
Ask HN: What to do after failing final interviews twice? - uyoakaoma
I have had two interviews with big companies Google and Amazon. After going to on campus interviews with both companies but only to here the word you are not qualified. I feel like a complete loser.
======
johan_larson
Take heart. The interview process is designed to say no. A common anecdote at
Google goes like this: "I persuaded the best programmer I know to apply at
Google. And we rejected him." These companies say no to all kinds of talented
people every day.

Apply again next time you are looking for a job, if Amazon and Google really
are the sort of companies you want to work for.

Think back on your interviews and figure out what you did wrong, then study up
on that.

And next time, prepare very carefully, with a focus on algorithms and data
structures. I would use this book, although it's a bit dated now:
[https://www.amazon.com/Data-Structures-Algorithms-Alfred-
Aho...](https://www.amazon.com/Data-Structures-Algorithms-Alfred-
Aho/dp/0201000237)

This one may also be useful: [https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-
Jon-Bentley/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Jon-
Bentley/dp/0201657880)

~~~
deegles
I joke that the only people who pass Google interviews are the people who
already work there.

~~~
rasz_pl
nah, repeat interviews after one year and >80% of already employed there would
get rejected

------
buss
I know how you feel, but take solace in two facts:

1\. Any good company will have a high false negative rate, because it's more
expensive to hire a bad candidate than reject a good one. That's why the big
ones (Amazon, Google, FB, etc) will keep re-interviewing you for the next few
years. They know they make mistakes and want to try again under new
circumstances.

2\. If you actually are unqualified right now, you're _very_ close to being
qualified! If you've made it to onsite interviews then you're doing better
than the majority of candidates. Most people are rejected at or before the
phone screen. You're close, give yourself another year of improving your craft
and interview again.

Background: I worked at Amazon, and conducted interviews while there. I've
conducted lots of interviews at a startup, I just interviewed at Google for
the third time and finally got an offer (now 6 years after graduation). At all
places, we optimized for false negatives.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Any good company will have a high false negative rate, because it's more
> expensive to hire a bad candidate than reject a good one.

As I usually do in these discussions, I would like to register that I think
this is a load of crap.

First, a good company will have a high F-measure. Optimizing your hiring
process for precision and ignoring recall is just a sign of having a really
deep, really talented applicant pool (or being deluded about the depth and
talent of your pool).

Second, when the costs of a bad hire come up lots of "cans" get thrown around
without any grounding in reality. I view "optimiz[ing] for false negatives"
the same way as I view security theater or overprotective parenting: attempts
to stave off very low probability negative events that end up costing more
than the events themselves would. Again, with a deep and talented pool this
might not be the case, but if you are large enough to have that you are large
enough that the damage a bad hire can cause is trivial to your business.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
So you're actually arguing for companies to hire employees who will likely
produce negative output (their code will be so bad as to take not only their
own time, but other programmers' time to fix) just to ...what, not hurt the
feelings of the bottom 80 percent of developers?

Your analogy is poor: Hiring a bad programmer is an extremely high probability
event, even in a broad pool of candidates as would apply to a high-end company
like Amazon, not a low priority event. There have been studies dating back to
the 70's that show a 10-20x skill difference between average and great
developers. If you're going to pay roughly the same for a 1x as a 10x
developer, wouldn't you want the 10x? So they tune their hiring process to
skew that number as high as possible.

OP above may be an exception who fell through the cracks, not really ragging
on them in particular.

I did know at least one person who applied to Amazon and who was rejected --
and rightfully so, in my opinion. His skills were sub-par, and the interview
process detected that. Most others that I worked with while I was at Amazon
were also above average; people I've encountered at other jobs have been
mediocre by comparison, with the exception of a number of game developers I
know.

~~~
vonmoltke
> So you're actually arguing for companies to hire employees who will likely
> produce negative output (their code will be so bad as to take not only their
> own time, but other programmers' time to fix) just to ...what, not hurt the
> feelings of the bottom 80 percent of developers?

I did nothing of the sort. In fact, I am arguing that your hypothetical
negative output employee is much rarer that some people think.

> Your analogy is poor: Hiring a bad programmer is an extremely high
> probability event, even in a broad pool of candidates as would apply to a
> high-end company like Amazon, not a low priority event.

I have seen no data to support this. My personal experience does not support
this.

> There have been studies dating back to the 70's that show a 10-20x skill
> difference between average and great developers. If you're going to pay
> roughly the same for a 1x as a 10x developer, wouldn't you want the 10x? So
> they tune their hiring process to skew that number as high as possible.

Citation needed. I have certainly seen this bandied about the Internet quite a
bit, but the best the citations only claim a 10x difference between great and
_terrible_ developers, and even those studies are likely flawed.[1]

> I did know at least one person who applied to Amazon and who was rejected --
> and rightfully so, in my opinion. His skills were sub-par, and the interview
> process detected that. Most others that I worked with while I was at Amazon
> were also above average; people I've encountered at other jobs have been
> mediocre by comparison, with the exception of a number of game developers I
> know.

I'm not saying people _shouldn 't_ be rejected or that bad developers should
have jobs at places like Amazon. I'm saying that optimizing for false
negatives because you are paranoid of false positives is an anti-pattern and
that there are better ways to deal with false positives.

[1] [http://blog.fogcreek.com/10x-programmer-and-other-myths-
in-s...](http://blog.fogcreek.com/10x-programmer-and-other-myths-in-software-
engineering-interview-with-laurent-bossavit/)

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
>My personal experience does not support this.

Mine does. Sometimes all the work done by a new developer ends up needing to
be ripped out and redone. I've had that happen to me in the last year (a
developer with high credentials and who answered the questions well!), and I
just had a friend show me a developer who would copy-and-paste code from
StackOverflow into different places until the result was what he wanted --
leaving all of the other references because he didn't really understand WTF he
was doing.

>10x difference between great and terrible developers

It's 10x between great and average. The studies were done on actively employed
developers at large companies, and also showed the 10x developers produced
more easily readable code that was better optimized.

>Citation needed. [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-
Month#The_sur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-
Month#The_surgical_team)

~~~
vonmoltke
> Sometimes all the work done by a new developer ends up needing to be ripped
> out and redone. I've had that happen to me in the last year (a developer
> with high credentials and who answered the questions well!), and I just had
> a friend show me a developer who would copy-and-paste code from
> StackOverflow into different places until the result was what he wanted --
> leaving all of the other references because he didn't really understand WTF
> he was doing.

How did that code get in there in the first place? Does your or your friend's
companies not do code reviews, particularly for new team members?

> It's 10x between great and average. The studies were done on actively
> employed developers at large companies, and also showed the 10x developers
> produced more easily readable code that was better optimized.

> [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-
> Month#The_sur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-
> Month#The_sur..).

The relevant quote:

> Brooks _muses_

I have the book. I've read it. Brooks has nothing other than conjecture on the
subject. As Laurent Bossavit said in the Fog Creek interview,

> When I looked into it, what was advanced as evidence for those claims, what
> I found was not really what I had expected, what you think would be the case
> for something people say, and what you think is supported by tens of
> scientific studies and research into software engineering. In fact what I
> found when I actually investigated, all the citations that people give in
> support for that claim, was that in many cases the research was done on very
> small groups and not extremely representative, the research was old so this
> whole set of evidence was done in the seventies, on programs like Fortran or
> COBOL and in some cases on non-interactive programming, so systems where the
> program was input, you get results of the compiling the next day. The
> original study, the one cited as the first was actually one of those, it was
> designed initially not to investigate productivity differences but to
> investigate the difference between online and offline programming
> conditions.

Both my anecdotal experience and independent research into the subject
corroborate what Laurent is saying in this interview.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
>How did that code get in there in the first place? Does your or your friend's
companies not do code reviews, particularly for new team members?

His company didn't do regular code reviews, no.

It's a game company. Game companies frequently don't follow the same set of
best practices common in other industries. In part because typical game
developers are a notch above app/web developers, though in part because it's
just a lot more "wild west."

------
moondev
Just making it to those on-site interviews is an accomplishment in my book.
Just because you did not get the job does not mean you didn't gain anything.
Use your experiences moving forward and you will land somewhere.

There are plenty of non-unicorn places that are awesome to work at. Maybe
focus on some startups and other places, you don't have to take the job if
they offer you. You are just as much interviewing them to see if it's a good
fit.

The other thing too is the more you interview the more comfortable you are
with it. You have already experienced probably the tougher interviews out
there. Keep at it and you will land somewhere you love.

~~~
samfisher83
If you don't get a job I think interviewing is a waste of time. It might be an
accomplishment, but you have to waste a a vacation day on not a vacation. A
lot of time it is quite unorganized and sometimes the interviewer doesn't even
seem interested.

I know when i am doing an interview I am prepared and make sure I know exactly
how I am going to structure the interview and have read over the persons
resume. I can't say the same for the places I have interviewed.

~~~
adrianratnapala
Last time I went to such an interview I got to spend a night in a very good
hotel, in a very pretty town that I otherwise wouldn't have visted. I got to
take in their summer festival, which I didn't even know was on.

And on the next day: I spent few hours talking about about programming to
programmers. That done, I wondered about the town some more, eating local food
and sipping foreign wine.

Damn! What a waste of a holiday.

~~~
cableshaft
The time I interviewed at Google they flew me in the day before, once I got to
my hotel room I had a couple of hours to mentally prepare for the next day
before going to bed.

The next day I had about five or six hours of the toughest interview problems
I have ever encountered and they had to end it a slightly early to make sure I
had enough time to get back on the airport and make the flight they had
scheduled for me to get back. About the only thing I got to experience besides
Silicon Valley traffic was a meal at In-N-Out Burger (which was delicious,
like always).

I still enjoyed the experience, mind you, and Google campus was really cool to
see in person, but that didn't exactly feel like a holiday. I imagine most
people's experiences would be more like this and less like your singular
holiday-like experience.

~~~
akhilcacharya
At MS and FB they give you 2 nights if you're on the other coast and reimburse
food - MS even gave a sightseeing stipend. This is for intern interviews, at
least.

------
sp527
I've worked at Google and Facebook and I've been rejected from almost all of
the top companies at one point or another (including Google, amusingly). It
really doesn't mean much other than that not all the variables lined up during
that particular interview process. It happens. Don't let it get you down!

~~~
zerr
Did this (having G & F in CV) help finding next jobs? i.e. possibilities to
skip/ease further [tech] interviews? (in this case, it might be worthwhile to
allocate some time preparing for interviews at G or F).

~~~
sp527
Nah most companies still insist on their process but I don't think I've ever
been denied an interview (it's usually HR screening resumes and they won't
pass on people with a background at companies like FB/Google). It helped a lot
in convincing me working at a large tech company was not the right path for me
personally (if you can't tolerate it at FB/Google, it's unlikely you would be
able to do so anywhere else). Perhaps the biggest benefit is security: you can
safely take startup risks without worrying about getting back into the
industry. That's been the most important benefit I think.

------
aphextron
Interview for a third time. Just getting to the point of an in-person
interview with both Amazon and Google means you're clearly a qualified
engineer. Chalk it up to practice. Tech interviewing is a skill, just like
anything else.

They just have the luxury of being very picky and rejecting people for no real
reason. There are plenty of great tech companies out there, I promise you.

------
nilkn
This is nothing to worry about. These companies do not blacklist candidates
for not getting offers. You can try again in the future. Their interview
processes are designed entirely around finding reasons to not hire someone, so
much so that they very often make mistakes and reject talented applicants.

It's also important to understand that there are many great companies out
there. In fact, I think Amazon has a fairly controversial reputation as an
employer for programmers, so you very well may have dodged a bullet. I'm
really not exaggerating on that either to try to make you feel better. I've
legitimately heard lots of horror stories about Amazon.

~~~
shakkhar
Case in point:
[https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX).

------
bkjelden
Keep Trying.

Informal stats I've seen say that the big players still reject 80% of their
onsite candidates - you're not a loser, it happens to a lot of people.

I failed 3 in a row in one week once - not fun. I know how you feel. I was
pretty bummed for a few months and it took me a while to restore my
confidence.

For me, my progression with tech interviews was definitely non-linear. I
sucked at them and felt terrible and incompetent, and then suddenly things
started to click very quickly and I'm alright at them now. The only real way
to get better is practice.

~~~
curryhowardiso
"The only real way to get better is practice." 100%

------
danso
I don't have much to add but "complete losers" don't get invited to Google's
and Amazon's campuses, nor do they get several hours (at the least) of top
talent devoted to finding and interviewing them.

But that perspective is hard to see right after being rejected. The worst
thing you can do is let that drag you down into a self-fulfilling prophecy,
unable to meet the plenty of opportunities that will come your way.

------
mindcrime
Remember, they don't actually know if you're qualified to work there or not.
Interviewing is hardly a science. There's a lot of intuition and "gut feel"
involved. Being reject could mean anything from "you actually _are_
unqualified" to "the interviewer's dog got run over by a car this morning" or
anything in between. More likely it means something closer to "these people
don't actually know how to evaluate me to see if I'm qualified for their job
or not, and the outcome of this process is closer to random chance than
anything else.

IOW, don't let it get you down. If you feel the need, continue studying,
working hard, learning new stuff, etc. as that can only help you in general.
But there's no need to feel like a loser.

~~~
vonmoltke
As someone who has been rejected after a Google onsite, an Amazon hiring
event, and (as of a few hours ago) an Amazon onsite the thing that gets me
down is these companies are among the few who actually want to _interview_ me.

I'm in Dallas. I get hit up by someone affiliated with Amazon once every
couple months, Google and Microsoft about once a year, and Facebook
occasionally. Getting a company not listed in the previous sentence and not
located in DFW to acknowledge my existence, let alone interview me, is like
pulling teeth. Based on OP's visa situation he may be in a similar boat.

~~~
codeonfire
Yes well, big companies WANT to hire you but they also are culturally not able
to. When they get too big it's all about politics and money. They want to hire
you but lack the will to hire people that cost a lot and may be a political
liability. The company as a whole is like a drug addict. They want to stop but
can't and will never admit they have a problem. Big companies are addicted to
larger numbers of cheaper employees because headcount determines each managers
rank and salary not results.

------
CommenterMan
"Jumping from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm is the big
secret to success."

I don't know the source of this quote, but it was repeated by a physicist in
the documentary "Particle Fever".

~~~
nsxwolf
But how? How could anyone's enthusiasm not be diminished by failure? Not even
a little bit? If there are really people like that, that sounds like a genetic
advantage.

~~~
kstenerud
I'm not sure if it's learned or innate but it goes a little like this:

No matter what happens, I'll still be breathing tomorrow, unless I die in
which case it doesn't matter anyway.

I approach everything in life under the assumption that I'll reach my goal.
Some things go wrong, of course, but mostly the world gets out of my way and
lets me pass.

A "failure" means that your success doesn't lie with them. Move on.

Also, take some time to think about WHY you have the goals that you do. Are
they really what you want, or just something that other people told you to
want? The world is full of successfully miserable people.

~~~
mancerayder
"The world is full of successfully miserable people."

Up-voted so I feel less guilty stealing that phrase!

------
mwfunk
In my experience, the majority of people who interview at the big tech
companies don't get offers. It's not even necessarily because the interviewee
made any mistakes, just for whatever reason many companies like that are super
picky because they can afford to be.

You shouldn't feel bad about it at all, but I know the feeling- it sucks,
especially if you really got your hopes up. However, the fact that you got
those interviews reflects very well on you, and the fact that you didn't get
the jobs does not reflect poorly on you.

Just going through the interview process is a really useful learning
experience. It builds confidence for future interviews and gives you a feel
for how you might want to further develop your professional and/or
interpersonal skills.

Sometimes job-seekers get lucky and get an offer right away. Sometimes people
interview at 10-20 different companies before it works out. All you can do is
not take it personally, learn what you can from each experience, and keep
trying. If you keep trying you are guaranteed to eventually succeed (well, on
an infinite timescale :), but if you give up you are guaranteed to fail
immediately. Good luck!

------
davesailer
OK, you revealed only far down this thread that you actually are a special
case, not just some random local who got an interview. That does add
complexity.

But (and I am no expert, and I have never come within a million miles of this
level of employer), I decided decades ago that anyone who didn't have the
brains to hire me was someone I didn't want to work with. No, really - what
you see and what you think you want might not be what you need, and a
different employer could be a better match.

I've found in my life that unexpected and unanticipated opportunities usually
turn out better for me than ones I think I ought to pursue. Maybe that's only
me, maybe not.

And finally, as others have said, interviewing gives you more practice at
interviewing, which makes you better at interviewing, and more likely to make
it through the inevitable random fluctuations that reject qualified
candidates. Randomness is not your fault, but practice at recognizing it and
dancing around it will help you.

------
lefstathiou
Here's an idea: consider working with us : )

Finsight (New York) www.finsight.com

About Us: 3-year old NYC-based enterprise fintech startup. We create web-based
tools that help investment banks use data to automate workflows and sell fixed
income and equity securities. You can very loosely think of us as an Angelist
for institutional investors. Every month, $10-20 billion of financings are
exclusively marketed through our platform (Angelist did $150 million in 2015).
We work with all the leading bulge bracket investment banks (Goldman Sachs,
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citi, JPM, Barclays, etc) and hundreds of the
nations leading corporations like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ford, Hyundai, etc.
We are bootstrapped and profitable and believe we are in a very unique
position to significantly impact an extremely valuable segment of Wall Street
(new issue offerings).

What We're Looking For: Full stack is ideal but we are flexible. Most
important for us is someone who enjoys coding and is self-organized. We are a
very lean team and need a lot of help - we don't have bandwidth to do a lot of
hand holding so we need people excited about taking ownership over their work.
We have great clients who are supportive and we have a roadmap that can easily
get us into 2017. We know what we need to do, need help doing it...

Stack: Front-end: angular and express Backend: laravel, php, node.js Database:
MYSQL Deployments: chef and docker Interview Process: 1. Resume screen 2.
Phone screen with hiring manager 3. Onsite interview with team (expect some
technicals) 4. Done.

Contact: leo@finsight.com

------
fenomas
The thing to remember is, there are maybe 10+ possible reasons you didn't get
an offer, and only one of them (doing badly in the interview) is under your
control. The others (position got cut, somebody else was a better fit,
internal requirements changed, position filled by an internal transfer, etc)
are, if not random, at least indistinguishable from random from your
perspective.

Of course, they usually don't tell you the reason in your case, so all you can
do is guess - if you think you bombed the interview then study what you
missed, and if you don't, chalk it up to randomness.

------
eachro
I got rejected at 7 final onsites before landing an offer. There is hope for
you. Just keep working on projects and whiteboarding. Don't underestimate how
much focused interview prep can help. Good luck!

------
joncp
Well, it's pretty standard knowledge that Google's hiring process is a
capricious shambles. Give it a third try and you might get in.

Not sure about Amazon's hiring process but from what I hear, you're better off
not working there.

~~~
nsxwolf
It helps to realize the Amazon interview is a free trip to Seattle. You can
exploit that the same way you can exploit time share companies.

~~~
joncp
Please please please don't come to Seattle.

~~~
verisimilidude
Elaborate. I want to hear this.

~~~
nsxwolf
Amazon aggressively recruits people all over the country. If you have a pulse,
you can probably get through their initial phone screen and they will pay to
fly you out to Seattle for a day of interviews. You typically won't have a lot
of time to see the city, but you can roll the dice and "miss" your return
flight and try to get a standby booking which might buy you a few hours or an
overnight - which you can then book a hotel on your dime.

------
gorbachev
If you didn't get any feedback as to why you were rejected, there's no point
in feeling bad about it.

There are all kinds of reasons companies reject candidates. A lot of them have
nothing to do with your competence.

Maybe they had a better or cheaper candidate come along. Maybe the open
position was closed. Maybe they thought you were overqualified. Maybe the
interviewer(s) had a bad day and rejected everyone. Maybe one of the
interviewers is an asshole and vetoed your candidacy over the objections of
everyone else.

You have no idea of knowing what happened, even if they did give you feedback.
They are certainly not going to tell you that everyone but the asshole wanted
to hire you.

~~~
imsofuture
Furthermore, all companies are _different_. They all value different things
and strengths and types of people. Getting rejected by Amazon doesn't mean you
are "not the top 1%", it doesn't even mean you aren't _Amazon 's top 1%_. It
means that on that specific day, those specific people didn't think you were
the specific top 1% they were looking for right then.

You might be Amazon top 1% tomorrow. You might be Facebook top 1% right now.
You might have been Uber's top 1% yesterday. You might be everything a founder
somewhere is looking for right this second.

Hiring is not an objective game, never read anything personal into it.

------
EliRivers
Stop reading Hacker News and everything like it. Such echo-chambers have
persuaded you that working for one of a handful of companies is all that
counts, and that your worth is measured by doing so. It's damaging your mind.

Come back mentally protected.

------
philwelch
I recently quit my job because of burnout and management problems. Since then,
I applied to 39 jobs. I pulled out of the process with four, 34 rejected me,
and the last one was the offer I accepted. Out of the 34 that rejected me, 11
rejected me after a full loop. I don't know what was more insulting, doing 11
full loops (3 of which required air travel!) without getting an offer, or
getting rejected by 23 companies without even reaching the full loop step.

Big companies have fixed interview processes that are designed to weed out
false positives at the expense of having a lot of false negatives. Startups by
and large don't know WTF they are doing when it comes to hiring. Companies in
the middle deceive themselves into thinking they have a process when they
really don't know what they're doing. Some companies experiment with their
hiring process, which is a lot like not knowing what you're doing except they
get usable data out of it afterwards (at the expense of you, the applicant).
And some companies don't even have a clear idea of what roles they need to
hire for when they bring you to a full loop. Twice I've received interview
feedback to the effect of, "we like you, but we can't actually move forward
with the role we interviewed you for because we lost budget/want to rework the
role requirements".

If you're interviewing with places like Google and Amazon, you're in a career
that pays six figures. A six figure career isn't treated like a five figure
career, and tech is a pathological example of this. Most six figure careers--
doctor, dentist, longshoreman--have some sort of barrier to entry where you go
through years of hazing, high expenses, and unreliable income. Other six
figure careers are really just the top of a five figure career. With tech, I
don't know how it is if you have some sort of marker that you've already been
through years of expensive hazing (i.e. a degree from MIT or CMU) but for a
guy like me who went to a mid-rate state university, there's the same instinct
to have a high barrier to entry but instead of making that barrier to entry
something that you can spend a few years climbing through, it's a gigantic
wall that you get one chance to jump over. And that wall is the interview
process.

------
nindalf
A real warrior doesn't dash off in pursuit of the next victory, nor throw a
fit when experiencing a loss. A real warrior ponders the next battle.

Ponder your next move and come back stronger.

------
oykos
I interviewed at Google 3 times over 6 years before they hired me. I am now a
senior staff engineer (L7). Don't sweat failure - learn from it!

------
devonkim
You were not rejected by Google and Amazon, you were rejected by fallible,
biased, and hopefully well-intentioned representatives at Google and Amazon as
part of their human-driven internal processes.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
You should not feel like a complete loser because the interviewers are just
people like you and their decision says nothing about you as a person, they
just think they didn't see what they were looking for, they may be wrong and
even if they are not wrong, it says nothing about your potential.

That said I don't think any advice here will really help. I've been in a
similar position years ago and you have to experience actually getting into
one of these places and then realizing everyone's just the same as you to feel
better about this. I'm in the opposite situation to you now and trying to get
out of a large tech company and do my own thing. I would say keep applying if
this is what you want and keep practicing the interview style questions -
personally going over algorithms and data structures without any other
motivation besides interviews is hard for me. If you can work on something of
your own, even a game or something not important do so, because when you
finally do get in to one of these companies, you might find out (perhaps
sooner than you expected) that you want to get out and having experience doing
your own thing might make that easier.

------
acconrad
Practice! Books like Programming Pearls and Cracking the Coding Interview will
be useful for you. Meet with friends and do mock interviews.

Developer interviews are similar to the SATs/GREs/any other standardized test.
It's not a test of your general ability so much as it is a test of your
ability to do well on a standardized testing format. And in general, the best
way to ace those is to practice interview problems _a lot_.

------
JSeymourATL
> What to do...

Go find a small-shop, where you can learn and grow. Where they will appreciate
your contributions more. And you'll have greater impact.

Be so good they can't ignore you. Incidentally, that path will also make YOU a
future prime target for the Big Guys. Google especially is fond of acqui-hires
> > [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/12/23/bebop-was-more-
than-a...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/12/23/bebop-was-more-than-an-
acqui-hire-for-google/?mg=id-wsj)

------
partisan
When I didn't manage to make it past my Amazon interviews, I hit a wall. It
was a harsh realization that I was either not my best self or that I was not
good enough. After a two month slump, I decided that I was just not up to the
standards of a rigorous technical interview, but that I could get there with
hard work and a new mindset.

I can't tell you not to feel badly about it, but I do want to tell you that 4
years on, it doesn't matter whether I would have been hired by Amazon. In
fact, I probably would not have my own company if I had been given an offer.

------
shaftway
Take it as a learning opportunity and try again.

I'm assuming you're a software engineer....

You didn't say anything about your skill level or experience, or what level
you were looking for. Interviewers are often given a target level to interview
you at, and if you are not at that level you will get low marks (though better
interviewers will often suggest you be hired at a lower level).

You should have a pretty good idea of how you did on each question. Did you
check edge cases? Solid test coverage? Did you ask clarifying questions? How
good were your answers? If the obvious answer is O(n^2) then there's an answer
that is O(n log n). If the obvious answer is O(2^n) then there's an answer
that is O(n^2). Look for infinite loops. Memoization. Recursion, and unrolling
that recursion into a loop.

Don't get discouraged. You were just handed a study guide for your next
interview in 6 months.

Remember to ask questions about the company. Even if you know the answers. An
interviewee that's asking questions looks more engaged and is more likely to
get more attention. I like asking questions like "What's the best/worst part
of working here?" Things that it's legit to ask more than one interviewer, in
case they talk and share your questions.

Acting calm and relaxed, and being able to hold a conversation helps a lot.
You're not just interviewing for your ability. You're going to be part of a
team, and if your interviewer can't imagine working with you, that may
translate into a pass.

Learn something new. Disjoint sets are a great tool for interviews. I've taken
questions that the interviewer thought was O(n^2) and solved it in O(α(n))
which grows so slowly it might as well be O(1). I boned up on proof by
induction before my Google interviews and it helped carry me through.

Practice interviewing. I went on half a dozen interviews to prep for my
interview at Google. I occasionally interview even if I'm not looking. I've
had 10 jobs (I used to jump around a lot) and I've probably gone on well over
a hundred interviews. Most were practice ones I didn't particularly care
about, some were practices that turned into jobs. Very few were specific jobs
I was working to get.

You might have just gotten unlucky. [http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...](http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html) has a good synopsis of
the stress and dejection that not getting hired holds, particularly at Google,
and how you might have just happened to get the wrong interviewers.

------
williamstein
Since this question is specifically about in-person interviews, I wonder if
you could work on your attention to detail regarding language skills. For
example, in this very question you wrote "After going to on campus interviews
with both companies but only to here the word you are not qualified", which
contains multiple mistakes (the punctuation is incorrect and "here" should be
"hear").

~~~
jonathankoren
I really dont think that theyre punkuation or spelling is the the issue.
Thesare are really common misakes.

Typing is a different noisy channel than speaking.

~~~
Ologn
I think it could be an issue. Dozens/hundreds/thousands of people interview at
Google. If I was interviewing for a programming position, and they were
misspelling words in the e-mails and mangling their English, and English
language communication was important in the job (as it has been for every job
I've had), that would be a red flag. With so many others of a probably
equivalent competence interviewing, it wouldn't take many red flags for them
to be passed on for an offer.

~~~
jonathankoren
Yeah but it was a onsite interview. If typing was going to be an issue, it
would have already come up.

------
TheMog
As a lot of people have already said, even getting to an on-site with either
of these companies is an accomplishment in itself. I've had on-sites at both
and like you, I've been turned down. Doesn't stop Amazon from coming back to
me with different job opportunities about once a year.

Keep in mind that in most cases you will not be given the real reason for
rejection (mostly as a lawsuit-avoidance measure) but something vague like
"not qualified" (which can mean anything starting from a wrong haircut to the
interviewer bearing a grudge against your school) or "decided to go with
another candidate". Heck, I've been told by an employer that they'd found an
internal candidate for the position only to find out nine months later via the
grapevine that the rejection happened the exact day a hiring freeze with
"rightsizing" had been instituted.

You're not a loser, otherwise you wouldn't have made it in there in first
place. What it means is that on this particular day, the stars didn't align
for you.

------
youngButEager
H1B story. I was contracting as a middleware software engineer a while back.

They posted job descriptions for two senior-level programmers, both positions
requiring Masters degrees.

These two 'job opening' announcements were placed in the break room so
everyone saw them.

The pay? $65,000 a year.

The steps to hire an HIB require: \- the employer make a documented effort to
hire a U.S. national first \- by posting a 'Job opening' \- by interviewing

A lot of times, tech firms are hiring H1Bs from India etc.

Right? Just take a look at the over-representation of foreign nationals,
compared to U.S. college grads/citizens, at the tech firms you've worked at.

When I saw "$65,000 annual salary" well my goodness. Do you think they'll find
someone, a U.S. national, to take that position? No.

It's an unhappy truth, but if you know you're qualified, not too old, and felt
a lot of rapport with the interviewers, and did well on the tech part of the
interview, and don't get an offer, the firm my not WANT to even be doing that
interview but they _must_ before hiring an H1B.

~~~
codeonfire
Exact reason I won't interview at Microsoft. I went to a hiring event a few
years ago and was the only American on either side of the table. They needed
to be seen trying to hire Americans, and I felt stupid for having fallen for
this scheme.

~~~
biocomputation
Sad, but true!

------
jknoepfler
In the eyes of the interviewers, you were not the most qualified candidate for
the position they were hiring for. That's nothing to feel bad about, it just
means that if your goal is to be hired by Amazon or Google (or etc.), you need
to improve your qualifications (work a different job), and/or improve your
ability to communicate your qualifications (work on your "whiteboarding"
skills. Also if English was the language the interview was conducted in, work
on your conversational English with a language swap partner). You may even
"run better" if you re-apply without any improvement, but why take that risk?

There is no penalty to you for re-applying to different jobs at Google or
Amazon, and you may find a team for which you are a better fit, you may have
better interview luck, or you may be evaluated against a less competitive
pool. In the meantime, get a different job and don't let your skills rust.

~~~
skookum
> In the eyes of the interviewers, you were not the most qualified candidate
> for the position they were hiring for.

For Amazon, this is not a correct conclusion. Having done well into the low-
hundreds of on-site interviews for Amazon, I do not recall a single instance
of a debrief discussion comparing one candidate against another. At Amazon it
is simply a matter of making the bar or not making the bar. While it may seem
like you are interviewing for a specific position, in reality at Amazon you
are interviewing for a given role and level. Generally the level is targeted
based on the candidate's experience and if the candidate barely doesn't make
the bar but the interview loop agrees they have growth potential they may get
an offer at one level lower, though this is not particularly common. Amazon
will extend an offer to any candidate who meets the bar regardless of how many
good candidates are interviewing for a specific "opening". Between the
company's growth rate and the high attrition Amazon needs more new hires than
can be found that meet the bar.

~~~
jknoepfler
I accept the Amazon specific revision that "in the eyes of the reviewers, you
did not meet the bar." The rest of the advice follows just as naturally from
this premise. The only variable that is eliminated is the current application
pool, which the candidate has no control over anyway. Performed ability level,
interviewer perception, and "resume traits" are the variables any candidate
should manipulate to increase the odds of being hired. The first two are very
noisy, the later can also be a function of effort (the same information can be
presented better or worse in a resume).

I reject the notion that Amazon's hiring practices are neither implicitly nor
explicitly comparative. The notion of hiring candidates that "raise the bar"
is explicitly comparative to existing employees. That said, I do not know the
details of Amazon's hiring philosophy. I do know that internal promotion
within Amazon is quota constrained and therefore implicitly comparative.

~~~
skookum
> I reject the notion that Amazon's hiring practices are neither implicitly
> nor explicitly comparative.

You are absolutely right on that. The core question that needs to be answered
at each interview debrief is "when the next review process roles around, do we
believe this candidate will end up in the upper half of the stack rank for
their role/level?" It's a little more complicated than that as Amazon's stack
rank is a two-dimensional rank that looks both at contribution-in-level and
perceived growth potential, but in the end it's still a judgment call of "is
this candidate better than half the people currently in this role."

------
vmarsy
Try Microsoft and Facebook.

Try applying for an internship if applicable, the barrier of entry is lower.

Don't get discouraged, I got rejected 4 times at the phone interview level
before getting an offer. You should feel proud for going on-site with Google
and Amazon already. Try to reflect on your mistakes during those 2 events to
make the 3rd on-site interview a success.

------
tomjen3
Don't feel like a complete loser (yes, that is easier said than done). You
failed two interviews, but an equally valid way to look at that is that you go
so far as the interview stage at two companies, one of which is legendary for
being monsterously difficult to interview for. You just did something 99.9% of
the world will never ever have the change to do.

Did they tell you why you didn't pass the interview? If so work on that, if
not, know that there are tons of companies out there that will want to hire
you.

I never applied for anything like Google, but I had companies that wouldn't
take a second look at my application and companies that spent the entire
interview stage trying to wow me to sign the employment contract. Most
companies (probably in particular Google) have an employment pipeline that has
_nothing_ to do with whether you would be a good employee.

Don't be discouraged by a few companies choosing not to hire you.

------
blackflame7000
First off, you are not a loser just because you weren't selected by some of
the most elite tech companies. Google will never know how many talented people
they have accidentally turned away over the years because of trivial things
like the whiteboard test.

My advice to you is pick a language and just program anything and everything.
Make it a point to master one language rather then learn 10 for a resumes
sake. No one cares how well Shakespeare wrote Spanish and no one will care if
you don't know perl if you are a c++ guru.

Finally, don't let your opinion of yourself and your capabilities be dictated
by someone who barely even knows you and what you are capable of. Google is a
fantastic company but even they make mistakes. Focus your energy on trying to
prove them wrong.

------
matt_wulfeck
It's so important for you to be rejected from many places because it helps
build your rejection "tolerance". If you read about people you admire, you
will see their paths absolutely _paved_ with rejection.

------
subway
You find another org you're interested in working with and move on with life.

~~~
uyoakaoma
The problem is I am an international most companies do not support H-1B's

~~~
pkaye
Are you looking for a H1B sponsorship? A lot of tech companies do this if you
have speciality skills. Even some small ones. The only catch is the visa
process is long and you have a 1/3 chance of getting one.

~~~
uyoakaoma
Yes I am looking for companies. But the only companies which I knew who
offered a lot were google and amazon. And doing something I like while working
for them

------
Bahamut
Happens - I failed interviewing with Google 5 times this past year, the last
time being my first in-person with them (feedback was inconsistent
performance).

I've learned at least with Google, sometimes you get bad luck with the
draw...and in my case, I had some quite bad luck with recruiters who weren't
the greatest communicators. One technical phone screen was waived due to the
team's familiarity with my work, only to be rejected as not what they were
looking for for that specific role.

Also, sometimes rejection is a blessing. The important thing is to make the
most of your experiences.

~~~
Kephael
I was under the impression Google only interviews a candidate so many times
before they are banned from interviewing.

~~~
Bahamut
These interviews were mostly initiated by Google - in particular, I have a
special level of expertise with Angular, which they highly covet and which is
likely why they've been contacting me roughly every two months or so to
interview for various engineering roles.

Also, I had a typo - I didn't mean recruiters, I meant interviewers.

------
rdl
1) That's two companies. And presumably for two roles total. There are
probably 50k other options.

2) If you can get feedback from friends who work at either on how the
interviews went, and specifically what they found unqualified about you, you
can try either remedying those deficiencies (which might be real, or might be
perception -- different ways to fix), or you could apply for roles/companies
where those matter less.

Amazon and Google are pretty different, aside from both being "big", so it
would be helpful to know what you liked about each and their roles.

------
ndesaulniers
Get back on your horse and try again. Took me 4 tries to get into Google.

------
kdamica
You are not a loser. Getting in the door at these companies is an
accomplishment in itself, and puts you in the top tier of applicants.

Treat every interview as a learning experience for the next.

One thing you can do when you start looking for jobs is to accept interviews
for roles you are interested in but wouldn't feel terrible turning down. This
will give you some experience before you interview for the roles you deeply
want. Interviewing is a skill, one that I've found needs to be relearned for
every job search.

------
greenleafjacob
The measure of an engineer is what he builds. There is plenty of top notch
engineering going on outside Google. Think WhatsApp, CoreOS, Rust at Mozilla,
Azul JVM, etc.

~~~
superuser2
AFAICT no one actually believes this. There are plenty of places where
building something important will get you in the door for an interview. There
don't appear to be any employers that would be satisfied by track record
without whiteboard performance.

~~~
greenleafjacob
I think that is correct, that most employers today insist on the monkey show
interview process. I meant it more as countering what OP said about feeling
like garbage. Being a great engineer in fact (building reliable and durable
systems) is at best correlated and at worst completely orthogonal to what is
measured in interviews today.

~~~
ams6110
When did this become a thing, and is it mostly an SV phenomenon?

I've never in my life (nearly 30 years in salaried dev/tech positions) had to
do whiteboard coding in a job interview.

------
orsenthil
If you like to work for one of these companies, then try again. You should try
until you get it. Also, it helps to remember that, cracking the interview is
just one part and you will be able to do it at some point in time with
practice, but working as a software developer is a different story. You could
aim to become a good software developer at anytime, irrespective of where you
work. I hope you give preference to the later.

------
rincebrain
Practice and breathe.

Realize that even if you're doing well, interviewers can still perceive you
poorly, and the process is weighted to reflect how much more painful a bad
hire is than rejecting a good hire.

Practice is going to improve your performance and put you at ease with the
process, and give you a better understanding of when your performance was not
up to snuff versus just not meshing with how the interviewers wanted to
interact with you.

------
Taylor_OD
As others have said... Keep trying. If you really want to work at one of the
large players its often a multi year process of interviewing and getting
turned down until you dont.

As far as feeling line a loser... Interview more. I'm sure there are plenty of
smaller shops that will throw plenty of money and praise at you if you need a
ego boost.

------
makach
Embrace it as an awesome experience. Most people don't get an interview. You
obviously got some learning from it.

Interviews are great. They go both way. Never forget you are also interviewing
them!

Also being employed, going to interviews should not be considered illoyal.
Never lie, be transparent when you have to be---

------
asimuvPR
Its normal to feel defeated. The process is tough. But you should recharge
your batteries and try again. :)

------
schwarzmx
Like others said - keep trying. I was rejected by both companies once, and now
I work for Amazon. You get better with time.

Also, both companies have quite different styles of interviews (whiteboard
programming aside). Really pay attention to what the recruiters suggest to
study up before the interview.

------
swagtricker
Screw 'em. Take the opportunity now to learn that a career in software
development is far more than cranking out code on bullshit deadlines where
you're just another numbered drone in the hive. It can also be making colossal
mistakes at small to medium sized organizations where you deal with stupid
politics and influence major architecture and platform decisions because
business people don't know what they're doing:)

Seriously though: get involved with a local users group & meet people
interested in your language/stack of choice. Get to know a bit about the
smaller places they work & why they do it. Network, look for new opportunities
& take a run at some place where you can have some impact.

Disclaimer: due to personal biases and the shared experiences of friends &
colleagues, I would _NEVER_ recommend someone who loves their CAREER filed get
pulled into a JOB at a big U.S. company. Take my advice with a grain of salt
(or perhaps a full kilogram).

------
Xyik
Understand that the success rate is probably something like 5% for high tier
companies, being 1 of the other 19 that failed isn't anything to be ashamed
of.

What's important is that you reflect on things you could have done better in
your interviews and learn from it.

~~~
codeonfire
I wouldn't call these companies "high tier." They are big and have a lot of
money but mainly rely on interns to keep their decades old cash cows going.

------
3pt14159
Often times its really hard to say no to someone, especially if they've gotten
that far into the interview process. Just keep moving forward. You'll find
something that you like and you'll forget all about Amazon.

------
pm90
Every Google interviewer I've spoken to has told me the same thing: most
Googlers got in on their 3rd or 4th attempt. Don't take it personally; there
are a ton of opportunities for Software Developers in the US.

------
bobdole1234
You'll interview again, and again, until you are qualified.

Then you'll get hired.

------
cheez
Don't worry about it. Rejection is part of the process. I was rejected even
being the best candidate, according to them, because of "culture fit".

I translated this to mean old.

------
Joof
These companies have a very high rate of false negatives and are often happy
to have people reapply next year. Apply to more companies and get as many
rejections as you can!

------
thefastlane
if feasible, try to have a debriefing conversation (on the phone) with your
google recruiter. obviously will depending on their individual style, but they
can sometimes provide vital feedback that you can use to get better for when
you interview with google again in the future (which you definitely will at
some point.)

above all, get back on the horse! and again, and again, and again. don't let
feelings stand in the way of what you want to accomplish.

------
sjg007
The founder of what's app was rejected from Facebook.

------
abovechange
it's not about what the other say. They try to judge you in a few minutes,
even though a real judge needs months or years. I still figure out a lot of
positve aspects of people working with me, as well as negative, after months
in the same company. The truth is that it's all about what you think you can
make, not what the other say. Just smile and keep going on your road, always
with head up! =)

------
gsmethells
Build something the world has never seen and carve your own path. Nothing
builds confidence like productivity and it helps you learn new things to boot!

------
sgt101
This is pretty odd, surely they saw your CV before the interview? Perhaps ask
your contact at these companies for more feedback?

~~~
elemeno
How is that odd - the whole point of interviews, and especially on-site ones,
is to decide whether or not someone is 1) qualified to do the job, and 2) a
good fit for the role/team/company.

A CV only tells you so much after all,

~~~
sgt101
I think that any candidate who is not "qualified" for a job would either have
the qualifications on their CV or not. You might say that the candidate hasn't
got the right experience or hasn't demonstrated the capabilities required -
but "not qualified" doesn't make sense for a mature organisation interviewing
candidates. If it was followed with " and we have sacked the bozos who invited
you for an interview. I'm really sorry for wasting your time. Best..." then
fair enough.

~~~
shados
Everything is relative. At a company, I was a top dog, by an order of
magnitude (if such things can be quantified) at developing software in my
field. I thought I was pretty damn good at it, and put something to that
effect on my resume.

Later on, I applied to a different company, and while I got hired...holy shit.
I have one hell of an imposer syndrome, because an "average" dev there can
seriously show me a trick or two...or a hundred. The top of the food chains
might as well be gods among mortals in my view.

So really, a resume only tells you what the applicant THINKS their
qualifications are. Nothing more.

------
lackbeard
If you're still looking for a job: apply to other companies. If not, reapply
at Google and Amazon in 6-12 months.

------
known
They may not have the "relevant" opening for you.

------
Walkman
just fail a couple more times perhaps?

------
cagey_vet
i've blown perhaps hundreds. it gets better.

------
Ologn
After having interviewed many people (and having been interviewed), I
eventually modeled in my head the average technical competence of candidates
as a Gaussian curve with a normal distribution. The lower part of that curve
got weeded out by headhunters and HR. Then we go through resumes and weed more
out - you need to have a certain level of competence (or a friend with such)
to know enough to put a resume that looks good, even if it is puffed up some.
Then we weed more out with phone interviews.

By that point, unless someone slips through, usually we are interviewing
people on the right half of the curve. Which means the bulk of people will be
average - as good as the average programmer, or admin, or what have you.

About one in six will be one standard deviation above the mean. About one in
twenty will be two standard deviations above the mean. About one in three
hundred or so will be three standard deviations above the mean. Bruno Bowden
said the top leadership at Google was at least three standard deviations above
the mean.

So that's the answer. Are they interviewing six people, or twenty (or three
hundred)? Without a reference from someone in the group, the person they hire
will probably be the one who is one or two standard deviations above the mean.

I think one example of this is in answering questions. Usually the first three
questions I ask are the same for each person. People who stumble over the
questions, who kind of can answer them, barely, rarely recover after them.
People who hit all the questions out of the park right off the bat usually hit
all the other questions asked out of the park. In a sense, for people who
don't hit the first three questions out of the park, I'm only continuing the
interview to not be rude (also usually my opinion is one of several, but no
one ever said someone was competent that I said was not).

So I think that's one thing. You should be able to answer 100% of the
questions asked, in detail. Because that was the hit rate of the people we
thought were good. Not stumble over a sort-of answer, but answer in full, and
explain whatever area is asked about in full detail if asked.

The one in six or one in twenty who could do this were given offers, unless
they had severe personality issues. In my experience, here being average is
good enough, although different places have different ideas on fit.

Flipping this model around, maybe one out of twenty interviews I've gone on
have I been asked inane questions, where me not doing well was more the
interviewers fault than mine. But for the other nineteen of twenty times, I
would say if I didn't get the offer it was either because I applied for a
position I was not qualified for, or I just was not prepared and filled-in on
the subjects as I should have been.

Also, your English language and spelling skills are lacking, as someone has
noted here. Were the interviews in the English language? If they were, that's
something to work on.

------
cloudjacker
What I hate about Google onsites is that EVERYONE YOU EVER KNOW is invested in
the outcome, without consider what you think is right for you.

You could be interviewing full time at 20 companies through Hired.com and
nobody bats an eye - no matter if they are interesting, pay extremely well (or
not), are located in a cool place - Google's interview has people in lalaland.
Which makes a non-offer outcome much more compounded than actual.

------
beachstartup
> _I feel like a complete loser._

if you quit after only two tries, you may have a point.

~~~
alimw
That's harsh, but you have a point. The OP's biggest problem may yet prove to
be that he or she has developed an ego too easily dented.

