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All my career rejections

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Re: All my career rejections

#171

Post by Ma8ee »

karolist wrote: post #146
Ma8ee wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in the hope that the interview would reflect the actual work that needs to be done, which my education and previous work experience have prepared me very well for. Then I'm happy to prepare for the interview in the sense that I try to learn as much as possible about the company and the people I'm going to meet.

Copying this response from my older comment: The rampup at FAANG can be brutal and you'd be doing lots of learning even after getting in. The leetcode style interviews are designed to select people capable of studying and materialising broad problems in depth and scope under time constraints. They are also objective and can't really be faked nor you can talk your way in like in most banking/finance IT jobs. I was of…

They select people who have a lot of discretionary time. I guess that is ok, if you want an organisation consisting mostly of young people without family that are happy to work weekends and evenings.

I’m very happy to be in a position where I can do most learning during company time, and then spend my free time with my wife and kids.

Re: All my career rejections

#172

Post by danjac »

joelbluminator wrote: post #168
danjac wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small startup doing FAANG style interviews is like a small startup adopting microservices for their 3-developer team. More red flags than a Soviet May Day parade.

Yeah I never got it. Don't they at least wanna make sure the candidate knows their current tech stack? many of them don't seem to care. The ones that care are usually very small companies where every hire is super critical. The bigger the team, the less important the hire is, the less they care about the actual work that needs to be done.

The thing is, when I've seen code written in startups that have a "leetcode" process, it's ... not great. Lots of premature optimization and code review bikeshedding and not-invented-here, while having big issues around perhaps more important things like security, API design and database performance.

Re: All my career rejections

#173

Post by joelbluminator »

nostrebored wrote: post #142
Aeolun wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that’s unbelievable? I’ve literally had a company recruiter tell me that I should probably spend a few hours on leetcode and hackerrank before the interview. That turned out to be predictive, because they rejected me mostly based on my inability to do well on those kinds of tests. I got a life people. Between taking care of my son, wife and work, where am I supposed to find ‘a few hours’ to spend on somethi…

Having a life means that you should love a standardized interview format. There's nothing worse than project assignments from companies asking 'for only a few hours' with descriptions that very clearly ask for multiple workdays. Algorithmic interviews also compensate you better. Being able to prepare for multiple interviews at the same time means that you have a broader range of options to choose from and can play th…

Home assignments at least test your actual ability to write code or complete something that somehow resembles real work. Whereas solving whiteboard / live codility questions under stress with some guy looking at everything you type is a lot about how well you are under stress and how used you are to solving codility questions.

Re: All my career rejections

#174

Post by joelbluminator »

danjac wrote: post #172
joelbluminator wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I never got it. Don't they at least wanna make sure the candidate knows their current tech stack? many of them don't seem to care. The ones that care are usually very small companies where every hire is super critical. The bigger the team, the less important the hire is, the less they care about the actual work that needs to be done.

The thing is, when I've seen code written in startups that have a "leetcode" process, it's ... not great. Lots of premature optimization and code review bikeshedding and not-invented-here, while having big issues around perhaps more important things like security, API design and database performance.

Yeah I agree. A lot of it is coming from CTO's, tech leads. It feels like that for them to justify their salaries they will push for "cutting edge" solutions like graphql, micro service architecture and stuff like that. Many times completely unneeded.

Re: All my career rejections

#175

Post by arwhatever »

120bits wrote: post #109

I did something similar last year after getting rejected by FAANGs and few more other tech companies. - Google rejected 3 times. - Facebook 2 times. - Amazon(AWS) 1 times. - Adobe 1 Times. - Twitter, Github, stripe and others won't even consider me good enough for an interview. - Dozens others companies, who do FAANG style interviewing. I fear rejections, no matter how much I "try" to act normal. I was looking forwar…

I'm trying to kickstart a job search website that allows you to find jobs with an interviewing style which you are comfortable with (in addition to a commute distance that you are comfortable with, seating arrangement, pay rate, work hours expectation, automated productivity monitoring, etc.)

My hope is to get enough developers to create (free) profiles that the website can put some backpressure on the industry, however small, to curtail some practices that engineers dislike. There is so much demand for software engineering labor, after all. I'm sure this won't make a dent in the large software companies that have their own internally-hosted job board + cachet, but any difference in a positive direction would be good.

The website is here: https://sievejobs.com

FWIW, just from loads of recent experience, there are still quite a few teams that will hire you based on your demonstration of some real-world software development ability.

And I'll also add, that I really like your simple phrase "FAANG-style interviewing." It's more succinct than any I have been able to come up with: "Whiteboard + algorithms?" "Non-real-world Leetcode puzzles?" etc.

Re: All my career rejections

#176

Post by joelbluminator »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #106
rramadass wrote: post #101

I wouldn't do this and keep it around. We have all had rejections, particularly in these highly competitive times but the trick is to forget about them after doing a quick postmortem and learning any lessons. The reason is that psychologically we are wired to focus on the negatives and ruminate endlessly on it leading to self-doubt and a sapping of self-confidence. This is absolutely not good for long-term psychologi…

Am I supposed to forget that the vast majority of companies find me unhireable?

You should see it like this: There's way more candidates than there are positions. Look at Linkedin, even some unknown startup gets 50+ applicants (and that's only Linkedin, they probably have other channels for hiring). Now the famous names you are competing against hundreds. So yeah, don't sweat it. You and me are both unhirable for many positions as are most everyone else.

Re: All my career rejections

#177

Post by joelbluminator »

throwmeaway_66 wrote: post #68
rapfaria wrote: post #58

I get it, and I think we've all been hurt. But why keep this list? I remember when I had a stellar year at a big corp. My manager said `nothing bad to report, wow`. I was ready for that S - a Special automatically meant a promotion. A few weeks later, when the whole R&D got the performance letter, I received mine with a C. D usually meant `demitido`, or fired in portuguese. I couldn't believe it, and I kept that lett…

This is a very good comment. The fetishization of "failure" is a quite recent phenomenon that like many other communication workflows of the modern time has the implicit or explicit goals of making someone understood, commiserated, seen as naturally strong or "yes, I cried, but look how much stronger I am". A total waste of energy that to my eyes looks weak and entitled. Like when you read on, say, Twitter "my biolog…

Sorry for being nitpicky but a teacher talking like that could be very harsh and damaging depending on the child.

Re: All my career rejections

#178

Post by newswasboring »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #166
newswasboring wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are genuinely curious. The point here is, people are confident that they can do the job, just can't pass the interview. The purpose of the interview is to select someone to do the job, not to pass the interview. "Preparing for the interview" is chasing the wrong KPI for both parties. Companies don't want someone who can pass the interview, they want someone who can do the job, they are not the same things…

However confident people are hat they can do the job the point of the interview is to convince the recruiters. That's the game and the recruiting company sets the rules.

Thats the point though. The recruiting company rules seem to be suboptimal and infact optimizing for something unrelated to that job.

Edit: Fun example. Its like recruiting companies are trying to hire for the next big chess tournament and their criteria is how fast someone can win practice end game scenarios. It might seem fine on the surface, but the truth is end game is only 10% of the game.

Re: All my career rejections

#179

Post by joelbluminator »

redisman wrote: post #120
throwaway892398 wrote: post #108

I've been accepted to most of the positions I've applied mainly because I avoided FAANG companies for fear of rejection. I was getting regular emails from their recruiters but just kept deleting them. One day I just decided to reply to the Google recruiter. I stupidly set up the interview ASAP at a time when I was out of the country with no computer or internet. So I went into the interview with zero prep. It was a d…

The FAANG interview is hard dude. I feel like I could maybe get in if I took a 6 month study break for it which is totally unrealistic. I tried a few times at the top 10 companies (except ones I consider immoral) and even got pretty far at some (onsites that went decently) but I'm pretty happy at medium sized later stage startups doing my 9-5. It's not like working for the highest market cap company in the US is goin…

Good comment. There won't be any more meaning, arguably there would be less meaning in FAANG (I mean where will u have more impact: a 50-200 people team or a 100000 team?). The FAANG compensation though is simply insane and just having it on your resume is huge for one's career, that's why everyone wants it. But u can have a very nice career without working there, I mean most of us don't work there.

Re: All my career rejections

#180

Post by joelbluminator »

vorhemus wrote: post #165

What amazes me every time I read articles like this is that some companies are apparently so afraid of hiring the wrong people because that's costly - and at the same time they don't mind throwing abandoned projects that did cost millions of dollars on the graveyard every month.

Great comment. In fact, in a country like the U.S where it's so easy to fire people I don't see what the big deal is.
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