11–20 of 82 posts
I'd say this just means you can go work somewhere that will allow you to be more then a junior cog in a large corporation.
I'd start with the hacker news "who is hiring" thread that gets posted the 1st of every month if you aren't already watching it.
You: But what if I get a mistrial? I might be smart and qualified, but for some random reason I may do poorly in the interviews and not get an offer! That would be a huge blow to my ego! I would rather pass up the opportunity altogether than have a chance of failure!
Me: Yeah, that's at least partly true. Heck, I kinda didn't make it in on my first attempt, but I begged like a street dog until they gave me a second round of interviews. I caught them in a weak moment. And the second time around, I prepared, and did much better.
The thing is, Google has a well-known false negative rate, which means we sometimes turn away qualified people, because that's considered better than sometimes hiring unqualified people. This is actually an industry-wide thing, but the dial gets turned differently at different companies. At Google the false-negative rate is pretty high. I don't know what it is, but I do know a lot of smart, qualified people who've not made it through our interviews. It's a bummer.
But the really important takeaway is this: if you don't get an offer, you may still be qualified to work here. So it needn't be a blow to your ego at all!
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com.au/2008/03/get-that-job-at-g...
And that all remains perfectly true. I flunked my first round of Google interviews, then tried again (in a different role I've come to conclude was a much better fit, mind you) and now I'm here. You can be too ;)
It helps to have some sort of arrogance about the whole thing. If they don't want you, then whatever. They have brilliant engineers but I wouldn't want to join a big company that already has it all figured out. What's in it for you?
The first time I was rejected for being "too opinionated" for the likely team I'd be in, second time I was accepted. And I'd say the first rejection was spot on too, I don't think I'd have been a good fit for that team.
Bear in mind that a 'failed interview' isn't necessarily a failure on your part; it might just mean that the company doesn't think you'd have been right for the job. If possible do push really hard to get honest feedback in as much detail as possible; if it's a good recruitment process, such feedback can be a goldmine of personal improvement opportunities.
I don't know if it helps, but I interviewed twice at a large company here in Melbourne (for a role as a contract developer). The first time I was rejected for being "too opinionated" for the likely team I'd be in, second time I was accepted. And I'd say the first rejection was spot on too, I don't think I'd have been a good fit for that team. Bear in mind that a 'failed interview' isn't necessarily a failure on your…
"Bad fit for particular job" != "poor candidate in general"
Sometimes the interviewer can see this better than the candidate.
I interviewed 3 times with Amazon before I got an offer from them. And then when I was there, I kicked ass. There's little correlation between the interviews and how good you actually are. Also, while I was at Amazon, I did probably over a hundred interviews (in person and phone screens). Interviewing in hard and there are a lot of very bad interviewers there. They try to keep a similar bar across the company, but I…
You've doubtless seen this already, but I'm going to quote Steve Yegge anyway: You: But what if I get a mistrial? I might be smart and qualified, but for some random reason I may do poorly in the interviews and not get an offer! That would be a huge blow to my ego! I would rather pass up the opportunity altogether than have a chance of failure! Me: Yeah, that's at least partly true. Heck, I kinda didn't make it in on…
This stuff is hard. Don't sweat it too much.