They Rejected Us • Hacker News Board

Re: They Rejected Us

#321

Post by usepgp » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

hartator wrote: post #262

yongjik wrote: post #177

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?

just asked the 6 or so coworkers here right now who have macs. not a single one has homebrew installed.

Re: They Rejected Us

#322

Post by w0mbat » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #39

jakeinspace wrote: post #24

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…

Is facebook a good bar now? I was thinking facebook isn't so popular, you really want SpaceX or something "better" now. All you validation seekers have to move!

Facebook is known for over-paying, which alone accounts for its continuing popularity with engineers. I worked my ass off trying to get through the multi screen hiring process there and despite being ex-Google still fucked it up at the end. It didn’t help that I got concussion the day before the on-site and wasn’t 100%.

Re: They Rejected Us

#323

Post by aylmao » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

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…

The most mind-boggling thing to me is that Google interns get re-interviewed before getting a return offer.

You don't go through the whole process. I can't remember the exact numbers, but iirc the logic is that offer decisions are made on 5 pieces of feedback. If you interview at Google you get a total of 5 interviews. If you're an intern, your intern manager and two peers write feedback, so they need 2 other people to interview you and give a thumbs up.

If you think about it, this is kinda nuts. They're hiring someone to do a job. They have them do that job for 3 months. Yet, rather than fully basing their decision on wether that person is good at the job they will actually be doing, they instead opt for also putting you through coding interview questions.

I haven't heard of another company that does this. I know others also want several opinions, so they just assign more peer/manager reviewers.

The sad part is I know interns who suspect this might well be why they didn't get a return offer-- interviewing is nerve-wrecking for some people, and it can be hard to get up to speed especially because towards the end of the summer recruiting season and early school to-dos start to pile up on top of finishing your intern project.

Re: They Rejected Us

#324

Post by w0mbat » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:42 AM UTC

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #235

jakeinspace wrote: post #24

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…

I'm pretty proud of how I got rejected from Google, how I laid into several of their products as bad and slow and missing important features. Now that they've incorporated most of my feedback into those products I go around and brag about how mad everyone got when I dared to criticize the holy Google during the interview.

Never criticize the company or their products during the interview. Whatever company it is. Have some common sense.

Re: They Rejected Us

#325

Post by HillaryBriss » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:42 AM UTC

My favorite rejection story is the one by Adam Sontag

Re: They Rejected Us

#326

Post by unnouinceput » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:46 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #281

Haul4ss wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I was an intern in college, I have seen older technical folks become harder and harder to employ. I've had good friends lose their job and because they're older/more expensive, they get rejected with all sorts of creative excuses. Well, guess what? Now I'm older and I'm more expensive. Thankfully I saw it coming, and I have been saving diligently along the way. I'm not rich, but my lifestyle costs are not insan…

You become more expensive and you also typically get more specialized in the things that make you expensive. Even if you keep skills up in a variety of areas, you typically major on certain topics where you're really valued. There are a huge number of random things I could have been slotted into right out of school and I'd have done a good job. Today, my skills and compensation are much more specific.

Exactly this. As becoming older you also get experience, experience very few have. I was at one meeting with several people from a company that hired me as external contractor and several people from their client company. And an issue arrived at the table, a technical issue none of their staffers or client's staffer could explain/solve (both technical and non-technical people were at that meeting). So they asked me to weight in my input. After a round of questions from my side I told the most technical people there I thought he could understand, to do XYZ. He did it and just like that the problem went away. XYZ was a very weird combination that none fully understood how that could be the solution. When they asked me how did I know that I said only one word "experience". That's what you pick up over the years, the truest form of knowledge, the one that makes you to be more expensive. Because just like that particular problem where they wasted at least 100 hours of different people trying to solve it and in itself the problem also made their process more expensive, having a person that can solve this type of problems is the make or break of a company.

Re: They Rejected Us

#327

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:54 AM UTC

I’m far less worried that these companies reject a lot of people than I am worried that so many engineers are willing to accept idiotic open-plan offices, horribly dysfunctional management, pay that (while high) doesn’t fairly reflect a realistic fraction of the monetary value you actually contribute to the business.

Jobs at most well-known tech companies are really dumpster fire terrible things, bad for basic psychological health.

It’s sad that we consider getting these jobs a serious measure of any kind of success.

Re: They Rejected Us

#328

Post by ravenstine » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 2:02 AM UTC

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #63

maxxxxx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who has time for that if you have a full time job? Do you spend all your vacation in interviewing?

Your first job is your job, your second job is working on OSS on github to make yourself look good, and your third job is interviewing :^)

> your second job is working on OSS on github to make yourself look good

Sounds good on paper. In practice, what people do on Github is worthless.

I've only one company ever actually looked at what I made on GitHub. Otherwise, they'll never check out what I've done even if a project is listed on a resume. Nobody has the time or amount of shits to give to actually review your own code. Very few people I know who are working as software engineers even have any serious projects or contributions on GitHub.

As much as I love doing side projects, the idea that companies care what I do on GitHub is some of the worst advice I've encountered. Now my profile is full of trash I've forked along the way and it hasn't made a lick of difference as to how many interviews I've gotten.

Re: They Rejected Us

#329

Post by mcguire » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #144

NotAnEconomist wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent most of my college evening getting drunk with philosophy majors and pretending my math degree meant more than my CS fallback -- but I haven't found the corporate interview system to be that terrible. I do however think it's a game that conflicts with certain personality types, including myself early in my career. I'm always curious what you (or anyone else!) think could be done better.

The all day interview process selects for a kind of person who is confortable with arduous processes. With poor scalability. IMO any team with an SLA should be avoiding these people like the plague, because they will tolerate bullshit manual processes that take all day. They have no motivation to make foolproof automated processes with good visibility and repeatability. The smartest of them will fight attempts to cha…

The downsides of avoiding the algorithmic interview process is that you will end up hiring people who talk a very good game, but cannot write code to get out of a paper bag.

One of the most painful interviews I have ever seen was a guy who had a resume listing a number of interesting projects. He could talk energetically and in detail about them. Then we asked him to write some code to solve a simple problem. He said he didn't know our primary language, but was very familiar with Python. I know Python, I was good with that.

He didn't know Python. I tried to help him, but he didn't get much farther. I eventually called the interview, with a complete 180 of my hiring opinion. Nice guy, but he couldn't be what we needed.

Re: They Rejected Us

#330

Post by cheez » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 2:05 AM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #292

throwaway5250 wrote: post #172

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 someo…

Or you can do what I did, rip them a new one and tell them that their process is shit.