"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
They Rejected Us
61–70 of 385 posts
Re: They Rejected Us
#62This really highlights how hard it is to hire, at least in Tech. We come up with processes and fantastic lists of questions that verify how well a candidate knows minutia, and use that as proxy for how well he/she will do in a position where the primary required skill is speed of learning and growth.
I'll hire someone who knows how to find out what they are missing over someone who knows a lot of details but can't grow. But that is hard to justify and involves risk: what if I misread someone's capacity to learn and I just hired somone without the skills nor the ability to learn? Joke's on me!
So larger orgs will naturally go for process-driven hiring practices, so they can cover their behinds (and part of that is due to the requirement of applying the same standard to everyone—can't fault them for that).
But this is how small orgs can win, by taking chances on candidates that are very driven to grow, and can create impressive teams that will outlive the company: good teams always find a way to recombine at least partially in other companies.
So the corollary for candidates is: you have to reverse-engineer the hiring process of the large company you're trying to join. Or you can go for smaller companies* that do something you want to get deep into. Total comp is less but look at it in terms of you getting paid to learn. Then make yourself available so that large orgs come trying to hire you. When that happens, it will be on your terms.
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* Note: small companies don't have to be startups. While startups can be fantastic places for growth, they can also be sh*t shows since the entire company is trying to figure itself out, so be sure you properly interview their founders to get a feel for their integrity/sleaze.
Re: They Rejected Us
#63Do practice interviews at companies you don't really want to work for. It takes the pressure off and makes the real interviews easier.
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 :^)
Re: They Rejected Us
#64This 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…
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?
Re: They Rejected Us
#65Salty software engineers :)
It gave me a good laugh, it's comforting to find some people who are saltier than me. It made confronting my own saltiness easier.
Re: They Rejected Us
#66This 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…
exactly rejection is part of saleship if you are not selling than you have no rejection they go hand in hand
Re: They Rejected Us
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still, it's pretty silly when a company says you're not knowledgeable enough in X when you literally wrote the book on X. Being told, "You obviously don't have experience" by a company when it's literally untrue really grinds my gears.
I think you have to take all interview feedback with a pinch of salt. People make emotional decisions then try and rationalise them. You will rarely hear what the emotional issue was.
Yeah, I understand it. The _public_ reason for a rejection is rarely the same as the _actual_ reason for a rejection.
It just grinds my gears when a company adds that little bit of insult at the end of it, by somehow making it your fault in the end for supposedly lying to them.
Re: They Rejected Us
#68I wonder how safe would be me post my own stories... Since I don't have a major company job, would it stop my hiring chances? But basically: one company rejected me because was against company policy hire people without experience... Except they wanted to be the first company in my country to hire someone for that role and wanted to hire a local. No wonder they even wrote magazine articles complaining of not finding…
I have evidence to suggest that I have been subjected to illegal hiring discrimination in the past. However, I'm not going to share my story because I know a ton of HN people will defend the discrimination as justified (even though it's not, and even though it was illegal).
But I don't give a fuck. A company wants to reject me on stupid grounds? I'll go get a different job at a better company. There's _tens of thousands_ of software employers in the bay area. If one decides they dislike me so much that they're willing to do this, it's probably a bullet dodged anyway
Re: They Rejected Us
#69Do practice interviews at companies you don't really want to work for. It takes the pressure off and makes the real interviews easier.
Recruiting is a time consuming task for all involved and for you to casually waste peoples time in that manner is horribly disrespectful
Re: They Rejected Us
#70This 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…
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?
When I was a senior at university, my friends and I all had a wall at our apartments covered with our rejection letters. Back then (if they gave you the courtesy of a reply) they were sent on paper in the mail. So yes, it's always been that way.
I myself have been on interview committees and voted to reject candidates who got hired, and turned out to be good. Why did I want to reject them? Don't really know, just got a bad vibe in the interview more than anything. We didn't do much technical screening at that company. Decisions were mostly based on past experience and references, and whether you seemed reasonably intelligent and sociable in the interview. I think that we hired a real dud maybe once, so it seemed to work.