7 ms·

Very well written article and I can add some context being in the unhired category of engineers. I graduated from Georgia Tech sometime in the last couple of y

Very well written article and I can add some context being in the unhired category of engineers. I graduated from Georgia Tech sometime in the last couple of years with a 3.64 GPA. I know that GPA doesn't mean much but really at Georgia Tech they make you work for it like a dog. I have some projects on GitHub and well I thought companies would come knocking at my door. Boy was I mistaken. So I started applying late into my graduation semester. I got interviews with Amazon / Google and another Tech giant. I got turned down without an interview from Facebook / Palantir and some other older startups. I did not apply to a lot of companies, and I feel that was the real difference bw me and friends that got offers from all of those companies that I've mentioned above. Past summers I had worked at management consulting companies and ultimately after not getting any offers from Tech companies, I moved back home to Asia. And although I did feel a little crushed at the time, I'm working at a big engineering company back home, and I don't make as much money, I'm learning to like what I do. Perhaps after a couple of years of nursing my self-esteem, I'll try again. Till then yea it sucks to not fit in. It sucks to not be a culture fit. It sucks to be told that you are not adequate after slogging it out at a supposedly "world class" engineering school. The best reason that I got rejected was because other candidates felt coding was their calling and I didn't seem all that committed. wtf! I'm of Asian descent and well was on a F1 Visa (non-resident/citizen) with a horrible accent. Perhaps there were other factors that resulted in me not being hired because I did make it through the phone screens for some companies, and also because I have other asian friends that did get offers. . But yea atleast it feels good to know that there are PhDs out there that can't get jobs either so it wasn't all me.

raverbashing 13y ago
Not surprising to me. Although it is a top school, a recent graduate has lots of "gotchas" for companies. The corporate world has a lot of differences from the academic world, and in my point of view, it is, on average, better.
rayiner 13y ago
Considering that 3.55 is the cut-off for highest graduation honors at GT, you have nothing to be ashamed of there! If you decide to take another stab at things, there is no reason to limit yourself to Amazon/Google/etc. The southern east coast has a perfectly healthy tech ecosystem, from Atlanta up to D.C., and the GT brand carries well there.
- not_paul_graham 13y ago
  Yes man the irony. Georgia Tech tells you that you've graduated in the top 10% of your class, institutional highest honors and all that. And then your parents call you and tell you that they spent six figures on your education and you are essentially worth nothing. Here are some quotes from my parents: "If you really wanted to work as a shitty programmer for a small pay we could have saved all that money instead of sending you to this school." [My dad to relatives in front of me] "Sending not_pg to Georgia Tech was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. It was just a drain of my hard earned money." The reason for shame was my culture and I'm still grappling with it a bit because it is so ingrained in my psyche from all the years of growing up with it. It seems like everyone in my family is constantly judging me for being such a failure. In the grand scheme of things I've stopped caring lest I let this get to my head. But I do realize that I essentially screwed up my time by not being more diligent, not managing it better. Anyway I'm out of the US so Atlanta to DC isn't in the picture atleast in the short term. The only good thing to come out of this is that if I do apply for a PhD in the coming few years I'll have some professors that'll write some good recommendations for me and a decent GPA.
  - FD3SA 13y ago
    I think you need to read a bit of michaelochurch, and learn to stop desiring to be a cog in the machine. A "job" is a contract wherein you show up and are told what to do, in order to make the owners rich in exchange for a subsistence salary and all of your waking hours. There is more to the world than that. Take time off, explore and learn about the world. Start a company. Start ten companies. Believe me, "jobs" are overrated. Between me and my friends, we've worked at every top tech firm in the world (Apple, Tesla, Google etc). They're all the same. They want all of your waking hours in exchange for a subsistence wage (Bay area is expensive). Go and live your life. Build your own skills so you can consult and control your hours. Travel and have fun. YOLO.
    - ahomescu1 13y ago
      Corporate jobs do have their perks. Especially in the Bay Area, they give you access to the following: 1) A green card if you're not a US citizen (this one's really important for foreigners). 2) Starting capital (savings), if you want to later start a startup. If you're single and live in SV, you can save substantially. Maybe you can start a company with no money, but I imagine it's harder. 3) Connections/networking. You get to work with a lot of smart people. Again, if you want to start a startup, this helps (it's easier to have 1-2 cofounders, than do it alone). For example, Valve was founded by a couple of ex-Microsoft engineers.
cobookman 13y ago
Are you a citizen? As I've very rarely heard of a fortune 500 company sponsoring a new grad's visa. I will mention that I've interviewed for Facebook in the past, and have found them to be very pretentious. The interview really made me not want to work for them. Also as a Gatech student as well, did you primarily do on-campus interviews E.g: Career Buzz. As I've found Career Buzz to really suck at getting students jobs. You're talking like 50+ students interviewing for 1 job. And the interviewers are looking for that closet nerd most of the time. I kind of have a philosophy that if its a good job, the company doesn't need to approach students. The students will approach them.
- not_paul_graham 13y ago
  Not a citizen. Haha to be perfectly honest the only reason I wanted to work at Facebook was because of the perks. They pay well plus you aren't spending much at all on food / gym / laundry / etc. so you can save quite a bit if you live frugally. Plus the network in the event I wanted to venture out on my own. Anyways yes most of my non-citizen friends applied to 20-50 jobs using spreadsheets and all that. I was a little late to get my act on like I mentioned in my initial post, and as a result I clicked on all the apply buttons for CS or related jobs on Career Buzz. For startups I emailed co-founders / applied to their open positions. Anyway one of my friends was a Korean and is now serving in the army, so is the Israeli kid that lived down the hall, so atleast I'm a little better off?
eranation 13y ago
I can tell you that sadly accent can have more weight than we all wish it would have. It's a double issue, even if you are interviewing with the most liberal and ethical person who loves you and think you're a great fit but had problem understanding due to heavy accent, it's not in your favor. And even if your accent it's only light, there are sadly still people out there that will even subconsciously prefer the candidate that bad the "better" English. It's sad, but I think it's more of a reason than your actual skills. I go to GT and can vouch anyone who graduated with your GPA is probably very smart and talented. Don't give up! Knowing how to interview is a skill by itself, there are many common mistakes people do that are not related to their skill set. My wife had a heavy Russian accent and spent a year working solely on her English, and interview skills (went to a career coach). From dozens of rejections, she now got 2 offers in one month, and she is almost 40 :-)
- Kluny 13y ago
  I agree about accent, but I want to encourage the parent post by saying that since his written English is excellent, he may be able to avoid that discrimination by sticking to text communication until he's established a relationship with someone at the interviewing company. This is what I try to do - I'm hard of hearing, and someone who doesn't understand the implications of that can easily jump to the conclusion that I'm an idiot or dishonest if I hesitate in answering a question. It just takes longer to process speech when someone changes topics quickly.
foobarqux 13y ago
Engineering is a suckers game. Go back into consulting, apply for an MBA from an elite school and come back as a manager at any of the companies And if your accent is a problem then do whatever it takes: go to a speech therapist. Actors do it all the time and so do CEOs (Vikram Pandit).

raverbashing 13y ago

Not surprising to me. Although it is a top school, a recent graduate has lots of "gotchas" for companies. The corporate world has a lot of differences from the academic world, and in my point of view, it is, on average, better.

rayiner 13y ago

Considering that 3.55 is the cut-off for highest graduation honors at GT, you have nothing to be ashamed of there! If you decide to take another stab at things, there is no reason to limit yourself to Amazon/Google/etc. The southern east coast has a perfectly healthy tech ecosystem, from Atlanta up to D.C., and the GT brand carries well there.

not_paul_graham 13y ago
Yes man the irony. Georgia Tech tells you that you've graduated in the top 10% of your class, institutional highest honors and all that. And then your parents call you and tell you that they spent six figures on your education and you are essentially worth nothing. Here are some quotes from my parents: "If you really wanted to work as a shitty programmer for a small pay we could have saved all that money instead of sending you to this school." [My dad to relatives in front of me] "Sending not_pg to Georgia Tech was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. It was just a drain of my hard earned money." The reason for shame was my culture and I'm still grappling with it a bit because it is so ingrained in my psyche from all the years of growing up with it. It seems like everyone in my family is constantly judging me for being such a failure. In the grand scheme of things I've stopped caring lest I let this get to my head. But I do realize that I essentially screwed up my time by not being more diligent, not managing it better. Anyway I'm out of the US so Atlanta to DC isn't in the picture atleast in the short term. The only good thing to come out of this is that if I do apply for a PhD in the coming few years I'll have some professors that'll write some good recommendations for me and a decent GPA.
- FD3SA 13y ago
  I think you need to read a bit of michaelochurch, and learn to stop desiring to be a cog in the machine. A "job" is a contract wherein you show up and are told what to do, in order to make the owners rich in exchange for a subsistence salary and all of your waking hours. There is more to the world than that. Take time off, explore and learn about the world. Start a company. Start ten companies. Believe me, "jobs" are overrated. Between me and my friends, we've worked at every top tech firm in the world (Apple, Tesla, Google etc). They're all the same. They want all of your waking hours in exchange for a subsistence wage (Bay area is expensive). Go and live your life. Build your own skills so you can consult and control your hours. Travel and have fun. YOLO.
  - ahomescu1 13y ago
    Corporate jobs do have their perks. Especially in the Bay Area, they give you access to the following: 1) A green card if you're not a US citizen (this one's really important for foreigners). 2) Starting capital (savings), if you want to later start a startup. If you're single and live in SV, you can save substantially. Maybe you can start a company with no money, but I imagine it's harder. 3) Connections/networking. You get to work with a lot of smart people. Again, if you want to start a startup, this helps (it's easier to have 1-2 cofounders, than do it alone). For example, Valve was founded by a couple of ex-Microsoft engineers.

cobookman 13y ago

Are you a citizen? As I've very rarely heard of a fortune 500 company sponsoring a new grad's visa. I will mention that I've interviewed for Facebook in the past, and have found them to be very pretentious. The interview really made me not want to work for them. Also as a Gatech student as well, did you primarily do on-campus interviews E.g: Career Buzz. As I've found Career Buzz to really suck at getting students jobs. You're talking like 50+ students interviewing for 1 job. And the interviewers are looking for that closet nerd most of the time. I kind of have a philosophy that if its a good job, the company doesn't need to approach students. The students will approach them.

not_paul_graham 13y ago
Not a citizen. Haha to be perfectly honest the only reason I wanted to work at Facebook was because of the perks. They pay well plus you aren't spending much at all on food / gym / laundry / etc. so you can save quite a bit if you live frugally. Plus the network in the event I wanted to venture out on my own. Anyways yes most of my non-citizen friends applied to 20-50 jobs using spreadsheets and all that. I was a little late to get my act on like I mentioned in my initial post, and as a result I clicked on all the apply buttons for CS or related jobs on Career Buzz. For startups I emailed co-founders / applied to their open positions. Anyway one of my friends was a Korean and is now serving in the army, so is the Israeli kid that lived down the hall, so atleast I'm a little better off?

eranation 13y ago

I can tell you that sadly accent can have more weight than we all wish it would have. It's a double issue, even if you are interviewing with the most liberal and ethical person who loves you and think you're a great fit but had problem understanding due to heavy accent, it's not in your favor. And even if your accent it's only light, there are sadly still people out there that will even subconsciously prefer the candidate that bad the "better" English. It's sad, but I think it's more of a reason than your actual skills. I go to GT and can vouch anyone who graduated with your GPA is probably very smart and talented. Don't give up! Knowing how to interview is a skill by itself, there are many common mistakes people do that are not related to their skill set. My wife had a heavy Russian accent and spent a year working solely on her English, and interview skills (went to a career coach). From dozens of rejections, she now got 2 offers in one month, and she is almost 40 :-)

Kluny 13y ago
I agree about accent, but I want to encourage the parent post by saying that since his written English is excellent, he may be able to avoid that discrimination by sticking to text communication until he's established a relationship with someone at the interviewing company. This is what I try to do - I'm hard of hearing, and someone who doesn't understand the implications of that can easily jump to the conclusion that I'm an idiot or dishonest if I hesitate in answering a question. It just takes longer to process speech when someone changes topics quickly.

foobarqux 13y ago

Engineering is a suckers game. Go back into consulting, apply for an MBA from an elite school and come back as a manager at any of the companies And if your accent is a problem then do whatever it takes: go to a speech therapist. Actors do it all the time and so do CEOs (Vikram Pandit).