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They Rejected Us

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291–300 of 385 posts

Re: They Rejected Us

#291
post #55
post #3

I'm really surprised at how they managed to get so many big names from the open source community to share their stories. Maybe success isn't tied to grinding out a bunch of leetcode?

It's very fashionable for successful people to tell the story how they "failed" or got "rejected" but with enough persistence they found success. There is something to be learned from that but you never hear the stories of people who do the exactly the same thing but never succeed and keep getting rejected. There is a lot of survivorship bias in this.

How I Failed and Am Still Failing to This Very Day

Re: They Rejected Us

#292

Try getting rejected at the final executive approval (i.e., their magic eight-ball) after passing the in-person day and the hiring committee. Once you've seen the inside of the hiring process, you'll never take this stuff personally again. It's utter garbage. At best, the process manages to select for a few traits that are probably useful, while de-selecting for others they didn't realize were crucial for ultimate su…

There was one company I applied to, for which I passed the screening and the technical interview, that I got a "Welcome Aboard" email from which also included paperwork for getting started. I just needed to meet the CEO as a last step, but they told me it was basically a formality and that I was hired.

I arrived on time and was told to wait outside the CEO's office. Through the wall, I could hear him talking to someone over the phone about football and what flavor chicken wings he wanted to have ordered and delivered to him. I sat there for 25 minutes hearing his muffled dudebro voice ramble on as if his schedule was clear for the day.

Finally, he let me in. At least he remembered my name. I told him why I wanted to work for Acme Corporation and the skills I planned on bringing to the table. He told me almost nothing and had me out of there in less than 10 minutes.

Not even an hour after I left did I receive an email from the same HR person who told me "Welcome Aboard!" that they wouldn't be moving me forward in the hiring process. It was one of the most devastating moments in my life because that initial email and the phone call I got after was a sign that my shitty life was finally going to turn around.

It did help teach me a good lesson that I would learn multiple times(with much softer landings) later on, which is that most people involved in hiring don't know what the hell they're doing and that just because a company makes a lot of money doesn't mean that forms of insanity aren't baked into their processes. You've just got to let rejections roll off you.

Re: They Rejected Us

#293
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it feels like they want medals for getting rejected at companies that haven't even bothered to give me a callback. We all get rejected from dozens of interviews. That's just life. Did anybody ever think it wasn't like this?

> We all get rejected from dozens of interviews. Which we know because of what? Sites like this let people know exactly that! > Did anybody ever think it wasn't like this? The common narrative is that if you work hard your efforts will be recognized. I don't normally hear "after a lot of people utterly fail to recognize them" unless you're talking about fiction writing. > it feels like they want medals for getting re…

> Which we know because of what?

Experience :-)

Re: They Rejected Us

#294

This is like It Gets Better, but for fragile software engineers who obviously are talented enough to make 6 figures some place else. I understand rejection can feel personal, especially when so much of your life and identity comes from the work you've put into mastering some field, but this doesn't seem like the healthiest mindset. I'm just leaving college now and don't have much of a perspective yet, but the applica…

You sound awesome! Hopefully I never have to work with someone like you.

Re: They Rejected Us

#295
post #70
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it feels like they want medals for getting rejected at companies that haven't even bothered to give me a callback. We all get rejected from dozens of interviews. That's just life. Did anybody ever think it wasn't like this?

When I was a senior at university, my friends and I all had a wall at our apartments covered with our rejection letters. Back then (if they gave you the courtesy of a reply) they were sent on paper in the mail. So yes, it's always been that way. I myself have been on interview committees and voted to reject candidates who got hired, and turned out to be good. Why did I want to reject them? Don't really know, just got…

It seems to me anecdata suggest the average hiring process lets through only a few duds.

It often feels to me like people are using that as a justification of the quality of their hiring practice. What's interesting is hiring practices vary greatly across the board but mostly in aggregate seem to produce this "we only ever got a few duds" result.

My hypothesis has now shifted to "most people can do most jobs". Or to restate it "There are only a few duds. Period. And hiring processes produce mostly random results. That's why we see a few duds come through."

Re: They Rejected Us

#296
post #202

Note to self: If I get rejected from a lot of companies, just apply to Twitter. They'll surely say yes. Addendum: there should be a companion site "Even twitter rejected me!"

The site was made by an ex-twitter engineer, so lots of the entires come from other Twitter engineers.

engineers at twitter are used to making useless websites ... jk, im not a billionaire. But I was accepted by twitter.

Re: They Rejected Us

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he couldn't remember some useless piece of easily-googleable (ha) CS trivia on the spot. Or that's what he claimed. > Even though they all run it internally. That's what he claimed as well. But never heard of Homebrew while I was at Google, though I had a Macbook for 5+ years. (Well I can't definitely say my Macbook never ran Homebrew - after all, when you are in Google, all such things are handled by dedicated tea…

Hum, how can you do development work with HomeBrew? You install packages one-by-one?

MacPorts.

Re: They Rejected Us

#298
The Big Co interview process is a binary classifier (hire/no hire). It's actually reasonable to tune it to minimize false-positives, since a bad hire can be disastrous for all parties involved - imagine an employer changing their minds on you during your first few months. Tradeoff is that this will increase false-negatives, saying No to great people, and lead to stories in the link above.

Other thing worth mentioning is that "culture fit" might make companies turn down excellent developers, who don't happen to have the founders' same personality type.

Re: They Rejected Us

#299
You may not have been rejected because of your technical skills, but because of your soft-skills.

A large part of our hiring process involves deciding if you think you can work with this person day to day and if you think they'll fit in the company culture.

Re: They Rejected Us

#300
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also companies often want very different things. Not only from the technical perspective, but most of them also care about cultural match, and culture can mean very different thing in different companies. So getting offers from one good company and rejected by another is completely normal.

Personally I think beyond "can communicate / not a jerk" culture has just been a placeholder for personal bias.

There could still be legit culture fit sessions, like Stripe has a high bar for friendliness, and Airbnb want people to love traveling and be adventurous.
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