11 ms·

Ask HN: What to do after failing final interviews twice?

• subway 10y ago
  You find another org you're interested in working with and move on with life.
  • uyoakaoma 10y ago
    The problem is I am an international most companies do not support H-1B's
    • pkaye 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        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
    • namelezz 10y ago
      Lot of companies support H-1B. Moving on is the only thing you can do. You need to pick yourself up as soon as possible and apply for other positions. Keep in mind there are people who can not even land a phone interview at those companies.
• sgt101 10y ago
  This is pretty odd, surely they saw your CV before the interview? Perhaps ask your contact at these companies for more feedback?
  • uyoakaoma 10y ago
    They do not tell what you failed. But just that the interviewing/hiring committee didn't a make a decision
    • sgt101 10y ago
      Ok. 1. It's normal. 2. Don't worry. 3. You got the interviews, lots of people didn't. That's a pat on the back there. 4. There are lots of other companies. 5. Focus on your strengths. Keep going, push on, and you can come back to these companies in a year or less with much more strength and steel than now.
  • elemeno 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        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.
• moondev 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.
    • shaftway 10y ago
      Anything can be a learning opportunity. Maybe what you learned is that the company isn't as professional as you'd hoped.
      • samfisher83 10y ago
        In a 50,000 person company there are way too many people for you to make any kind of generalizations. There is a probably a lot of good people and lot of dicks.
    • adrianratnapala 10y ago
      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.
• CommenterMan 10y ago
  "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".
  • fapjacks 10y ago
    Ah, that's a great documentary! I found one of the subjects kind of too overly-enthusiastic all the time, but it's still a good documentary nonetheless. And good advice!
  • nsxwolf 10y ago
    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.
    • joepvd 10y ago
      The question is how you interpret the decision of the other party not to move forward. Call it a failure on your side, and it will be a failure. There really is some deeper truth to the remarks in the other comments to frame it as a learning moment, and to gain experience. By framing these random facts in another way, you can come out without a scratch on your soul, and this tiny bit of extra wisdom that will make you understand that (a) this random outcome of the process is nothing personal, and (b) you will be able to approach the random processes a bit better next time.
      • sjg007 10y ago
        Sometimes it is just random.
    • kstenerud 10y ago
      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.
• 3pt14159 10y ago
  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.
• aphextron 10y ago
  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.
• orsenthil 10y ago
  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 10y ago
  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.
• anilr 10y ago
  Did you have face-time with the companies before the on campus interviews? Companies I've worked for in the past have hired far less than 50% of the people they brought in for interviews. It's like a blind date, you know a little about the person, but there's still a lot of missing information so not getting the job is the norm, not the exception. That said, asking for feedback on what you could improve might provide you with insight. Also, review your resumé, do you think the companies expected a competency you don't yet have? Head-up, there are lots of big companies out there. Some, like Google, still have a lot of choice in hire, while others (Yahoo comes to mind) can't be quite as picky! :)
• swagtricker 10y ago
  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).
• Walkman 10y ago
  just fail a couple more times perhaps?
• joncp 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      Please please please don't come to Seattle.
      • verisimilidude 10y ago
        Elaborate. I want to hear this.
        • nsxwolf 10y ago
          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.
      • nsxwolf 10y ago
        Born there, grew up in Redmond. Sorry.
      • biocomputation 10y ago
        Seconded.
• Bahamut 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    I was under the impression Google only interviews a candidate so many times before they are banned from interviewing.
    • Bahamut 10y ago
      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.
    • Codefruit 10y ago
      Any idea how many times? I've made it to onsite interviews twice, and am unsure about applying a third time, at least not yet, for this very reason.
• acconrad 10y ago
  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.
• johan_larson 10y ago
  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/dp/0201000237 https://www.amazon.com/Data-Structures-Algorithms-Alfred-Aho... This one may also be useful: https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Jon-Bentley/dp/0201657880 https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Jon-Bentley/dp...
  • deegles 10y ago
    I joke that the only people who pass Google interviews are the people who already work there.
    • rasz_pl 10y ago
      nah, repeat interviews after one year and >80% of already employed there would get rejected
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• Xyik 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.
• shaftway 10y ago
  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-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... 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.
• vmarsy 10y ago
  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.
• williamstein 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        Yeah but it was a onsite interview. If typing was going to be an issue, it would have already come up.
  • Theodores 10y ago
    Totally true. Spelling is about respect for the reader, it is not about using fancy words or merely conveying a message or being brainy. Some people just do not like lousy spelling without having a deep reason for why, however, spelling says a lot about ones attitude towards others.
• greenleafjacob 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        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.
  • raverbashing 10y ago
    Pretty much this. Google, Amazon, and other big companies are overrated You can find a lot of interesting with outside of them. Even better, innovative work is being done right now by a company you never heard about before
• gsmethells 10y ago
  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!
• beachstartup 10y ago
  > I feel like a complete loser. if you quit after only two tries, you may have a point.
  • a_small_island 10y ago
    What's your problem?
  • alimw 10y ago
    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.
• nilkn 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    Case in point: https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX.
  • voltagex_ 10y ago
    I was told there's a one year "cooldown" per team at Google
• gorbachev 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.
• tomjen3 10y ago
  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.
• davesailer 10y ago
  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.
• partisan 10y ago
  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.
• bobdole1234 10y ago
  You'll interview again, and again, until you are qualified. Then you'll get hired.
• rdl 10y ago
  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.
• bkjelden 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    "The only real way to get better is practice." 100%
• youngButEager 10y ago
  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.
  • raincom 10y ago
    There is a contract opening at Apple Sunnyvale. Somehow, TCS/Infosys/Wipro is trying to fill this spot, yet these couldn't find a candidate for the last 3 months. You know why? These (TCS/Infosys/Wipro/etc) companies are trying to fill the spot with $55 per hour on 1099. Yet they need senior level candidates. I am like, you can't find a candidate with those rates. So, the story goes on: not enough qualified people. Tech labor is going the route of restaurant/construction industries: they are always people available for the rate you want to fill, but they are on H1B or some farm visa, illegal, etc.
  • codeonfire 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      Sad, but true!
• asimuvPR 10y ago
  Its normal to feel defeated. The process is tough. But you should recharge your batteries and try again. :)
• sjg007 10y ago
  The founder of what's app was rejected from Facebook.
• eachro 10y ago
  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!
• sp527 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
• mwfunk 10y ago
  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!
• danso 10y ago
  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.
• lefstathiou 10y ago
  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
• devonkim 10y ago
  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.
• jknoepfler 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    > 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 10y ago
      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.
• matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  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.
• oykos 10y ago
  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!
• cheez 10y ago
  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.
• mindcrime 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
• schwarzmx 10y ago
  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.
• kdamica 10y ago
  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.
• pm90 10y ago
  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.
• Joof 10y ago
  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!
• lackbeard 10y ago
  If you're still looking for a job: apply to other companies. If not, reapply at Google and Amazon in 6-12 months.
• buss 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    > 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.
    • myblake 10y ago
      I think it's probably much truer that big tech companies are optimizing for false negatives because they do have a really deep, talented applicant pool. Some start ups do but it's definitely more of a risk. I completely agree with you that in general you're better off optimizing the F-measure, but I'm not sure it's empirically true that lots of companies thought of as good do this.
• nindalf 10y ago
  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.
• fenomas 10y ago
  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.
• philwelch 10y ago
  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.
• ndesaulniers 10y ago
  Get back on your horse and try again. Took me 4 tries to get into Google.
• cloudjacker 10y ago
  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.
• Ologn 10y ago
  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.
• TheMog 10y ago
  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.
• thefastlane 10y ago
  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.
• known 10y ago
  They may not have the "relevant" opening for you.
• cagey_vet 10y ago
  i've blown perhaps hundreds. it gets better.
• ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
  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.
• EliRivers 10y ago
  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.
• Taylor_OD 10y ago
  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.
• JSeymourATL 10y ago
  > 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-an-acqui-hire-for-google/?mg=id-wsj http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/12/23/bebop-was-more-than-a...
• abovechange 10y ago
  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! =)
• blackflame7000 10y ago
  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.
• makach 10y ago
  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---