Ask HN: Dealing with Failed Interview at Google and AWS?

It's natural to feel disappointed when one doesn't get through an interview and one begins questioning a lot of things when this happens. This happens to almost everyone. Almost everyone has not made it through at some point or another ...be it an interview, college application, a date, a driving test, getting selected for a sports team ...

We tend to obviously be more critical of ourselves when we lose out on things like interviews because we value jobs a lot more than other things. While it is ok ...in fact, healthy even, to feel a bit depressed by rejection, this shouldn't get to the point where you spiral downwards questioning everything in your life.

Hiring is often a matter of selection based on a number of factors beyond technical skill. Irrespective of what developers believe, HR truly can could be influenced by salary expectations, date of availability, logistics (for instance, visa issues) ..etc. I do agree that most of these are non-issues for places like Google or Amazon but even then, it might be a tough call to make when companies have shortlisted 2 very strong candidates and just have 1 slot to fill (or maybe even 10 strong candidates and 4 slots ...you get the idea). The point of all this is, don't beat yourself up about it -- external factors beyond your abilities, suitability or control influence hiring decisions. Don't feel too bad if you think you did well enough at the interview. If you didn't, you now know where you were lacking.

HTH, good luck

I'm in my mid thirties and I know that feel. Got turned down in round 2 of AWS last year after the interviewer put a full court press on me for not knowing something kind of arcane (I think it was knowing the implementation of FIPS 140 or something like that). I was honest and said I had no idea and only a passing familiarity with it, but the guy was just like a dog with a bone. That's the way it is sometimes - you get a bad interviewer and the game is up. You shouldn't couple your self-worth or even your worth as a developer/technologist with the outcome of any interview process - especially from those kinds of places.

It will feel like crap for a while, but it's a numbers game - keep turning them over and one or two will come up your way. Don't know what city you are in, but tech meetups are a great place to pick up leads for jobs, usually. This might sound weird - but elections are happening now (assuming you are U.S.) - Go volunteer at a campaign pretty hard for the next week and a half. You might meet some people who can help you out in the long run.

At your age, it's often better to cut your teeth somewhere where you can jump in and get more responsibility off the bat anyway.

I recently went through some similar feelings... well, at least about the interviews. For me, it wasn't so much being rejected by places where I really wanted to work as just getting rejected five or six times. It was shocking; I've never had to interview more than twice before the offers started rolling in.

as an aside, what is it with the lack of a response? I interviewed at one place... for like 7 hours. It went really well, the guy gave me his email, told me to email him... until the end. "How much do you want?" I named a high number, and then said something like "But that's high. I just got someone that used to work for me a job for $lowernumber" - the guy mumbled something about that being a little high, I said that I'd been interviewing for a while, so I was open to offers.

Total silence. I email the guy twice, email the recruiter, etc.. and eventually like two weeks later I email the contract recruiter (who told me ahead of time that my high number was in range) and he tells me that I didn't get the job, because of the downsides I was real up-front about in my phone interview.

Man, I can understand not wanting to hire me. Especially not for the high number. But if I spend seven hours on-site interviewing with you, and you ask me to email you... you can respond. And what is it with making me name a number and then not countering? it's a negotiation. I'm trying to get as much as I can, but I really don't know how much that is. Give me some clues.

gah. Okay, yeah, rant over.

The solution for me was to keep interviewing until I ended up getting a job.

The fact of the matter is that social performance matters a lot on interviews, and for me? My social performance is pretty random. Some days I seem to have it; all my mistakes come off as jokes, and I seem charming and confident. Other days? well, sometimes it seems like I'm mildly autistic. My mistakes cause awkward silence.

That, and some departments just don't want a personality like mine. I... don't drink kool-aide. I mean, sure, I'll do what I'm told, but, for instance, you aren't going to get me to actually believe that advertising is good for the person that is being advertised to.

I recently got a gig that is absolutely perfect for who I am and where I am in my life, and it was the first job that accepted me. Incidentally, it's at google, but it's a contract-to-hire thing, so I've got another year (and a bunch more cash) to let my partner try to get prgmr off the ground again before deciding if I really want to (or if I'm actually able to) become a company man. Meanwhile, from what I gleaned from the interview, I'm going to be able to absolutely nail the role, as long as they don't expect too much google cheerleading from me.

From that perspective? The rejections were really for the best; I can't credibly pretend that I want to be a company man because I'm not ready to be a company man, and I think I'll make an awesome contractor (and maybe I'll be ready to be that company man a year from now? )

Does anyone know what the retry/reapply period (after rejection) for Google is these days?

"...At the time, it seemed much better to be chosen than not chosen"

http://cdixon.org/2013/02/13/the-credentials-trap/

this too, shall pass.