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

I can relate. I've been rejected after 2-3 months of pretty good prep by all of FB, Google, MSFT, Amz and Apple after onsites with them. It's been pretty depressing and I feel totally burned out, but the only path forward seems to be to practice harder.

All the companies above told me to try again after a year, Google mentioned I wouldn't have to do the phone screens again, so hopefully I'm not that far away from getting the job.

My advice would be to try stay positive. If you're a programmer and have a stable job, you're in the top 10-20% income wise in this Country and probably in the top 5% of all humanity. As programmers, we have the tools to imagine and make into reality whatever we chose. To top it off, we generally enjoy doing this stuff and working conditions are usually tolerable.

My current path is to keep challenging myself progressively tougher algo problems on websites like HackerRank and not get locked into the mindset of gluing together libraries all day.

All the best for next year!

I've recently gone through similar rejection myself. I found a company through a Who's Hiring post. I breezed through three phone interviews, and it felt like the company had hired the NSA to find me, as what they seemed to be looking for was me exactly. I had an all day in person interview, felt like I had a great rapport with everyone, had no problems with any of the coding sections, had great answers for their questions, and getting the job seemed like a foregone conclusion. Then a week later I got "we've gone with another candidate". I'm pretty sure that's not true, as it's a fairly small company, and over the course of my interviews, their team page was updated a few times. No one with the position I applied for has been added since before my interview, and the job ad is still up, and in fact, has been expanded upon. So essentially, they'd rather just not have that position filled then fill it with me :\

What's funny though, is that when I first read the rejection email, the main source of my disappointment was not the job, but realizing I'm probably stuck in the midwest for another winter.

My head is up, though.

2 months ago I went through something similar. Interviewed at this company: 2 phone interviews, one skype call, and about 6 hours of onsite (flew out to a different city).

I got another offer so I contacted the manager from the first company and the recruiter. Manager calls me up and we discuss the offer, things seem to be going well, I was happy with the offer and we agree to move ahead. Recruiter contacts me the next day saying I should be getting an offer letter by the end of the day. Next day I get a call from the recruiter saying the HR department wants to see my current pay stubs and tax documents from the last year because they want to ensure my "integrity". Things went south after that as I didn't want to give my personal information. I really liked the team and the job (what was described to me by the team / manager).

I was in the same state as you are right now, didn't really sleep properly for 3 weeks. I would suggest taking your mind off the job hunt for next week or so - - start a new project - learn a new technology that you have never touched before - hike / take long walks (helped me a lot as it opened me up to a new perspective) - volunteer (tech talks / meet ups)

Honestly, a job or a company doesn't define who you are and what skills you have, it is YOU who makes the difference.

I've twice failed the final round of Google interviews. Just remember that if you haven't failed then you haven't really pushed yourself to the limit. Now that you're a member of the huge family of Google rejects, take a look at the myriad awesome companies out there. I ended up with a fantastic post-series A startup that has exposed me to opportunities I'd never have if I was writing boilerplate Python and PHP at Google. Though Google pays better and had free food. Working for a startup is not without its drawbacks.

If relocation is not an issue for you, there are literally tons of jobs in US. HN's hiring thread doesn't represent even a 0.01% of these... There are many great companies or big enough circles where they even never heard of "Hacker News". So you should consider the world outside HN.