
Everyone’s been rejected – these are our stories - jon_kuperman
http://rejected.us/
======
lkrubner
I love this, but it could go even further:

Blaine Cook was "rejected" from Twitter after years of hard work. But he faced
an insane scaling problem, and most of us would look bad if we faced the same
set of problems.

Steve Jobs was "rejected" by Apple after years of hard work.

Or my all time favorite:

John Lasseter was fired from Disney because he was too enthusiastic about
cutting edge digital animation (rather than the traditional animation
techniques for which Disney was famous), then he became head of Pixar, which
got bought by Disney, and which took over Disney's animation, and so now he is
head of animation at Disney. They fired him, but now he is back, and now he is
in charge, because he was right.

Lots of great people do great work and then get fired. Getting fired doesn't
mean they were wrong. Sometimes it simply means they were too right, and
nobody wanted to hear it.

~~~
golergka
TBH, I don't think that Lasseter would be able to do what he did if he stayed
at Disney. So one could argue that Disney's decisions were good for them in
the long run.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
That may be a selective interpretation.

How many talented people have been fired or never hired, but you never hear
about them because they don't make a spectacular come-back?

If hiring is as random as it seems to be, there's going to be a massive pool
of wasted talent.

------
msoad
I was rejected by Adobe, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon,
Netflix, Skype and many more companies. I got rejected by Apple 3 times and
two times with Facebook and Google.

I'm now working for Google.

One thing I can tell for sure, specially after interviewing others. It's all
random. Most of interviewers make their mind about the candidate in seconds.
If you are a charming person you have a good chance. If you are not a very
likable person you have a very small chance.

~~~
thewarrior
May I message you ?

~~~
msoad
I prefer to stay anonymous. I'll share my recent interview experiences with
Google, Apple and Facebook here soon.

------
laotzu
This reminds me of an old zen tale:

>There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many
years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came
to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Maybe,” the farmer
replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other
wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “May be,” replied the
old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses,
was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their
sympathy on his misfortune. “Maybe,” answered the farmer. The day after,
military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army.
Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors
congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe,” said the
farmer.

The point being that when you become so upset with being turned down for a
certain job you are setting yourself up to be let down by missing the big
picture. The reality of the big picture is you have no idea how something that
might seem like a great success might lead to great failure, or great failure
might lead to great success.

~~~
saiya-jin
I guess everybody can find such examples in their lives, usually when looking
back hard enough.

My example, out of few - breaking up with my longterm girlfriend (5 years, 6
months spent backpacking together in himalaya) seemed like a proper disaster.
Few years rewind - I have the most amazing person imaginable beside me, to
which I proposed (and she said yes) on top of Mont Blanc this May, after hard
ski tour. Without prior hard breakup, and messing around a bit, I wouldn't be
able to appreciate current one so much

(or another summary - looks is by far not enough for happy long term
relationship, compatibility on many levels is necessary. but until you meet
somebody with whom you "click" on almost all imaginable aspects, you don't
even know how good such a state is, and how much peace it can bring to life)

------
sarciszewski
Eventually these folks got accepted though. I guess that's the moral we're
supposed to take away from this: If you get rejected a lot, but you keep
trying, you'll eventually be accepted?

If so, that's bullshit. The only reason we don't see any examples here of
people who _never_ get accepted is because they're invisible to the industry.
Many of them probably ended up committing suicide or switching careers. (I've
contemplated both more than I care to admit in polite company.)

We can't all be winners.

(But by that logic, we can't all be losers all the time either. You're
probably somewhere in between both extremes.)

~~~
the_af
I don't think it's bullshit. I also don't define people as "winners" or
"losers" depending on whether they get cool jobs.

I think it's true you'll eventually get accepted in a nice job if you work in
IT/software development, have a decent level of competency, and keep at it
without getting too discouraged. It's easy to feel crushed when you get
rejected twice in a row, so I think this is valuable lesson: you can have
decent skills and you'll still get rejected (sometimes arbitrarily, sometimes
because it just wasn't your best day), and you shouldn't feel crushed because
interviews are -- sadly -- highly random, and even great developers get
rejected. That's the point of the website: your skills are likely not the
reason you got rejected, so don't get too discouraged.

This isn't some feel good bullshit philosophy. It's true. Getting a job isn't
about being a winner. If you have decent skills -- say, you have some
experience and fizzbuzz isn't a stumbling block for you -- you are already
marketable. You just need to have the combination of luck/being prepared/being
in one of your best days.

~~~
sarciszewski
> I also don't define people as "winners" or "losers" depending on whether
> they get cool jobs.

Normally I don't either, but in my post above I was using it as a shorthand.

You can't win them all, and you probably won't lose them all, but there might
be someone out there who does.

------
neofrommatrix
I recently interviewed at very hot container startup. I had 1 phone screen, 6
on-sites, and 2 follow up phone calls. I did well in the phone screen to be
invited onsite. Apparently, I did great on the 6 interviews onsite and then
they wanted to have a follow up phone call with a manager (30 mins). That was
positive too. But, the last phone call was set up with the SVP who determined
that I was not a good "culture fit" after 30 mins on the phone. This in spite
of me having had wonderful technical conversations and interviews (including
coding) - which I apparently rocked- with 6 engineers and 2 managers, and
having very highly relevant experience working in the cloud (orchestration and
networking). The SVP just swooped in and decided I was not a good fit.

I simply don't get interviews these days. Sigh! On to a better company.

~~~
CrLf
> 6 on-sites

I don't understand the point of multiple (or very long) interviews. If they
can't decide after the first 30 minutes if the candidate is hirarable, they
probably won't.

It's an illusion to think that interview environments relate directly to
workplace performance. Interviews are mostly useful for the subjective parts
than for grilling candidates in hopes of avoiding a bad hire. Going through
all the hoops and knowing all the things doesn't make for a good employee. Not
unless you're being hired as a robot worked in some factory floor.

Also, unlike what seems to be the general idea elsewhere on this thread, soft
skills are very important, I argue even more important than hard skills. If
you have any ability to learn (which may be considered a soft skill) you can
pick up almost any technology and implement almost any algorithm. Not so if
you lack the ability to relate to you coworkers, work effectively as a team,
or clearly communicate your ideas.

You can learn tools, but you either have the right attitude or you don't.

~~~
neofrommatrix
I agree. You cannot fake good nature and attitude during all day interviews.
At least, I cannot. Soft skills and communication are really important in any
team environment.

But, how would one go about determining whether someone is a quick learner?
That beats me.

~~~
CrLf
You don't determine it directly. But quick learning comes with other traits,
like curiosity. You can determine those during a conversation if you're a good
interviewer (which is the catch, interviewing is also a skill).

Sometimes you'll fail. But I've yet to see convincing proof that the
alternative reduces failures (but it does reduce the willingness of people to
admit failure).

------
jondubois
Interview processes are more about social skills than technical skill (even in
engineering interviews). There is a huge amount of randomness involved - Maybe
the HR person just didn't like your face!

It's mostly about understanding the company culture, reading the interviewer's
face and trying to figure out what they want to hear as you go along (of
course technical skills are a prerequisite).

The only time I didn't get an offer was because I asked for too much money. I
think asking for more money is a good idea though; it weeds out all the frugal
companies.

I think that if your success rate is 90%, it means you're not charging enough.
You need to bring the price up and allow the success rate to drop - Then the
average quality of offers will go up.

------
kzhahou
Companies keep files on candidates, which generally makes sense for tracking
purposes, but they can be counter-productive at the big companies.

I go in and apply. I meet with 6 people out of thousands, representing 1-3
teams out of hundreds. It doesn't work out, for any of <n> reasons, some of
them just luck of the draw. But now my interview is in the system and will be
forever referenced. I'm given a polite but non-informational "it's not a fit"
and sent off to a competitor.

Idea: Big companies shift to lighter-weight interviews which aren't considered
final. If you're good enough to make it to on-site and it doesn't work out
(but there was lots of reasons to think it would have), then you get happily
scheduled for another round in a few weeks or whenever, and Company tries to
not leave you with a stigma of rejection.

This frequently happens with executive recruiting, but not at lower levels. At
least, I haven't seen it. Instead we get so many stories like on this website,
where it should have been obvious just by CV/portfolio alone that they were
awesome developers.

~~~
akavi
Are you sure?

At my previous company (a relatively small startup, admittedly), one of the
indisputably best engineers (a 10xer if I've ever worked with one) was hired
after such a "second shot". A few weeks is probably too rapid a turn around,
given that a "failed" interview is a negative signal (or at least, should be
That's the point, after all). But say, a year later for engineers in that wide
fuzzy area between "Hire!" and "Oh god no!"? I think plenty of companies _do_
do that.

Further anecdata: Friends who've been rejected from Google have told me that
they were explicitly encouraged by their Google recruiter to re-apply in ~a
year.

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
if you have competencies in areas A, B, C and apply for several positions and
due to the vagaries of HR you get interviewed by team A which is not a good
fit for some reason, why should you have to wait for a year to apply for teams
B and C?

This is like meeting a group of friends going on a first date with one of
them, getting shot down and not being able to date any of the others for a
whole year even if you could be a good fit for them instead.

We've seen here plenty of times however how we all consider the interview
process pretty much random and broken, so it shouldn't be too surprising when
companies are not operating efficiently and shrugging off false-negatives as
if they don't matter, it's just basic human behavior, just like if you are
extremely attractive you're going to be extremely picky and not care if you
don't give somebody a shot because no matter what there will always be a line
of potential suitors waiting at the door.

~~~
joedavison
afaik, you can interview for a different team/function right away, no need to
wait one year. The one year waiting period is for re-applying to the same
position.

------
napperjabber
I have to say, after inheriting a code base from Max(@mxcl), its sad that
anyone would reject him. Hes pretty much the guy that gave me the first sane
introduction to cacoa programming. - That being said, I was rejected from a
company because I hadn't used binutil in python. - I find I can pass any
interview with a confident low voice more consistently than by showing my
technical expertise. - People are interested in how well you assimilate into
the culture of the workplace. Sometimes, that workplace culture needs to
evoluve to include a more eclectic dev-background, or they risk alienating
talented people. Alas, sometimes that evolution is not nessicary or its just
to early for the company. - I've seen this happen to good devs and I've been
on the receiving end of it. - Hiring isn't fun; you have to find someone who
understands who you are. Inheriting trust is a lot faster then building trust
and I find most companies don't have the time (sometimes ability ) to build
that trust.

~~~
neverminder
I agree. I was rejected not too long ago by a startup with a reason that they
thought I belonged in a more corporate environment (I never indicated so). In
my experience if a company really needs someone they are much more receptive,
otherwise they just come up with a BS like that and worse.

~~~
jacquesm
> they thought I belonged in a more corporate environment

That's their way of saying they either can't afford you or you are too smart
to be worked to death for 0.0001% stock.

~~~
pc86
That's a pretty generous grant, not everyone can be Employee #2.

~~~
myth_buster
Or a technical co-founder.

------
fffrad
It's interesting how in our current time, if you work at Twitter, facebook,
google, or a famous start up, it is synonymous to "I made it".

~~~
thewarrior
Because it is. Once you land a position at the big 4 you're (potentially) on a
multi decade gravy train that just keeps on giving.

Even a short stint and an "Ex-Googler" tag on your resume is enough to open
doors and keep landing gigs years into the future.

Moreover the top firms are known for engineering the shit out of their
software. You're much less likely to run into really bad code or stagnate.

So its definitely worth sacrificing a bit to try and get in.

~~~
kami8845
> multi decade slave train

If you want to have "made it", go start a startup. Being an employee generally
means working 40-60 hour weeks for other people's dreams.

~~~
thewarrior
Working for 2+ decades while making something like $150k+ a year on average
over the long term , and retiring with substantial savings , without having
worked 100 hour weeks on the startup lottery , sounds pretty awesome to me.

Don't know maybe I'm not elite founder material.

~~~
yawgmoth
Other companies pay great salaries. In Detroit, for example, you can make
100-130k with a much lower cost of living (even if you're living downtown or
in one of the wealthy suburbs). I presume Chicago, Boston, ATL, etc., would be
just as lucrative if not moreso. If the bar is based on salary and hours, you
can make it in a lot of places.

~~~
pc86
Arguably if your goal as a software developer is to make as much money as
possible and retire as soon as possible, you should probably work on HFT in
the lowest-COL area that supports that field (maybe Chicago with a long train
commute or something?)

I'm a team lead and make less than an entry level developer at any SF or NYC
shop, but I'm willing to bet that I can save more and have more put away for
retirement than most as well.

~~~
dceddia
This is along the lines of what Mr. Money Mustache [0] recommends, minus the
long commute. For anyone interested in early retirement through working hard
and saving money, his blog is absolutely worth a read.

It could be a bit of a lifestyle change (or maybe you're already close and you
don't know it!), but for people with software-developer-level salaries, early
retirement is absolutely within reach.

[0] [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com)

~~~
pc86
Yeah, I am assuming that long train ride + cheap mortgage is probably cheaper
than very short commute + downtown Chicago rent, which may not be the case
everywhere. And quality of life goes down pretty quickly with increases in
commute.

------
5h
It happens the other way around also.

In an interview for a CTO type position a while ago, the only technical member
of the interview panel was visibly aghast that I had never made a bootstrap
theme - which, despite me explaining where that sort of task fits into the
webapp ecosystem to the others, had already rubbed off on the rest of the
panel. The extensive team/project building portfolio presented was irrelevant.

I thanked them for their time and didn't call back as I've had my fill of
toxic work environments out there.

------
cryoshon
Being rejected from the top tier of technology companies and then landing in
another top tier company doesn't seem so much like a genuine expression of
angst over rejection but rather a bitter leer. But sure, the way work
rejection is delivered is typically insensitive, and getting rejected sucks--
companies have no compassion for assets they don't want to use, and it's
dehumanizing to realize you are utterly replaceable and plentiful as far as
they are concerned.

~~~
ddmma
Rejection as well failure is just feedback. We should not take it so personal
but we build up expectations and project our selfs into that brand building
stuff. The choosen ones must be selected and save the Zion or be part of it.
What I've learned from my over 500+ jobs, accelerators, etc... Rejection is a
fkin template! Move on fast and next time you'll reject them also ;)

------
hmate9
The reason why there are so many rejections is because companies are trying to
minimse the false positives instead of minimising the false negatives.

~~~
danieltillett
I am not sure why companies are so paranoid about false positives. Apart from
the the lack of evidence that being extra picky is helpful, you can always
fire if the candidate does not meet your standards. Be crystal clear about
what you expect and cut if it is not met.

~~~
will_pseudonym
Hiring bad people is signaling to your existing, well functioning team, that
you care about the bottom line more than their experience & happiness. It
drives good people away, because firing bad apples is way harder than it
should be...

~~~
danieltillett
I don't disagree with this, but being extra fussy at the interview stage does
not mean you can avoid bad hires, or even that you will hire better people on
average. Better to be clear about what you expect and serious enough to deal
with it if you get it wrong.

~~~
will_pseudonym
If you'll notice, I never talked about any interviewing! :) We were talking
about pre-hire as a state. It's just that usually that state and (formal)
interviews go hand in hand. Interviews are a poor way to hire in general. I
think having water cooler type experiences before people are hired, and doing
away with formal interviews would be great. This works amazingly well for the
most effective teams--the rich get richer in this way, too. Love talking about
this stuff! Have a great day!

~~~
danieltillett
In an ideal world both employer and employee would have more time to learn if
they are a compatible fit. In practice we have a pretend process where both
sides lie to each other and it is only by chance that it works out. I would
like to see a world where everyone was more honest about what they expected
and where learning that they weren't a match did not mean that one party was
wrong.

~~~
will_pseudonym
That's the world I'm striving to create! Email me if you ever want to work
with someone with similar values. I know lots of people. I like to make my
fiancé roll her eyes at me by telling people I'm the Kanye West of networking.
;) But seriously though, I love serving people and making others happy, and
I'm an amazing long term recruiter...

------
andrewstuart
I'm a recruiter and I sometimes say that "recruiting is the business of
rejection".

At any given moment I might have between 5 to 20 possible jobs that I'm
searching for people for. In a given week I might receive 1,000 applicants.

It is _incredibly hard_ to get anyone into a job and often great people are
rejected for various reasons.

The Business of Rejection - that's recruiting.

~~~
kafkaesq
Reject all you want, but at least be classy about it.

A vast amount of empirical data suggests that recruiters are very, very bad at
this.

And many companies, when engaging candidates directly, aren't much better.

~~~
vijayr
Most recruiters are terrible. The other day I was asked to fill a form
(skills, work experience, personal details, the whole thing - in great detail)
_before_ the recruiter would even tell me the name of the company he is trying
to hire for. I knew arguing with him is futile, so I didn't. Job search in
general is a depressing experience, even when it is easy. Good recruiters are
extremely rare :(

My funniest experience with a recruiter - he called me up and tried to recruit
me to the same company I was working for at the time.

~~~
will_pseudonym
I'm a great recruiter! My approach is to help both sides understand the other
side's needs completely before signing on the dotted line. I'm only happy when
everyone else is. I also only work with people I would want to work with in
the future, and that goes for both sides :)

Are you looking for something right now? If you are, I'll dig through your HN
comment history and try to understand your needs and desires. If you aren't,
I'm still going to, because good people are as hard to find as good
recruiters! :)

~~~
relkor
That's creepy

~~~
will_pseudonym
Fun thought experiment: all this information is publicly available, and we're
okay with it as evidenced by the fact that we're participating freely in the
activity.

You're not bothered by algorithms (maybe you are, but you're not writing about
it, so from this context you're less bothered) that can analyze data and
language and patterns of communication, but you do have a problem with a human
trying to understand the needs and desires of another human in the aim of
helping that person land a job they would live?

Like I said, it's a thought experiment. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm
always learning. Unless I'm an algorithm--they never learn. Or do they? Maybe
you're just a poor Turing Test judge?! ;)

~~~
relkor
To be more formal, there are two possiblities that I see:

1) You are RecruiterBot born from the forge of a brillant engineer smarting
from rejection and trained to communicate using audio samples from bugs placed
in business schools.

\- The announced intent to harvest data is a flaw in the algorithm because it
is known that humans find overt monitoring "creepy". My response is to submit
a ticket to your maker using the contact info, with steps to reproduce and
other data.

\- I assume the monitoring itself is rational because my priors tell me the
marginal cost is likely low enough to be worth it.

2) You are a real person

\- In this case your decision to stalk the above user represents a significant
economic investment. The idea that you will spend 30 minutes? or more
following stranger on the internet shows to be an imbalance in your economic
incentives. I begin to wonder, are you a rational actor?

\- In the interest of safety I will avoid you because the data points I have
do not fit human models of behavior. My percieved risk is much higher because
your economic incentives do not appear to align with mine. Therefore it is
unlikely that trade is worth the opportunity cost when I know of others who do
align AND have lower risk assements.

~~~
will_pseudonym
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this! To give you some insight into my behavior--
I have an intuition about who is naughty or nice (maybe I'm Santa!), and I
don't spend any time on awful folks unless I'm learning from the experience.
That means I can put more wood behind fewer arrows so to speak.

It absolutely seems creepy to read about my behavior, but I promise that with
the people I reach out to, my batting average for them responding positively
is probably around 0.600. I need to crunch those numbers--that'll be a neat
piece of data to use to demonstrate that I'm effective at communicating with
new people, which means my fat butt is worth it's weight in gold to companies
who want to reach new clients and partners.

I think you might find that high touch sales is much more like what I've
described above, than not. I love when someone treats me like I've described,
because it demonstrates listening and understanding! Which is equivalent to
them demonstrating that they respect me and my time.

I absolutely respect your space and won't stalk you (mostly because I don't
think it'll be a mutually beneficial relationship). I would say though that if
you met me on the street, you'd find that I radiate a positive aura and leave
nearly every human interaction with both of us better off. I know what I'm
doing is Right because of the evidence of the reactions in my life to what in
putting out. And to quote the song Forrest Whitaker, "You ain't gotta love
me!" :)

Have a great day, and best of luck to you!!

------
s3nnyy
I live in Zurich and I used to code for a living. Now, I hire engineers for
different startups in Switzerland.

As I got deeper into IT-recruiting, I realised that candidate filtering at the
top of the funnel is fundamentally broken. Especially in Europe companies
expect a CS degree and don't appreciate self-taught skills as much as in the
US.

I am trying to change this. If you look for a tech-job in the most liveable
city in the world, check out my story "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to
work in IT" on [http://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-
to...](http://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-
switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90) or send me a mail to the mail-address
in my HN-profile.

~~~
_yosefk
Could the difference be due to education being cheaper and thus there being
fewer reasons to forego it?

~~~
jacquesm
No, it just saves a bunch of time and you later won't hear (when someone
messes up) 'he doesn't even have a degree, what did you expect'?

It's the recruiting equivalent of buying IBM (or Microsoft I guess).

If the applicant pool is large enough any quick way to discriminate that skews
positively for applicant capability is going to be used. It is also _much_
easier to see if someone has a degree than to actually test if they have the
required skills.

~~~
pc86
> _If the applicant pool is large enough any quick way to discriminate that
> skews positively for applicant capability is going to be used._

I think a lot of self-taught developers (myself too earlier in my career) fail
to realize this.

If you've got 1,000 applicants and your job is to schedule 10 interviews from
that pool, you will do _anything_ that won't absolutely destroy candidate
quality. It's not about the finding the best, it's about finding someone who
wants the job and will be able to do it. _The name of the game is not
minimizing false negatives (disregarding good people), but minimizing false
positives (interviewing shitbirds)._

So if you work for BigCo you say the person need three years of corporate
experience. You're down to 800 applicants. One year of experience in the
JavaScripts. 750 applicants. Maybe the phrase "SQL Server" has to be on their
resume. 400 applicants. College degree. 320 applicants. _Computer Science_
degree. 120 applicants. Maybe you want to filter by your preferred recruiter,
because they only charge you 11% of base salary instead of 18% like that other
firm. 22 applicants. Now you can actually read the resumes and pick the top
half to interview. Anyone who actually wrote a cover letter and is in this
pile is pretty much guaranteed an interview.

------
tofupup
Being rejected a few times this week, this makes me feel a bit better. For one
interview ... my brain decided to take the day off ... nerves I guess ... it
was not pretty. Any who (sic) ... the show must go on ... back at it tomorrow
morning wish me the best.

~~~
lkrubner
If you'd like to feel better, you should read "Embarrassing code I wrote under
stress at a job interview":

[http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/embarrassing-code-
i-w...](http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/embarrassing-code-i-wrote-
under-stress-at-a-job-interview)

~~~
Xyik
thanks for sharing this. mirrors several interviews i've had

------
paulftw
Twitter - where most of these rejected people ended up?..

~~~
namelezz
or Twitter - where most of these rejected people make awesome comebacks

~~~
im2w1l
Or, to account for the selection bias: People don't always come back after
rejection. But when they do, they do it at twitter.

~~~
autotune
...which just laid off a bunch of their staff.

------
steven2012
Someone I know at Facebook said that they have something called "Overheard at
Campus" or something like that, where people post funny things they hear on
campus. They said that recently one of the posts was: "I am going into an
interview. I am pissed. It's gonna be a reject from me." Which pretty much
underscores how interviewing appears to be these days, especially at a company
like Facebook.

~~~
fitzgeraldthe1
Sounds like a joke.

------
fensterblick
Thank you for this site! I am going through the interview process now and
there are times where I feel like a fraud. Some call this impostor syndrome.
It's encouraging to read others who have travelled the same path I've been on.

------
jdoliner
> I was rejected at Amazon and other companies with no technical interviews
> because I wasn't a Java engineer.

That one seems pretty legit to me.

~~~
sharpy
They hired me despite my not knowing any Java. I was there for close to 5
years and did my share of interviewing and I haven't seen a single instance
where lack of specific programming language skill was brought up as a reason
to reject the candidate. But yeh, the whole hiring process is more random than
it should be.

------
copperx
It's interesting how all these top companies insist on JS expertise, I didn't
know that it was so important for an interview and that's something I need to
work on.

~~~
andrewstuart
If you have no JavaScript these days then largely you can forget job hunting.

If you have awesome, expert, deep, deep JavaScript then firstly you might as
well be a unicorn but secondly, you will get a job.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Should probably clarify that it's only important if you're looking for Web
jobs :-) Sometimes people here forget there's more to software than the web.

~~~
copperx
Is that really true? In the page some report that Google and other companies
that aren't ALL web require you to know JS.

~~~
skj
I know very little about js. It wasn't an issue when I interviewed with Google
and it hasn't been an issue working there.

------
spooningtamarin
I love how Facebook HR rejected one of my acquaintances and then after he
asked "Why?", the recruiter sent an email that was something along these
lines: "Ok, may I schedule a technical interview in a week?".

Eventually he ended up being an engineer there.

My experience and rejection also indicated there's something arbitrary random
going on in the interview process. Once a recruiter from Google commented my
grades with a serious attidute, saying I should keep them as high (I was still
a student) and I immediately realised that grades weren't even checked because
my grades were horrible (GPA<3, ridiculous bible theology social classes
ruined it for me) and if they cared I should get them higher.

------
lordnacho
It seems to me like that best predictor of whether you'll get the thumbs up is
social cues, rather than anything technical.

I went to an on-site at a major company, and there was a guy who just wouldn't
smile. He also led me down the wrong way on the tech part, which is easy when
you make zero facial gestures and talk like a robot. I figured it out
eventually, it wasn't hard, but he dinged me.

With the other people it was just a breeze. We chatted about various low level
performance things, about how the work environment is, and so on. The tech
parts were easy, because you could tell whether you'd actually understood the
problem correctly.

~~~
will_pseudonym
Yup! Also, would you really want to work with person A? I wouldn't, no matter
how talented. Our scarcity mindset as employees has us asking for any job
sometimes, no matter how awful the fit...

------
danharaj
I was rejected for grad school after submitting half-hearted applications and
now work as a fullstack Haskell developer. I didn't even know I would find it
as satisfying as research.

------
hacknat
I just want to confirm the sentiment about how subjective interviewing is. I
recently switched to using a coding challenge instead of a traditional
interview loop. I would take candidates out for coffee pitch them the team and
position, ask them some questions about themselves and then explain how the
challenge would work. The first time I did this I decided to give everyone the
challenge, even people I was sure were going to eat it, just to give myself
some good data about how tough the challenge was and if it needed to be tuned.
I was shocked by how bad my tech-radar really was. Not so much on the upper
end, I can spot the winners still. However some of the people who I thought
would eat it did a lot better than I thought they would. It made me realize
how subjective interview loops really are, with little to no chance of the
interviewer to be shaken out of their biases if they don't want to be. Not
that coding challenges are perfect, but I'm never going back. I will refuse to
participate in interview loops now - on either end.

------
ryandrake
I'd guess that over my nearly 20 year career, I've been rejected from more
companies than most HNers have even applied to. I've listened to tons of
employers tell me what they think I'm not capable of, and that was back when
you would actually get personalized feedback from a failed interview. My
grades, my lack of a "prestigious" education, my technical skills, my people
skills, my background, my previous employment history, my potential, and, of
course, the catch-all "cultural fit" have all been used as reasons that
Company X was sure I'm an idiot. I don't let interview rejections bother me
for even a millisecond anymore--it doesn't mean anything whatsoever, and I'm
convinced getting hired at any given company is more of a dice roll than
anything else.

------
andersonmvd
May be unrelated, but this is like my howihacked.info project that I launched
three days ago, but with a different design and story focus. Anyway, I'm happy
for that and these stories are cool as well. I'd suggest the story of the
WhatsApp founder that wasn't hired by Facebook. Kudos :)

------
saurabhjha
The tiny 1 hour slot is not enough to judge candidates. As an interviewer, the
best I can do is check if they communicate their ideas well and have they got
done something interesting on their own.

It is sad that we still have to follow this broken process because of lack of
any viable alternative.

------
jqm
Looks like (so far) nearly half the people shown wound up at twitter. Apply to
twitter first?

~~~
gotchange
A very interesting phenomenon indeed that all these, excuse my French,
"rejects" wound up at TWTR, can we deduce something concrete from this about
the company's hiring policy or offerings quality?

~~~
snegu
More likely that coworkers at Twitter are telling each other about this site
and encouraging them to post.

~~~
skj
Exactly. The first question that should be asked when people try to make
generalizations is if sampling bias is accounted for.

------
f0rgot
As a current job seeker, this is doing wonders in helping me keep my head up.

------
kelvin0
It seems to me chasing 'high profile' Tech company employment is setting
yourself up for failure. Competing against thousand of applicants should not
be viewed as 'failure' it's a mostly a number's game. Not saying you shouldn't
apply to these companies, but you should also consider your odds and adjust
your expectations accordingly. Also, we seem to identify way too much with the
company we work for ... taking a step back from that helps balance your
outlook.

------
devsquid
Getting turned down always feels shitty, but I try hard to not take it
personally.

The whole you rejected me, but haha I'm better off comes across as pretty
self-centered and entitled.

-edit- removed question,more

~~~
cthulhua
I read this as "we were rejected but it worked out ok, so don't feel too
discouraged if you have a bad interview"

~~~
devsquid
Ok I like that, its just the term rejection has a common us versus them
connotation in the US.

~~~
jon_kuperman
Creator here. Sorry if that wasn't clear! I only meant this to be inspiring
for people to "keep trying" even when they face rejection!

~~~
devsquid
Yea its quite cute!(Not meant to be condescending)

The site loads them in random order and I read about how someone was nervous
during an interview and faults the interviewers and a few other more sour ones
first. lol sorry.

------
arethuza
Many years ago I had an interview for a job I really wanted - all day event
with chats with multiple people including the CEO. Pretty sure it was my chat
with the CEO that killed my application. I was absolutely gutted.

8 years later the same chap was the first angel investor in the startup I co-
founded and worked with us as Chairman for a number of years before the
company was acquired.

I never did ask him if he remembered rejecting me!

------
pinkunicorn
I can't help noticing that a lot of people are from Twitter.

------
rekoros
Rejected in 2009 != rejected in 2015

You have to consider the time dimension and boom-bust cycle.

"I showed up at the store and they didn't let me in."

"Because it was closed!! You showed up at 3am!"

------
altonzheng
To be honest, this wouldn't make me feel much better after a rejection. I
already know the process is sometimes arbitrary and up to luck.

