4 ms·

I've been chasing internships and jobs at Google on and off for the past two years or so. I'm still in college, and I met a recruiter for SREs at a conference.

by shawnps 16y ago

I've been chasing internships and jobs at Google on and off for the past two years or so. I'm still in college, and I met a recruiter for SREs at a conference. After talking to her on the phone, I decided it wasn't worth the stress, and called off any further interviews. I suck at interviewing (I get nervous pretty easily), so I've tried to do various things on the side where the pressure isn't so high (competitions, side projects, etc.) but companies still don't seem to care. So I think I'd be happiest working for myself, on something that I'm passionate about :)

olegious 16y ago
Why not just try to get better at interviewing? Although working for yourself is great, many of the skills you use in an interview will serve you well in other areas of life.
- shawnps 16y ago
  I'd like to, but I feel like I've exhausted my options. I've interviewed all over the place, and I'm generally a nice guy and I think I'm pretty smart, but people seem to never want to hire me, I dunno why. I forgot to add this: the most recent interview that was discouraging was with a large travel-related company. A recruiter reached out to me (so, I didn't even apply), gave me a few questions to complete that I spent hours on. I worked super hard, typeset it in LaTeX, and figured it was way beyond what they normally receive from candidates. The recruiter even told me they were very impressed. I went in to interview, chatted with some engineers (and I even taught the second guy a few things, like the rename command), and never heard back. I emailed the recruiter and asked why. The recruiter said that the team simply needed to hire a senior candidate. I felt stupid for wasting my time. Something similar happened with Jane Street; they wanted solutions to questions in OCaml. I spent a long time on the problems, submitted them in Scheme, Python, and OCaml, all using recursion, higher order functions, etc. After submitting the code, they turned me down. Yelp also turned me down after I spent a long time on the problem they gave me. I did what the problem asked, including writing unit tests. It was fun to write since it was in Python, and I like Python. But again, turned down after submitting the code. Also, I figured it wasn't a problem with the code, as I had friends who were hired by Amazon and Google review it and they said it looked fine. These are the types of things that are making me want to stop interviewing. What I'd like to do is become more active in the HN community, and eventually start working on projects related to studying Japanese or learning about Japan. I'm working on a small project now that will show a new Chinese character per day, because kanji-a-day.com is currently the top result in Google for "kanji of the day", and it's not nice looking.
  - nola 16y ago
    contact info?
    - shawnps 16y ago
      shawnpsmith@gmail.com, http://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnps http://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnps and thanks for taking an interest in me
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - matwood 16y ago
    Where was a person like you the last time I was milling through resumes?
    - shawnps 16y ago
      Thanks, it helps to see a comment like yours when I'm in this kind of slump. Next time you mill through resumes, keep me in mind :)
  - ekanes 16y ago
    Hey Shawn, a couple pieces of admittedly unsolicited feedback in case it's helpful. a) It'd be great to check out your website rather than a linkedin page. People want a sense of who you are as a person rather than just a resume. b) Building something (anything) will give you more credibility as a doer. c) re "First place in National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, 2010" -- Congrats! That's pretty amazing.
    - shawnps 16y ago
      I always welcome feedback, thank you! I didn't realize how important a personal site is. I actually recently bought the smallest Linode available, so I'd like to get shawnps.net up soon. I've been doing schoolwork and working on the Kanji website, but I'll try to get a personal site up soon. And thanks, my team and I worked hard at the competition. I always thought it was kind of cool that had a post about us on the White House blog. The website is down now, so here's a cached copy: http://tinyurl.com/5uzs5yp http://tinyurl.com/5uzs5yp

by shawnps 16y ago

olegious 16y ago

Why not just try to get better at interviewing? Although working for yourself is great, many of the skills you use in an interview will serve you well in other areas of life.

shawnps 16y ago
I'd like to, but I feel like I've exhausted my options. I've interviewed all over the place, and I'm generally a nice guy and I think I'm pretty smart, but people seem to never want to hire me, I dunno why. I forgot to add this: the most recent interview that was discouraging was with a large travel-related company. A recruiter reached out to me (so, I didn't even apply), gave me a few questions to complete that I spent hours on. I worked super hard, typeset it in LaTeX, and figured it was way beyond what they normally receive from candidates. The recruiter even told me they were very impressed. I went in to interview, chatted with some engineers (and I even taught the second guy a few things, like the rename command), and never heard back. I emailed the recruiter and asked why. The recruiter said that the team simply needed to hire a senior candidate. I felt stupid for wasting my time. Something similar happened with Jane Street; they wanted solutions to questions in OCaml. I spent a long time on the problems, submitted them in Scheme, Python, and OCaml, all using recursion, higher order functions, etc. After submitting the code, they turned me down. Yelp also turned me down after I spent a long time on the problem they gave me. I did what the problem asked, including writing unit tests. It was fun to write since it was in Python, and I like Python. But again, turned down after submitting the code. Also, I figured it wasn't a problem with the code, as I had friends who were hired by Amazon and Google review it and they said it looked fine. These are the types of things that are making me want to stop interviewing. What I'd like to do is become more active in the HN community, and eventually start working on projects related to studying Japanese or learning about Japan. I'm working on a small project now that will show a new Chinese character per day, because kanji-a-day.com is currently the top result in Google for "kanji of the day", and it's not nice looking.
- nola 16y ago
  contact info?
  - shawnps 16y ago
    shawnpsmith@gmail.com, http://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnps http://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnps and thanks for taking an interest in me
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- matwood 16y ago
  Where was a person like you the last time I was milling through resumes?
  - shawnps 16y ago
    Thanks, it helps to see a comment like yours when I'm in this kind of slump. Next time you mill through resumes, keep me in mind :)
- ekanes 16y ago
  Hey Shawn, a couple pieces of admittedly unsolicited feedback in case it's helpful. a) It'd be great to check out your website rather than a linkedin page. People want a sense of who you are as a person rather than just a resume. b) Building something (anything) will give you more credibility as a doer. c) re "First place in National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, 2010" -- Congrats! That's pretty amazing.
  - shawnps 16y ago
    I always welcome feedback, thank you! I didn't realize how important a personal site is. I actually recently bought the smallest Linode available, so I'd like to get shawnps.net up soon. I've been doing schoolwork and working on the Kanji website, but I'll try to get a personal site up soon. And thanks, my team and I worked hard at the competition. I always thought it was kind of cool that had a post about us on the White House blog. The website is down now, so here's a cached copy: http://tinyurl.com/5uzs5yp http://tinyurl.com/5uzs5yp