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Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

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Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#131

Post by spb »

aianus wrote: post #128
helpingout wrote: post #18

You have classic signs of depression. Perhaps major depression. The worst part of depression is that it clouds normal thought processes. That's probably why you can't perform as you once did. Find a way to see a psychiatrist you feel comfortable around. Go with a family or friend if that helps get you over the hump. So many high achievers I know go through this. You're not alone, and with proper help you'll get throu…

People always say to get help but how specifically do you find a psychiatrist/therapist? Try them at random from yelp/yellow pages?

I found mine from a referral through an email to the author of an article on Psychology Today about issues similar to what I was going through, describing the kind of qualities I was looking for (specifically, I asked if they knew someone who'd be able to understand when I use movie and TV analogies to describe how I'm feeling).

The author must have forwarded my email to a colleague (who may have, in turn, forwarded it to further links in a chain - all the intermediary addresses were duly absent from the final referral I got, as should be expected from professionals), because soon after, I got a response from a new contact, referring me to a therapist who turned out to be a good fit.

Looking for a therapist can really suck (I'd had somewhere around eight months of trying at least five different bad-fit therapists before I tried the random-midnight-email approach above), so I figured I'd mention the approach that actually ended up working for me.

Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#132

Post by jtchang »

Interviewing is like dating and there is a certain amount of randomness to it. For every interview you might as well roll some dice. A certain percentage will reject you NO MATTER WHAT. It happens. Especially at large companies like Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc.

I've done a fair share of interviews as well and would be glad to give you a bit of feedback as well.

Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#133

Post by Sacho »

helpingout wrote: post #18

You have classic signs of depression. Perhaps major depression. The worst part of depression is that it clouds normal thought processes. That's probably why you can't perform as you once did. Find a way to see a psychiatrist you feel comfortable around. Go with a family or friend if that helps get you over the hump. So many high achievers I know go through this. You're not alone, and with proper help you'll get throu…

Ken White is an (arguably) highly successful lawyer(partner in his own firm, happily married with two children, etc), who runs the law blog popehat.com. He has been diagnosed with major depression, and a lot of people have said his posts on it have really helped them re-evaluate their position: https://popehat.com/tag/depression/

Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#134

Post by zippy786 »

noahlt wrote: post #24

At every company, for any given candidate, there exists a set of interviewers who will always fail you for an interview. There is no company with >1000 employees at which you could interview with a 100% success rate. I think you will really appreciate this blog post http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... by Steve Yegge about getting a job at Google.

I disagree. What do you see so different in that blog post ? OP is struggling with interview puzzles not concepts of data structure, common algorithms. I think it is far too easy to devise a problem that even most current interviewers would fail. I'm saying this after being hired and seeing the level of knowledge most interviewers possess.

Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#135

Post by gummysmrind »

aianus wrote: post #128
helpingout wrote: post #18

You have classic signs of depression. Perhaps major depression. The worst part of depression is that it clouds normal thought processes. That's probably why you can't perform as you once did. Find a way to see a psychiatrist you feel comfortable around. Go with a family or friend if that helps get you over the hump. So many high achievers I know go through this. You're not alone, and with proper help you'll get throu…

People always say to get help but how specifically do you find a psychiatrist/therapist? Try them at random from yelp/yellow pages?

My health insurance had a list of people in the network but yeah. For a therapist you both need to be on the same page so you need to see who you click with. i saw one that just made me feel worst about my self. I just stopped going and tried someone different,eventually gave up on therapists... Psychiatrist is a little easier since they're all legit doctors, mds,or I got lucky. Although people like to talk about how mental health related drugs are over prescribed so i guess there's enough crappy ones. they're their to prescribe and make sure you don't get worse. its a simpler relationship, like the doctor you see when your leg breaks or a dentist.

Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#136

Post by blm »

You still are intelligent. You still can be liked by your teams. The way you feel is just clouding the way you see yourself right now.

When you go for interviews people often dont see your potential. They often dont want to take a gamble on you turning the boat around soon enough for their liking. Very often people pick up on how you feel about yourself and use it to form an opinion of you. One that often agrees with how you feel about yourself. The good thing about this is things change when you take control of your feelings and change. The situation is more in your hands than you realise. You have control.

The biggest thing you need right now is time. With time your feelings change and you see yourself differently. You will be able to remember the postive times and show yourself you are still capable. Dont give up if things don't change in a week or a month or several months. The improvements are so small that it is hard to notice every day. However as the months pass, the change adds up and you notice it.

I know it feels like leaving the current job is the only option. But unemployment can make you feel bad, even worse. That is something you need to avoid. What I did was find a differnet job that gives headspace to think and keeps the bills mostly paid.

Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#137

Post by fapjacks »

Just to address the depression and anxiety issues:

1) Take a shower and do a load of laundry.

2) Go for a run.

3) Take another shower and put on clean clothes.

4) Eat leafy green vegetables like lettuce or spinach.

5) Make an appointment with your doctor.

I don't know if you're there yet, but these three things (get clean, do some exercise, and eat a healthy diet) actually work fairly immediately in most cases. I've been through years of really bad depression and anxiety (PTSD) after a long time in the infantry and helped many friends with similar issues. Everybody's different, but there's a strong chance at least one of these things will help. And even if they don't help, you've made an appointment to see a doctor.

Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#138

Post by eropple »

namelezz wrote: post #82

> I'm dumb and worthless. No you are not. You passed the interview and you are working at one of the "Big 4" tech. It's a great achievement there. > I'll never get a job again because I can't solve the puzzles. Don't worry those skills are trainable. There are several online resources to improve your puzzle solving skills[0],[1],[2]. It takes time but it's definitely doable. Beside having the current company name on…

> Don't worry those skills are trainable.

They are, but I'll go the other way: you shouldn't bother with training them. Companies that put on this three-ring circus bullshit are telling you what they think of you.

Working at a place that wants you to work for them is so, so much better than working for a company that wants you to feel privileged to work for them. It's a job. You're (probably) not curing cancer.

Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#139

Post by Flemlord »

aianus wrote: post #128
helpingout wrote: post #18

You have classic signs of depression. Perhaps major depression. The worst part of depression is that it clouds normal thought processes. That's probably why you can't perform as you once did. Find a way to see a psychiatrist you feel comfortable around. Go with a family or friend if that helps get you over the hump. So many high achievers I know go through this. You're not alone, and with proper help you'll get throu…

People always say to get help but how specifically do you find a psychiatrist/therapist? Try them at random from yelp/yellow pages?

Go to Castle Connolly and search on Psychiatry in your area. This is a curated service that identifies the best doctors in any specialty; I've used it many times for myself and family members and always been happy with their recommendations.

https://www.castleconnolly.com/

There is a small fee, although you can still see the doctor's name and location without joining.

Re: Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do?

#140

Post by eropple »

nedwin wrote: post #110

Many great comments here which hopefully help, and I'm not going to address the anxiety/depressive side of the coin - others have done that better. One piece of advice I got from a manager around interviewing was to be trying to interview somewhere every 3 to 6 months. He's incredibly happy in his role but he interviews to a) find out about new opportunities/products/technologies but b) so that when he finds that one…

I'll echo this. Before I went into consulting I would interview bimonthly or so. Not because I was unhappy (though sometimes I was), but because it was good to keep sharp and because sometimes you'll surprise yourself by finding a gig that really clicks. I was a lousy interview at my first job out of college. I've been a very good one since, and it's helped me get jobs I liked.

It's also helped me seriously expand my network (and Boston's a small town); you meet a lot of people.

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