Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories • Hacker News Board

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#131

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:00 PM UTC

stevedonovan wrote: post #98

techdragon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript is a perfectly fine language but... I find the 'ecosystem' unpleasant. Every time I turn to JavaScript for something, the barrier to entry for non trivial work rises. JavaScript feels to me... As a programmer working 8 hours a day in Python much significant portions of it doing Django, and a few hours a week learning Elixir, C and Rust... Like the whole world is rolling up a giant katamari daciamacy ball,…

No wonder people keep churning out new js libraries - it's their attempt to cope with the churn, actually creating more churn in the process.

It's the C++ of the web.

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#132

Post by minikites » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:06 PM UTC

tarsinge wrote: post #121

minikites wrote: post #104

Oh no, highly skilled mostly white males experiencing temporary setbacks, won't anyone think about how hard they have it? They made it eventually and you can too! Never mind the dozens of stories without a happy ending as whole groups of people get funneled into the "discouraged worker" pool to keep them out of the U3 unemployment rate. I wish more effort like this was put into mentoring/training/recruiting underrepr…

Let's start by not stressing race/gender

We still live in a very racist society, how is that helped by pretending otherwise?

http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

> The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume.

> We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names. These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market.

And as for gender:

http://phys.org/news/2006-05-female-name-chat-users-maliciou...

> A study by the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering found that chat room participants with female usernames received 25 times more threatening and/or sexually explicit private messages than those with male or ambiguous usernames.

> Female usernames, on average, received 163 malicious private messages a day in the study.

These are two narrow examples of course, but pretending everyone has a fair shot is extremely naïve.

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#133

Post by f0rgot » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:15 PM UTC

As a current job seeker, this is doing wonders in helping me keep my head up.

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#134

Post by yawgmoth » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:15 PM UTC

thewarrior wrote: post #105

kami8845 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> multi decade slave train If you want to have "made it", go start a startup. Being an employee generally means working 40-60 hour weeks for other people's dreams.

Working for 2+ decades while making something like $150k+ a year on average over the long term , and retiring with substantial savings , without having worked 100 hour weeks on the startup lottery , sounds pretty awesome to me. Don't know maybe I'm not elite founder material.

Other companies pay great salaries. In Detroit, for example, you can make 100-130k with a much lower cost of living (even if you're living downtown or in one of the wealthy suburbs). I presume Chicago, Boston, ATL, etc., would be just as lucrative if not moreso. If the bar is based on salary and hours, you can make it in a lot of places.

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#135

Post by will_pseudonym » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

relkor wrote: post #127

will_pseudonym wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a great recruiter! My approach is to help both sides understand the other side's needs completely before signing on the dotted line. I'm only happy when everyone else is. I also only work with people I would want to work with in the future, and that goes for both sides :) Are you looking for something right now? If you are, I'll dig through your HN comment history and try to understand your needs and desires. If…

That's creepy

Fun thought experiment: all this information is publicly available, and we're okay with it as evidenced by the fact that we're participating freely in the activity.

You're not bothered by algorithms (maybe you are, but you're not writing about it, so from this context you're less bothered) that can analyze data and language and patterns of communication, but you do have a problem with a human trying to understand the needs and desires of another human in the aim of helping that person land a job they would live?

Like I said, it's a thought experiment. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm always learning. Unless I'm an algorithm--they never learn. Or do they? Maybe you're just a poor Turing Test judge?! ;)

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#136

Post by JFlash » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:22 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #72

I was rejected by Adobe, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Skype and many more companies. I got rejected by Apple 3 times and two times with Facebook and Google. I'm now working for Google. One thing I can tell for sure, specially after interviewing others. It's all random. Most of interviewers make their mind about the candidate in seconds. If you are a charming person you have a good cha…

Being charming, likable or whatever you want to call it is important. Technical competency should be the biggest factor but there are plenty of people who have that and are personable too.

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#137

Post by aikah » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #104

Oh no, highly skilled mostly white males experiencing temporary setbacks, won't anyone think about how hard they have it? They made it eventually and you can too! Never mind the dozens of stories without a happy ending as whole groups of people get funneled into the "discouraged worker" pool to keep them out of the U3 unemployment rate. I wish more effort like this was put into mentoring/training/recruiting underrepr…

> Oh no, highly skilled mostly white males experiencing temporary setbacks,

Here comes the racist right here. people get rejected all the time even when they are white, in fact, most of the people that get rejected for a job are white. I think you do not fool anyone anymore with this kind of narrative. It's tough for everybody, so don't make it about race or gender. Stop complaining and try harder.

And FYI, I'm black.

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#138

Post by marcosdumay » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:46 PM UTC

will_pseudonym wrote: post #82

danieltillett wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why companies are so paranoid about false positives. Apart from the the lack of evidence that being extra picky is helpful, you can always fire if the candidate does not meet your standards. Be crystal clear about what you expect and cut if it is not met.

Hiring bad people is signaling to your existing, well functioning team, that you care about the bottom line more than their experience & happiness. It drives good people away, because firing bad apples is way harder than it should be...

Keeping bad people surely tells that (or that you are too stupid to even keep the bottom-line).

But hiring somebody bad by mistake, then recognizing that mistake and firing the person? How could that tell this?

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#139

Post by sarciszewski » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

Eventually these folks got accepted though. I guess that's the moral we're supposed to take away from this: If you get rejected a lot, but you keep trying, you'll eventually be accepted?

If so, that's bullshit. The only reason we don't see any examples here of people who never get accepted is because they're invisible to the industry. Many of them probably ended up committing suicide or switching careers. (I've contemplated both more than I care to admit in polite company.)

We can't all be winners.

(But by that logic, we can't all be losers all the time either. You're probably somewhere in between both extremes.)

Re: Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories

#140

Post by relkor » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

will_pseudonym wrote: post #135

relkor wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's creepy

Fun thought experiment: all this information is publicly available, and we're okay with it as evidenced by the fact that we're participating freely in the activity. You're not bothered by algorithms (maybe you are, but you're not writing about it, so from this context you're less bothered) that can analyze data and language and patterns of communication, but you do have a problem with a human trying to understand the…

To be more formal, there are two possiblities that I see:

1) You are RecruiterBot born from the forge of a brillant engineer smarting from rejection and trained to communicate using audio samples from bugs placed in business schools.

- The announced intent to harvest data is a flaw in the algorithm because it is known that humans find overt monitoring "creepy". My response is to submit a ticket to your maker using the contact info, with steps to reproduce and other data.

- I assume the monitoring itself is rational because my priors tell me the marginal cost is likely low enough to be worth it.

2) You are a real person

- In this case your decision to stalk the above user represents a significant economic investment. The idea that you will spend 30 minutes? or more following stranger on the internet shows to be an imbalance in your economic incentives. I begin to wonder, are you a rational actor?

- In the interest of safety I will avoid you because the data points I have do not fit human models of behavior. My percieved risk is much higher because your economic incentives do not appear to align with mine. Therefore it is unlikely that trade is worth the opportunity cost when I know of others who do align AND have lower risk assements.