
“Facebook turned me down” (2009) - zachlatta
https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/3109544383
======
chadillac
Turned me down in 07' after a handful of phone interviews, flying me across
the country, and 8 hours of in person interviews with 3 separate
departments... but not before I got their CTO so shitfaced drunk he botched a
2AM code push to production and helped convince Zuckerbergs little sister into
riding a mechanical bull.

I regret nothing.

edit: Worth noting I was a 22 year old self taught programmer that hadn't
experienced addressing O(log n) in a CS course, working with massive amounts
of data, or large scale Linux sysadmin stuff. I wasn't fit for the ranks when
compared against ex Yahoo! and Google people running for the same positions.
So at least I made the most of it.

edit2: I got the interview after finding a bug in their authentication system
that would allow a password hash collision to spit out the e-mail of the user
that the collision occurred with. Meaning I type in a bogus email, and a
password, after the post the login form would come back with the email pre-
populated of the user that the hash collision had happened on, I type in the
password again, and I was logged in as said user. It was a small bug I found
by accident and then afterwards asked if they were hiring...

edit3: [http://i.imgur.com/sePVdgI.png](http://i.imgur.com/sePVdgI.png)

~~~
gscott
They won't hire you but are begging to get more H1b workers...

~~~
JamesArgo
Yeah, how awful it would be for America if the world's brightest become
citizens.

~~~
michaelt
I'm all for the best and brightest becoming citizens, but we should offer
visas for the most in-demand, high salary professions first. We can tell from
salaries that the shortage of CEOs, lawyers and hedge fund managers is much
more acute than the shortage of programmers and engineers.

~~~
kyllo
Since when do CEOs, lawyers, and hedge fund managers ever have visa problems?

Certain categories of US visas can basically be bought, but it is not cheap.

~~~
TallGuyShort
I think michaelt was being ironic.

------
firloop
Twitter passed on him also.

[https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/1895942068](https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/1895942068)

~~~
psbp
This is pretty hilarious. It's as if he knew what would happen.

------
integraton
It's interesting how neither of the founders fit any of the stereotypical
valley founder profiles. They don't look like Mark Zuckerberg, they are older,
Brian Acton barely used twitter, and his tech background is more traditional
(C, C++, Perl, etc).

~~~
lolwutf
Any word on if either were married?

~~~
shutupalready
And if they were, I hope they were also smart enough to have prenups.

This brings up a question: Is it even possible to make a prenup that covers
_future_ windfills? E.g., a prenup that protects your wealth in a company that
hasn't yet been founded.

~~~
techsupporter
By definition, a prenuptial agreement only covers entering into the marriage.
Future assets, especially in community property states, usually have to be
specifically disclaimed by the other party in the marriage before they can be
considered separate property. For example: A prenup can't specify that a house
bought after marriage is separate property, but the non-owning spouse can
voluntarily sign away rights to that property as a recorded instrument. This
is why some deeds say "John A. Doe, Grantee, a married man as his sole and
separate property." (Some states allow for property purchased with separate
assets to remain separate inside the marriage but the paper trail on this
better be meticulous if a divorce ever happens.)

Editorializing: Why would a spouse be no less entitled to reap the rewards
generated by the other spouse's start-up? A relationship, especially a
marriage, is inherently two people acting as a unit, so just because one
spouse didn't sling PHP and research lambdas all night doesn't mean that
either spouse's contribution is more or less valuable. If my spouse
accomplished something like this, I'd be thrilled at the success and genuinely
looking forward to our life together with much less time and stress investment
from both of us, since that means that I was also picking up a lot more of the
"home life."

~~~
hueving
>Why would a spouse be no less entitled to reap the rewards generated by the
other spouse's start-up?

Because just sitting around giving emotional support to someone doesn't
entitle you to half of everything they get. It doesn't work that way with any
other relationship (parent, friend, etc), so why should a marriage? This is
especially true if both partners are working.

~~~
smsm42
Because that's what marriage is. If you don't like it, there's an easy
solution - don't marry. You can do practically everything - from sex to going
to movies together to emotionally supporting - without being married. If the
concept of sharing your life with another person sounds weird - just don't do
it. It's not mandatory, you know.

~~~
nawitus
No, there are different kinds of marriages. One can have an agreement that
past and future assets are not divided. If you don't like it, don't get such
an agreement.

>If the concept of sharing your life with another person sounds weird - just
don't do it.

Sharing your life with another person doesn't imply sharing property.

------
gojomo
Note that per Forbes [1], Brian Acton was Yahoo employee #44.

So it's not like Facebook (or Twitter) was overlooking a diamond-in-the-rough.
More likely, it was some other key-role/compensation/fit mismatch.

[1]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-
inside-story-how-jan-koum-built-whatsapp-into-facebooks-new-19-billion-baby/)

------
waterlesscloud
Turns out false negatives can be pretty costly too, it seems.

~~~
kkowalczyk
If he was hired by Facebook, he wouldn't have (co)developed WhatsApp. If
Facebook hired him, he would most likely be worth (to Facebook) as much as any
other random Facebook programmer.

Unless he's the one who started WhatsApp, it would have been developed and
successful anyway and Facebook would have to buy it for the same amount of
money.

The reality is that product/market fit is much more powerful force than
programming capabilities of any single engineer.

~~~
marvin
I think the real issue is that when Facebook didn't hire him, he went on to
found a competing company which Facebook felt compelled to pay 16 billion for.
That's a big cost.

~~~
gohrt
If FB hired him, then one of the other N messaging apps would have become the
biggest one, and Facebook would have bought that company.

------
curiousDog
In this case, he was probably rejected more for fit/pay/cultural reasons but
this should be a reminder for candidates to never be dejected when they're
turned down by these companies. I have a friend who tried to kill himself
because he failed the Google interview. Rejection by the "smartest" engineers
at this companies is by no means an invalidation of your abilities. At the end
of the day, none of them are solving the grand unified theory.

~~~
Taurenking
[ have a friend who tried to kill himself because he failed the Google
interview.]

WHOA, talk about extremes

~~~
cmollis
"Google turned me down" (2008)

(have been calling me back in since 2012. Haven't gone (yet). Currently
laughing all the way to the bank NOT rendering ads in every place imaginable).

~~~
cmollis
I should add that I would love to work there (but I'm sure I'd fail the
interview (again)).

------
erict19
Just goes to show, on paper, founders aren't always the most appealing
employees.

~~~
paul
I think in many cases great founders would make terrible employees. Imagine
trying to tell Steve Jobs what to do.

~~~
waterlesscloud
So if you're a giant company, hire them and _don 't_ tell them what to do. Let
them run free on your dime. Own whatever they make.

(Not that Twitter was a giant company in 2009, and Facebook was just getting
there)

~~~
bduerst
Too high of a risk for companies.

Better to let the market sift out the successful founders than to payroll a
hundred of them, hoping for a big win. Think of how many unsuccessful founder
types that Facebook didn't hire too.

Also if this guy was working for Facebook, odds are he would have ended up on
messenger, and someone else would have filled the SMS market need for Whatsapp
in India. Then Facebook would be acquiring that company instead.

~~~
rodgerd
> Too high of a risk for companies.

The problem with PARC and AT&T labs wasn't that having a bunch of really smart
people doing interesting stuff failed to produce brilliant, world changing
ideas, it was that the companies in question weren't always good at
capitalising on them (arguably for the better, in the case of Unix).

~~~
a_bonobo
> it was that the companies in question weren't always good at capitalising on
> them

There's lots of fun evidence for this - AT&T had an answering machine 1934 but
shelved it for 60 years.

>AT&T firmly believed that the answering machine, and its magnetic tapes,
would lead the public to abandon the telephone.

[http://thinkofthat.net/2010/12/03/no-answer-how-and-why-
att-...](http://thinkofthat.net/2010/12/03/no-answer-how-and-why-att-killed-
the-first-answering-machine/)

------
staunch
So, in the movie The Social Messenger I hope we see a scene in which Facebook
made a Final and Best offer to acquire and this guy said "No. One more
billion. Because you turned me down." :-)

------
hendzen
"We only hire the best engineers"

~~~
Ologn
He only had a BSCS from Stanford and had been a VP of Engineering at Yahoo
leading over 300 engineers. Facebook turned him away, and as someone else
mentioned here, Twitter.

It kind of puts in perspective that blog post from yesterday that claimed
companies in Silicon Valley can't find rock star ninja engineers (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7259845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7259845)
).

~~~
ChuckMcM
This isn't all that unusual. Most people realize that hiring processes are
really random. In some ways just hiring anyone who applies, firing them after
90 days if they don't work out, and keeping track of who has been through once
is probably a better system overall.

The recent work on how SAT scores don't predict college success is similar.
There is a huge amount of influence around 'fit' and environment. Some people
just "click" and some people don't. Genius rock star programmers that don't
click are poor employees, and some times former washouts that do click are
your key hires. Hard to predict.

~~~
DanBC
> This isn't all that unusual. Most people realize that hiring processes are
> really random. In some ways just hiring anyone who applies, firing them
> after 90 days if they don't work out, and keeping track of who has been
> through once is probably a better system overall.

"EMPLOYERS: avoid employing unlucky people by immediately tossing half the CVs
in the bin" \- Viz top tip.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I'll have to remember that one :-) But on a more serious note, its been
interesting to see the different sort of talent location ideas that have
emerged. So I person I met a long time a go as a production assistant for the
TV series Robotica was trying to come up with a new series and I suggested
"American Hacker" where folks would go on the show and compete for a spot at
Facebook or something. His comment though was pretty funny which was "That
won't work Chuck because too many people are like you and they don't care
about being on TV, you really need people who will cut off their own leg if
you promise to put them on during prime time." Which was a sad sad commentary.

Things like the Stripe CTF contests are good recruiting tools, hackathons
kinda sorta, resume scanning and the 5 - 10 person interview panel? Hard to
get repeatable results.

~~~
ableal
> I'll have to remember that one :-)

Also hilarialously wortwhile is the C. Northcotte Parkinson take "The Short
List, or Principles of Selection" (e.g.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=c.+northcote+parkinson+candi...](https://www.google.com/search?q=c.+northcote+parkinson+candidate+selection)
)

------
georgemcbay
Coincidental hindsight aside, just given his background as it stood in the
2009 timeframe I'd love to be a time traveling fly on the wall to see his
interviews and/or the decision making process that had both Facebook and
Twitter passing on him.

------
kldavenport
Looks like he won't have to worry about working for a living anymore...

------
NAFV_P
Ask Threaders:

What code does Zuckerberg write? I've seen the film and googled "mark
zuckerberg". From what I gather, he did some programming in Atari BASIC, and
he's just another perl hacker. Common sense would conclude that he is multi-
lingual (yeah, I'm aware he was rusty a year or two ago), but does anyone know
any specifics?

~~~
varenc
PHP...

~~~
NAFV_P
_So no, I don’t think it is deliberate that PHP gets very little press. PHP is
about as exciting as your toothbrush. You use it every day, it does the job,
it is a simple tool, so what? Who would want to read about toothbrushes?_

Rasmus Lerdorf, [http://www.sitepoint.com/phps-creator-rasmus-
lerdorf/2/](http://www.sitepoint.com/phps-creator-rasmus-lerdorf/2/)

------
balls187
Seems like a pretty smart way to get a job at Facebook.

------
ycmike
I think this post now is rather appropriate
[http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html)
Imagine a world where he would of given up.

------
datawander
NYTimes actually pointed out another curiously-related Tweet [0] from the
other co-founder, Jan Koum:

"totally agree with Vinod Khosla. people starting companies for a quick sale
are a disgrace to the valley... 3:47 AM - 17 Jul 2012"

[0]
[https://twitter.com/jankoum/statuses/225134737285578752](https://twitter.com/jankoum/statuses/225134737285578752)

 _edit_ : I am not criticizing Jan at all and would gladly do the same given
the same position.

~~~
ghshephard
Whatsapp may be many things, but one thing it isn't is a "quick sale" \- it's
something of lasting and useful value. I'm willing to wager 5 years from now,
Whatsapp will still have a significant portion of the world's messaging
traffic.

~~~
datawander
Wasn't criticizing the sale at all (edited to clarify tone), just found it
interestingly related.

I use it myself, but not sure about the 5 years wager. One of the main reasons
quite a few people I know use it is precisely because it wasn't Facebook. My
bet is FB guts it and tries to {force, gently-push} everyone to switch to
their well-designed app. But the FB app is probably too bandwidth-hungry for
most WhatsApp users.

~~~
gohrt
> My bet is FB guts it and tries to {force, gently-push} everyone to switch to
> their well-designed app.

[http://instagram.com](http://instagram.com) Ctrl-F Facebook

------
vagarwa
Well he turned Surfmark down and decided to follow his gut :) (Some 'gut' that
was!)
[https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/1997180708](https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/1997180708)

And I have 'immortalized' this using...surfmark
[http://www.surfmark.com/viewsm/GzFRmNKFeUqCGZBiZRzChw#page1](http://www.surfmark.com/viewsm/GzFRmNKFeUqCGZBiZRzChw#page1)

------
drawkbox
Sweet victory. They didn't hire so he built it anyways.

------
skyebook
And yet in both cases of being denied by Twitter and Facebook he aired the
negative news and kept a positive outlook.

That's the sign of a smart person in my book.

------
Untit1ed
If success is the best revenge, this guy is god-tier.

------
JeremyMorgan
Fine! If you guys won't hire me I'll go out and start my own world dominating
business you'll want to buy and then you'll have to.

See you in a few years suckers!

------
tribe2012
Just goes to show that the skills required to get a job are different than the
skills required to start a company

------
mhartl
They still hired him. The only difference is they payed him a small signing
bonus.

------
return0
What's that latest tweet of him? Probably a misspelling ;)

------
Kiro
He was too expensive.

------
kimonos
Cool! Haha!

