

Strange reason for being turned down. Any other good ones? - JGailor

This is a pretty weird one, as I've been programming for a while and haven't heard it yet. I have been interviewing w/ a local Bay Area startup that I was introduced to via a friends recommendation. It's a bit of a strange situation as I had just spent the past year working as a co-founder on a startup, and I made it clear that there was a strong chance that I would be applying to a startup incubator over the winter to work on a problem that I find frustrating and would love to see solved, so it might not be a long-term thing. They were understanding, so we met, and after a few good face-to-face meetings we had talked about a reasonable short-term engagement.  At this point I usually ask the other side to think it over a bit and send me an email with an offer to start really coalescing the process, and to open up some space for any questions that might not occur during an interview.<p>After a few days, I got an email, and while it was very positive on my technical/engineering abilities, ultimately they thought I was "too mature" for the team and might not be a good fit.  I was somewhat disappointed, as I liked these guys and thought they had an idea that I could really dig deep into, but I can understand the need to make sure the team is clicking at close to optimal efficiency as possible.  I just have never had the "too mature" reason used before.  My thoughts at this point are that either:<p>A) They felt that was an easy way to say they weren't really interested.  Strange, but that's ok.<p>B) They were not happy with the potential for me to leave after a few months. Very legitimate, but there's always some flexibility and we could have talked some more about it and changed plans.<p>C) I just was too serious during the interview process, and didn't seem like I could work comfortably with the team. I think this is very possible, but usually when interviewing it seems hard to get too comfortable.  There's a lot of evaluation going on from both sides, and you want to put your best face forward.  For me that usually means trying to look capable and professional.<p>Anyway, I think they're a great company and will blow up in the next few years, but this just struck me as a strange one, so I thought I would cheer myself up and see if anyone else had any funny or weird stories about interviews.
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hturki
I think you're spot on with the "they think you're too uptight" hypothesis.
Small teams can be really anal when it comes to culture fit, for better or for
worse, and unfortunately when it comes to this people can be really prejudiced
and ofter rely on more "superficial" factors such as gender and age. I
personally work at a startup with a lot of pretty brilliant people, but that
has a pretty bro-ey feel at times. I personally enjoy it (I did pledge a frat
in college), but I see the term "culture fit" being thrown around when
discussing potential candidates and do have mixed feelings about it. On one
hand, it does contribute to a sense of community and high morale, and hiring
someone that would ruin that sense of community would be pretty bad, but on
the other hand, we do end up turning away a few otherwise qualified
candidates.

But long story short, they probably didn't hire you because of some shallow
first impression (which doesn't automatically make them jerks since we're all
guilty of this), but there was probably nothing you could have done so you
shouldn't feel bad about it. It's just the way the world works sometimes.

~~~
masterzora
> but on the other hand, we do end up turning away a few otherwise qualified
> candidates.

I've had to turn down several otherwise-qualified candidates recently for
culture fit reasons. While it would be awesome if all qualified candidates
were created equal, their technical qualifications are only one piece of the
puzzle.

In reality, the culture fit and the ability to work with the rest of the team
is key in a small company. Everybody has to deal with everybody, so if anybody
has issues dealing with anybody you can run into some major friction that'll
cost you more than you gain.

At the end of the day, the way to look at it isn't "they're qualified but they
don't fit the culture", but rather "they're not qualified because they don't
fit the culture". It goes a long way toward eliminating the mixed feelings.

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kinkora
I have two.

The first is my own experience of being turned down for a part-time
engineering role because the company didn't think it was safe or good for me
to travel so much. From where i stayed at that time, it would have taken me
roughly 90 minutes to get there and another 90 minutes to get back if i got
the job. To be fair to them, I honestly felt they were concerned for my well
being.

The second is from a previous company I worked for and I was asked to
temporarily join a hiring team that were bringing in new recruits (mostly uni
grads) to evaluate their technical abilities. There was a really young
candidate whom I felt stood out but he had a quirkiness of pulling out a
sesame street soft toy from his bag and stroking it every time he faced a
"challenging" question. I had absolutely no issues with that but HR apparently
felt that was too weird for them.

~~~
JGailor
That is definitely an interesting quirk.

The first one seemed pretty decent of them. It would have at least given me a
warm feeling about not getting an offer based on concern for my well-being.

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turbojerry
I was once turned down for a job because I was "Too entrepreneurial", it still
makes me laugh thinking about it.

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DougSF
If this is in CA, you may want to look into suing them for age discrimination.

<http://ag.ca.gov/civilrights/lawleg.php>

~~~
JGailor
Ah. I don't think it was a case of me being too "old" as maybe me being "too
uptight" or something along those lines (although I'm still pretty young I
guess I've recently slid outside that 20's sweet-spot, and as most of my
friends will attest too I'm probably not uptight-enough at times).

It's sort of the reason why I found it to be such a weird response, only
because it seems an interview is not necessarily the best place to judge how
someone acts personality-wise once they've integrated into a team and become
comfortable.

Someone else brought up the age discrimination thing to me, but honestly even
if that was the case these are good people and I think as a founder of a
company you do need to make the best decision you can for the well-being of
the business.

