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They Rejected Us

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Re: They Rejected Us

#81

Post by markbnj »

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 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 read it completely differently, like "See this has happened to us all at some point; it's not personal."

Re: They Rejected Us

#82

Post by hinkley »

swampthinker wrote: post #48

Max Howell's story really surprises me. You would figure that someone would've internally fast tracked a developer like him.

That one is famous. We had a quite lively discussion about it here shortly after the event.

Edit: to this day I have no fucking idea what “inverting a binary tree” means, other than the interviewer was too proud to admit they made a mistake.

Trees have two dimensions and “invert” is the one you can’t change.

Re: They Rejected Us

#83

Post by egometry »

fenomas wrote: post #51
dannykwells wrote: post #4

Maybe it's just me but it sure does seem like a lot of these people ended up at Twitter. And I don't see a lot of Google.

The obvious explanation would be that the maintainer (who used to work there) hit up colleagues for stories, or because it circulated among Twitter employees for whatever other reason. It's not very likely to imply anything about Twitter's or Google's hiring.

This is accurate. I see a lot of my twitter-employee friend network represented here.

(Also, this feels like it even started as a twitter thread.)

Re: They Rejected Us

#84

Post by Aunche »

dentemple wrote: post #42
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.

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.

This is why a lot of companies just don't bother to give any substantial feedback.

Re: They Rejected Us

#85

Post by kadendogthing »

softawre wrote: post #79
kadendogthing wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the hiring process -- especially in programming -- isn't some golden, concise, dependable standard. It's quite messy, chaotic, and practically completely worthless. The best you can do is sort out the people you absolutely cannot use or don't want. The rest? The one's that you reject because of not matching some part of the interview process but largely are a good fit? They're probably fine, they're…

If I am being honest, as an engineering manager, I really hate to have to fire people. I have done it a few times in my career and I still remember every 15 second block of time in each of the meetings. So my hiring bar is pretty high now. I've had my current team all for 4 years and they are all still doing great.

It's hard to gauge what "high" is in these contexts. I'm specifically deriding the multi-week, extremely specific but not relevant exercises some companies have as their interview process.

What does your interview process look like, if you care to share?

Re: They Rejected Us

#86

Post by dictum »

patmcguire wrote: post #80
ams6110 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Probably the most honest explanation of how companies actually hire I've seen.

It's stunning how much energy, ink and tongue movement is wasted trying to justify most decisions, in every aspect of life, when in practice they boil down to vibes.

Re: They Rejected Us

#87

Post by dumb_troll »

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…

You're correct, but I'm a bitch (maybe because of school, parents, life, idk) ... this was somewhat comforting.

Re: They Rejected Us

#88

Post by mixmastamyk »

eqdw wrote: post #64
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…

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?

In the 90s we’d have a nice chat, review the resume, and then get “can you start Monday?” Now with twenty years experience it’s a twelve-hour marathon to prove I’m not a fraud, at every single lead. It’s just not scalable, when it takes dozens of leads to score an offer.

Re: They Rejected Us

#89

Post by [deleted] »

projectramo wrote: post #6

Note to self: If I get rejected from a lot of companies, just apply to Twitter. They'll surely say yes. Addendum: there should be a companion site "Even twitter rejected me!"

[deleted]
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