I (28, female) work in a very, very large software development company. I've been in my current team for over 2 years and feel like I want to change. My current manager (since August) knows I want to change. He told me wants me to stay here but also that he supports my decision and he offered to help in any way he can.
I looked at the internal job board, talked to various managers & teams, and the following was the outcome:
- Team #1: did an internal informal interview loop, got accepted, but manager told me his financial request for the position was denied so he told me I had to wait. This was in July. I haven't heard back.
- Team #2: did an internal interview loop. I got rejected. The manager told me he saw problems with my problem-solving skills and because he noticed my pull requests had quite a few back and forths.
- Team #3: had an initial talk with the manager. I sent him some artifacts of my work, he gave me some feedback (both positive and negative) but he told me he was going to schedule interviews. He promised this 2 weeks ago, I haven't heard back.
- Team #4: I did an interview with a principal engineer, I felt it went well. But manager let me know that after talking with the engineer, they decided to pause the hiring. I asked him for how long they were going to pause and he never replied. (I'm very confused that he didn't say whether I did good or bad, just that he was pausing.)
I'm at a loss here. Imposter syndrome is kicking in and I'm worried that managers #1 and #4 lied to me, and that managers #3 is hoping I will forget about the interviews because in reality he didn't want to hire me.
I had no idea internal transfers were this complicated and I don't know who to talk to about this, I feel embarrassed that I can't find a team that will accept me. What do I do?