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

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

#141

Post by minikites » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:56 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #137

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…

You ignored the part where I included "skilled". Of course it's hard for unskilled white people too, I'm complaining about the specific combination of white + male + technically skilled, who have no real reason to complain, as they are extremely likely to land a job and become wealthy.

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

#142

Post by akavi » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 1:59 PM UTC

kzhahou wrote: post #74

Companies keep files on candidates, which generally makes sense for tracking purposes, but they can be counter-productive at the big companies. I go in and apply. I meet with 6 people out of thousands, representing 1-3 teams out of hundreds. It doesn't work out, for any of reasons, some of them just luck of the draw. But now my interview is in the system and will be forever referenced. I'm given a polite but non-info…

Are you sure?

At my previous company (a relatively small startup, admittedly), one of the indisputably best engineers (a 10xer if I've ever worked with one) was hired after such a "second shot". A few weeks is probably too rapid a turn around, given that a "failed" interview is a negative signal (or at least, should be That's the point, after all). But say, a year later for engineers in that wide fuzzy area between "Hire!" and "Oh god no!"? I think plenty of companies do do that.

Further anecdata: Friends who've been rejected from Google have told me that they were explicitly encouraged by their Google recruiter to re-apply in ~a year.

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

#143

Post by kelvin0 » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 2:00 PM UTC

It seems to me chasing 'high profile' Tech company employment is setting yourself up for failure. Competing against thousand of applicants should not be viewed as 'failure' it's a mostly a number's game. Not saying you shouldn't apply to these companies, but you should also consider your odds and adjust your expectations accordingly. Also, we seem to identify way too much with the company we work for ... taking a step back from that helps balance your outlook.

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

#144

Post by rekoros » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

Rejected in 2009 != rejected in 2015

You have to consider the time dimension and boom-bust cycle.

"I showed up at the store and they didn't let me in."

"Because it was closed!! You showed up at 3am!"

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

#145

Post by the_af » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

sarciszewski wrote: post #139

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 conte…

I don't think it's bullshit. I also don't define people as "winners" or "losers" depending on whether they get cool jobs.

I think it's true you'll eventually get accepted in a nice job if you work in IT/software development, have a decent level of competency, and keep at it without getting too discouraged. It's easy to feel crushed when you get rejected twice in a row, so I think this is valuable lesson: you can have decent skills and you'll still get rejected (sometimes arbitrarily, sometimes because it just wasn't your best day), and you shouldn't feel crushed because interviews are -- sadly -- highly random, and even great developers get rejected. That's the point of the website: your skills are likely not the reason you got rejected, so don't get too discouraged.

This isn't some feel good bullshit philosophy. It's true. Getting a job isn't about being a winner. If you have decent skills -- say, you have some experience and fizzbuzz isn't a stumbling block for you -- you are already marketable. You just need to have the combination of luck/being prepared/being in one of your best days.

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

#146

Post by pc86 » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

sarciszewski wrote: post #139

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 conte…

> Many of them probably ended up committing suicide or switching careers.

If you honestly think about committing suicide even for a moment (as in, seriously consider it) because you didn't get a Big 4 CS job, you have serious mental health issues and should probably be under constant supervision.

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

#147

Post by laotzu » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 2:52 PM UTC

This reminds me of an old zen tale:

>There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “May be,” replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “Maybe,” answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe,” said the farmer.

The point being that when you become so upset with being turned down for a certain job you are setting yourself up to be let down by missing the big picture. The reality of the big picture is you have no idea how something that might seem like a great success might lead to great failure, or great failure might lead to great success.

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

#148

Post by pc86 » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

_yosefk wrote: post #108

argonaut wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't really apply. At the executive/management level things are hugely different. Politics, how well you work with others, investor perceptions, "vision", experience, communication skills, etc. all become more important than raw individual contribution skills. Another common example that people like to use, but which also doesn't apply is the example of Brian Acton getting rejected from Facebook before starti…

AFAIK Lasseter wasn't that senior when Disney fired him.

> John Lasseter was fired from Disney because he was too enthusiastic about cutting edge digital animation

It's possible that Lasseter was the animation equivalent of the programmer who has a job in a web design firm that traditionally does everything in Rails (or .NET or Django or whatever) and constantly says "let's use Haskell!!" when they're just building CRUD apps for clients.

The "works well with others" thing is important even for junior folks.

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

#149

Post by myth_buster » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 3:05 PM UTC

sarciszewski wrote: post #139

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 conte…

The takeaway (I believe) is that the process is _Random_

I take the odds as dating or finding a friend; in a large co., some times you may find the fit other times you may not.

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

#150

Post by pc86 » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 3:07 PM UTC

s3nnyy wrote: post #124

js-coder wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a result the failing-rate for the mentioned killer-subjects is dropped from 80% to 20-30%. Do you have any links to back that up? I'm not studying at TUM but I'd be really surprised if there's a 80% pass rate for those subjects.

Around 2008 Prof. Mayr stopped teaching discrete mathematics. After that in most of the midterms there was a solvable problem. Often it was something like "Use the Dijkstra's algorithm to find the shortest paths in this graph. 10 Points" (and the exam had like 32 points).

> the professors started to introduce one problem in each exam that anyone could pass who practised a bit and / or wasn't entirely stupid.

What is considered a passing grade at one of these schools?

At my private liberal arts college in the US it was usually (but ultimately up to professor discretion):

  00-59% - Fail (0.0 for GPA)
  60-67% - D    (1.0)
  68-69% - D+   (1.3)
  70-72% - C-   (1.7)
  73-77% - C    (2.0)
  78-79% - C+   (2.3)
  80-82% - B-   (2.7)
  83-87% - B    (3.0)
  88-89% - B+   (3.3)
  90-92% - A-   (3.7)
  93+    - A    (4.0)

You could count any class with a D or better toward graduation, but to actually graduate you needed a 2.0 or better GPA. If you did not have it you could take additional courses to bring your GPA up, but adding on 3-credit courses when you've got 120 credits built up with a sub-2.0 GPA is typically a losing proposition. Most transferred if they were sub-2.0 by the end of their Sophomore year.

I've seen other grading scales with E's in addition to/instead of F, or minor variations on the percentages. It seems popular to give Honors courses an extra point (e.g. an A- is 4.7 instead of 3.7), particularly in US High Schools.