
"You're not qualified to join our team" - almosnow
I&#x27;d like to share with you guys a recent experience that I&#x27;ve had while looking for a job. It may be a bit long but I think is well worth the read.<p>I&#x27;ve applied for a job at ooyala, they were looking for software engineers and I honestly exceeded (by far) the requirements they define for the position. I sent my resume and eventually got called for a first interview.<p>In this first interview, I was asked to implement a ‘kind-of-hard’ algorithm. Candidates were given an hour to finish and I completed everything in 20 minutes, the guy tested my implementation and told me it was impressed because it took me less than an hour while most other people don’t even finish.<p>A week later I got called for a second interview. This time I was asked to code many different algorithms, much easier than the one on the first interview but still challenging. The success of the interview was measured on how many algorithms you managed to code within an hour. When I finished, I was told that I did really well because most people solve around 2-3 problems on average while I managed to solve 8.<p>Another week later I got called for a third interview. This time I was asked to code the game &#x27;breakout&#x27; taking into account a set of 10-12 features (like different types of tiles, power-ups, etc...). I was given 4 hours and finished everything just shy of 3. The interviewer told me it was fine because on average they expect you to implement just around 4-5 features while I managed to code ALL of them.<p>Today I got a call from them: &quot;We recently reviewed your performance along with the guys that interviewed you. We believe that you are not qualified to join our team but we&#x27;d like to extend an invitation to you to apply again whenever you feel more capable [...]&quot;<p>And that’s it; an awesome degree, 10+ years experience, excellent performance on 3 out of 3 practical interviews, still unemployed…<p>So, what does it take to get a job guys?
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hluska
I'm not trying to minimize your pain, nor am I trying to defend the company in
question. However, in my experience, the probability of being given an honest
answer for why you didn't get the job is almost zero.

Looking for a job is an all around horrible experience and flippant answers
that in no way match your interview experience make the process all that much
worse. If you need someone to talk to, I've been exactly where you are and my
email address is on my profile. I don't know if I can be of much help, but I'd
be glad to commiserate with you. Or, alternately, if by some stroke of luck,
you're located somewhere near me, the first few rounds are on me.

~~~
almosnow
Thanks man, I really appreciate it.

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NumberSix
I had an unusual, negative interview experience with Ooyala several years ago.
I rather suspect it is the company and not you.

This happens. As you get more experience in software or engineering, you will
find yourself acing hard technical questions on interviews and knowing you
have done well, yet, for some reason, the company won't hire you. In some
cases, it will be because they, in fact, feel threatened, that you are better
than they are. You can be a direct threat if the hiring manager is running a
project that is in trouble and higher ups or investors are unhappy about
his/her progress.

From what I understand, Ooyala was founded by a couple of very young Google
alumni; Google was their first job after Stanford. The heavy technical
interviewing is a typical Google practice, and Googler startups frequently
copy Google practices. Googler startups, especially those founded by ex-
Googlers who have never worked anywhere other than Google, tend to be odd.
There can be a teenage rock star whose success and adoring groupies have gone
to his head problem.

Some aspects of video technologies, such as developing and implementing video
codecs, are extremely difficult. It is fairly common for people to grossly
underestimate the difficulties if they are unfamiliar with the field and then
become frustrated and emotional in dealing with the problems. This might also
have contributed to your negative experience.

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avenger123
You know what, to some extent its a numbers game.

The reasons you didn't get this job could be many. They could have felt
intimated by your level of competence, someone decided they don't like you,
etc.

The main thing is to take what you can from each company and learn from it.
There are some companies that doing 3 technical interviews and weeks of
interviewing are worth it (I'm thinking of Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.) If
it is a start up or a small company and they make you jump through these hoops
you got to decide if its worth it.

Build your pipeline. You should try to line up at least two interviews a week
at different companies (at a minimum). When you do this, you will feel more
confident and it will show in the interview. Never stop looking until you have
an offer. So this means, focus on setting up interviews even if you have ones
coming up.

Realistically speaking, if you get to your forth company and you don't get an
offer, its likely there is something wrong with your approach, your interview
skills, the jobs you are applying to, etc. My rule of thumb when I am looking
is that if I don't have an offer by the third company I have interviewed with,
I totally need to focus on what I am doing wrong. It could be just a streak of
bad luck, but somethings off in my approach.

Lastly, like I said, its a numbers game, you win this by having a lot of
companies to interview with.

------
chris_wot
It doesn't take a long time to find that Ooyala might not be the best company
to work for:

* [http://gigaom.com/2010/03/31/brightcove-ooyala-is-spreading-...](http://gigaom.com/2010/03/31/brightcove-ooyala-is-spreading-lies-about-our-security/)

* [http://blog.brightcove.com/en/2010/03/desperation-security-a...](http://blog.brightcove.com/en/2010/03/desperation-security-and-ethics)

------
bratsche
I wouldn't take it personally. Many companies seem to never be forthcoming
with their reasons for doing the things they do.

I know this won't pay your bills right now, but in a way you can be glad to
not be working at the company that didn't hire you. If they're the kind of
company that makes people jump through a bunch of hoops, gives them positive
feedback every step of the way and then doesn't hire them then it's likely not
a place you want to work. The tougher situation is when you do go to work at a
company like that, and they just arbitrarily hire you and not someone else,
and then over the next couple years you have to experience how fucked up their
decision make process is.

My last company fired one of the other developers shortly after I left; they
gave him no advanced warning, no indication that they weren't happy with what
he was doing, and no honest reason for why they were firing him. They fired a
girl from marketing apparently for just being intelligent. They fired another
guy from marketing because a few years after they hired him for a marketing
job they decided he should suddenly be a coder.

You got a small peek into the decision making process at this company you
interviewed for. For whatever reason they didn't think you'd be a good fit,
and you should now be certain that _they_ weren't a good fit for you either.
Sounds like you're a smart guy/girl and you'll rock an interview at a place
that will actually appreciate you and what you can offer them.

~~~
eshvk
> If they're the kind of company that makes people jump through a bunch of
> hoops, gives them positive feedback every step of the way and then doesn't
> hire them then it's likely not a place you want to work.

I know you are trying to make the OP feel good and all. But dude, every
company does that. Unless you know folks in the company or are so good that
they pee in their pants at the sight of you actually considering working for
them and give you a blank check.

------
bonemachine
It's starting to look like a lot of startups just don't know how to assess
candidates, or to reliably predict job performance from the interview process.
So instead they like to churn through lots and lots of applicants, subjecting
them to needlessly lengthy quizzing cage sessions and other ostensibly
"objective" stack-ranking techniques. And then brag to their peers about how
they only hire "top 1%"-ers. As if to cover up for the fact that quite often
the actual hiring decision amounts to a gut level feeling, a hunch basically,
that this person will or will not flourish in the role despite having about
the same order of gaps and deficits that everyone else on the team has, and
which the interviewer secretly knows himself to have. Just different ones,
perhaps.

So I wouldn't make much of their "assessment" of your capabilities. Why they
passed on you ultimately doesn't matter. Overall what you've described is
indicative of a general thoughtlessness and lack of vision somewhere at the
top of the food chain in that organization. So like the others in this thread
I'd say it looks like you dodged a bullet, here.

And thanks for naming the company (Ooyala) in this case. The more companies
that get exposed for bullshit interviewing tactics and shabby treatment at the
hands of poorly trained HR drones, the better.

------
memracom
You should have walked out when they asked you to do that 2nd technical
interview. People are not computers. We all know that a simple coding
interview is necessary to winnow out the barely competent people, so it is
reasonable to have a brief phone interview, followed by some kind of timed
coding test. But when you pass that and then, instead of talking to you, they
want you to do another coding interview, walk away. They are a bunch of idiots
who you would not want to work with anyway.

Employers owe it to candidates to actually talk to them, to ask them questions
about their experience. If they are not willing to do that after a short phone
screening and a timed coding test, then this employer lacks confidence in
their ability to find people and is clutching at straws in the hope that
battery after battery of coding tests is going to identify a good employee.

People are not computers. There is value in a person's character, their
approach to work, the way they design a solution and make decisions. You need
to talk to them in order to learn that kind of thing.

------
sfrechtling
The thing is that employers are looking for more than just fitting
requirements - they are also being influenced by subjectives (how you act,
look etc) and even by pure luck. Their excuse may be that you are not
qualified, but it is just as likely in my opinion that it could have been a
change in market conditions, or their opinion of you as a person, or even the
job description may have slightly changed during the process. You can always
ask for specifics.

A long time ago I used to work in recruitment, and the two biggest things I
learnt was that the requirements mean almost nothing, and that apart from
entry level jobs (grad positions), how you frame your experience to what they
are looking for is the most important part of applying.

I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties, but the fact you passed i) the
resume screen, ii) multiple technical tests and iii) some interviews is a good
sign - I would be positive and just look for another company that feels you
fit better.

------
jhhn
Here in Brazil the main reason for these rejections, what I suppose to be in
more than 90% of times, are the salary expectations. It's the first thing they
ask about and, even if they call you for personal interview, it's only to
build a large number of candidates because they will choose the cheaper one.
Almost all the times you will never even receive a return.

Software engineering are positions suitable for kids of that guys who lives
with parents forever. It's not possible to have a family o raise children with
these kind of careers.

I'm so regretful for dedicating my whole life working with IT and computer
programming. I was so curious in the beginning, but nowadays I fell like I was
stupid.

I'm also unemployed because I left a position in a bad company about three
weeks ago. The last information I received states that a lot of people are
leaving as well.

~~~
ghostdiver
Why not leave your country? Europe is open for people coming from Brazil,
somehow this nation fits into European culture.

~~~
jhhn
To be honest I don't know. And I don't think that Europe is open for us.
Brazil exported a lot of non skilled illegals for everywhere in past. The
Spanish, for example, seem to hate us. They love to establish their corrupt
companies here in our territory, what is a very profitable place due to our
huge life cost, but they don't like our people there.

What happens is that there are a lot of descendants of Italians, Japaneses and
others living here that can easier move abroad. Note that "easier" is not
"easily" and it's also not my case.

------
lazyant
I bet probably you got a canned response and they didn't go ahead with you not
because of tech skills but because somebody didn't like you for some reason or
felt threatened or who knows why, it's a very random process.

------
dlu
Sorry to hear that, it sounds super frustrating. "Not qualified" is a less
than eloquent phrase, but companies can sometimes be terrible at explaining
their reasoning.

It could easily be a scenario where they would rather see much fewer features
that were well written and painstakingly cleaned up. However, their
question/prompts may have accidentally led you to over-value quantity of
features completed. I've seen a number of interviews go side-ways because of
miscommunication like that.

It is really hard to tell what happened. If you can get feedback from them,
that could be very useful. Otherwise, keep on plugging away.

Good luck to ya

------
maaku
General advice: the reason given for a rejection is almost never the real
reason.

------
ACow_Adonis
When someone breaks up with you, do you believe them when they say "Its not
you, its me!"? Lesson 1: Be skeptical. Lesson 2: Be really skeptical of humans
offering insight into the real motivations for their own actions.

Lets go into detail on this. If you're going for a job interview, you don't
get the job, and you're given some feedback, several rather unlikely things
have to line up for that feedback to be truthful, useful, and accurate.

1\. The interviewer has to actually be able to accurately gauge the metric
they think they're measuring (and most interviews don't). 2\. The interviewer
has to actually be relying primarily on that metric (and most interviews
aren't.) 3\. The interviewers have to actually be able to have the insight to
know the real reason you aren't given the job (and most people don't have good
insight into why they make decisions, and there's often a layer of bureaucracy
involved as well) 4\. The interviewer has to actually be able to tell you the
real reason you aren't given the job (they can't tell you if the reason is
illegal, or if circumstances have changed, or if someone is trying to save
face/not admit something...)

How can I put this gently. Its all bullshit.

Could I be wrong? Sure, but if you're a betting person, I know which way I'd
bet...

------
dl8
I've applied to a soul crushing number of companies this year and I've yet to
land a position. Sometimes it's because I just fail at the tech interviews, or
I just have a brain fart and mess up trivial stuff, but quite a number of
times, like the OP I thought I do quite well yet still get rejected. Yeah it's
a numbers game, but I think I've applied and got rejected/not responded to by
a absurd amount of companies so far.

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goldenkey
You might have imposter syndrome. If any job I went for required 3 grilling
technical interviews designed to put me like a mouse in a maze, I'd tell them
to get lost. The fact that you even went through with all that chicanery is
quite telling.

I believe that despite the time limits, you probably wrote subpar code.
Otherwise they probably wouldn't have said, feel free to re-apply when you
feel more capable. That doesn't sound like a tall tale to me. (and I'm aware
other HNers are saying HR often lies about the reasons.)

To top it off, you are having a problem finding a job in a huge tech market.
Any coder worth his salt, is not going to have a problem finding a job in this
day and age, unless they lack confidence (imposter syndrome) or really aren't
that great..despite years of experience, and yada yada.

Unless you can provide more information, I'm leaning towards lack of
confidence, or false confidence.

~~~
almosnow
The code was fine, trust me, I have 10+ years of experience coding ;D

JK, but yeah the thing with the three interviews also bugged me, however I
just went with it.

~~~
goldenkey
Thinking about this some more. I would call up / email, and ask to speak to
whoever evaluated your tests. It is fair game to want to know what was done
wrong, and what the proper solutions are. That should kill your curiosity, and
show what the real deal (or deceitful game) they are playing is.

Sorry you had to go through that mate. There are plenty of jobs out there,
hell, if I was you I'd work remotely :-)

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rajacombinator
Sounds like an HR moron run amok. Not surprising considering my general
impression of that outfit. (Look at their atrocious name, reflects general
thoughtlessness.) Consider yourself lucky.

------
sbussard
Start a company dude (or chick), you've got no excuses

~~~
almosnow
I am doing it! Been working on it from the last two years, the job pays the
bills so that I can come back home and spend my afternoon coding :D

------
kohanz
Sounds like a poor choice of wording from ooyala. You are clearly qualified
for this position on a technical level, but there are a multitude of other
things you are evaluated on for most positions. Perhaps you didn't meet their
requirements in one of these non-technical areas. If this was the case, they
would have been better off using the "not a fit" wording or something similar.

~~~
almosnow
Yeah man, I feel fine and confident I'm just really pissed off for the "you're
not capable" remark.

TBH, the guy that checked my code on the last interview was like "oh I didn't
knew yo could do that on Javascript" when looking at stuff like closures.

I'm just pissed off man :/

~~~
goldenkey
Multiple technical interviews is kind of silly anyhow. Sounds like an ill-run
company. Only one technical interview is really necessary. If they don't value
their employees time or candidates time (the hiring process takes both), then
I'd forget the whole thing and wouldn't let yourself get baited again by
overly technical interviews. Just get up and announce, "I'm not interested in
wasting time, you can figure out my intellect in 10 minutes if you had someone
even half-my-wits."

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vijucat
What was the age difference between you and the people you interviewed with at
Ooyala? Maybe the 20-year old who interviewed you decided you are not a
"cultural fit" (read "too old") for the team.

I have 10 years+ of experience, too, and I am quite impressed with your
performance; given the description of the tasks, I wonder if I would able to
complete them!

~~~
almosnow
I'm 26, they were all between 24 and 30 maybe. Also, no bs, I started working
part-time as a coder sometime around 16 and just continued doing it

~~~
vijucat
In any case, it's regrettable that your time was wasted, but I guess one day,
you'll look back and see how it was a stepping stone to something better! :-)

------
chudi
Maybe the next time try to convince them that you're a valuable guy, they gave
you hard problems to solve and you did a great job, but its possible that they
were expecting something different.

People don't get hired only for technical skills, they get hired for a lot of
reasons.

Don't take it too serious, try in another company were your skills are
valuable!

------
Yxven
Don't overthink it. Most likely, they said the same thing to all the
candidates they didn't hire.

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Patrick_Devine
I would send them an email outlining, in a positive way, all the things which
you just mentioned and explain how you're capable and qualified for the
position. Be polite and professional, and if they can't get their crap
together, keep looking at other positions.

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brianmcc
Probably was no job. They had a few unsolved JIRAs and needed a breakout clone
for a client :-)

------
FurrBall
"...we'd like to extend an invitation to you to apply again whenever you feel
more capable".

Sounds like it was written by a pompous egg head on a power trip.

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ratsimihah
Maybe they're just testing your interest. If you really want to work for them,
apply again. That may just be a part of the process.

------
smirksirlot
A company of 220 people that can't figure out how to properly phrase a hiring
rejection? Not a good sign.

