Ask HN: Am I unhireable?

Thanks for asking the question. A few thoughts:

1. The fact that you made it in-house and to final rounds means your resume was "fine" for those roles. The resume is what gets you the first phone screen, from then on they are interested enough.

2. Interviewing is a numbers game and the market is harder right now. There are likely a ton of people applying to the same roles so even an "average" candidate is going to get bounced a lot. These rejects don't mean you're terrible.

3. At the same time, the flip of #2 is that you need your resume to stand out. And frankly, the mindset matters here because it comes out in your words. If I had to put a headline on you, it would be something like "versatile developer with a product mindset, experienced from FAANG to multiple startups." That's the positive spin I can put on what I read from you above. But your actual post drips with self-... doubt? A bit of loathing maybe? So I wouldn't be surprised if you're massively under-selling yourself in your resume and interviews.

4. For your crypto jobs if you want to down-play it, then focus those blurbs on the tech stack and your vague contribution (eg "launched initial MVP to X thousands of customers for $Y revenue" without dwelling on what the product actually did.)

I hope these are helpful. Have someone with a lot of hiring experience review your LinkedIn and resume with a critical eye and listen to their feedback.

> Or, you shake me down for more money than we agreed to retain you-- your loyalty is clearly for sale

Who doesn't have a dollar amount that they're willing to walk away from a job for? I've been personal friends with many of my old managers; not one of them didn't understand when I left for a role for a significant pay increase. One of them was even joking with me one day about the talk he had with his manager on what they would have to do to retain me, and his answer was, "they offered him $50k more than we pay him, we won't be retaining him." And most of them were talking to me about their next role's pay bump at one point or another too. And let's say I was working for you, and out of the blue a friend from a previous job is hiring for their team and offers me a similar position for $50k more per year than you're paying me, I'm not going to not take it out of some sense of loyalty. In the words of the wise, "there's always a price and everything is for sale." The products your company offers is generally for sale for as much as is economically feasible, the same way your engineers are selling you their time.

Anyway, your overall point is that as a hiring manager you don't want to stake your time and reputation on people that seem disloyal. My point is both that people are inherently disloyal with their employers (in that their loyalty costs money), and that the signals you use to judge loyalty are, in my opinion, flawed. I can go into why I'm of that opinion, but it's my lesser of the two opinions.

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Thanks, other than working somewhere longer I'm curious how I could stand out from other candidates?

I'd love to join to help out in the support group, but Discord decided a while ago that something about my e-mail, phone number, browser, or IP is something they don't like and instabans me 10 seconds after signup. The most nafarious thing I did was deleting my account a while back. Go figure.