Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

They Rejected Us

rejected.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 385 posts

Re: They Rejected Us

#311

Post by saagarjha »

electrograv wrote: post #166
pmden wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"possibly the most important piece of software on OSX" I'm earnestly trying to avoid downplaying his work, but it's only a package manager. Unless he was interviewing to be Google's next head of package management on OSX, I'm not sure why you think assessing him on something other than his useful side project is bad form. I'm also not certain how an answer being 'easily-googleable' makes it arbitrary or pointless. So…

> I'm earnestly trying to avoid downplaying his work, but it's only a package manager. I'm earnestly trying to avoid downplaying your comment, but you sound like you have no clue how much engineering effort and talent is actually required to build and maintain a reliable, functional, production-grade package manager that a huge number of people use. Being able to completely implement and support a sophisticated softw…

> I'm earnestly trying to avoid downplaying your comment, but you sound like you have no clue how much engineering effort and talent is actually required to build and maintain a reliable, functional, production-grade package manager that a huge number of people use.

It's also entirely possible that Google saw Homebrew as neither reliable, functional, or production-grade enough for their taste. While Homebrew is somewhat decent today (though, it's still broken in some ways that I will not go into here and I'm under the impression that it's being worked on), but it wasn't always particularly reliable or stable. The only real benefit it had (and arguably still has) is that it has massive traction.

Re: They Rejected Us

#312

Post by saagarjha »

vonmoltke wrote: post #266
dwild wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he is more than qualified for "will contribute to a small portion of software that will be run by a large fraction of the planet's computers". Maybe, but for that part he was in competition with people that were simply better to "contribute to a small portion of software that will be run by a large fraction of the planet's computers".

That's where we come to my second point. Additionally, the public perception of the Google hiring process (a perception cultivated by Google themselves) is that candidates are not in competition with anybody. It's just "do you clear the bar or not".

Companies rarely hire people in a vacuum; almost always, it's because they are looking for someone to fill a certain role (be it "we need another competent engineer who we can assign arbitrary work to"), and there are always other people that can do the same job.

Re: They Rejected Us

#313

Post by saagarjha »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #201
pmden wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"possibly the most important piece of software on OSX" I'm earnestly trying to avoid downplaying his work, but it's only a package manager. Unless he was interviewing to be Google's next head of package management on OSX, I'm not sure why you think assessing him on something other than his useful side project is bad form. I'm also not certain how an answer being 'easily-googleable' makes it arbitrary or pointless. So…

Package manages often determine the success of an entire ecosystem. To give you an idea of how hard this is, Go still has not been able to come up with proper package management. Some of the best engineers in the world built that language.

macOS had multiple package managers prior to Homebrew.

Re: They Rejected Us

#314

Post by mcguire »

sho wrote: post #103

I still can't get over the fact that Google rejected mxcl, author of homebrew, possibly the most important piece of software on OSX, because he couldn't remember some useless piece of easily-googleable (ha) CS trivia on the spot. Even though they all run it internally. If that isn't the purest, most concentrated form of arbitrary, blind, own-goal beaureaucratic corporate idiocy I don't know what is. And people actual…

"Why am I so hardnosed about this? It’s because it is much, much better to reject a good candidate than to accept a bad candidate." -- Joel

https://www.forbes.com/sites/falonfatemi/2016/09/28/the-true...

Re: They Rejected Us

#315

Post by rabidrat »

dionian wrote: post #15

If there are two good candidates and I pick one of them, it doesn't necessarily mean you were 'rejected', you just weren't selected. I've been 'rejected' by plenty of companies but I try not to take it too personally.

For a company with infinite headcount (any of FAANG), it does mean you were rejected though.

Re: They Rejected Us

#316

Post by noitsnot »

smoyer wrote: post #263
davnicwil wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I like the idea of this site but was disappointed to find most of the entries being something like I was rejected by Fashionable BigCo X and Y but then eventually got a job at Fashionable BigCo Z Which is great, it really is, but not really all that interesting (sorry!). You've only been rejected in a very narrow sense. Everyone has an off day, or off interviews. You were actually accepted by the mainstream, ev…

Well ... doing a little mental statistics it looks to me like you should just apply to Twitter in the first place if you never want to get rejected during your job search.

The abundance of Twitter picking people up after rejections is really odd to say the least.

Re: They Rejected Us

#317

Post by mratzloff »

saagarjha wrote: post #313
gamesbrainiac wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Package manages often determine the success of an entire ecosystem. To give you an idea of how hard this is, Go still has not been able to come up with proper package management. Some of the best engineers in the world built that language.

macOS had multiple package managers prior to Homebrew.

And they sucked.

Re: They Rejected Us

#318

Post by DenisM »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #150
sho wrote: post #103

I still can't get over the fact that Google rejected mxcl, author of homebrew, possibly the most important piece of software on OSX, because he couldn't remember some useless piece of easily-googleable (ha) CS trivia on the spot. Even though they all run it internally. If that isn't the purest, most concentrated form of arbitrary, blind, own-goal beaureaucratic corporate idiocy I don't know what is. And people actual…

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin... Please read the above. It contains an updated opinion from the creator of homebrew and is more relevant. It also contains responses from people who worked at google and were or are part of the hiring process.

Some of the Google employee replies are so bad, they circle around and come out good.

Re: They Rejected Us

#319

Post by mamon »

vonmoltke wrote: post #138
eqdw wrote: 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. That's just life. Did anybody ever think it wasn't like this? Based on how this industry carries on about "talent shortages" and "lack of good engineers", yeah.

Thing is: Majority of failed interviews can be probably traced back to a relatively small pool of mediocre engineers, who get rejected by dozens of companies, before they finaly land a job. And then they loose that job 3-12 months later, because they coulndn't keep up with their employer expectations. So, at least in theory, both "there's talent shortage" and "it is so hard to land a job" can be true at the same time, just for different groups of people.

Re: They Rejected Us

#320

Post by electrograv »

saagarjha wrote: post #311
electrograv wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm earnestly trying to avoid downplaying his work, but it's only a package manager. I'm earnestly trying to avoid downplaying your comment, but you sound like you have no clue how much engineering effort and talent is actually required to build and maintain a reliable, functional, production-grade package manager that a huge number of people use. Being able to completely implement and support a sophisticated softw…

> I'm earnestly trying to avoid downplaying your comment, but you sound like you have no clue how much engineering effort and talent is actually required to build and maintain a reliable, functional, production-grade package manager that a huge number of people use. It's also entirely possible that Google saw Homebrew as neither reliable, functional, or production-grade enough for their taste. While Homebrew is somew…

That's a very good point -- I've never had any issues with it, but I've also not used it very extensively, so my anecdotal experience doesn't count. If it's true that it's more broken and unreliable than alternates, then I'd agree with you.
Post reply on HN