Thanks @many-minister-78351. My friend now has worked on a plethora of side projects until now, some of them are her own, but most of them were interview assignments from Indian companies. Every company here wants to give their own side projects and coding assignments, without even looking at the candidate's GitHub profile which has several side projects already. And when you ask them if you could submit an already done assignment that you have on GitHub, they deny that, and say that you need to work on this one because it's part of their "process". They want to feel that they are very "clever" and think that somehow their evaluation criteria is unique.
And then what? All to no avail. The reasons for rejections have often been so bizaare, it's like you could be rejected for even breathing in the wrong direction. Speaking from personal experience!
And say despite all this nonsense the candidate still manages to impress the company and awaiting an offer, then what? In my own experience a lot of companies talk big during interviews When push comes to shove, they don't want to put their money where their mouth is. But they want to probe into your past life and pull out every bit of information from you, just so that they may find something to pay you less. I myself have been asked for Aadhar card, bank statement, passport, PAN card and salary slips from few really well-funded companies, before even a VERBAL offer! At-least now I'm in a really good company and position where I don't have to worry about this and I can tell them to get lost, but it took me a lot to get here. I have suffered severe burnout few years back, to the extent where I didn't work at for 2 whole years, during which I also got diagnosed with clinical depression. Maybe I will share my story someday, should the occasion arise.
My friend has been seriously considering career alternatives other than tech, due to these experiences. And I have nothing more to say except tell her that this is how it is, she needs to stick it out, and hopefully her luck might change. Doesn't sound exactly reassuring, and I don't blame her one bit. It's becoming such a cliche - be it on Twitter or anywhere, everybody keeps saying the same motivational bs - "try harder, do this, do that, keep learning, keep pushing code on GitHub, write blog posts, etc, you'll make it" - the expectations from a "full-stack developer" is just sky-rocketing. After all, a full-stack developer needs to be good at EVERYTHING there is, isn't it?
It is hard not to feel bitter when looking back you mostly have only negative experiences. Anyway, thanks a lot for your response, and I hope more people will speak up.