two senior "development" managers. Yes, quotes are intentional, and I am definitely using "senior" and "development" very generously here. I was passed over with feedback along the lines of being technically strong but supposedly lacking “enthusiasm” for a 4-month contract. Let that sink in. The irony? One of the managers looked like they were either having a full-on existential crisis or had just been chewed out before the call. From the second the interview started, that manager looked genuinely sad to be alive. But sure I was the unenthusiastic one. Let me explain how this works at BMO. Every year or so, they bring in short-term contract devs to do glamorous work like fixing accessibility issues, building simple pages from design, and migrating ultra-basic pages (with really zero business logic) into a headless CMS. This has been going on for over 5 years. And yet somehow, they're still asking the "what is an aria label?" question like it's some high-bar test of accessibility expertise. Now, if you take a minute to check the LinkedIn profiles of the managers, a few things jump out: Timelines and all buzzwords. That's all I'll say. Complete waste of time.