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I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

grell.dev

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Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#31

Reminds me of the guy who created Homebrew being rejected by Google for failing some silly Leetcode puzzle.

This story feels after all the years still awkward. Many people at Google don't have anything that impressive on their resume like being the creator of homebrew. Commentary like "Google looks only for computer scientists, so you need to have studied CS" is so out of touch that i sometimes questions if these people ever worked in a big corporation. There are thousands of different roles, many multiple times suited for that guy. I suspect the people who vetoed didn't like that guy for some other reasons.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#32

> Unfortunately they thanked me for my application but said the team doesn't have the capacity to review additional applications. It seems like they didn't even look at his application.

Even if someone from HR who screens for first rounds read it, they probably wouldn't understand why this might be an interesting candidate.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#33
post #10

Reminds me of the guy who created Homebrew being rejected by Google for failing some silly Leetcode puzzle.

Which is not something that happened, even according to Max Howell himself: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin... > I feel bad about my tweet, I don’t feel it was fair, and it fed the current era of outragism-driven-reading that is the modern Internet, and thus went viral, and for that I am truly sorry.

it kind of happened, he went through seven interviews. from the same post:

> But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like them. Surely, surely Google could have used that.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#34

Hey, I'm the author of the blog post. Thank you for submitting this. If you have any questions feel free to ask and please let me know how the writing was. It's one of my first posts so I'd like to improve

Hey mate, I would just like to say that I wish they at least find it in their hearts to reward you for the value you have provided to them. Knowing cut throat american corps, I'm afraid the chances are nil. Even if a good amount for you is peanuts to them.

Which is why my position is GPL > MIT..

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#35

Reminds me of the guy who created Homebrew being rejected by Google for failing some silly Leetcode puzzle.

I was thinking about this the other day. I think it might just be a thing of Google looking for a different thing than what made his open source project famous.

Without no knowledge of the details further than mxcl's tweet; probably any performance issues even on simple code, get infinitely multiplied when running at Google's scale, slogging the thing, on Google's dime. From what I've seen of him, mxcl is good at designing a really approachable product, and on running an open source project. But homebrew is really slow, even on the latests Macs, even for basic cases.

To me it seems then that he'd be more fit for a product owner/manager position than an engineering one, and that could be the root of his not-hiring.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#36
post #30

I would guess like him that no human engineer ever read his application. The less they would have done in that case would be to at least thank him for his work, even if they don't plan to hire him for some reason. Automated systems, AI screening, and incompetent HR people are the bane of modern recruiting practices.

Perhaps, but just like vibe-coding being good-enough for some purposes they think vibe-hiring will get good-enough candidates?

I guess at least they're dogfooding it?

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#39
Anthropic probably gets tens of thousands of applications. They seem to have filled their queue before even reviewing this particular candidate. Unfortunate but just reality.

Always always always try to get into direct contact with the actual hiring manager. Blog author had a friend of a friend let them know a relevant role was open. The correct move is NOT to blindly apply. It’s to ask for an intro to the engineering manager responsible for the role.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#40
A friend of mine is maintainer of an open source service used (at least, at one time) by all of the major social media platforms as a load-bearing piece of their infrastructure (intentionally keeping it vague). My friend was invited to interview at one of the biggest and was rejected after having a bad whiteboard session. Of course they immediately replaced my friend's service (ha!)
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