14 ms·

The road to success is paved with rejection letters

281 points by cloudedcordial 5y ago

bradknowles 5y ago
Wait -- you're planning to make meth with AI? Is there actually a college course for that? /s Sadly, the hero image for this site doesn't appear to have anything to do with the subject for this post.
robotnikman 5y ago
>The Road to Success Is Paved with Rejection Letters The same can be said with many things in life we strive for. On the path to those things there will be a lot of rejection and failure, but you need to pick yourself up and try again.
- MisterSandman 5y ago
  Lol @ me who received a rejection letter 2 weeks ago, and haven't been able to pull myself up again. I know it's on me and my mental health, but I just wish there was a silver bullet that I could get hit with that can stop me from taking rejections so hard.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    I can sympathize with you. Not academia, but of the 40 job applications I've sent out in the last couple months, 7 rejected me outright, 4 moved to interviews, and all of those have ended in rejections or ghosting. Finding the energy to keep going every day is hard enough, not to mention maintaining self-worth and happiness.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Keep going. 10% isn't great but you can make it up in volume. Interviews are random..
  - idrios 5y ago
    6 years ago I got rejected from every grad school program I applied for, and also couldn't find a job in the industry I wanted (biotech). After a very long 2 years of unemployment or low wage jobs I threw my hands up and became an English teacher in China. Was the best experience of my life and I was way more employable when I came back, partly because of the experience and partly that I made an app for my students when I was there. You'll find a way for it to work out; the hardest part is managing your own emotions, but you're far from alone in your situation.
    - esel2k 5y ago
      I can relate and I was actually doing the same thing about 9years ago. I was more lucky as I had a job in biotech and wanted to go back to grad school but got rejection after rejection. I was so frustrated that I took anything (Bad PhD lab not the topic I wanted etc) and ended up hating grad school. Left it - for good. Studied another topic (tech) went down a different career path. Today I am more than happy and get chased weekly by headhunters. My take away: It is a journey. Don’t be affraid to push for what you believe in and I can say that as I applied to more than 500jobs in the last 10 years… But I am now down to narrowing a handful applications with nearly 80-90percent success rate (Sr Manager and Director level positions).
  - cirgue 5y ago
    For me, it wasn’t getting better at taking rejection, but quitting putting emotional investment into job applications (or whatever else) on the front end. Quit fantasizing about how great the work/your coworkers/the comp will be and just treat it like the roll of the dice it is.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    I got a physical rejection letter in the mail some years ago, many months after the application. I couldn't believe any organization would waste somebody's time to print out a form letter, stuff an envelope, and mail it when they could notify me over email. I consider these bullets dodged because there's more organizational anachronisms you don't want to deal with as an employee.
  - russelldjimmy 5y ago
    I got rejected by my dream company a few weeks ago. Seeing the rejection letter first thing that morning crushed me. I was at a friend’s place that morning and I excused myself to go home in the afternoon. They understood that I needed time alone. While at home, I tried to not distract myself with any kind of work. While surfing through YouTube, I stopped, switched off the TV and just stayed with myself for a few moments. Tears ensued. I started grieving the loss just like one would grieve any other. 10 minutes later, I felt much better. A day later, I didn’t think about it nearly as much. Find out how you like to grieve and make yourself the space to do so. It helps immeasurably. Lightens the burden.
    - shantnutiwari 5y ago
      This is an awesome reply. yes, learning how to grieve is important
  - Psyladine 5y ago
    The first time you smash your thumb with the hammer you curse out loud, put ice on it, watch the blood darken under your nail and suck air in every time you try to curl it after. The fourth or fifth time, you cuss when it happens, shake your hand off and keep at it. By the tenth time, you start using a pair of pliers to hold the nail in place.
- willis936 5y ago
  I went on a hundred dates before meeting my fiancé. I sent out a hundred applications before getting my current job. Being good is great and all, but the recipe for success is perseverance and improvement.
paulpauper 5y ago
In spite of the rejection, it helped greatly that the author is clearly very smart and competent. For people who are neither, it would be hopeless.
- 99_00 5y ago
  Do you agree that if someone is not smart nor competent, then following the authors advice is highly likely to result in more success than if they did the opposite of the authors advice?
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    I dunno. How many rejections does it take before you know to stop trying? You only hear of the successes. If you can compare your skills to your peers, that can at least help in determining if you are totally out of your league or not.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  Yes his road to success is paved with both rejection and success. Its relatively normal actually. In fact I don't even consider this story to be one where the author encountered a ton of failure and got success through raw tenacity. It's fairly tame.
- 0000011111 5y ago
  He is also white, male, not gay and has a Phd. Many folks from marginalizes communities cant find a way past the rejection barriers the world throughs at them.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I'm not so sure how accurate that is in today's tech world. I've often told my wife she ought to consider switching to coding as a career because my company will pay a premium to get female software developers.
    - 5y ago
rr808 5y ago
Its true too of jobs. Everyone sees when someone gets a job but its much harder to know if someone effortlessly switched or spent years failing interviews every week. My last job hunt took 6 months and had dozens of failures. I'm still not sure if its normal or I'm below average quality.
- dustingetz 5y ago
  maybe the gatekeepers are below average quality. how much about the world would that instantly explain?
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  If you're not getting rejected then you don't know where your ceiling is. If you get rejected somewhere and then accepted somewhere slightly lesser, you know you pushed yourself as high as you could go. If you apply and get accepted and just take that job... then who knows how much higher you could have aimed.
  - krisoft 5y ago
    That assumes two things: - there is an ordering between jobs - one’s goal is to find the “highest” according to that ordering I don’t think that either of those is true in my value system.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      In fairness, for a lot of people, the ordering is "Who will pay me the most?"
    - oreally 5y ago
      Yea the SWE ego stroking shows quite a bit in anonymous settings. It's like they think they're doing valuable work only in the FAANGs.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        1) I'm not anonymous am I - my user name is my real name. 2) I'm not at a FAANG.
aqme28 5y ago
It's true. If all you get is acceptance and never rejection, you have set your sights too low.
giantg2 5y ago
The road to failure is also paved with failures/rejections
- eslaught 5y ago
  Arguably there is no road to failure, just a road to success that you never get to the end of. The hard part is not that failure is some permanent state. The hard part is that without good feedback you don't know if you're actually on a trajectory to (eventual) success, or how long it will take, or what you need to change (or do more of) to get there. Good feedback is essential and makes the difference between wandering around blindly with no idea where you're going, and walking an (albeit difficult) path to something that might eventually look like success.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    There is an end to the road. You don't get to keep trying forever.
  - periheli0n 5y ago
    I agree, but in my experience, recruiters and HR departments share total paranoia about giving feedback to applicants, most likely out of fear of being sued. Sometimes (rarely) it's possible to obtain feedback from people you know at the place where you applied, but even then feedback is likely to be distorted and not tell the full story. TL;DR There is no feedback when applying for jobs and most of us are flying blind.
    - eslaught 5y ago
      You're absolutely right. I'm querying a novel to literary agents right now, and it's the same way. The official channels provide absolutely no feedback. That's exactly what's frustrating about it. You need to look for feedback elsewhere. There's a risk of getting bad feedback if the person isn't actually involved with making decisions, but it's better than just talking to friends (or not talking to anyone at all). And if you're willing to iterate and experiment, you can figure out (at least indirectly) how good the feedback is by the results you achieve when you put it into practice. I personally provide mentoring to junior members of my community (as a researcher in HPC) through conferences I attend. In my writing life, I look for feedback at writers conferences. I'm not sure what the equivalents would be in other parts of the job market, but something similar might help.
hereforphone 5y ago
Sending a rejection letter (email) out is a nice gesture. Too often companies just ghost you, even if you've spent time with them in their office during interviews and lunch.
mangecoeur 5y ago
The road to failure is also paved with rejection letters so I’m not sure it’s a terribly helpful observation.
MiguelVieira 5y ago
"Well suppose" — Pemulis can just make out Lyle — "Suppose I were to give you a key ring with ten keys. With, no, with a hundred keys, and I were to tell you that one of these keys will unlock it, this door we're imagining opening in onto all you want to be, as a player. How many of the keys would you be willing to try?" .... "Well I'd try every darn one," Rader tells Lyle. .... Lyle never whispers, but it's just about the same. "Then you are willing to make mistakes, you see. You are saying you will accept 99% error. The paralyzed perfectionist you say you are would stand there before that door. Jingling the keys. Afraid to try the first key."
applgo443 5y ago
My college professor once said - 'If you are not facing constant rejections, then you are not aiming high enough'
- yobbo 5y ago
  A counter point; because simple jobs/positions can be filled by almost anyone, they have many applicants and are usually reserved for the network. Aiming higher means fewer candidates, and fewer competitors.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >Aiming higher means fewer candidates, and fewer competitors. Aiming higher also means fewer opportunities, which means competition is tougher, as many people are also trying to move higher. Kind of like a game of music chairs.
    - yobbo 5y ago
      The game of musical chairs exists at all levels, but at lower levels one has to leverage network, whereas at higher levels it is possible to leverage competence. The advice stays the same, everyone should aim high, but rejection letters are not a meaningful signal.
- tombert 5y ago
  I had a job where the CTO of the company said "obviously none of us want to be woken up at three in the morning for a production issue, but if we're never being paged then we're probably moving too slow." He was very big on the "it's ok to break production, just don't make same mistake twice" mantra, which I like.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    "if we're never being paged then we're probably moving too slow" Or you are at a company that respects your time at home and doesn't wake you at 3am. I personally might not even hear the phone.
mkl95 5y ago
I'm bad at defining success, so I define it as the opposite of failure. In the last few years I've dodged some bullets because I was honest about my expectations. My advice is that you challenge recruiters about the culture and working conditions at your potential new job, and do your best at getting rejected if it sounds crappy. You will find a Good One eventually.
tombert 5y ago
When I was starting out, the ratio I would get for callbacks was on the order of 20:1, and the conversion to offer was on the order of 50-60:1, and those are extremely generous numbers. I think a lot of people have seen the million jobs that I've had (and the fact that I have not been unemployed for more than a month in almost a decade) and just assume that I'm some expert interviewer, and yeah I've gotten better, but in reality I still get rejected far more often than getting an offer. My ratio now is probably closer to 20:1. Obviously I'm not the pinnacle of success or anything, but I think I've done pretty well as an engineer (particularly since the first decade of me doing this I didn't even have a degree). I think a lot of things in life boil down to a numbers game. Million-to-one odds aren't so bad if you plan on doing something a million times.
version_five 5y ago
This may sound dumb, but how does one find so many opportunities to get rejected from? I'd love to be able to get myself in front of more people to be rejected more, but the real problem is getting the funnel in the first place. This is true both for business development and for job applications in anything but a very junior or well defined position. Getting rejected is relatively easy to take once you're in a groove (and usually it's possible to get a high conversion rate anyway). It's getting into the conversation in the first place that I find very challenging
- ceroxylon 5y ago
  There is a good thread here that has many current opportunities: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515750
  - atum47 5y ago
    I remember feeling lost after I quit my job at the bank I used to work for. Remember seeing one of those threads and reading all the offers. End up sending my CV for 6 of them. 3 wrote back. 2 offered me a challenge. I've been working for 1 almost two years now. I'm happy with them and I like to think they're happy with me either. Great thread. Highly recommend.
    - willhinsa 5y ago
      How did you decide which ones to send your CV to? It's been so overwhelming for me as a career switcher (from actuarial science) to know what I would want to do.
      - atum47 5y ago
        I wanted to work with vanilla JavaScript, so I look for that in the job description. We do use React also, but I learned to like it.
- d23 5y ago
  Continually try to step up and the boundaries of what you're comfortable with. Keep growing and learning new things. Always seek and take opportunities that are slightly or greatly above whatever "level" you're currently at.
lbj 5y ago
I hate that an inspirational story like this has to start with an inb4 "Im white. Im straight. Im privileged". Its 2022 and I thought we'd be colorblind by now, but its never been a bigger issue. At least for some very loud people.
- deleted 5y ago
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jake_ 5y ago
Thank you for sharing this.
cosmiccatnap 5y ago
himalayan_yak 5y ago
Perseverance. For some reason, we do not talk much about perseverance and grit. May be some of it is getting lost in the (what I perceive to be) increasingly cynical views on meritocracy (not that questioning the status quo on this topic is a bad idea, just that many seem to outright dismiss the idea of hard work and merit). Barely half way through the interview with Apple for an internship position - which itself felt like a huge win after getting rejected by all the companies I had applied for - I was sweating profusely, couldn't say any coherent line, and was internally just praying for the embarrassment to end. After spending weeks in preparation for the interview, it was a huge blow. Also, since I didn't go to a top-100 (US) school, I didn't know if I could ever even get to the second round of interview with another H1-B sponsoring (~big) company ever again. Long story short, rejections continued but I eventually found a break in a small local company - which did wonders to boost my confidence after being able to write "real" code for money. Later, went on to do Masters in a public university where I could work as a TA - which meant so I didn't need to pay the (almost impossible out-of-state) tuition. And yes, found a job a H1B sponsoring company where I am quite happy now:). Its not that my story is any special or anywhere close to the success of like the one mentioned in the post. I guess my point is we can only play the cards in front of us. Being able to find a joy in doing so well (which I think is a secret to persevere) goes a long way not just for success in career but in other aspects of life also.
- austincheney 5y ago
  As a long term JavaScript developer my view into the world of software is distorted to this slice of the industry, so that I what I am speaking to. Perseverance is not rewarded in software, at least not in JavaScript. The key reason is that there is no trust. Employers do not trust the competency of the developers and the developers do not trust each other. The result is that the work is typically extremely beginner and developers are not expected to write original code aside from trivial React components. Everything else, I mean this literally, is a downloaded NPM package because there is substantially greater trust in anonymous strangers than your coworkers. If you are interested/capable of doing more you aren't compatible with current hiring trends and will not be hired. In all fairness though if you can get hired in a low cost of living market for 170k knowing almost nothing about how the software or the platform really work doing beginner chores then why bother persevering with hard work to be anything more? Eventually most of these people will elevate to management where their technical experience is irrelevant anyways.
bob66 5y ago
Akashic101 5y ago
This article reminds me a lot of the situation I'm currently in, albeit at a much smaller scale. After studying game-design and game-development for five years I wanted to to go to my local university for a bachelor. Denied While looking for options I started worked for a friend of the family in his lawfirm to save up a bit of money. During that time I applied to the university of Cologne, hoping that I have better chances there. Denied in the second round (still stings) Now a year into working for the lawfirm I met by chance the CEO of a small startup on an IT job fair who wasnt even presenting there. He saw potential in me that at that time I didnt even saw in myself and offered me a job as a Junior Frontend Developer, where I work now for a bit more than 3 months. Its an absolute dream job, and if any of the previous rejections didnt happen I wouldnt be now in this amazing situation I am in now. "One door closing opens another" is now one of my favourite sayings.
vstollen 5y ago
Very encouraging post! Like many others, I've been dreaming to work in the USA for quite some time now. I've always imagined that my CV would stand out and that it would be easy to send out a few applications and get an internship abroad. Well... turns out it's not. At least for me. Posts like these remind me, that we should speak about our rejections more open and regularly. They are also part of the process, a source of motivation, and usually an opportunity to learn.
deleted 5y ago
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jorisboris 5y ago
You inspired me to make a list of my failures and share it publicly in an article. And compare it to my list of successes to see how each and every failure led to a success.
maxverse 5y ago
> The people I met at Yale seemed to understand the world and its opportunities in a way that other people didn't. They had a confidence in their ability to shape that world like I'd never seen. My Yale education went far beyond the academic. I'd love to hear more about this.
abhayhegde 5y ago
Amazing story! I am so waiting for so many 'another' stories.
jewddha 5y ago
Rejection (the ability to learn and grow from it) is a core competency in business and life. There was a guy who even made rejection into a game: https://www.wnyc.org/story/an-invisibilia-favorite-rejection-therapy_2/ https://www.wnyc.org/story/an-invisibilia-favorite-rejection...
WalterBright 5y ago
Some rejection letters I've received (scroll down to Game Publisher Rejection Letters): https://classicempire.com/ https://classicempire.com/
mro_name 5y ago
lol, or even plain muteness.
spiritplumber 5y ago
In 2009, my application to the Stanford graduate program was rejected. In 2011, I was selling my tech to Stanford because it was better than theirs. I'm still bitter, though.

Wait -- you're planning to make meth with AI? Is there actually a college course for that? /s Sadly, the hero image for this site doesn't appear to have anything to do with the subject for this post.

robotnikman 5y ago

>The Road to Success Is Paved with Rejection Letters The same can be said with many things in life we strive for. On the path to those things there will be a lot of rejection and failure, but you need to pick yourself up and try again.

MisterSandman 5y ago
Lol @ me who received a rejection letter 2 weeks ago, and haven't been able to pull myself up again. I know it's on me and my mental health, but I just wish there was a silver bullet that I could get hit with that can stop me from taking rejections so hard.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  I can sympathize with you. Not academia, but of the 40 job applications I've sent out in the last couple months, 7 rejected me outright, 4 moved to interviews, and all of those have ended in rejections or ghosting. Finding the energy to keep going every day is hard enough, not to mention maintaining self-worth and happiness.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Keep going. 10% isn't great but you can make it up in volume. Interviews are random..
- idrios 5y ago
  6 years ago I got rejected from every grad school program I applied for, and also couldn't find a job in the industry I wanted (biotech). After a very long 2 years of unemployment or low wage jobs I threw my hands up and became an English teacher in China. Was the best experience of my life and I was way more employable when I came back, partly because of the experience and partly that I made an app for my students when I was there. You'll find a way for it to work out; the hardest part is managing your own emotions, but you're far from alone in your situation.
  - esel2k 5y ago
    I can relate and I was actually doing the same thing about 9years ago. I was more lucky as I had a job in biotech and wanted to go back to grad school but got rejection after rejection. I was so frustrated that I took anything (Bad PhD lab not the topic I wanted etc) and ended up hating grad school. Left it - for good. Studied another topic (tech) went down a different career path. Today I am more than happy and get chased weekly by headhunters. My take away: It is a journey. Don’t be affraid to push for what you believe in and I can say that as I applied to more than 500jobs in the last 10 years… But I am now down to narrowing a handful applications with nearly 80-90percent success rate (Sr Manager and Director level positions).
- cirgue 5y ago
  For me, it wasn’t getting better at taking rejection, but quitting putting emotional investment into job applications (or whatever else) on the front end. Quit fantasizing about how great the work/your coworkers/the comp will be and just treat it like the roll of the dice it is.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  I got a physical rejection letter in the mail some years ago, many months after the application. I couldn't believe any organization would waste somebody's time to print out a form letter, stuff an envelope, and mail it when they could notify me over email. I consider these bullets dodged because there's more organizational anachronisms you don't want to deal with as an employee.
- russelldjimmy 5y ago
  I got rejected by my dream company a few weeks ago. Seeing the rejection letter first thing that morning crushed me. I was at a friend’s place that morning and I excused myself to go home in the afternoon. They understood that I needed time alone. While at home, I tried to not distract myself with any kind of work. While surfing through YouTube, I stopped, switched off the TV and just stayed with myself for a few moments. Tears ensued. I started grieving the loss just like one would grieve any other. 10 minutes later, I felt much better. A day later, I didn’t think about it nearly as much. Find out how you like to grieve and make yourself the space to do so. It helps immeasurably. Lightens the burden.
  - shantnutiwari 5y ago
    This is an awesome reply. yes, learning how to grieve is important
- Psyladine 5y ago
  The first time you smash your thumb with the hammer you curse out loud, put ice on it, watch the blood darken under your nail and suck air in every time you try to curl it after. The fourth or fifth time, you cuss when it happens, shake your hand off and keep at it. By the tenth time, you start using a pair of pliers to hold the nail in place.
willis936 5y ago
I went on a hundred dates before meeting my fiancé. I sent out a hundred applications before getting my current job. Being good is great and all, but the recipe for success is perseverance and improvement.

paulpauper 5y ago

In spite of the rejection, it helped greatly that the author is clearly very smart and competent. For people who are neither, it would be hopeless.

99_00 5y ago
Do you agree that if someone is not smart nor competent, then following the authors advice is highly likely to result in more success than if they did the opposite of the authors advice?
- paulpauper 5y ago
  I dunno. How many rejections does it take before you know to stop trying? You only hear of the successes. If you can compare your skills to your peers, that can at least help in determining if you are totally out of your league or not.
deltaonefour 5y ago
Yes his road to success is paved with both rejection and success. Its relatively normal actually. In fact I don't even consider this story to be one where the author encountered a ton of failure and got success through raw tenacity. It's fairly tame.
0000011111 5y ago
He is also white, male, not gay and has a Phd. Many folks from marginalizes communities cant find a way past the rejection barriers the world throughs at them.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I'm not so sure how accurate that is in today's tech world. I've often told my wife she ought to consider switching to coding as a career because my company will pay a premium to get female software developers.
  - 5y ago

rr808 5y ago

Its true too of jobs. Everyone sees when someone gets a job but its much harder to know if someone effortlessly switched or spent years failing interviews every week. My last job hunt took 6 months and had dozens of failures. I'm still not sure if its normal or I'm below average quality.

dustingetz 5y ago
maybe the gatekeepers are below average quality. how much about the world would that instantly explain?
chrisseaton 5y ago
If you're not getting rejected then you don't know where your ceiling is. If you get rejected somewhere and then accepted somewhere slightly lesser, you know you pushed yourself as high as you could go. If you apply and get accepted and just take that job... then who knows how much higher you could have aimed.
- krisoft 5y ago
  That assumes two things: - there is an ordering between jobs - one’s goal is to find the “highest” according to that ordering I don’t think that either of those is true in my value system.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    In fairness, for a lot of people, the ordering is "Who will pay me the most?"
  - oreally 5y ago
    Yea the SWE ego stroking shows quite a bit in anonymous settings. It's like they think they're doing valuable work only in the FAANGs.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      1) I'm not anonymous am I - my user name is my real name. 2) I'm not at a FAANG.

aqme28 5y ago

It's true. If all you get is acceptance and never rejection, you have set your sights too low.

giantg2 5y ago

The road to failure is also paved with failures/rejections

eslaught 5y ago
Arguably there is no road to failure, just a road to success that you never get to the end of. The hard part is not that failure is some permanent state. The hard part is that without good feedback you don't know if you're actually on a trajectory to (eventual) success, or how long it will take, or what you need to change (or do more of) to get there. Good feedback is essential and makes the difference between wandering around blindly with no idea where you're going, and walking an (albeit difficult) path to something that might eventually look like success.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  There is an end to the road. You don't get to keep trying forever.
- periheli0n 5y ago
  I agree, but in my experience, recruiters and HR departments share total paranoia about giving feedback to applicants, most likely out of fear of being sued. Sometimes (rarely) it's possible to obtain feedback from people you know at the place where you applied, but even then feedback is likely to be distorted and not tell the full story. TL;DR There is no feedback when applying for jobs and most of us are flying blind.
  - eslaught 5y ago
    You're absolutely right. I'm querying a novel to literary agents right now, and it's the same way. The official channels provide absolutely no feedback. That's exactly what's frustrating about it. You need to look for feedback elsewhere. There's a risk of getting bad feedback if the person isn't actually involved with making decisions, but it's better than just talking to friends (or not talking to anyone at all). And if you're willing to iterate and experiment, you can figure out (at least indirectly) how good the feedback is by the results you achieve when you put it into practice. I personally provide mentoring to junior members of my community (as a researcher in HPC) through conferences I attend. In my writing life, I look for feedback at writers conferences. I'm not sure what the equivalents would be in other parts of the job market, but something similar might help.

hereforphone 5y ago

Sending a rejection letter (email) out is a nice gesture. Too often companies just ghost you, even if you've spent time with them in their office during interviews and lunch.

mangecoeur 5y ago

The road to failure is also paved with rejection letters so I’m not sure it’s a terribly helpful observation.

MiguelVieira 5y ago

"Well suppose" — Pemulis can just make out Lyle — "Suppose I were to give you a key ring with ten keys. With, no, with a hundred keys, and I were to tell you that one of these keys will unlock it, this door we're imagining opening in onto all you want to be, as a player. How many of the keys would you be willing to try?" .... "Well I'd try every darn one," Rader tells Lyle. .... Lyle never whispers, but it's just about the same. "Then you are willing to make mistakes, you see. You are saying you will accept 99% error. The paralyzed perfectionist you say you are would stand there before that door. Jingling the keys. Afraid to try the first key."

applgo443 5y ago

My college professor once said - 'If you are not facing constant rejections, then you are not aiming high enough'

yobbo 5y ago
A counter point; because simple jobs/positions can be filled by almost anyone, they have many applicants and are usually reserved for the network. Aiming higher means fewer candidates, and fewer competitors.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >Aiming higher means fewer candidates, and fewer competitors. Aiming higher also means fewer opportunities, which means competition is tougher, as many people are also trying to move higher. Kind of like a game of music chairs.
  - yobbo 5y ago
    The game of musical chairs exists at all levels, but at lower levels one has to leverage network, whereas at higher levels it is possible to leverage competence. The advice stays the same, everyone should aim high, but rejection letters are not a meaningful signal.
tombert 5y ago
I had a job where the CTO of the company said "obviously none of us want to be woken up at three in the morning for a production issue, but if we're never being paged then we're probably moving too slow." He was very big on the "it's ok to break production, just don't make same mistake twice" mantra, which I like.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  "if we're never being paged then we're probably moving too slow" Or you are at a company that respects your time at home and doesn't wake you at 3am. I personally might not even hear the phone.

mkl95 5y ago

I'm bad at defining success, so I define it as the opposite of failure. In the last few years I've dodged some bullets because I was honest about my expectations. My advice is that you challenge recruiters about the culture and working conditions at your potential new job, and do your best at getting rejected if it sounds crappy. You will find a Good One eventually.

tombert 5y ago

When I was starting out, the ratio I would get for callbacks was on the order of 20:1, and the conversion to offer was on the order of 50-60:1, and those are extremely generous numbers. I think a lot of people have seen the million jobs that I've had (and the fact that I have not been unemployed for more than a month in almost a decade) and just assume that I'm some expert interviewer, and yeah I've gotten better, but in reality I still get rejected far more often than getting an offer. My ratio now is probably closer to 20:1. Obviously I'm not the pinnacle of success or anything, but I think I've done pretty well as an engineer (particularly since the first decade of me doing this I didn't even have a degree). I think a lot of things in life boil down to a numbers game. Million-to-one odds aren't so bad if you plan on doing something a million times.

version_five 5y ago

This may sound dumb, but how does one find so many opportunities to get rejected from? I'd love to be able to get myself in front of more people to be rejected more, but the real problem is getting the funnel in the first place. This is true both for business development and for job applications in anything but a very junior or well defined position. Getting rejected is relatively easy to take once you're in a groove (and usually it's possible to get a high conversion rate anyway). It's getting into the conversation in the first place that I find very challenging

ceroxylon 5y ago
There is a good thread here that has many current opportunities: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515750
- atum47 5y ago
  I remember feeling lost after I quit my job at the bank I used to work for. Remember seeing one of those threads and reading all the offers. End up sending my CV for 6 of them. 3 wrote back. 2 offered me a challenge. I've been working for 1 almost two years now. I'm happy with them and I like to think they're happy with me either. Great thread. Highly recommend.
  - willhinsa 5y ago
    How did you decide which ones to send your CV to? It's been so overwhelming for me as a career switcher (from actuarial science) to know what I would want to do.
    - atum47 5y ago
      I wanted to work with vanilla JavaScript, so I look for that in the job description. We do use React also, but I learned to like it.
d23 5y ago
Continually try to step up and the boundaries of what you're comfortable with. Keep growing and learning new things. Always seek and take opportunities that are slightly or greatly above whatever "level" you're currently at.

lbj 5y ago

I hate that an inspirational story like this has to start with an inb4 "Im white. Im straight. Im privileged". Its 2022 and I thought we'd be colorblind by now, but its never been a bigger issue. At least for some very loud people.

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jake_ 5y ago

Thank you for sharing this.

cosmiccatnap 5y ago

himalayan_yak 5y ago

Perseverance. For some reason, we do not talk much about perseverance and grit. May be some of it is getting lost in the (what I perceive to be) increasingly cynical views on meritocracy (not that questioning the status quo on this topic is a bad idea, just that many seem to outright dismiss the idea of hard work and merit). Barely half way through the interview with Apple for an internship position - which itself felt like a huge win after getting rejected by all the companies I had applied for - I was sweating profusely, couldn't say any coherent line, and was internally just praying for the embarrassment to end. After spending weeks in preparation for the interview, it was a huge blow. Also, since I didn't go to a top-100 (US) school, I didn't know if I could ever even get to the second round of interview with another H1-B sponsoring (~big) company ever again. Long story short, rejections continued but I eventually found a break in a small local company - which did wonders to boost my confidence after being able to write "real" code for money. Later, went on to do Masters in a public university where I could work as a TA - which meant so I didn't need to pay the (almost impossible out-of-state) tuition. And yes, found a job a H1B sponsoring company where I am quite happy now:). Its not that my story is any special or anywhere close to the success of like the one mentioned in the post. I guess my point is we can only play the cards in front of us. Being able to find a joy in doing so well (which I think is a secret to persevere) goes a long way not just for success in career but in other aspects of life also.

austincheney 5y ago
As a long term JavaScript developer my view into the world of software is distorted to this slice of the industry, so that I what I am speaking to. Perseverance is not rewarded in software, at least not in JavaScript. The key reason is that there is no trust. Employers do not trust the competency of the developers and the developers do not trust each other. The result is that the work is typically extremely beginner and developers are not expected to write original code aside from trivial React components. Everything else, I mean this literally, is a downloaded NPM package because there is substantially greater trust in anonymous strangers than your coworkers. If you are interested/capable of doing more you aren't compatible with current hiring trends and will not be hired. In all fairness though if you can get hired in a low cost of living market for 170k knowing almost nothing about how the software or the platform really work doing beginner chores then why bother persevering with hard work to be anything more? Eventually most of these people will elevate to management where their technical experience is irrelevant anyways.

bob66 5y ago

Akashic101 5y ago

This article reminds me a lot of the situation I'm currently in, albeit at a much smaller scale. After studying game-design and game-development for five years I wanted to to go to my local university for a bachelor. Denied While looking for options I started worked for a friend of the family in his lawfirm to save up a bit of money. During that time I applied to the university of Cologne, hoping that I have better chances there. Denied in the second round (still stings) Now a year into working for the lawfirm I met by chance the CEO of a small startup on an IT job fair who wasnt even presenting there. He saw potential in me that at that time I didnt even saw in myself and offered me a job as a Junior Frontend Developer, where I work now for a bit more than 3 months. Its an absolute dream job, and if any of the previous rejections didnt happen I wouldnt be now in this amazing situation I am in now. "One door closing opens another" is now one of my favourite sayings.

vstollen 5y ago

Very encouraging post! Like many others, I've been dreaming to work in the USA for quite some time now. I've always imagined that my CV would stand out and that it would be easy to send out a few applications and get an internship abroad. Well... turns out it's not. At least for me. Posts like these remind me, that we should speak about our rejections more open and regularly. They are also part of the process, a source of motivation, and usually an opportunity to learn.

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jorisboris 5y ago

You inspired me to make a list of my failures and share it publicly in an article. And compare it to my list of successes to see how each and every failure led to a success.

maxverse 5y ago

> The people I met at Yale seemed to understand the world and its opportunities in a way that other people didn't. They had a confidence in their ability to shape that world like I'd never seen. My Yale education went far beyond the academic. I'd love to hear more about this.

abhayhegde 5y ago

Amazing story! I am so waiting for so many 'another' stories.

jewddha 5y ago

Rejection (the ability to learn and grow from it) is a core competency in business and life. There was a guy who even made rejection into a game: https://www.wnyc.org/story/an-invisibilia-favorite-rejection-therapy_2/ https://www.wnyc.org/story/an-invisibilia-favorite-rejection...

WalterBright 5y ago

Some rejection letters I've received (scroll down to Game Publisher Rejection Letters): https://classicempire.com/ https://classicempire.com/

mro_name 5y ago

lol, or even plain muteness.

spiritplumber 5y ago

In 2009, my application to the Stanford graduate program was rejected. In 2011, I was selling my tech to Stanford because it was better than theirs. I'm still bitter, though.