
Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope - throwawaybcporn
I&#x27;m 32+, live with my parents and have failed at 4 different startups in the past 10 years, two since I left my last paying job in 2012. In 2014, I had $0 taxable income (due to being unemployed) and was rejected by the following companies:<p>Google* (third time in 3 years)
Twilio* (x2)
Smartling*
Samsung*
Amazon+
Facebook
Cloudflare 
AppDynamics*
DigitalOcean
Placemeter*
E.W.Scripps*
Hatch
AppNexus*
OpenX
ThoughtWorks*
Roost
... several others I can&#x27;t remember
... several others I can remember, but mutually decided the fit was wrong
... MANY others to whom I submitted a resume and never heard back<p>* = rejected after in-person interview
+ = withdrew, sensing impending rejection
else, rejected after phone screen<p>In addition, I took the GMAT and was rejected by the following schools:<p>MIT Sloan
Stanford Business School
Columbia Business School
Harvard Business School<p>If you&#x27;re thinking &quot;Wow that&#x27;s a lot of calls and interviews to come up empty-handed&quot;, you&#x27;re right. You see, while my resume is (apparently) attractive, I suffer from crippling anxiety, the kind that says &quot;Hey, you have in interview tomorrow! No sleep for you!&quot; It turns out interviewers don&#x27;t like bloodshot eyes, dark circles and a foggy Xanax brain. (Nor does the GMAT.)<p>But finally... last week I had an interview at a major university, got 3 hours of sleep but somehow landed the job (pending HR salary approval). It doesn&#x27;t pay like Google does, but I think I&#x27;ll learn a lot and I&#x27;m extremely grateful that someone finally said &quot;yes&quot; to me. I&#x27;m going to make the most of it and will be a better engineer from the experience.<p>Don&#x27;t give up! If you have any technical skill, whatsoever, someone out there wants to hire you. Just keep plugging along!
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jarsin
I wouldnt worry about getting passed up by the bigger companies. Everyone
knows their interview processes are highly dysfunctional jokes. Then most
startup companies copy them because they all think they are going to be the
next google etc.

My last interview at amazon went like this:

Stupid trick coding question over the phone that I did not understand at all.
Followed by 3 memorization questions. followed by one question I felt was
valid and i know i got it right.

I was being interviewed for a specific product that was right up my ally. I
could literally build what they had built easily, but they never once asked
questions related to the product or my experience.

I looked at the product a year later and basically nothing has been done to
it.

~~~
infinitone
I did the new grad assessment test last week for Amazon, I am more than
positive I aced both sections, especially the coding questions (passed all
tests). Yet somehow I still didn't advance. I have other interviews in the
pipeline that were way tougher and I didn't get the solutions 100% yet I still
advanced.

~~~
EwanG
Could be worse. About five years ago I was interviewing at Amazon, and had
gotten picked by the hiring manager and all that was left was a "trivial" HR
screen. Lady there felt that since I had mainly done consulting I couldn't be
trusted to stay at a full time job, and so overruled the hiring manager and I
didn't get the position.

The rest of the story? A couple years later I had a chance to talk with the
hiring manager while he was applying for a position at a place I was working -
seems the person HR picked led to their whole unit being disbanded because
they failed so miserably. He felt he had to take some of the blame for not
keeping a closer eye on the person, but still...

~~~
throwawaybcporn
During this period, my dad said something that stuck with me: "The
interviewing process is very human. There are all sorts of reasons it can fall
apart, many that have nothing to do with you. Maybe they've got an inside
candidate or someone decides they don't like the school you went to or the tie
you're wearing."

I've found this to be true in a small number of my experiences. There are
certain positions I interviewed for where my history was 100% in line with
their needs, the interviews all went well and I should have gotten the job.
But then didn't. Have no idea why not.

------
cj
Congrats on the new job!

> I suffer from crippling anxiety [...] foggy Xanax brain.

Consider asking your doctor about propranolol.

It's a safe, non-addictive beta-blocker often used to treat high blood
pressure, but it also eliminates the peripheral nervous system response to
anxiety, the "fight-or-flight" adrenaline rush feeling: racing heart,
shortness of breath, inability to concentrate, shaking, sweaty hands,
blushing, etc.

It doesn't effect your mental anxiety, but it'll cut out all of the physical
symptoms, which makes the mental anxiety much easier to control, without
creating any sort of brain fog.

~~~
solipsism
+1 for Propranolol. As parent says, it does not affect your cognition! It
doesn't make you sleepy or slow or happy or numb or relaxed or lightheaded or
anything like that. It affects only your autonomic systems, eliminating the
high heart rate and blood pressure, shaky hands, dry mouth, etc. These
physical effects often push your normal performance anxiety over the edge,
creating a cascading effect. Talk to your doctor if you think it could help,
it might change your life -- it did mine, allowing me to become an influential
voice at my company with an influential position to match. There's no reason
you should allow a biological particularity put you at a career disadvantage
compared to others. And it's important to realize anxiety is very often
biological in origin, and non-pharmaceutical methods are often not enough.

While many people feel that other type of drugs, like benzodiazepines (e.g.
Valium, Xanax) cause them to become somewhat of a different person, beta
blockers like propranolol can better be described as making you a rock-solid
version of yourself.

~~~
throwawaybcporn
See my comment above. I don't really get nervous at the interviews... I'm
actually fairly collected and confident in person. It's just that lonely,
panicky night beforehand that gets me.

It's so torturous, I actually considered having a friend use my email to
schedule the interview (or GMAT) for me, then only tell me I have an interview
(or GMAT) the day I have the interview (or GMAT). If this situation had gone
on much longer, I would have done this.

~~~
sjg007
You might try meditation or imagining a positive outcome. The worst that can
happen is they reject you. Apply at smaller places to practice. Places where
even if you get the job you wouldn't take it. The best times to look for a new
job is when you have one.

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mgkimsal
A lot of software companies seem to have a set of conflicting beliefs.

1 Iterative/agile software development. YAGNI. Build the bare minimum, then
iterate when you learn more.

2\. Hire slow, fire fast.

A really agile org would be hiring fast too. Now... I know a lot of this has
to do with labor laws - hiring an actual employee brings extra baggage. And in
the US at least, more people may want to be employees for reasons like health
insurance.

Even with those considerations, companies should be bringing on more short
term contractors, and the ones that work out stay longer. The ones that don't,
for whatever reason, move on.

The same teams that will say "YAGNI, just build XYZ, ship it, etc" \- iow,
just get stuff out the door - will hem and haw and take forever looking for a
perfect candidate that, in reality, doesn't even exist.

It's early in the morning, this sort of makes sense in my head, but I may not
quite be making sense. But it's still a seeming conflict that bugs me.

~~~
raverbashing
I agree with this sentiment

More to the point, they think employees have zero flexibility. That if the
employee is hasn't worked with a certain technology (like Hibernate, but has
Java experience) this doesn't matter.

~~~
throwawaybcporn
This. Above all else, this has driven me absolutely insane. I've immersed
myself in and learned dozens of technologies in my past but because I didn't
use _one lousy framework_ I don't qualify? Something I could pick up in a week
or -- at most -- a month?

This is especially true of startups. They feel like they're under pressure to
produce yesterday and don't have time for someone to get "up to speed".

Worst is when they say "Well you don't have any Ruby experience. Maybe you
could do a Ruby coding assignment for us." Then you spend the whole weekend
cranking out a Ruby application only for them to say "This is great. Well
done. But we really need someone with Ruby experience."

 _desk smash_

------
mgkimsal
Maybe the lesson here is "quit trying to get jobs at tier 1 name brand
companies". There are, by definition, only 500 companies in the Fortune 500.
There are hundreds of thousands of smaller companies around the country that
could use your skills.

~~~
throwawaybcporn
What post did you read?

"Smartling* Cloudflare AppDynamics* DigitalOcean Placemeter* Hatch AppNexus*
OpenX ThoughtWorks* Roost"

~~~
mgkimsal
They may not all be 'tier 1' companies (I just made up the phrase 'tier 1' \-
'top tier' may have been better), but there's a commonality to many of these -
they're largely well-known names in many communities.

I knew Google, Facebook, Amazon, Samsung, Cloudflare, appdynamics, DO, openx
and thoughtworks without even batting an eye - the others sound familiar, but
I can't say definitively if I know what they do.

"Midwest-city tool and die cutting" probably needs someone with this person's
skills just as much, perhaps moreso, than digitalocean needs yet another
devops guru.

------
wallflower
Congrats! Good luck!

Re crippling anxiety - I highly recommend improv classes.

~~~
a3n
I indirectly second that. A colleague took improv classes for vaguely similar
reasons, and he had a positive and helpful experience.

<reddit>Great username for this particular post.</reddit>

~~~
throwawaybcporn
I created this account to comment on an article of a sexual nature the other
day but never did. So I reused it. I freely admit it is very weird in the
context of my post.

------
raverbashing
I think the job market is eating itself up.

This year I sent tons of CVs, very few responses, a lot of technical tests,
some interviews where "you don't fit the profile"

Companies usually like me when I start working for them, but to "cross the
chasm" is hard.

~~~
throwawaybcporn
This is how I feel. I've been a badass at everything I've ever done, including
being an employee. My last employer _begged_ me to stay and I did for a few
months longer.

So to have my fate determined by a short interview over the phone by some
arbitrary questions just seems... suboptimal. Inefficient. Stupid.

Someone has to fix the incumbent resume-based hiring process. It is fucked
beyond belief.

------
fichtl80
So many sad recruiting stories ...

Some thoughts/tipps: Start your interview with: "I happy to be here ... am
really nervous, i couldn't sleep last night." ... that removes questions marks
in recruiters had about your eyes.

Don't tell em about xanax, better, don't use it.

@pookieinc 3+ years are not impressive ... i code for 15 years and possibly
the guy who are you talking about your job too ... so don't behave like the
god of coding.

@pXMzR2A 270+ job applications ... hmm your resume must be shit or you apply
for jobs you are not qualified for ... i would love to see it, there must be a
major bug in it :)

... and btw. congrats and merry christmas

------
kolbe
Congratulations. Regarding the crippling anxiety: I was the same way from
college until a couple years ago. I couldn't, for the life of me, get a good
night of rest on the nights before an important event. But simply changing up
my diet[1] fixed that problem very quickly. It's worth a shot for you to look
into doing that. I know how destructive and terrible it feels to be unable to
rest properly.

[1] Specifically, I cut out wheat and corn altogether, reduced my carbohydrate
intake to less than 50g a day, and never ate anything with added sugars.

~~~
throwawaybcporn
Being chronically sleep-deprived is the worst and I appreciate your sympathy.

However, I just can't get behind your dietary suggestions. Corn and wheat are
not psychoactive substances. I don't think there's any solid science to
support the idea that adding/removing them would affect your general anxiety
levels.

As I said in another response, Lexapro gave me one amazing month of clarity
away from my condition and it was a near-religious experience. I could make
plans again. I became interested in girls again. I wanted to scream from the
mountain tops and work as a door-to-door salesman for the pharma company that
changed my life. Then I relapsed.

In other words, for some people (like me), there is a serious physiological
issue at work that needs a pharmaceutical fix. No amount of vitamins or yoga
or whatever is going to change that.

------
pookieinc
JS + Ruby/Rails dev here w/ 3+ years experience under belt. Currently looking
for job myself and have been for about 3 months. Funny how, like OP, my resume
and exp. is "very impressive", yet it doesn't lead anywhere, not even to a
phone interview sometimes.

I'm attempting the numbers game approach (apply for 100 companies, 5 will get
back to you, select from those 5), but I've hit the edge of: what if there are
none that are willing?

Thanks for the luck, will keep banging head against wall until a job is found.
Happy holidays!

~~~
k__
3 years are impressive?

~~~
throwawaybcporn
I wish I could downvote this. Maybe the guy went to Stanford or MIT. Maybe his
Ruby work is available on Github and is solid. Maybe he did an independent
project that showed remarkable creativity and drive. There are any number of
reasons his resume could be "very impressive" with only 3 years under his
belt. Don't be a dick.

~~~
k__
You're the one who wants to downvote me.

I didn't say anything offensive, just asking a question.

Learn the difference between other people saying something offensive and
yourself implying some offensive meaning into a neutral statement.

------
pXMzR2A
I don't suffer from anxiety.

In the last 8 months, I have submitted 270+ job applications, received 3
interviews, got rejected by all three, none of which were high reputation
companies.

Great to hear you had a success! :)

~~~
dvirsky
Did you ask for anyone to look at your CV and help you improve it maybe? For
what it's worth, I'm not in HR but I interview a lot of people and see a lot
of CVs (not hiring currently though). You can send me your CV privately if you
want some feedback.

------
esonderegger
Congratulations! It sounds like you've landed somewhere really good.

Thank you for reminding us not to give up. A lot of your story sounded
familiar, although you were way more persistent than I was. I'm 33, and
recently got rejected from two different bay area "dream job" companies after
making it through several phone rounds in order to fly out for in-person
interviews. The more recent of which, I got nervous the night before and only
got three hours of sleep. The hardest part of that rejection was wondering
"what if" I had been just a little bit sharper.

After the second rejection, I accepted a position with a small defense
contractor near my home in Washington DC. The bureaucracy and mindless
restriction are sources of endless frustration. The combination of billing by
the hour and a long commute leave very little time and energy for keeping up
the job search.

Reading your story reminds me I have very little to complain about. Thank you
for posting. I'll use some of this time off to send out some more
applications. Hope you have a great Christmas and good luck once the new job
starts!

~~~
throwawaybcporn
What's hard to stomach about the no sleep aspect of everything is that I think
companies/interviewers think "Well if it's fair for one, it's fair for all.
They're all under the same pressure, so we'll see who overcomes it."

But that's not true. I know it's not true because I used to be one of the
people who didn't feel interview pressure. When I landed a dream-type job a
few years ago (which ended up being a nightmare due to a psychopathic boss,
but that's beside the point), I remember going into the interviews head-
strong, cocky and almost arrogant... which they apparently loved bc they hired
me on the spot.

Ha! It makes me laugh now. I'm twice the engineer I was then, but half the
interviewee simply because my ego has been recalibrated to reality.

------
zerr
Congrats! And as a side-note, I think it is suitable for persons in your
[before-job] situation - to ask for internship or contract-to-hire work
instead of direct hiring. We all know interviews suck. And working temporally
for 2-3 months would be much more effective (for you and the company) to see
if you're a good fit or not.

~~~
throwawaybcporn
Unfortunately, interviewees don't dictate hiring terms. And suggesting a
short-term deal probably makes you look weak. I wouldn't recommend this
approach to anyone.

------
harpb
tl;dr: There are lot of opportunities for software engineers!

6 weeks ago, I left my job and here's my share of the search experience. 1
week after leaving the job, I got a cold email by a company who is 25-min
drive away in Foster City. I did initial call with the HR on Dec. 1. On Dec.
2, I did my first phone interview. I was asked to rate my competency in Python
and JavaScript on the scale 1-10. Then the interviewer asked me questions that
were targeted at that level. I did badly, but not horribly, with the Q/A on
technical parts and ok on some of the basic ones. On Dec. 3, I did second
phone interview, which went great in the first half and badly in the second
half. In the later part, I just started to get nervous and lost my cool. They
still felt I was competent, so on Dec. 4 I did a full day of interview. I did
5 different interviews from engineers to CTO and CEO. By the end of the day, I
was offered the position @ 135K. This is where you expect the typical ending
of me accepting the salary and living happily ever after. Not so fast there,
reader. I pressed for higher salary - 25K more than they were offering. They
didn't budge and neither did I, so no cigar.

In parallel to interviewing at that company, I also created my profile on
Underdog.io. I spent Dec. 5 to Dec. 16 talking with 7 different companies in
New York. I saw that their Salary range is lower than in Bay Area so it did
not go far.

On Dec. 13, I created my profile on Hired.Me. Since then I have had 5 offers.
I have made strong connection with one of the company and will be having in-
person interview in a month (I have 3 week family wedding planned in Jan :)).

From my experience, there are so many companies looking for quality engineers.
If you are having hired time getting hired, I am open to talk with you. I
personally don't pursue working at big companies for the sake of them being
big. I am looking for a company where I fit in based on my programming design
sense and culturally.

I'm 27/M/Single/SF - so I don't have much constraints as someone who may be
older with family or in non-tech savvy part of the county.

~~~
throwawaybcporn
The key part of your story is that you've made it to SF. I got lucky in 2010
and found a company that would hire me and let me move to a tech hub from my
home state. Once I left that job and then the big city (to reduce my burn and
work on my independent project), I found it damn near impossible to get back.
The fact that I wasn't in the city was a killer for almost all companies,
especially startups (where I really wanted to be).

So I moved to the city again for a few months and had a dozen interviews in
the first couple of weeks. Some I rejected... some rejected me (obviously),
but the activity difference was _stark_. It was like the floodgates opened.

Everyone should keep that in mind when job-hunting. If you've left or lost
your job in a tech hub _make use of the time you have left in your apt_.

------
br0ke
Grats on the job!

I hear you about the anxiety. I managed to land an interview with nvidia in
2001 and was so nervous that I couldn't eat or sleep for the 24 hours before
the start of the interview (then ate lunch with them at their cafeteria and
was wolfing food down like an animal). Didn't fare well, but a year later of
hunting and working as a substitute teacher, I ended up working with a great
team at FedEx for a while and went to being a "computer scientist" at the army
research lab after that.

Anxiety is a challenge, but it can be overcome! I'm even in the process of
starting with "toastmasters" to get me out of my comfort zone and learn how to
be "on" around strangers.

Again, congratulations and thanks for sharing!

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orliesaurus
Glad to hear a good story on Xmas day :) Well done you!

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imagex
Congrats, and a very Merry Christmas to you.

------
websurfshop
It's a viscous circle with all the rejection. Don't take it personal. We live
in a cruel world, but that does not make you less valuable as a person. Jesus
loves you. Merry Christmas.

------
ryanicle
Congratulations! All the best! More good things to come for you.

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throwawayTwit
About 7 months ago I interviewed at Twitter, making it through two phone
interviews before failing to solve some tricky algorithms questions in the on-
site interview. Recently a Twitter recruiter contacted me on Linkedin looking
for referrals and I sent him my resume, only to be told that they were looking
for people with more experience, despite significantly more relevant
experience on my resume.

Is the BigCo interview process just that arbitrary?

~~~
throwawaybcporn
"Hey we're looking for people. Just not you."

That's some cold shit.

~~~
throwawayTwit
Right? There was the obligatory 'we're keeping your resume on file', but that
didn't make it sting any less.

------
jamesturn
Just curious, so this is a university staff position or are you enrolling in a
business school as a student? Either way, congrats!

------
phantom_oracle
It's scary to see just how many talented folks there are out there, that are
struggling to find some work.

It's not like most of you are blue-collar workers either. Those supposed job
'shortages' at those big tech firms seems more like a sinister collusion
strategy to flood the market with cheap labour possibly.

------
Kurtz79
Congrats and best luck for the future.

In a way it's kind of belwildering how radically different seem to be the job
hunting experience for many HW users.

You see so many posts like "I had multiple six-figure offers", or "it's
impossible to find enough candidates for the position" and then you see posts
like this.

~~~
infinitone
I'm a comp eng new grad with a bit of H/W exp. All I see when I look for entry
positions are software?

~~~
Kurtz79
You could look for embedded software positions.

I graduated in Electronics but it was clear for me that I liked software more,
and embedded is a good compromise.

After a while, if you do ok with your job you could ask to move to more HW
focused roles inside the same company.

------
gmoneynj2000
Just what I needed to hear! Thanks!!

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Arsenije
Hey man congrats on you new job! I have one keyword for you: "mindfulness".
Start practicing it.

Cheers, —A

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hemantv
You should get some help anxiety thing. I have seen people let ego / pride
decide. There is no shame asking for help when you need it.

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wittedhaddock
I have goosebumps reading this. Thank you so much for sharing. This is
meaning.

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PaoloGalesi
Read the tao te ching my friend. Read and read it and read it and... Good luck

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akclr
Good luck and all the best in the new year!

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ozy123
Good work! And congrats!

------
akeem
Congratulations!

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ing33k
keep rocking !

