One great piece of advice an informal mentor gave me long ago is that there is no information in a rejection.
That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in the interview or application process.
Having been on the hiring side of the interview table now many more times than on the seeking side, I can say that this is totally true.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is to equate a job interview to a test at school, assuming that there is some objective bar and if you pass it then you must be hired. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better.
I can only think of one instance where we had two great candidates for one role and management found a way to open another role so we could hire both. In a few other cases, we had people whom we liked but didn't choose and we forwarded their resumes to other teams who had open roles we thought would fit, but most of the time it's just, "sorry."
This. I've hired in a number of roles, in several industries, and what they've all had in common is that rejection is never personal.
My first career was in theatre, which a) is (or at least was, back in the day?) much more competitive than tech - par was one callback (ie, second screening) per 100 auditions, and one casting per 10 callbacks; and b) is genuinely, deeply vulnerable - you have to bring your whole self into your work, in a way that you don't in any other field.
It's still never personal, and actors who don't develop thick skins wash out quickly.
I once auditioned three rounds for Romeo, at a company I really liked, and thought I'd killed it. I didn't get the role, and was pretty bummed (particularly since - actors are nothing but petty - I didn't much like the performance by the guy who did). Six months later the casting director button-holed me after seeing another show I was in, and told me I'd been their first choice, and he was sorry they'd not been able to cast me. The trouble was, he said, their only good choice for Juliette was at least a foot shorter than I am, and there was no way that wouldn't have looked awkward.
It's never personal.
Furthermore, that "failed" audition directly led to two later jobs, and I think indirectly to a third. Having a good interview, even in a situation where you don't achieve the immediate goal, can only be good for you - both by developing your own skills, and for creating a reputation for competence within your industry.
Strong agreement. I can confirm for other readers that the day I realized this --- "Oh, rejection means nothing!" --- was a weird day. It takes a weight off.
And it is true across every other field. There are way more factors external to the "you" of the decision, and they're given more weight than the "you" of the decision. This is one of those cases where you only need to experience the "other side of the table" once for it to click.
Companies that are more humane in their hiring practices (even just actually send a rejection email vs. ghosting) deserve a bit of credit, because caring for the applicant is not a KPI.
Hey! Good to meet a fellow artist. I made it to 40 before I sold out. You?
One thing outsiders don't understand is that, for actors, auditioning IS the job. Getting cast, and working on a show, is a joy (some more than others, of course!), but the rest of your life is nothing, nothing but looking for work.
The were two things that made that "it's all cool" shift happen for me. The first is that once I'd been in the industry long enough I could pretty much guarantee that when I went in for an audition I'd see someone I knew, or at least with whom I had an immediate second-degree connection. Auditions stopped being a grind, or mainly about courting rejection - instead, they became an opportunity to hang out with some cool people for a while. I started looking forward to them!
The second was realizing that choosing and performing my audition pieces was the only time that I was in complete control. No one was telling me what to do or how to do it: I could make my own choices, and take whatever creative risks I wanted.
I think both of those approaches made me a much better auditionee than most. My batting average was a lot higher than most of my peers - even some that I thought were better actors.
I don't know how well those insights generalize. I've never (thank god!) had to do leet-code, but I'd hope that (though maybe only in a second screening?) taking a creative approach - if you can talk about it sensibly, and pivot if it doesn't ultimately work - would impress fellow engineers. I strongly believe that adopting a "what can I learn from this experience, and these people?" mindset is a good way to reduce the pressure you'd otherwise put on yourself.
Do you mean you sold out in the arts or in the sense that you changed careers? If the former, I’d be curious to hear (well, read) the story since that’s not an admission one typically encounters.
I never met a professional with a conceptual category of "selling out" within the industry. Scraping together any kind of living in the arts is a massive struggle, so everyone takes "money jobs" when they can get them. During my 10 or 12 years as a working actor I had two consecutive years during which my sole income was from performing, and maybe a couple of other other five or six month periods where I was able to drop restaurant (or whatever other) gigs for a tour. This was in the early-'oughts, and I'd have to look at my social security records to be sure, but my income during those years was somewhere around $30k. I was single, and really, really good at being poor.
By the way, that's like a 98th percentile result for an actor. Most people never come close to making a living, however meagre.
There's an old, old interview (maybe Michael Parkinson? Don't remember) with Joss Ackland - a wonderful mid-twentieth century British character actor, on stage and screen - where the interviewer asks him why the hell he did some crappy science fiction film, and Ackland says something like "that was 1962? Oh, yes. Well, my mother needed a new kitchen." No actor will ever fault him for that!
What does disappoint me is seeing actors with tremendous talent who take nothing but money jobs. I get why they do it - especially for the ones at the top of the commercial heap it'd be awfully hard to say 'no' to an easy gig that comes with a boatload of cash - but I can't help but feel sad that I'll never get to see them working at their best.
Even so, my response when I see a truly bad film is generally a shrug: "a lot of actors [and associated professionals / craft services] got paid." The artists among them will learn from even that experience, and many (many many) among them will invest that income back into doing work that they believe in.
I'm a computer engineer, EMT, and firefighter. I have scooped up brain matter from hot asphalt and run into burning buildings (without even getting paid for it). People ask me how I can do this. I dunno. Training and experience I guess. Doesn't bother me.
But the idea of standing on a stage pretending to be someone else fills me with sheer terror. Even worse would be trying out for that job 100 times and getting rejected every time.
I don't know how actors do it. My hat's off to you.
It's all a matter of perspective. My uncle once brought his kids to see a big show I was in, and afterwards said just what you did. I looked at him, genuinely surprised, and said something like "dude, you're a surgeon. If I screw up at work 2,000 people laugh at me, and forget about it five minutes later; if you screw up at work, someone dies. You really think I should be the one feeling nervous?"
You're right about training and experience, though. I screwed up on stage (in loads of tiny ways, not usually perceptible to anyone but me) every time I ever stepped onto one, and in big ways lots and lots of times as well. But, you know, I always knew that I (with my castmates' help) would get out of it. Failure is inevitable, and it doesn't matter. In fact, if you haven't failed somehow, in at least some small way, then you either don't know what you're doing, or you aren't trying hard enough to succeed.
Also, when I was training young actors I always told them that they will never experience such unconditional love as when they first step in front of an audience. Those people have given at least their time and maybe their money to see you - don't you think they want you to succeed? They're rooting for you, none more so.
To bring this back to the larger subject of the thread, I think all of that's also true of every job interview any of us will ever attend, or conference paper we'll ever deliver. It'll never be perfect, and that's just fine.
I once got an emergency call to a theatre where a fight scene mishap left an actress punched out cold. There's less opportunity for harm in entertainment relative to medicine but it does happen sometimes.
You're right, and oh my god: don't get me started on the abysmal safety record of theatres, particularly towards the non-union end of the scale. I never got a fight director credential, but I was competent, and served as fight captain on any number of shows. 1.) Unarmed fights are the most dangerous type of scene, but also the most likely to be treated cavalierly by people who don't know any better. 2.) There are safe ways to do (just about) everything. A company that can't afford to hire a qualified fight director shouldn't stage fight scenes. Period. End of story.
I've literally walked out of shows (as an audience member) where it's been clear that the actors are doing unsafe things, because I didn't want to see happen what you showed up to. Thanks for being there, and I hope that woman was OK.
She was alert when we got there. We took her in as a precaution/for observation. Don't know what happened after that but the loss of consciousness was brief so she was probably fine.
Of course I have. I'm thinking of a couple of them right now, and I admire the hell out of them: it took courage to get up there and do what they did. I wasn't going to cast them in that show, right then, but within the limits of the time available I did my best to help them improve. I hoped they did, and I wished them nothing but the best.
I'm glad you brought that up, because it might be the exception that proves the rule. Those auditions did feel more personal, but it was entirely benign: I was rooting for them to succeed, and really felt for them when it became obvious (especially to them) that they had not.
Maybe it's not like that with other fields, or other companies, or other people - but if not, then that's not somewhere anyone should have to work. There's no incompatibility between high standards and human decency.
A colleague rejected a candidate this week after said candidate posted ten lines of code into a clipboard all at once and then claimed to have written it one line at a time. When challenged, he further claimed my colleague's zoom session lagged which is why he missed it.
Of course. But I've screened far more out because I was in a rush and got 40 resumes in that day and they just didn't pique my interest as much as the next one over.
Building on that: There's a few reasons why a company won't explain why they reject a candidate.
One of the reasons is that they don't want candidates to "game" the system, because it makes it hard to screen for the people they want to hire.
Another reason is that often rejections are highly subjective, and telling a candidate that "we didn't hire you because of X" could be highly insulting.
Finally, quite often candidates are rejected because the people hiring ultimately are looking for people they will get along with. It doesn't matter how smart someone is, if something about the working relationship causes friction, the team dynamic can quickly devolve. (And to be quite frank, in these situations the candidate will probably have a better job working elsewhere.) These kinds of rejections are highly subjective, so no one really wants to give a candidate feedback.
These are all likely enough to contribute, but there's one big one.
If you don't say anything at all, the applicant has nothing to go on for a lawsuit against you.
If you say anything, and the applicant is a malicious litigant, you just became a potential paycheck via settlement.
If you're hiring a dozen people a year, you can probably ignore this. If you're hiring hundreds or thousands, and thus many times that number of applicants, you're going to step on that landmine eventually. Better then to have a company-wide policy "no feedback ever"
I hear this about lawsuits a lot, but it doesn't really track for me. If a hiring manager says, "we decided to pass on you because you didn't go in depth as much as we hoped on how you would handle latency," why does that open the company up to a lawsuit anymore than no answer?
I could see if the feedback was "we wanted someone who better fit the culture," but giving a specific answer on a core hiring criteria doesn't seem like it would cause a problem.
In reality, I think the most likely reason is what others have mentioned, that candidates would argue the point.
I've been hiring people for a while and I use my "common sense" to violate conventions because of humanity, but I think you'd be surprised how defensive it becomes.
I always tell people why they didn't pass the interview, or why we didn't select them. Usually in a reasonably detailed way.
A plurality of individuals have tried to argue with me, that I didn't understand them (which, if true, could be a communication issue and thus: still an issue). Some try to litigate the issue (not in a court of law, but to say things like "but you didn't say that on the ad" (knowing how TCP works shouldn't be on an ad), or "I can learn" etc). A minority of those will go out of their way to hound me on social media.
My "HR" person doesn't get any of that because she gives no reason.
I'll continue to do it, because I think it's the right thing to do: but there are people in the world who disincentivise it. And after all; you're rejecting someone for a reason, so there is a higher probability that you will interface with someone who is as described: as they might not be finding work and thus circulating more and you are rejecting them for a reason... which could be related to attitude.
Indeed. The closest I've ever come to "arguing" (quotes very much intended) was when a recruiter called to give me feedback, and followed up by asking if I would like a call back if a more junior role opened up.
I told her that I respected their opinion but that I disagreed that I wasn't ready for the more senior role, and so I wasn't interested, but appreciated their time nonetheless. And I was appreciative. Although I predicted as soon as the interview was over that I wasn't getting an offer and why, having confirmation helped me refine where I messed up in the interview.
> A plurality of individuals have tried to argue with me... A minority of those will go out of their way to hound me on social media.
Which just reinforces why a rejection transitions to "no contact" most of the time. I try to make sure candidates have no contact information for this specific reason.
> If you say anything, and the applicant is a malicious litigant, you just became a potential paycheck via settlement.
Do you have examples? I know this is a real fear, but I've never heard any examples of lawsuits except for issues of discrimination due to age, gender, and ethnicity.
Right, and a malicious litigant will argue that the feedback they received represents discrimination against a protected class. It doesn't matter if they're wrong so long as you're still forced to come to court to defend it. They just offer to settle for less than what you winning in court will cost you.
I used to provide feedback but often got candidates who were argumentative about it rather that accepting that the decision was final. This turned me off on the whole concept.
Another reason is that often rejections are highly subjective, and telling a candidate that "we didn't hire you because of X" could be highly insulting.
If they've written down notes or a stance/defence in a talent management system, all they need to do is regurgitate that in my opinion. I wrote about it upthread but having done a data request under my country's privacy act, I was able to get a raw dump of all the data (PII redacted). Recommend that as best course of action if they're unwilling to provide feedback.
I can say that in some of the rejections that I got, it was quite personal.
I was old (55, at the time), and that seemed to actually upset the interviewers.
I had all the right buzzwords, but as soon as they saw my grey coiffure, the process started going sideways. Somehow, they seemed to think that a 30-year-old could have 30 years of experience.
I was treated pretty shabbily, a couple of times. It was clear that I was considered a waste of time.
I only made it to a test a few times. I failed the BTree part of one test (of course), and they didn't seem to like what I returned in a take-home, once. I also once failed a Swift test (I had just started programming in Swift), when I applied for an ObjC job. Otherwise, I did passably (but probably not outstanding) on the tests.
I don't know about you but the older I get, the less I take anything in life personal.
I've come to realize that there are so many aspects of life that are not under one's control and shaking your fist gravity doesn't accomplish anything; even more so when it comes to business and professional relationships.
One of my favorite quotes is from "Deuteronomy 18:13", or as the The Coen Brothers aptly put it:
- "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you"
I admit to getting quite pissed off, but I eventually decided that it wasn't worth it, and just retired.
I'm grateful that I had the means. Because of that, I would have been happy to take a lot less than many, if the work interested me, but it never got that far.
NBD. I've found that learning on my own is better, anyway. LLMs have been a Godsend, there.
These days, I get quite a bit done, but I do it on my own terms, and that makes all the difference.
This is what I’m working on, now[0]. Still has a ways to go, though. I should publish it next week.
My heroes are guys like Stu Nicholls and Howard Oakley. I've learned so much, since I decided to retire, and it's accelerating.
I looked it up as well, because I had a guess at which famous verse it was but didn't know it by chapter/verse.
The context of the verse, based on the surrounding verses, is that "simplicity with the Lord"[0] means accepting that what happens, or what will happen in the future, is from God and there's no need to try to figure out what will be out make sense of the uncertainty of life.
I think I can relate that to the GP's quote.
[0] translation to English my own, not sure what the language you saw was. Notably, the word used in the original Hebrew[1] can be translated as "simplicity" but also "wholeness" or "completeness". Maybe that works better? Also interestingly, in contemporary Hebrew, it means "naive"...
The most helpful job interview I had was when the interviewer broke script and just leveled with me about how I wasn't presenting myself well. There was a shared connection (our alma mater) that must have convinced him to be straight with me instead of hiding how poorly I was doing behind a mask. The HR handbooks say that you should never let a candidate know why they were not selected, but that information can be extremely helpful.
If you're not getting offers, I strongly recommend that you find somebody you trust to do a mock interview. Let them critique your resume, cover letter, posture, awkwardness, lame handshake, etc.
In the United States, most junior/community colleges have career centers that will do this. There are also economic development boards in essentially every town with a population over 1000; they can connect you to places to do mock interviews.
Very helpful for new interviewees, whether just out of college or during a career transition.
I have done about 75 coding interviews for big tech companies. I have told a fair number of people (around 10) that I would be submitting a no-hire, but then I went on to coach them for another 15 minutes on how they could improve. I never once heard from anyone on the subject and all the people I told were actually grateful 1) that they wouldn't be left wondering and 2) how they could pass the next one.
"Until then" means others will pay for your decision to ignore policy when it happens. It's never on the person who -- with every good intention, full of an instinct to "build a better world" -- willfully ignores the stuffy rules in handbooks and HR guidelines. Instead, when it backfires and someone does threaten to sue, it's precisely execs, HRs, legal who have to deal with it. The rules are there for good reason.
Exactly. The lock analogy is flawed and a distraction. I made a local universe of how I think the world should be. I gave those people the respect I think we all deserve, and hopefully they stand up and do the same. Maybe they are in HR, or become a C-level and institute the same things.
When you comply in advance, you not only let "them" win, there isn't even a them here, just an idea of a possible threat. Fuck that. Anyone can sue for anything, you can't "do stuff so you won't get sued". Frankly, this is cowards take that lets an nebulous idea pollute your world.
We don't have to Joan of Arc or Don Quixote, we can just do the little stuff that changes culture in the direction we'd like to see it changed.
Humans are incredibly valuable across many many dimensions, not letting them know how they can improve is a massive waste and harmful to both parties.
I feel you, but there is a big difference between (a) "justification" in the overall cost versus benefit to all parties involved and (b) the narrowly self-interested thing to do.
A couple years ago I was turned down for a position after an initial screening interview because they said my writing sample didn't meet certain criteria. I felt it arguably did, but I just said "thank you for your time and consideration", and moved on. I was just glad to get a clear "no" at an early stage.
They've probably revised their policy by now, I suspect, but I appreciated that they made the effort.
Yeah… the common connection thing is what’s at play here. This is why high-stakes introductions are done through people you know, to show that you can be trusted lest you be a social outcast.
> If you're not getting offers, I strongly recommend that you find somebody you trust to do a mock interview. Let them critique your resume, cover letter, posture, awkwardness, lame handshake, etc.
Slightly odd question but: what if it's the opposite of this?
Interviews are almost never an issue.
I would like to think (and have been told so too) that I'm both technically sharp and knowledgeable enough, and can communicate well enough. I have a firm handshake, and thanks to the ability to happily dive into topics I read up on, I can speak confidently - both on hard facts, as well as my understanding or opinion of any technical matter in my field - for hours maybe, if not longer.
But getting the interview... is.. legitimately hard. Multiple people have said my resume is quite solid, but I rarely get through beyond the base round.
Would you have any tips for just the act of getting a foot in the door, so to say? I'm reasonably optimistic I can take it from there.
(Two things I can probably change - using customized CVs (and a cover letter, where applicable), and reaching out to employees/HR at the places I'm applying at. Though that honestly seems exhausting with so many applications...)
Without any context of culture or country, just trying to be helpful: in my limited (<20 total interviews) experience, I would think about budget issues.
Meaning, what you ask for (or how expensive you are perceived, if you have that strong resumee) for the industry you apply, may be too different and leading to limited access.
Sometimes I feel junior people have it easier (I felt like I did, personally) since the expense in salary is pretty limited compared to either other roles or more senior people
Thanks! However... I am very junior right now lol (<1 YOE)
(I have applied to both competitive as well as more niche firms fwiw, I expect there have been stronger resumes I've "lost to". Though, my degree isn't a "common" one even though it's actually very suitable.)
It's not you. As a junior, there are going to be so many candidates for anything you feel qualified to apply for. It's a numbers game. IMHO, you should still tailor your resume to fit the position. I'd put together a too long resume with everything, and trim off irrelevant stuff so it's down to one page (maybe two, if that's the standard locally) of mostly relevant things for each position; when your resume does get looked at, you want it to pass muster.
Do your best to network. Think about the people you went to school with: who among them would you like to work with.
Every week, send 2-5 of them an email, remind them of what you did in school together, ask them how their summer/etc was, how are they doing at job hunting/if they like the job they found. If you don't mind looking a little desperate, in that email write something like I'm having a hard time getting interviews, have you found anything that works? If you don't wait for their reply... if they got hired, ask if their company is hiring; if they're still looking ask for tips.
Check in with your school's career center. Check in with your favorite professors.
Check in with your parents' friends and your friends' parents.
A personal connection is likely to get your resume looked at closely and not just ignored because there were 1000 applicants and 10 candidates seemed worth interviewing in the first 100, so they didn't look at the rest. It might not get you an interview, but it helps your chances; also, a personal connection might get a referral to an unrelated opening which is unlikely for an unconnected application. I would definitely send a friend's kid to another friend at a different company if I thought that was a potential match, but I wouldn't consider it for a resume that just came in.
I would also guess that in at least >50% of cases your application is never given a fair shot for random reasons. I remember when a company that I was working at was doing intern interviews, they would almost always run out of time to do interviews (this was back when interviews were in person), so they would pick 2-3 schools that they had time to get to (proximity * prestige was the factor there) and everyone else got a blanket rejection.
Maybe it’s because my school wasn't on that list, but I remember feeling like if I got rejected like that I would very much feel like I wasn’t good enough. But it was essentially random.
This is such an insightful take. As someone who has interviewed many candidates, I wholeheartedly agree. While it's important to reflect on how you can improve, it's also critical to maintain morale and become comfortable with rejection during the job hunt. One of the biggest obstacles I've seen; whether with friends, family, or candidates; is the tendency to internalize rejection as a sense of being inherently 'bad.' Of course, once you internalize this belief, any motivation to study is gone. It can be challenging to help people see that this negative self-talk has become the primary barrier to their success.
My recommendation to people is to apply for jobs you know you won't get while also applying for jobs you want. Exposure to rejection really does help take the sting out of the process.
> Of course, once you internalize this belief, any motivation to study is gone
This is definitely not a universal truth.
I know that if I had done better in every interview then I would’ve moved ahead and gotten the job. I guess that’s a different way of saying I was “bad” (not good enough). And it doesn’t affect my motivation in a negative way. I find that it actually helps me want to improve more.
I agree with your sentiment, but what you're referring to is "I'm not good at this task yet" which is different from "I am inherently incapable/inferior". The first can motivate, the second does not- this is supported by a large body of pedagogical research.
Especially true in today's hiring environment. They probably have hundreds of qualified people lined up for that position. One company recently reached out to me asking me to submit a CV, considering me a good fit for their position. In the end, they rejected me, but they mentioned that they got 1400 applications. If you don't have a personal connection to get you in, it's basically a lottery.
Even sometimes if you do have a personal connection. I've had twice now where I've had a warm intro to the hiring manager, jobs where I had done the kind of work before, and the hiring manager didn't even reply to my emails.
Won't lie, both of those hurt, but I also reasoned it that if that's who I would have been working for, I wouldn't have enjoyed the work anyway.
> you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit
And every role usually only gets one person accepted into it, or at most, a small number. Ideally they want the "best" person for the role (where "best" is highly subjective and context-dependent). Say 200 people applied for the role. Are you really going to feel bad about yourself because you weren't the absolute best person out of 200 applicants? Is it going to be a huge blow to your self-esteem that you might have been the 2nd or 3rd best out of that 200? (And that's assuming their interview process is perfect and accurately measures who the "best" person is, which is rarely the case.)
Rejections are hard. I get it. I don't enjoy them either. But it's so important not to take them personally.
Unsure about the author's financial situation but the calculus tends to change depending on it. I wasn't applying to Anthropic mind you but $50k-80k tech positions with 4 YoE in industry already. I had already burned through nearly all my savings before hitting another interview and rejection (for far less than what I used to make) and then realizing the job search had burnt me out and I was in danger of losing my lease and everything on top of that. I haven't gotten past a phone screen for half a year by now.
When America prescribes that you only deserve health insurance and shelter if you have a good enough job, and you're at the end of your rope financially, it is in my experience very difficult not to take things personally. I was actually pretty good at this earlier on, when I still had savings! But contrary to what some people say, it became harder and harder to stay positive as time went on until it became all but impossible. The last straw was when 13/hr jobs started rejecting me for not having "moving things around in a warehouse" experience.
I'm now having to work an eye-wateringly menial job with no experience requirement just to make ends meet, and even that still isn't enough for my poverty-level expenses. It's not the prestige of the job that bothers me but the fact that it isn't livable. It does feel sometimes that my life could have diverged significantly if I had just passed that interview all those months ago. So much was riding on that final interview and yet I didn't perform to some arbitrary unknowable standard to deserve a livable salary, and this is the end result of my rejection.
I'm hoping that if I get an HVAC certification or something I can just... survive comfortably. I don't think I'd be happy changing careers and I wanted to work in tech until I died or retired, but seems like it's not going to happen at this rate.
That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in the interview or application process.
Best to ask for feedback but of course they won't give it to you. I thought I did really well after 6 interviews with a FAANG company. They let me down by saying that another candidate was preferred. I pressed for feedback a month or so later and was ghosted. So I submitted a privacy request to the privacy and legal team about all and any data pertaining to the hiring process and interview, and was given a massive dump of their talent management system, plaintext notes of the interviews, group chat messages discussing me, etc.
It turns out I had a pretty bad read of the situation; there was some things that I had said that were misconstrued, some bad traits that I wasn't aware of, and then the key reason I was rejected (lack of domain exertise and relevant experience).
Anyways glad I went down this route, I still need to process the data and translate it to improving myself, but as my buddy GI Joe says, knowing is half the battle.
Not much to it really; took about a month round trip time to get the data; I had to authenticate myself but that was relatively straightforward since I could use my account with the organisation which I used to submit the job application to also perform the authentication (though the actual process is a bit bizarre).
Send a message like this (have ChatGPT to tailor to your jurisdiction):
Dear Privacy Officer,
I am writing to formally request access to any and all personal information $FAANG holds about me under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), specifically pursuant to Australian Privacy Principle 12.
I interviewed for the $ROLE position with one of $FAANG's Australian offices between February and March 2025. While I understand that I was not selected for the role, I am seeking access to any evaluative records, interview notes, recruiter or hiring manager comments, assessments, and other personal information recorded or obtained during the recruitment process.
For the purposes of identifying my records, my name is $FULL_NAME, and I applied via $FAANG Job Portal.
Please provide this information in a commonly used electronic format. If you require any further details to verify my identity or locate my information, I am happy to provide them.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your response within a reasonable time, as required by the Act.
I had thought I did well in all the interviews but was just bested by another candidate.
But the role continued to be advertised as they were hiring multiple headcount, so it seems the recruiter straight up lied and was trying to let me down gently. Reality settled when I saw all the hire/maybe hire/no hire positions of the interviewers.
I don’t disagree with any of the feedback or angry; I’m using all the data gathered to improve myself.
As for the privacy request, usually you agree to a privacy policy with most firms that say you can request a copy of the data anyway, don’t always need to use legislation to order it.
It's at a state level in the US, so it's necessary to look up your state's privacy laws (California was the first to adopt comprehensive privacy legislation but others have followed). TBH I had never thought about its applicability to hiring process information, since the laws are framed more as a "consumer" right, but it seems possible it's covered under some of these laws.
No, at least the privacy officer I spoke to says it doesn't negative impact how you are considered by the company, and that the requests are handled by the applicable data protection law.
I wouldn't do it for a tiny company / startup where such a request can easily be exposed to recruiter and interviewers, but in those cases you're very likely to receive candid feedback by just asking anyway.
There isn't, but you can also sometimes deduce things you didn't do as well if they were apparent. Like, if you couldn't answer a bunch of questions or finish the task on time, and all the other interviews were good, there is a good chance it was that thing, and you should brush up on it.
Sometimes interviews are designed to be a hard grind that everyone fails and it's based on 'did you fail the least', but those are rare and once you've done a bunch of interviews, you can tell the difference.
If your half way through a process, recruiters are often ok to tell you what you didn't do as well on and offer that as feedback and tips. At the end they tend to be quiet so you can't figure out the final reason for a rejection unless you somehow have a friend on the inside that can find out informally for you. If your lucky to get a rejection call, you can even get vague hints as to why it wasn't a go from the recruiter if you have the social skills and the right recruiter. I often play guessing games based on my deductions.
"to equate a job interview to a test at school, assuming that there is some objective bar and if you pass it then you must be hired"
This is excellent advice in general.
When you're on Reddit long enough, you'll see posts from men about how they were kind and considerate to a woman, and she still didn't want to date them. But that's not how life works. It's not about putting kindness, skills, effort, and good intentions into the machine and receiving success in return.
You should do these things because you want to. For yourself. Not because you will definitely get any reward in return.
Aim to excel in a job interview because you are good at what you do. Aim for being kind to others because you're a good person. Aim to learn a new skill because you're curious and love learning. Help a friend because you value your relationships.
And be happy because of what you do, because of who you are, because you can be proud of yourself.
The opposite can also be true. The worst job I ever had was where I was hired by a company, and placed on the team of, a hiring manager that had recommended I not be hired. He offered me no support at all. They just couldn't find many people willing to work at the company, and I was naive enough to just be excited that someone wanted me. I left after about 5 months.
I once interviewed a very good candidate - good skills, interest in the business, a few years of experience, could definitely do the job I thought I was interviewing him for - only to find out after the fact that we actually only wanted an industry veteran with very specific, particular domain knowledge, and neither the recruiters nor me and my immediate manager had really caught up to that requirement.
> One great piece of advice and informal mentor gave me long ago is that there is no information in a rejection.
I mean, there might be, in two ways. Sometimes, you just mess up in some obvious way and can learn from that. But you also get a glimpse of the corporate culture. Maybe not for FAANG and the likes - the processes are homogenized and reviewed by a risk-averse employment lawyer - but for smaller organizations, it's fair game.
But as with layoffs, there's nothing you can win by begging, groveling, or asking for a second chance. The decision has been made, these decisions are always stochastic and unfair on some level, but you move on. You'll be fine.
I think the point, which I agree with, was that in the typical case of a stock rejection, you don't know if the errors you think you made had any bearing on the decision. Information you get from the process you would have gotten whether or not you got accepted, so it's not from the rejection.
There are cases where the company gives you some indication of why they rejected you but they are rare in my experience (in the USA, mostly for legal reasons, IDK about other countries). Or they give you information in some other way. Some companies will stop and send you home part way through if it's not going well. That also gives more information.
Agreed. I've been rejected from roles I've been genuinely excited about and felt totally defeated. This last application run I made a concerted effort to protect myself from feeling bad and it definitely helped. Some people can be excellent candidates but ultimately the wrong fit for the role or an equally better or exceptional candidate is also in the pipeline.
I did a LOT of road bike racing a while back. Out of a large starting group (often 60+), one person wins.* Being prepared helps -- you want your fitness dialed and your equipment in good shape. But then Shih Tzu happens, even if you have the equanimity of Lao Tzu. If you conserve energy at the right times and expend energy at the right times -- and luck goes your way -- and the right combination of people work collaboratively -- then you might win. Or flat. Or crash. (Or die, but that's pretty rare.)
In bike racing, winning feels really good, but I don't think people really do it for the winning, because if you dominate one category, _congratulations!_ now you get to compete against the next level, replete with additional helpings of pain, exertion, and whatever the opposite of mental acuity is.
* In contrast to many sports where one of the two participants is guaranteed to win.
> One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is to equate a job interview to a test at school, assuming that there is some objective bar and if you pass it then you must be hired. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better.
This hasn't been true for the interviews I've given. For technical interviews I was given a question and rubrik of what they should say and a clear guide on how to grade them and give feed back about performance. Unless they did something truly bizarre there wasn't room for being subjective
> Unless they did something truly bizarre there wasn't room for being subjective
Without having been there, I have a sense of what you mean, but I do want to add:
1. Statistically speaking, there will misinterpretation and even outright errors on the part of interviewers.
2. As feedback gets passed up the chain, most processes I know about are not formulaic. People make judgment calls. They might be more or less consistent w.r.t. following some ideal, sure. A company might pride itself on consistency and that might be good. Another company might pride itself on adaptability -- changing a process to suit the current need, because maybe the old process wasn't that great.
3. There _will_ be differential treatment, as perceived by the interviewer, even if you behave _identically_!. Cultures are different, comfort levels are different, styles are different! Saying the same thing, with the same tone of voice, with the same timing might have different effects on different people.
But you know, this kind of information burden is one of the factors radicalizing the youth right now. These people don't just dissappear into a void if they are unwilling to accept that, they're organizing and being drawn to more radical movements to crush you. So is this way of dealing with workers here really that sustainable?
I wasn't advocating for any particular system, just stating the way things are, now, on the ground.
That said, I have my doubts about the true extent of the radicalization of "the youth", at least in the USA, given that the DSA/Mamdani voter base is squarely bougie upper middle class college grads freaked out that elite overproduction has killed their job prospects. Whatever radical things they may do, the result won't be to create more jobs for college grads.
>Whatever radical things they may do, the result won't be to create more jobs for college grads.
They probably won't. But whatever damage is caused likely won't be good for us all anyways. Not everyone is going to have the luxury of being detached from crisis once radicals make sure they feel it too.
Hell, I've interviewed people who were perfect for the job and whom I wanted to hire, only to be told that the financials of the business changed and we can't hire for that position any more.
I'd hope HR told the candidate that the position has been retracted, but maybe the HR system just sent an "unfortunately" email, I have no idea.
There's information there, though, you're just not privy to it (short of radical candor, which I would prefer), so what you're really saying is that there's no information in a rejection for you.
> ...the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better...
Or they liked you just as much as the one they hired, but you lost the coin toss. Or, they hated you because they misunderstood something you said. Or...?
This claim is exaggerated too far in the other direction. I try to spiral in towards the gravity well of truth rather than slingshot out of the solar system.
Yeah I think this is a great mental framework. Getting rejected hurts, it's natural to want to find a reason, and with some self-reflection it definitely can help one grow. But you gotta be very careful about over-indexing on any one interview where the reasons for rejection may or may not have anything to do with what you did and said during the interview (let alone your personhood).
Frankly, if you want to get better at interviewing, it's better to do more general research on what hiring managers and companies want, and then do more interviews to practice communicating that you have the skills and temperament to deliver value.
One specific piece of advice to the OA: this kind of post might feel cathartic, but it doesn't get you closer to your goal. Sure, it will resonate, people will commiserate, and you'll get some dopamine and internet points—but if your goal is to work at a top tier company like Anthropic then such a post can only hurt you. The reality in fast-growing, ambitious companies at the forefront of the AI bubble is that expectations are sky high, and getting things done to attempt to meet those expectations is incredibly difficult for a hundred different reasons. In this type of environment, whatever technical skills you have are not enough. To be successful you need a sustained and resourceful effort to solve whatever problems come your way. One of the most toxic traits is having a victim mentality. Unfortunately it's a common affliction due to the low agency that individuals have in big companies and late stage capitalism in general, but you've got to tamp it down and focus on what you can control (which in practice is often more than you might think). While this post doesn't directly demonstrate a victim mentality, it suggests internalizing the rejection ("My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.") in a way that is adjacent and something that would give me significant pause if I was a hiring manager evaluating for a role in a chaotic company.
> While this post doesn't directly demonstrate a victim mentality, it suggests internalizing the rejection ("My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.")...
Well said. While it might have only been the recognition of that feeling, I do think it might reflect a deeper internalization. Though I'm no psychologist; I only have an intuitive, common-sense understanding of the concept of "internalization".
> ... in a way that is adjacent and something that would give me significant pause if I was a hiring manager evaluating for a role in a chaotic company.
Yes, I can see why some people would have this take. But there are other takes, such as "this person cares and feels things deeply, and as long as they process these emotions, they'll probably come back stronger."
I have no idea to what extent Anthropic or other employers delve into prospective candidates’ blogs; but this strikes me as too much self-disclosure for one’s own good. We all have idiosyncrasies; but calling oneself weird on a now widely published blog article seems like it risks defeating the goal of making oneself an ideal candidate for many job opportunities.
Look, many of my own eccentricities have been (net) valuable to be professionally and personally, but it was probably better they be revealed “organically” rather than through a public act of self-disclosure.
This is the age of social media. This person has hit the front page of HN twice now. That's a commercially valuable skill.
At this point, having proved that can do something commercially valuable a couple times now, I think they should run with it. Start a YouTube channel. Keep racking up views. Then, eventually, do partnerships and sponsorships, in addition to collecting AdSense money.
If you like to write or perform for other people, you can monetize that now. This person is good at it. They should continue.
Sure I don't think you'll build a following just here if that's what you mean, but there is an audience. If you have the skill and technical knowledge to have articles hit the front page you will get a decent amount of views. Which is what i think this comment chain is talking about
As someone who’s hired many dev advocates, I definitely value the ability to turn mundane topics into posts that hit the HN front page. If they can do this about something as dull as failing interviews, imagine what they’d do with an actually interesting technical topic.
Failing interviews is a favorite topic for HN, not a "dull" one; this is not the only person who's made the front page about it, and certainly won't be the last. HN's audience contains a large group that believes "tech interviews are stupid and broken" and this is right up their alley.
I don't think it is a strong signal of an easy pivot to influencer-as-a-career.
Maybe a good point, but honestly, interviewers barely read resumes, they’re very, very likely not going to read your blog, or remember “hey it’s the person from that blog post I ready 7 weeks ago.”
I feel like this is the biggest lie ever told in this industry. Do you, as an interviewer, not read resumes?
I read loads of resumes and the truth is more like everyone are terrible communicators. Especially software engineers. Most resumes are badly formatted, badly typeset, full of errors and give me confusing/contradictory details about what your job responsibilities were rather than what you accomplished.
Most peoples' resumes are so low-effort that they're practically unreadable and I'm trying to read between the lines to figure out what you're capable of. I might as well not be reading them because I'm trying to figure out what you've done, what you're good at and what motivates you and nothing you've given me on that paper helps me do that.
One of these days someone is going to figure out how to cross-polinate technology people and sales people in the office to smooth out each others' rough edges. Whoever does is going to revolutionize industry.
It is true for some companies. That said, in my experience, the more it was visible in an interview that the interviewer read my application, my website, my open-source code etc, the more enjoyable working for that company has been for me. I guess it’s a sign people at such a company give a shit. It transfers to other areas than just interviews led by them. At this point, if I see that the interviewer barely skimmed my CV, my expectations, that this job will be good, plummet.
> I feel like this is the biggest lie ever told in this industry.
It's not. I've been in a number of interviews where the interviewer has told me straight up "I didn't read your resume. Mind giving me a second to give it a scan?"
To be fair, as you mention, resumes are horrible tools. They should only be used as a place to start a conversation, so does it really matter if the interviewer reads it in depth before starting the interview?
I’m a little confused, because first you challenge me, but then come to the exact conclusion that resumes are largely unreadable. I’ll look for something they claim to have done to dig deep on, see if it’s BS or not, but I’m not reading every X by Y% with my jaw on the floor. FWIW I’m generally on the back side of the process, where someone at the front (is supposed to have) vetted the person already.
> where someone at the front (is supposed to have) vetted the person already.
I think that's a mistake, personally. Each interviewer needs to make an independent decision and relying on the judgement of a screener early in the process is giving that person disproportionate weight towards hiring for your team. Usually that resume screener is someone in HR. Would you trust them to decide who your team hires?
Your posts do indicate that maybe there is a larger segment of folks who don't read resumes than I realize...My amount of rigor may only come after being involved in some catastrophically bad hiring decisions. Like someone I made the deciding vote to hire was stalking multiple employees, was a heavy drug user, did zero work of value and ultimately crashed and burned by getting arrested for coming at someone with a knife. For years HR wouldn't let us fire that person because of their protected class and multiple false claims they made against a large number of employees.
If it’s truly only HR and then direct to full interview panel then I agree with you, but I’ve never worked somewhere where a technical person wasn’t involved in screening. Yes recruiters will winnow the inbound, but usually there a technical phone screen, hiring manager screen, or both.
And yet still that screening almost always has less technical depth than further interviews. It should not carry the most weight in the process, but because of practices like this it does.
Sorry, can't agree with this. The hiring manager's decision carries the most weight yes, but saying it's biased towards the screen is over-generalizing. I'm sure sometimes it is, but as someone who interviewed thousands and hired hundreds over a quarter century career at many organizations large and small, I can tell you unequivocally that technical feedback can and does regularly override my screening signal.
People get hired all the time based on their online content. Or, at the very least, they get interviews when they wouldn't otherwise. Don't forget about the luck surface area!
As a hiring manager, I've read blogs. Heck when reviewing a stack of resumes, "has a technical blog" almost certainly moves a candidate to a consider pile and they are probably getting a callback in the very least.
On one hand I agree with you, but on the other... I don't really want to live in a world where being oneself (a perfectly fine, good self) is a liability.
I know I have privilege in being able to say this, but I'd rather get rejected by potential employers who don't get me, than have to pretend to be someone I'm not.
The phrase “too online” has a connotation that situates it in the 2020s or at worst the late 2010s to an extent that I don’t think really fits a degree of “online” you could have been literally before the invention of the Web.
I believe part of the post is referring to that idea (self disclosure and weirdness) itself, and the idea that the author usually does try to limit it. Even without this specific post, the "weirdness" can come across in an in-person interview and other ways. Some people are normal, some can pretend to be, and others either can't manage to pretend or its too difficult/painful to do for long periods of time.
Its not always bad to expose it and not always bad to get rejected because of it. Personality mismatch can make any job miserable.
Regardless, it feels bad to get rejected and that, I think, is what the article is making a point about.
It's a personal blog. I didn't read this as an employer. Someone greener may read this and think "this guy is really hard on himself but, unlike me, he's done so much more! Maybe we'll always feel this way so I should just be kinder to myself."
The modern internet is stuffed to the gills with branding and bravado. Some vulnerability is fine.
I have to think Anthropic is in high enough demand and looking for high enough skilled staff that any negative social implications from a blog post like this, as tame as it is, would be outweighed, for any actually suitable candidate.
Most CS people I know aren’t weird and are actually pretty corporate and conformist. But at the same time, the people I know who do open source are some of the weirdest people I know haha
The ratio changed after software engineering became a way to make a lot of money. It used to be there were a handful of well paying gigs and a bunch of "pretty good" jobs, but SE wasn't a huge outlier.
Once people flooded the field to make money, things changed. Used to be if I met another software engineer they'd 100% geek out over technology, CPU architectures, programming languages, etc. It wasn't ever just a job.
Or to put it another way, Microsoft used to be filled with people rocking back and forth in their chairs avoiding eye contact discussing cool tech things. When I went on my interview loop at MSFT I discussed the mornings Slashdot headlines with every person who interviewed me.
I'll take an eclectic bunch of weirdos who all do and like cool shit over the corpo conformist normies any day. Super easy to suss out who is who when you first meet them. Just ask what they like to do when they aren't laboring under the thumb of capitalism. The cool people will talk your ear off about some esoteric whatever.
SV/NY is pretty concentrated with "non-weird" SWEs these days unless you count "money-oriented" as weird. "CS degree from a top program followed by FAANG or NYC Fintech" was a common default path for reasonably-smart/reasonably-socially-skilled/highly-career-motivated high school students to aim at for a while.
I recently did a round of interviews at various AI companies, including model labs, coding assistants, and data vendors. My first takeaway is that, wow! the interviews are very hard, and the bar is high. Second, these companies are all selecting for the top 0.1% of some metric - but they use different metrics. For example, the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in a short period of time. I did not do well. By contrast, another company asked me to spend a day working on a particular niche optimization problem; that was the entire interview loop. I happened to stumble on some neat idea, and therefore did well, but I don't think I could reliably repeat that performance.
To reiterate - wow! the interviews are hard, every company is selecting for the top of a different metric, and there's really no shame in not passing one of these loops. Also, none of these companies will actually give you your purpose in life, your dream job will not make you whole:-)
My career long experience with these types of interviews is you get hired by the company that, when they interview you, you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason. The content of the actual work I’ve done at these companies and how the work is done, is completely different to these interviews and I’d have done equally well at all the places that didn’t hire me because they happened to ask the wrong questions.
I know, because I’ve been rejected and accepted to the same company before based on different interview questions, and did just fine in the role once I was in there.
In short, if you have decent skills the tech interviewers are mostly total random luck IMO, so just do a bunch of em and you’ll get lucky somewhere. It won’t make any rational sense at all later where you end up, but who cares.
>you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason
My experience exactly! I've been lucky in most of my interviews that I was asked about things I just happened to brush up on or had thought about deeply in some past project, so I was offered the job.
And like you say, the job rarely demanded any of the things I was asked about... which worked against me once, where I sailed through the interview process but struggled for the first year to get up to speed in my actual day-to-day job, although I did manage to get my act together before it became a big problem.
Yup! To be honest, it should be obvious via someone’s resume and references whether they’ll be capable of adapting to the job without making them jump through random hoops. People treat hiring devs like they’re hiring a contractor to paint their bathroom, instead of hiring them like white collar professionals who will grow with a position.
Arrrgh I remember an interview where I got this lucky... and I ended up failing it miserably. It was a python-heavy position, and I had been watching some Peter Norvig videos in the weeks beforehand to prepare. They asked me to implement some basic functionality of a poker game, which was EXACTLY what one of the videos was about. I was trying so hard not to copy his approach, and my own 'natural' approach would have been fairly similar (but not nearly as elegant), so by trying to avoid both of those approaches I made a complete mess, haha
And unfortunately, from the point of view of the company, this is a feature not a bug:
* to the company the cost of a false positive (bad hire) is very very much higher than the cost of a false negative (passing on a good candidate).
* AI companies have a large pool of strong candidates to interview
* Therefore they are incentivized to make their interview process hard enough that a poor candidate almost never passes it
* but then it becomes something a strong candidate can only pass with a bit of good luck
This is not “fair”, but it’s a marketplace. The best approach is the one you propose: accept it and don’t take it personally if you miss, roll the dice again.
Why is it that most other jobs especially low skill take the opposite approach? You screw up or demonstrate your incompetence on your first day on a construction job site you are let go right then.
I think it's trickier to gauge in knowledge work because there's a ramp-up period, even for top performers. Just understanding the institutional context that led to the current ecosystem - essentially understanding every Chesterton's Fence you encounter - takes a substantial amount of time.
Typically there's a lot of onboarding, and even a good candidate might not get a lot done in the first month or three... By the time you realize the new hire isn't a good fit, you've spent a ton of time on training.
Otoh, if you hire me to frame a house, it'll be objectively clear you need to get rid of me in the first hour, if not the first ten minutes. I don't know how I'd get past a screening for that either, but still.
They don’t have the money to hire lawyers to pursue discrimination suits, and the potential SME employers frequently don’t have the balance sheet to be collectible.
It’s a different ballgame when you can gamble $20k to make $1M.
No it isn't, their strategy is great at increasing the rate at which they select those deadly "bad hires". There's just an insane amount of risk in doing these sorts of tech interview things; code up a quick monte carlo simulation to convince yourself if you like. It's just that the risk doesn't fall on the improperly aligned humans conducting the interview, it's offloaded onto the company.
I mean, they could just as easily hire a bad candidate that happened to cram that specific interview knowledge the day before but is otherwise a bad developer.
Personally I don’t agree with the crazy tech interviews at all, no other job on the planet does it like this, even high skill jobs like doctors or professors. They hire based on your experience, your references, and a good chat to make sure you’d be a culture fit. If there’s a serious problem with a doctor once they start the job, they’d be let go, but they’re professionals so this isn’t a super common occurrence.
The exact same process could be taken with developers IMO. If I have a seasoned career, you should hire me based on that, not because I jumped through hoops you set up.
In fact, they tend to do the exact opposite, unfortunately!
Like the great Mike Tyson once said, "God punishes you by giving you everything you want... to see if you can handle it".
For many, achieving your dreams usually comes with the hard lesson that you had the wrong dreams and that the real dreams you should have had were many of the things you already gave away to get there.
Then again, infinite AI-developer money isn't the worst outcome, either. Something something land among the clouds.
Honestly, AI is far too creative to pick a job that cares about the wrong thing and you are dumped into a feature mill. It’d be the worst time to be at these large companies because the smaller more creative startups are what’s going to be really an adventure in this space, versus the same old run of the mill career treadmill SWE have been given after SWE ballooned in the 2010s.
You have much cooler opportunity in these new companies and product spaces versus the large ships. It really is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
> the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in a short period of time.
I had a bunch of these my last round of interviews, and am not convinced most companies even know what they want from these or how to assess. In the majority of cases it was clear to me the interviewers never even read the code I had submitted.
As an example, one company wanted a full AI Question/Answer system for large code projects using RAG to work on an arbitrarily large code base with an eval suite to go with it and also an API endpoint that could be called to automate asking of questions. You only had 24 hours to complete the assignment from receipt.
It was clear even before this that the company was likely not a good match, but I wanted to implement it for fun anyway. I'd already built all of this in production at a previous job (though it took weeks, which still felt pretty fast) so I knew how to approach it. Got it all done in time, met all acceptance criteria, had it so the entire thing could be run with one line of code (including building the RAG system, running evaluations, starting the webserver for the running API endpoint)... and rejected with no feedback a week later.
The trouble with asking people to write massive amounts of code in short periods of time is that you actually have to review it. I also have to say, despite the competitiveness, I was pretty unimpressed with the technical skills of the people on these teams (mostly smaller AI startups for me). It takes a pretty skilled engineer to assess the quality of a code base in such a short period of time and these teams did not seem like that had a lot of extra time on their hands.
Did you get offended when they rejected your day of work without even commenting? I guess they could've at least flattered you a bit saying it was impressive, but they had to go with another candidate for reasons.
I know I'd be pissed if the work did go uncommented.
> Got it all done in time, met all acceptance criteria, had it so the entire thing could be run with one line of code (including building the RAG system, running evaluations, starting the webserver for the running API endpoint)... and rejected with no feedback a week later.
> Also, none of these companies will actually give you your purpose in life, your dream job will not make you whole:-)
Some people really do find a whole lot of personal meaning from their work. And that's okay. It's their life.
If someone is the sort of person who might find meaning working for Anthropic, they would find that meaning at a lot of other jobs as well. I think that's a better emssage; not that "you shall not find purpose in your work", but "the purpose you may find from work is not limited to a single or even small number of AI companies".
That is fair. I suppose what I meant is, the idea of working at one of these companies can be really exciting, almost a fantasy, but in practice: it might actually hurt you in many ways. 'Look what they make you give', as a certain character once said. With that said, obviously I think it's cool and worth doing, but there are significant and painful downsides, too.
If the past 25 years of tech companies is any indication of the future of these new AI endeavors, working there will be directly contributing to the enslavement of mankind in ways we can't even begin to imagine yet.
The greenfield projects arising from this leap look benign now, but I can almost guarantee that won't be the case in the next decade once these technologies optimize their revenue generation engines and enshittification takes hold. Humanity will be at the whim of the AI compute overlords much more so than we are now, and that's an inevitable nightmare dystopia that I'm not looking forward to. The gilded age will look like child's play by the time we figure this out as a society.
I suppose that if your ambition is to be on the winning end of that hellscape, then by all means, go for it.
I get it, we all want to be somebody, but is the juice worth the squeeze?
They may find a candidate that succeeds, they may not. In the end, it’s up to you to decide whether that kind of environment is for you. I also interviewed at a few AI startups and while difficult, I wasn’t impressed with them. They seem to be too high maintenance with little to no experience.
This is key: the OP seems to be putting them on a pedestal, but if Sturgeon's law holds (and I think it does) then a sizable percentage of what's happening there doesn't smell very good.
I totally agree. My work is a major part of my life. I do my job well and that's important to me.
But I don't care about any particular company. I'm just as happy automating refineries as I am factories or chemical plants. I just want to be a valuable member of a team that gets stuff done.
> To reiterate - wow! the interviews are hard, every company is selecting for the top of a different metric, and there's really no shame in not passing one of these loops. Also, none of these companies will actually give you your purpose in life, your dream job will not make you whole:-)
I wholeheartedly agree.
That said, if you pursue jobs that are at least somewhat aligned with your personal convictions and desire for impact on the world and not strictly based on money, prestige, and power, you might be able to able to derive some greater sense of wholeness through the work. Not "make you whole", but "contribute to your wholeness".
If you only chase money, prestige and power - which if we're honest is central to a lot of the tech industry today - you probably won't experience any wholeness contribution from your work. That's fine, of course. Hopefully in that case you can find it through family, friendships, or community.
There's people whose entire job is to list houses at 50% over the market pricing. And there's people whose entire job it is to offer 50% market price for houses. They only need to be successful once every couple of month. They flood the market with buying and selling signals, that's just the way the market works. I wouldn't be discouraged if my fair market offer were rejected by most bidders in a market, statistically they are professional over/under bidders, that's fine.
They are all roundabout ways of getting to IQ. It used to be Leetcode but since that has become a known quantity and quite gamified, the interviews have evolved. Most of all, I have seen that there is crazy focus on speed and volume. Do a lot, read a lot of code, in little time. They've also adapted for AI coding tools. So the interviews have a debugging component, or take homes are open web, open tools, but again really compressed timelines.
The last bit - don’t tell people. Statistically most won’t reach their end goals, the few that do have reasonable chances of mental breakdowns and or other mental anguishes since - as the philosphers nailed a long time ago - the journey is actually what matters, the destination isn’t.
(Got where I wanted, the fact that I didn’t want enough and could re-set goals helped but still not great to reach the self imposed dream goal.)
Oh, what I meant was, this was an interview with a company that produces a coding assistant. Ironically, you really weren't supposed to use an LLM much for the interview, although I think you could use the company's product if you wanted. The restrictions were a bit unclear to me and I chose to try to code everything by hand, but in retrospect, that was probably not feasible.
The assignment was hard for me for a few reasons: There were many requirements; the requirements as stated were quite unclear to me; and it turned out that they were really referencing a certain standard solution to a standard problem that I was unfamiliar with. So we spent half the interview explaining the idea to me (bad!), and then the other half was me trying to code it up, and I just didn't get nearly far enough.
I think a spiritually similar assignment would be: implement multiplayer Google Docs using a CRDT, server, and clients, supporting a certain class of documents that are shown to you during the interview.
And imagine that the CRDTs are not directly explained in the problem statement, but some supporting data structure of CRDTs is referenced, and like clearly there is some way to make all the pieces referenced work together to create a working system, but it's never made explicit.
And imagine that you need to actually implement CRDTs from scratch in the interview, but also integrate them into this client-server document-editing app, which you also need to code from scratch. All in an hour.
This is why I say the interview felt kind of insane to me. But plausibly if I'd previously studied that problem, so that the implementation details were all clear to me from the start, and if I had used the company's coding assistant to the extent allowed, and if I had been in much better coding-things-from-scratch form, I could have done OK. I don't know. It's fine. They were probably looking for a type of engineer that I'm not. :')
Nope, it was a live coding interview, less than an hour. I personally did a double-take at the beginning of the interview. However, the long tail of people who can code up algorithms and apps quickly is very long indeed. There are certainly people I've worked with who are just multiples faster than me in this kind of situation, and I could imagine them passing the interview.
the internet is not your friend, but a kind of alien intelligence - vast, cool, and unsympathetic, in HG Wells' formulation. Publicly melting down (even anonymously) is not going to help you; if anything, you'll just end up feeling more isolated.
You need to work out your self-image issues with a person instead of projecting them onto your environment. That person might be a friend of therapist, or several people helping you with different things, and finding the right person(s) is likely to involve several false starts and blind alleys. You should pursue this work in person. Parasocial relationships are a necessity in this day and age, but over-reliance on them is ver bad for your mental health.
This makes me sad. Please don't speak to people like this. The small pieces of humanity that people sincerely share are about the only thing that it is worth living for. What a dark world we would live in when our public sphere is filled with insincerity. I can't infer anything about you from a single comment but it must be incredibly isolating and lonely to talk to you when you are in this mindset. I can see your good intentions but you have communicated a sadness and defensiveness that presents cynicism as truth.
I feel you've misread me as objecting to the author's sincerity - I don't think there's anything wrong with that! What I meant was that the internet, where all communication is necessarily quasi-personal and heavily mediated, is really not the best place to reach toward for mental health help, and that it's tremendously important to maintain or pursue genuine interpersonal contact, unmediated by screens or abstractions.
I agree. We all have thoughts and feelings and emotions; denying that, making that invisible, hiding the mere fact of your humanity is surely a difficult and sad way to exist. It is OK to feel things; it is OK to write about your feelings; it is OK to publish those writings wherever you like.
They spoke with respect and pointed out that, from the point of career growth, they may need to talk to someone.
They pointed out that there might be more effective ways of dealing with what the blog post author is going through.
This comment didn't make me sad at all, if anything I appreciated it.
I see the opposite: OP's post sounds like a cry for help, and paints a picture of someone that is not in a good place mentally.
anigbrowl might have been too direct and harsh (I would say the first paragraph of his comment could be worded differently), but he was very clear in the second paragraph about where to go from here.
If this is truly how OP thinks and this post is how they feel about everything that happened, I strongly recommend for OP to look for professional help (with emphasis on "professional").
I normally don't publish sappy essays like this, but I wanted to try sharing a common experience of rejection with a loud call for optimism and self-growth. I'm still learning how to be an authentic/vulnerable person, and I may have missed the mark
I like myself now. I really do. But sometimes that old self-doubt comes roaring back and I have to beat it down with a stick. You're totally right -- internet strangers cannot beat those feelings down for me.
By the time I published this, I was already back in a great headspace and moving on to the next thing :)
My hope is that somebody reads the essay and grows 1% more motivated to grab a stick and beat down their own self-doubts. I'll be sure to put that front-and-center in future essays
In my opinion this type of blogging - writing about genuine personal experience, ideals, feelings - is a positive.
At the end of the day the grandfather comment is more or less correct, the internet is a cold unfeeling whatever. But the act of writing from the heart is deeply, genuinely human and in this day and age I feel that the more human things I do, the better. And perhaps by being more obviously human will inspiring others to be more obviously human, and eventually making the internet (and perhaps the world) less of a cold and unfeeling whatever.
This is the best advice. There was a moment in time where being vulnerable on the net was okayish. I don’t think it is anymore. Its best to work on personal issues with your professional therapist and/or with your trusted group of friends.
This is the advice that I hope the author takes heed of the most.
I'll add that what qualifies as “weird” or “quirky” on the web is probably a world’s different than what did in the past. And the weird and quirky things that people are willing to indulge or entertain in certain online communities does not represent what the rest of the world is aware of or even finds appreciable.
You be you. You will find your people and your place.
It may just be that Anthropic isn't it.
I had a company that was like a white elephant for me for a long time. Got in there, and I will say: It was one of the worst experiences I had in my career.
Not all that glitters is gold, and happiness is often only discovered when it is gone. If you can avoid those two pitfalls in life. You'll do well better than me.
It shouldn’t surprise you that people like the work or products specific companies work on and have a dream to work on those too. The actual experience of working there though is hard to know in advance.
Hear hear. I joined a company which made a prosumer product I truly loved using. However, shortly after jointing i realized the company was nothing that I hoped for (Ancient tech, toxic culture, micro-management. All red-flags you can imagine). Fortunately a small startup made a blipp on my radar and after interviewing with them, as I apparently made a good impression, I got an offer so I immediately switched. I didn't realize it at the time but this happened to be a major inflection point in my career (technologically, socially and economically) for which I will be ever thankful. Not exactly OP's experience but my takeaway is that sometimes, even if you think you want to work at a place, it might not be the best option for you. There are so many more opportunities out there.
Overall, I enjoyed the essay and agree with the messaging. However, there were a few sentences that threw me off. I personally struggle with self-esteem issues, and I found these words extremely triggering, despite being sandwiched between words of self-affirmation.
> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
> I don't mind feeling ugly or low-status or whatever -- I know my place.
> I don't need (or deserve) your sympathy.
It's difficult to tell if this is just rhetoric / sarcasm, or if the writer successfully processed through these initial feelings. Either way, I take these moments seriously because it's not healthy to let these feelings grow.
If you feel like you're struggling, I encourage you to talk to someone -- preferably a therapist, but anyone supportive works like a friend or family.
If you're adamant about not talking to someone, consider reading The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown.
So what would the therapist convince him of? That his work was brilliant irrespective of the outcome? That's just gaslighting. (Not to say that the interview evaluation was fair)
You would hope that it would help him come to an acceptance of himself in such a way that he was less likely to engage in this kind of negative self talk.
The reasons why companies hire or don't hire someone usually have very little with the candidate themselves. From my experience, whenever this machine needs another cog, almost any will do - usually the first one within reach. And when it doesn't, not even the shiniest one will be of interest. So it's probably nothing personal OP
Nah. Every company has its lore about what makes a good candidate and they try to test for that. The lore is often rubbish (as in: there's often little correlation between interview performance and on-job performance), but there is still a process and that process rejects most applicants.
Or maybe it has everything to do with the candidate. They author recognizes they have spent much of their life being an unlikable jerk. Past actions can come back to bite you.
I tend to agree, which makes it all the more amusing that companies brag about being so selective. It seems like largely artificial and random selectivity.
Putting so much self worth into a single job application strikes me as unhealthy. Hiring decisions are have absurdly high variance. Everyone I know has been rejected from a job that seemed like a perfect, usually many times over. I'd say that's far more common than actually getting a given job.
Steve Yegge has a great story about Google HR doing an exercise with the eng hiring committee where they reviewed their own anonymized interview packets and they decided not to hire 40% of themselves.
I recently interviewed for Anthropic, 6 rounds, recruiter was great, said they were putting together an offer letter. I met one of the managers, then another came back from vacation... and then they decided not to give me an offer.
I asked for feedback, and the recruiter sounded frustrated (about the internal process), because they had a moving bar on what was wanted from the hiring managers. I know I hadn't completely aced one of the interviews (they had me do a second one), and apparently they thought it was good enough on initial review, but when coming back to review it again it was not good enough.
It seems like they are going through growing pains as a company.
I had an interview at a big tech company last year where I had a verbal offer letter which then got rescinded when a VP went over my interview feedback and decided I didn't come across as enough of a team player!
That feedback occurred immediately after another interview where I failed because I didn't show enough individual drive, I had talked too much about working in my team.
Probably not even about whether it was good enough at all, just random managers making random decisions by how they were feeling the day they interviewed you. Any time a company has a LOT of applicants, like any big tech company does, the less you should take any info at all from a given rejection or even an offer. It’s kinda random.
You’ll typically get better info only when a company is small and has a role in low demand and they only had a couple of people apply. This situation is pretty rare.
I posted about this in another thread of this comment section; submit a data privacy request for all and any data pertaining to the hiring process and interview, it won't negatively impact your chances in the future.
> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
This is not how to understand this. They may have been hiring for say 50 positions.
They will just fill up those 50 positions with the people who reach a threshold, not stack-rank _everyone_ who reaches the threshold and pick the top 50.
There's little ROI in doing that, and potentially it reduces their list of candidates by taking longer.
You might have been mid way through the test just as person 50 was offered their role.
Here's why it's wrong to think you did something wrong when you get rejected from a job:
Sometimes, a company has multiple candidates that pass the interview with flying colors for a single role. They need to pick someone, and reject the remaining great candidates. If luck or timing was different and you were the only great candidate, they would have just picked you. But now they have a few, and have a hard time deciding who is "better". Often, they kind of punt on hunches, gut feelings, or things that don't really say anything about you at all.
You end up with the "Unfortunately..." email anyway.
If you do happen to get some feedback, well that's actionable. It's something you can improve and the next time at bat you'll be in a better position to do well.
As someone that recently failed a tech interview at the last stage after a long search, the only way to move forward is to just keep moving. Given your motivation and passion, there's definitely another place for you.
Also important to note, just because you like the product doesn't mean you'll love the team, anthropic is a well paying job but it's also just a job.
Somewhat OT but I just don’t like the current iteration of DevRel.
Initially I saw the folks in this field as hype-persons, but their concrete output was tools that were useful for developers. The author did create this! But it was in service of landing a role at the company.
The people that work in this field now seem to mostly just get into beefs on the internet, create funny posts on Linkedin. Which… doesn’t seem very useful for developers.
Maybe they aren't, they could just be hosting these interviews as a fresh source of data for Claude to slurp up! ... sorry, I shouldn't be stirring up conspiracy theories this late on a Friday.
> I can't turn my weird off, so I think I defensively dial it up sometimes
Hits close to home! For what it's worth, it sounds like you have an admirable level of self-reflection and - despite being painful at times - I expect that this will pay for itself over the course of your life.
I wish I had the courage to post and talk like this more. I really resonated with the authors words as these kinds of feelings make up a lot of my internal monologuing some days.
If you are this emotionally invested in a job without having done it for some time, this is an accidental or insightful act of compassion from an amorphous over-funded company.
I do my very best when interviewing to ignore honest mistakes and look at the person. My criteria is more around, is this person demonstrating the ability to learn and grow? If so, everything else can be taught or developed.
> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
This is a really bad way of thinking. Apart from the fact that he doesn’t know the reason behind the decision (and this already heroically assumes that there was any reasoning to begin with), why would you make yourself so dependent on total strangers?
Yeah, I recently had an offer letter in hand, the company flew me out to do a final security review since it was a sensitive cyber sec role, did a 2-hour long polygraph test which went quite well honestly, but then 3 weeks later they told me they have decided to move ahead with another candidate? Made no sense and broke me down for weeks. Totally defeated. I still don't understand how they could move ahead with another candidate if they had already given me an official offer letter, but eh life goes on I suppose.
That would be a rare case where I would reach back for more information. Rescinding an offer is, in my book, a huge black mark against the company and I would consider shaming them in a blog post as well.
Was this your first polygraph? I never had one, but I heard that passing the first one for a high level ticket virtually always takes several tries.
Yeah it was my first polygraph so I was sweating buckets! The polygraph was relatively simple though, they tell you all the questions they will be asking beforehand, so nothing unexpected is thrown at you.
I think I passed the poly cause if I didn't then they would tell me that instead of saying they selected another candidate and honestly I was so depressed and defeated that I just didn't bother communicating with them after that, 3 weeks of constant waiting and reaching out for updates and then finally getting an 'Unfortunately' email kind of did it for me.
Are you willing to name the company? Shame them here. This sounds wrong.
I do not know what the details of the situation were, for example was the offer contingent on additional background checks that you failed or on something else, but if it was related to a US security clearance I would seriously consider filing a request for information -- they are required to tell you their findings.
It would probably be an interesting reading (unless one has a very thin skin) and I would do it just for fun, regardless of the pulled offer. My 2c.
I know there are comments here ridiculing the OP about posting this. Some asking OP to be stronger. All I want to say is posting something like this takes way more strength than what those commenters will ever allow themselves to experience. Expressing is a way of healing and no the internet is not a cold dry space. It is a place of feeling humans who could all use encouragement to show vulnerability like this. I don’t know if OP got some healing from this but a lot of similarly lost readers felt a little less alone.
I would expect most of us here have faced many rejections, some of which were deeply painful. When you care about something, some say, losing it hurts. (But was there ever a guarantee? Or was it only an expectation?)
Some people find ways to focus on the process itself and don't couple their well-being to the "end result" (whether success or failure).* This is a practice. You can learn it from others and from experience.
It is one thing to be honest with oneself and say "Yes, this thought is coming into my mind". You don't have to deny that feeling. That is one thought in your head. Acknowledge it and move on. You don't have to repeat it. You don't have to try to 'analyze' it. You can think about something else, and changing your brain patterns is probably a good idea. If the same idea pops up again, fine. Remember to be patient with yourself.
Some ideas that might work for you include: Find emotional support where you can. / Learn cognitive techniques to remind yourself to not fall into ruts. / Put sticky notes on walls. / Do something totally different. / Sunshine and fresh air can do a lot of good.
If one of these things doesn't seem to help, thank yourself for trying it, don't worry, try something else. If you need more support (mental health for example), seek it out.
* And how do you define the end-result? How much you helped people you care about? Maybe a time-averaged well-being metric? Something else? This is deeply personal, and I think it is worth reflecting on.
This whole essay is cringe. They're not your girlfriend. They're not "guiding humanity toward post-scarity AI abundance" whatever the hell that means.
Getting rejected from a job always stings, but it's worse if you build it up to be more than it is. There's a dozen other AI companies out there shoveling the same shit, go apply to them. It's a job, not a vocation. Try to keep it all in perspective.
> On top of their secret take-home assignment, I independently published diggit.dev and a companion blogpost about my [sincerely] positive experiences with Claude. I was hoping that some unsolicited "extra credit" would make me look like an exceptional/ambitious candidate.
As an employer, such brown-nosing would put me off. Being exceptionally eager to please can be a red flag.
If you have conscious insight into what behaviour is or isn't "weird" in a specific situation or environment, you absolutely can choose to turn it off, or at least damp it down. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't, and there's no judgement. But if you can identify it, you can choose.
Author here! I should say that I can't turn my weird off quickly and consistently :) The feedback loops in social situations are slow. I've been working really hard on my listening/people skills, but these things take time, and I'm probably just being too impatient
Fair answer - I shouldn't automatically apply my own situation/lessons to others. :)
I do wonder to what extent one could view it as a pattern recognition challenge, though. To an extent, what you wrote resonates with me: growing up, I was probably relatively "weird" compared to the norm of my peer-group, and yes, often either immediate feedback, or recognition of feedback sufficiently quickly, wasn't present.
But it was possible to learn, via reflection after the event. And after n awkward or painful reflections, I was able to analyse which aspects of my behaviour were judged negatively, and over time, those reflections embedded and I was able to slowly change my behaviour. And I never saw this as an 'act' or a 'mask' - I always saw it as a continual process of self-improvement, where the goal was to be better (according to the standards or expectations of the particular slice of the world I was part of at that time) - more sociable, funnier, a more engaging conversationalist, a better kinder friend or partner, whatever.
The (surprising?) positive flip-side to this approach is that as long as you have the right goals (and maybe role models) you can actually end up far more functional and able in many domains than your peers.
--
(I've often said privately that I see life as a continual process of self-improvement, and this absolutely wasn't something I got from parents, teachers, peers or books: it was these formative learning experiences that formed that private philosophy.)
Because sometimes having been "weird" is only recognized in hindsight. Attempting to project a persona, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_masking, is already difficult at the best of times. It's especially difficult under stress, like being in an interview.
I was selected to represent my high school as a candidate for computer science at a state-level competition. The teacher in charge of selection made it clear that he very much didn't want to pick me -- there just weren't any better options. He explained that my portfolio was all based on user skills. Nothing showed a deeper understanding of the underlying principles of computing. I didn't incorporate any of this feedback and was thoroughly humbled later on. It was a well-deserved loss.
Twenty plus years later and I've still never had more useful interview-related feedback and I'm still grateful he was willing to share that criticism. Now, having been on the flip side of the process quite a bit, I especially appreciate how hard it is to provide meaningful "negative" feedback.
I totally get the author’s frustration. I think such motivation and talent is a sign that there would be plenty of other groups happy to have the applicant. The trick to is connect with them, and not get so hung up on Anthropic specifically. Easier said than done though.
> The first time I flunked an Anthropic interview (ca. 2022), I accidentally clicked a wrong button during their automated coding challenge. It was easy to swallow that failure. I made an honest mistake; I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.
> This is different. I didn't misclick any buttons. My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
That’s a physically difficult passage for me to read, what an awful way to talk about yourself.
Too much emphasis on this position and this company.
> I posted diggit.dev to HackerNews and it hit the frontpage!
Again, too much emphasis on HackerNews and the position of a post
What do you want from them? Are you confused or distracted by all this?
This isn't a big deal, just a small thing. Be stronger.
Focus on what will bring long-term peace and benefit. Experience every process and enjoy everything, rather than frustration, self-blame, pain, or other negative emotions. It's always better to find solutions and enjoy the present moment.
I don't want to teach or instruct anyone, just a little of my thoughts. If you feel offended, sorry for that.
The post reads to me like all those movies about the nerd with a heart of gold that the hot girl will recognize and eventually marry.... which only happens in those movies.
Do people really not understand that companies don't care one whit about your personality? They only care about whether you can make them more money. And that extends to interviewers; the number one thing interviewers care about is can you meaningfully contribute to the existing roadmap, not whether you can bring your own unique perspective. This is especially true at mega huge corporate places like anthropic.
> Do people really not understand that companies don't care one whit about your personality?
When I worked at the original incarnation of HBO Max our #1 hiring criteria was "not an asshole".
When I joined MSFT out of college, they were big on hiring for future potential.
In any large company you're going to be reorged to a brand new project within a couple years of joining, so being flexible and capable of learning quickly is of paramount importance.
To you and anyone else who's struggled with the roller coaster of rejection and not feeling good enough I highly recommend stopping what you're doing right now and watching Jonah Hill's incredible movie, "Stutz" https://www.netflix.com/title/81387962 . As someone who recently went through a barrage of rejections and self doubt this movie blew me away and offers practical "tools" that may help.
My gut reaction is something like: "don't wait around to be picked, get out there and do great stuff"
Want to help the world get the most out of claude? Go out there and do it at an ability and velocity beyond what others think is possible. Go so hard friends think you're mad. That devs consuming your stuff think you're mad.
Create so much amazingly useful/helpful content and help so many people in so many ways that looking back in 1-2 years at the idea of working for anthropic would seem insane to you.
You’re incredibly talented, Taylor. Their loss, sincerely. If they didn’t hire you, know that it wasn’t the right fit and you shouldn’t be there. Your talents are needed elsewhere.
The disappointment of not getting a job offer seems reasonable. The disappointment about things that are core to who you are seems overboard to me. I feel the author could learn to be more comfortable in their own skin.
Also re this:
> “He’s cute, but he’s too weird”
If someone’s thinking this about you, you’re just not a good fit for each other. It isn’t that you’ve failed somehow. Maybe they’re cute but too “normal”.
I also got rejected by Anthropic, and now I’m working at an amazing startup instead. Anthropic’s hiring process is dumb, you shouldn’t take it personally.
Hey, I feel you on rejection - it stings. Just remember that, like any company, that place is just a collection of humans making imperfect decisions with limited information. Trust me. Your worth isn't defined by one hiring decision.
Not sure how I feel about “front-paging hackernews” as part of a devrel take home test. Obviously, I understand how important it is—I want my devrels to write content that drives front page traffic. But as a HN user…
Author here! Just want to be extra crystal clear that Anthropic gave me a boring/standard coding project. I decided to post a parallel project to HN to demonstrate that I was able to quickly create engaging software. They in no way asked or insinuated that I share anything online
That might be your problem right there. Deciding you can't do something is always a self-fulfilling prophecy. How hard have you tried?
I learned to turn my weird off a long time ago. It wasn't easy. It took many years. It was painful at times. But I did it. If I can do it, you probably can too.
P.S. You might want to think about whether or not turning your weird off is something you actually want. Being normal comes with its own set of trade-offs. But if you are going to keep your weird you should do it because it's something you decide you want, not because it's something you decide you are powerless to change.
Faking normalcy can often make you more unattractive than being yourself. I suspect that people can sense when someone isn't being genuine about themselves.
You can definitely fake it. Most people at $BIG_CORP aren't half as jovial and excited as they seem. Whatever, it's fine - we don't need to be perfectly authentic at all times, sometimes you can just go with the flow a little.
Is "God actor" a term reserved for only the best actors? :P
Not true, and why "be yourself" has died as dating advice.
Do not "be yourself" unless being yourself is attractive. Even "be the best version of yourself" doesn't work if you're a brony or some other socially unacceptable group
This kind of shitty blue pill advice is why MAGA, the manosphere, etc are bigger than ever. The rise of fascism is walking on a grave of blue pills.
lol relax. I'm not saying people should never change or that they're all perfect the way they are. I'm saying the opposite: if you want to be an attractive, interesting person, and you're not that person yet, you need to spend the time and energy necessary to actually change rather than faking it. You don't have to drop your existing hobbies (e.g. being a brony is fine) but it's nice to also have a few others you can share with others (e.g. getting into running or music or something as well).
No, the real blue pill is pretending any of your culture war manosphere shit matters or wasting any time thinking about that, because every second you waste on that is a second you could've spent improving yourself.
I like weird people. I think most creative people like weird people. If "weird" means you have idiosyncrasies, then yeah, all of us do. In my experience, once you get to know a person, you realize there is no such thing as "normal".
Now if "weird" in this case actually means "kind of an asshole" then that's a different thing, and yeah, that's definitely worth working on.
"I spent so much of my life being an unlikable jerk" - so yeah, it sounds like that could be (somewhat?) true, or maybe they're just very self-critical.
I like "weird coffee people", and folks that are obsessed with fun hobbies. I'm not so into sociopaths though, so it depends on the kind of weird.
Well, they could also dial down the weird during an interview, and slowly reveal their more personal side as they get to know their co-workers better. This seems so obvious it's barely worth stating, but it seems like there's a false dichotomy in their post (no weird XOR weird).
I mean, everyone is weird when you look really close. But we can be cool with one another. To me it just sounds like they're still quite sensitive to judgement, and looking for explanations as to the rejection. I totally get that, I'm in the same boat. Sometimes you just don't have a good explanation, and you have to solicit valuable feedback elsewhere.
Having been from the other side of the table. You did not flunk anything again.
A job process is not an exam where if you do well you succeed.
Your "performance" plays a small role in whether you are accepted (maybe less than 30%). The rest is:
- The pipeline: that is who are your competitors, is there someone late in the process, is there someone a manager worked with / knows
- Your CV: obviously at the point of the interview, you can't change your history
- The position fit: basically who they're looking for. They might have a profile in mind (let's say someone extrovert to do lots of talks, or someone to devrel to enterprise) where you simply don't fit.
- The biases: And there is looot of these. For instance, some would open your blog and say it's unprofessional because of the UI. Not saying that is the case, it's simply their biases.
So, my advice, you reached hn front page twice in a couple of months. Most people, me included, never did. You clearly have something. Find work with people that see that.
Anthropic from a technology perspective does interesting work, but from a business perspective its long-term viability is unclear. LLM generated slop will unlikely make it through the valley of despair in the Gartner hype cycle.
Rule #3: popularity is not an indication of utility.
Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win.
The fact is all employees that produce intangible assets look like a fiscal liability on paper. If you don't have project history in a given area, than managers quietly add training costs and retention issue forecasts on that hiring decision.
I found the dynamic range anecdote by Steve Jobs (a controversial figure) was rather accurate across many business contexts =3
Rule #6: Perspective is earned, and cannot be given freely.
If I recall, it was mostly gleaned from meetings with startup CEO/CTO after years in operation. Mostly just documents the various cons pulled on technical people... like illegally farming CVs for LLM products, and cheap work Visas. =3
> Perspective is earned, and cannot be given freely.
Perspective is developed rather than earned. Having said that, a numbered list of rules can be given freely. That's, like, one of the points of writing things down or otherwise committing them to long-term storage.
That is often academic institutional marketing rhetoric. What seems reasonable or lucrative to the naive is not necessarily worth the legal encumbrances or investment risks.
Rule #16: "One should listen to the person that signs the Checks, as the bank has already validated who is currently in charge of the account". Everyone has an opinion, but some opinions are more profitable than others...
heh i got rejected from google about 15 years ago. I remember exactly where i was standing (outside on the sidewalk), color and placement of leaves on the grass, even the specific joints and cracks on the sidewalk i was standing on when i got the news. I don't hold a grudge or have any regrets but i remember that moment vividly.
> Over the past decade, I've been striving to spread joy, to do good, to be better. I'm trying so hard.
To give some advice that is loving but entirely unkind: knock it off.
No amount of spreading joy or do gooding is going to make you feel better. It can not, anymore than doing math homework will convince yourself that you are smart.
The problem is not what you want, it's how you want it. Or to put it another way, be the ocean not the wave.
The best sales people don't get crushed by rejection. They are clear eyed about what is in their control, what can be learned, and what must be improved in the future.
Then they do this magical thing called — moving on. It's an incredible skill to cultivate.
You're amongst many of us who have also faced rejection.
what was the position? what are your credentials to fulfill that position? I feel like cover letters, and recommendations are just icing on the cake of core skills and experiences, not the entire cake.
The author writes "I respect [Anthropic's] approach to responsible AI adoption," Anthropic of course being the asswipes who published this turd[0] on university students' use of LLMs. It starts with the absolute gem:
> AI systems are no longer just specialized research tools: they’re everyday academic companions.
The article basically shrugs its shoulders at the problem of LLM-driven cheating and, to the best of my recollection, shows not a shred of honesty or willingness to face any of the real issues. Fuck Anthropic.
I truly do not understand the use of this public self castigation; it does not strike me as healthy, if anything it’s a cry for help, and I’m uncomfortable being exposed to it.
This is so sad. Can’t imagine weighing my self worth on whether I get a job at a company that’s clearly partly to blame for the economic bubble. So what you didn’t get access to a get rich quick scheme opportunity - move on.
I will add to some of the other excellent comments here: my time as a hiring manager at Apple and other Silicon Valley companies convinced me that I can never know the real reason I do not get a gig.
I saw good people rejected for stupid reasons, illegal reasons, and borderline reasons. It’s just a decision that is personal and largely irrational to the people who control the process.
Many people in a position to hire want someone they believe they can control. Do you come off as a doormat? Congratulations, you are more employable.
Many hiring managers want to be with attractive people. Are you attractive?
Lately I’ve been thinking I might have better odds making a straight shot for ASI on my own over practicing and rehearsing the material that needs to be presented almost perfectly in the AI interviews. I’ve worked at FANG in ML / applied research for almost a decade but still can’t even get a screening interview at the top places without asking someone I know for a referral. And I really hate bugging former coworkers for referrals. Normally end up procrastinating on reaching out until the job postings just disappear haha.
> I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.
I mean--maybe their interview process is overly harsh? They could miss out some good candidates that way.
> I don't need (or deserve) your sympathy.
Hey person, don't be so hard on yourself. The world is already hard enough to just live in. Hoping you find an alternate and maybe more enjoyable career path :)
> That's the point at which I would have stopped the process personally.
Why is that? I love take-home assignments. At least, if it's just an initial get-to-know-you interview, and then the assignment. What I utterly despise is the get-to-know-you interview, then a tech interview with the entire dev team, then a take-home, then a meeting with the CTO.
I will never, ever, ever go through with any job that has an interview process like this again. I always ask up-front what their interview process is like.
If a take-home or anything else (automated half-hour online test or whatever) taking more than a couple minutes and not requiring as much time investment from them as you comes before they've winnowed down much of the field—if it's used as any kind of screener—I'd be out. That time's better spent sending more applications (or, IDK, drilling leetcode) if there are more than a very-few candidates still in the running for a given position.
If you want early stage bulk screeners, go for it, I'm sure you need them, but don't take much of my time or the math don't math.
Why would I spend 4 hours (in the best case scenario, otherwise days) on the very first step of the application process, where, regardless of my resume, I have an extremely high chance to be rejected, while the company puts literally no time in?
Well, that's different. If it's a super challenging take-home, with requirements that exceed 1 page, then yeah, I'd agree. Most take-homes that I've received have been super simple, though. And they're usually not the first step, but the final step, in my experience.
I've been at a past company where we (well, mostly I) set up a take-home that would take a mid-level web dev familiar with the material maybe 15-30 minutes to knock out, basically just to test if candidates could produce responsive CSS layouts and knew how to make a proper web form work. It was wild how many we got back that still didn't account for basic (explicitly outlined) use cases like 'works on a phone screen'.
Last year I applied to Anthropic. I did one of those HackerRank assessments and scored 49/50 on my implementation of a K/V store with TTL, get/put/append, and some other operations I can't remember.
Right after that, they said there were no positions available. It was pretty disappointing.
there's only info in a rejection if the company that is rejecting cares about their field ..., meaning so rare almost no professional has ever witnessed anything like it ... ever ...
anyway, ... dude ... if any of the shit you write is true, you are applying at a submissive company while having zero submissive traits except those you fake ...
And here's my dating advice: you want someone you can fight with all the time and chill the next second and then fight again, while knowing you don't want anyone else ... and vice versa ... it's quite likely something along the unwritten but equally sarcastic, cynic, ironic reversed (inversed?) lines of Tim 'The Wannabe-Leprechaun' Munchkins (Minchin) "If I didn't have you" ... good luck
One great piece of advice an informal mentor gave me long ago is that there is no information in a rejection.
That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in the interview or application process.
Having been on the hiring side of the interview table now many more times than on the seeking side, I can say that this is totally true.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is to equate a job interview to a test at school, assuming that there is some objective bar and if you pass it then you must be hired. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better.
I can only think of one instance where we had two great candidates for one role and management found a way to open another role so we could hire both. In a few other cases, we had people whom we liked but didn't choose and we forwarded their resumes to other teams who had open roles we thought would fit, but most of the time it's just, "sorry."
This. I've hired in a number of roles, in several industries, and what they've all had in common is that rejection is never personal.
My first career was in theatre, which a) is (or at least was, back in the day?) much more competitive than tech - par was one callback (ie, second screening) per 100 auditions, and one casting per 10 callbacks; and b) is genuinely, deeply vulnerable - you have to bring your whole self into your work, in a way that you don't in any other field.
It's still never personal, and actors who don't develop thick skins wash out quickly.
I once auditioned three rounds for Romeo, at a company I really liked, and thought I'd killed it. I didn't get the role, and was pretty bummed (particularly since - actors are nothing but petty - I didn't much like the performance by the guy who did). Six months later the casting director button-holed me after seeing another show I was in, and told me I'd been their first choice, and he was sorry they'd not been able to cast me. The trouble was, he said, their only good choice for Juliette was at least a foot shorter than I am, and there was no way that wouldn't have looked awkward.
It's never personal.
Furthermore, that "failed" audition directly led to two later jobs, and I think indirectly to a third. Having a good interview, even in a situation where you don't achieve the immediate goal, can only be good for you - both by developing your own skills, and for creating a reputation for competence within your industry.
Hey, my first "career" was also in theater!
Strong agreement. I can confirm for other readers that the day I realized this --- "Oh, rejection means nothing!" --- was a weird day. It takes a weight off.
And it is true across every other field. There are way more factors external to the "you" of the decision, and they're given more weight than the "you" of the decision. This is one of those cases where you only need to experience the "other side of the table" once for it to click.
Companies that are more humane in their hiring practices (even just actually send a rejection email vs. ghosting) deserve a bit of credit, because caring for the applicant is not a KPI.
Hey! Good to meet a fellow artist. I made it to 40 before I sold out. You?
One thing outsiders don't understand is that, for actors, auditioning IS the job. Getting cast, and working on a show, is a joy (some more than others, of course!), but the rest of your life is nothing, nothing but looking for work.
The were two things that made that "it's all cool" shift happen for me. The first is that once I'd been in the industry long enough I could pretty much guarantee that when I went in for an audition I'd see someone I knew, or at least with whom I had an immediate second-degree connection. Auditions stopped being a grind, or mainly about courting rejection - instead, they became an opportunity to hang out with some cool people for a while. I started looking forward to them!
The second was realizing that choosing and performing my audition pieces was the only time that I was in complete control. No one was telling me what to do or how to do it: I could make my own choices, and take whatever creative risks I wanted.
I think both of those approaches made me a much better auditionee than most. My batting average was a lot higher than most of my peers - even some that I thought were better actors.
I don't know how well those insights generalize. I've never (thank god!) had to do leet-code, but I'd hope that (though maybe only in a second screening?) taking a creative approach - if you can talk about it sensibly, and pivot if it doesn't ultimately work - would impress fellow engineers. I strongly believe that adopting a "what can I learn from this experience, and these people?" mindset is a good way to reduce the pressure you'd otherwise put on yourself.
> I made it to 40 before I sold out.
Do you mean you sold out in the arts or in the sense that you changed careers? If the former, I’d be curious to hear (well, read) the story since that’s not an admission one typically encounters.
I changed careers. Wrote a bit about it here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699388
I never met a professional with a conceptual category of "selling out" within the industry. Scraping together any kind of living in the arts is a massive struggle, so everyone takes "money jobs" when they can get them. During my 10 or 12 years as a working actor I had two consecutive years during which my sole income was from performing, and maybe a couple of other other five or six month periods where I was able to drop restaurant (or whatever other) gigs for a tour. This was in the early-'oughts, and I'd have to look at my social security records to be sure, but my income during those years was somewhere around $30k. I was single, and really, really good at being poor.
By the way, that's like a 98th percentile result for an actor. Most people never come close to making a living, however meagre.
There's an old, old interview (maybe Michael Parkinson? Don't remember) with Joss Ackland - a wonderful mid-twentieth century British character actor, on stage and screen - where the interviewer asks him why the hell he did some crappy science fiction film, and Ackland says something like "that was 1962? Oh, yes. Well, my mother needed a new kitchen." No actor will ever fault him for that!
What does disappoint me is seeing actors with tremendous talent who take nothing but money jobs. I get why they do it - especially for the ones at the top of the commercial heap it'd be awfully hard to say 'no' to an easy gig that comes with a boatload of cash - but I can't help but feel sad that I'll never get to see them working at their best.
Even so, my response when I see a truly bad film is generally a shrug: "a lot of actors [and associated professionals / craft services] got paid." The artists among them will learn from even that experience, and many (many many) among them will invest that income back into doing work that they believe in.
I'm a computer engineer, EMT, and firefighter. I have scooped up brain matter from hot asphalt and run into burning buildings (without even getting paid for it). People ask me how I can do this. I dunno. Training and experience I guess. Doesn't bother me.
But the idea of standing on a stage pretending to be someone else fills me with sheer terror. Even worse would be trying out for that job 100 times and getting rejected every time.
I don't know how actors do it. My hat's off to you.
It's all a matter of perspective. My uncle once brought his kids to see a big show I was in, and afterwards said just what you did. I looked at him, genuinely surprised, and said something like "dude, you're a surgeon. If I screw up at work 2,000 people laugh at me, and forget about it five minutes later; if you screw up at work, someone dies. You really think I should be the one feeling nervous?"
You're right about training and experience, though. I screwed up on stage (in loads of tiny ways, not usually perceptible to anyone but me) every time I ever stepped onto one, and in big ways lots and lots of times as well. But, you know, I always knew that I (with my castmates' help) would get out of it. Failure is inevitable, and it doesn't matter. In fact, if you haven't failed somehow, in at least some small way, then you either don't know what you're doing, or you aren't trying hard enough to succeed.
Also, when I was training young actors I always told them that they will never experience such unconditional love as when they first step in front of an audience. Those people have given at least their time and maybe their money to see you - don't you think they want you to succeed? They're rooting for you, none more so.
To bring this back to the larger subject of the thread, I think all of that's also true of every job interview any of us will ever attend, or conference paper we'll ever deliver. It'll never be perfect, and that's just fine.
I once got an emergency call to a theatre where a fight scene mishap left an actress punched out cold. There's less opportunity for harm in entertainment relative to medicine but it does happen sometimes.
You're right, and oh my god: don't get me started on the abysmal safety record of theatres, particularly towards the non-union end of the scale. I never got a fight director credential, but I was competent, and served as fight captain on any number of shows. 1.) Unarmed fights are the most dangerous type of scene, but also the most likely to be treated cavalierly by people who don't know any better. 2.) There are safe ways to do (just about) everything. A company that can't afford to hire a qualified fight director shouldn't stage fight scenes. Period. End of story.
I've literally walked out of shows (as an audience member) where it's been clear that the actors are doing unsafe things, because I didn't want to see happen what you showed up to. Thanks for being there, and I hope that woman was OK.
She was alert when we got there. We took her in as a precaution/for observation. Don't know what happened after that but the loss of consciousness was brief so she was probably fine.
Hey!! Thanks for sharing this.
Your message and the child comment really has given me a perspective that I didn't have before.
Something Very practically stoic about it.
It's never personal
You never screened candidates who couldn’t act their way out of a wet paper bag?
Of course I have. I'm thinking of a couple of them right now, and I admire the hell out of them: it took courage to get up there and do what they did. I wasn't going to cast them in that show, right then, but within the limits of the time available I did my best to help them improve. I hoped they did, and I wished them nothing but the best.
I'm glad you brought that up, because it might be the exception that proves the rule. Those auditions did feel more personal, but it was entirely benign: I was rooting for them to succeed, and really felt for them when it became obvious (especially to them) that they had not.
Maybe it's not like that with other fields, or other companies, or other people - but if not, then that's not somewhere anyone should have to work. There's no incompatibility between high standards and human decency.
A colleague rejected a candidate this week after said candidate posted ten lines of code into a clipboard all at once and then claimed to have written it one line at a time. When challenged, he further claimed my colleague's zoom session lagged which is why he missed it.
Of course. But I've screened far more out because I was in a rush and got 40 resumes in that day and they just didn't pique my interest as much as the next one over.
> there is no information in a rejection
Building on that: There's a few reasons why a company won't explain why they reject a candidate.
One of the reasons is that they don't want candidates to "game" the system, because it makes it hard to screen for the people they want to hire.
Another reason is that often rejections are highly subjective, and telling a candidate that "we didn't hire you because of X" could be highly insulting.
Finally, quite often candidates are rejected because the people hiring ultimately are looking for people they will get along with. It doesn't matter how smart someone is, if something about the working relationship causes friction, the team dynamic can quickly devolve. (And to be quite frank, in these situations the candidate will probably have a better job working elsewhere.) These kinds of rejections are highly subjective, so no one really wants to give a candidate feedback.
These are all likely enough to contribute, but there's one big one.
If you don't say anything at all, the applicant has nothing to go on for a lawsuit against you.
If you say anything, and the applicant is a malicious litigant, you just became a potential paycheck via settlement.
If you're hiring a dozen people a year, you can probably ignore this. If you're hiring hundreds or thousands, and thus many times that number of applicants, you're going to step on that landmine eventually. Better then to have a company-wide policy "no feedback ever"
I hear this about lawsuits a lot, but it doesn't really track for me. If a hiring manager says, "we decided to pass on you because you didn't go in depth as much as we hoped on how you would handle latency," why does that open the company up to a lawsuit anymore than no answer?
I could see if the feedback was "we wanted someone who better fit the culture," but giving a specific answer on a core hiring criteria doesn't seem like it would cause a problem.
In reality, I think the most likely reason is what others have mentioned, that candidates would argue the point.
I've been hiring people for a while and I use my "common sense" to violate conventions because of humanity, but I think you'd be surprised how defensive it becomes.
I always tell people why they didn't pass the interview, or why we didn't select them. Usually in a reasonably detailed way.
A plurality of individuals have tried to argue with me, that I didn't understand them (which, if true, could be a communication issue and thus: still an issue). Some try to litigate the issue (not in a court of law, but to say things like "but you didn't say that on the ad" (knowing how TCP works shouldn't be on an ad), or "I can learn" etc). A minority of those will go out of their way to hound me on social media.
My "HR" person doesn't get any of that because she gives no reason.
I'll continue to do it, because I think it's the right thing to do: but there are people in the world who disincentivise it. And after all; you're rejecting someone for a reason, so there is a higher probability that you will interface with someone who is as described: as they might not be finding work and thus circulating more and you are rejecting them for a reason... which could be related to attitude.
Indeed. The closest I've ever come to "arguing" (quotes very much intended) was when a recruiter called to give me feedback, and followed up by asking if I would like a call back if a more junior role opened up.
I told her that I respected their opinion but that I disagreed that I wasn't ready for the more senior role, and so I wasn't interested, but appreciated their time nonetheless. And I was appreciative. Although I predicted as soon as the interview was over that I wasn't getting an offer and why, having confirmation helped me refine where I messed up in the interview.
> A plurality of individuals have tried to argue with me... A minority of those will go out of their way to hound me on social media.
Which just reinforces why a rejection transitions to "no contact" most of the time. I try to make sure candidates have no contact information for this specific reason.
> If you say anything, and the applicant is a malicious litigant, you just became a potential paycheck via settlement.
Do you have examples? I know this is a real fear, but I've never heard any examples of lawsuits except for issues of discrimination due to age, gender, and ethnicity.
Right, and a malicious litigant will argue that the feedback they received represents discrimination against a protected class. It doesn't matter if they're wrong so long as you're still forced to come to court to defend it. They just offer to settle for less than what you winning in court will cost you.
The article linked in this thread claims no one has ever sued based on constructive feedback: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22258113
(Not that I give it when rejecting most candidates, because I don't want to deal with an argument. In practice, I only gave constructive feedback once, and then posted it on my blog: https://blog.andrewrondeau.com/software/careers/interviewing...)
I used to provide feedback but often got candidates who were argumentative about it rather that accepting that the decision was final. This turned me off on the whole concept.
but confirmed why you rejected the candidate - which is sort of a win
Another reason is that often rejections are highly subjective, and telling a candidate that "we didn't hire you because of X" could be highly insulting.
If they've written down notes or a stance/defence in a talent management system, all they need to do is regurgitate that in my opinion. I wrote about it upthread but having done a data request under my country's privacy act, I was able to get a raw dump of all the data (PII redacted). Recommend that as best course of action if they're unwilling to provide feedback.
I can say that in some of the rejections that I got, it was quite personal.
I was old (55, at the time), and that seemed to actually upset the interviewers.
I had all the right buzzwords, but as soon as they saw my grey coiffure, the process started going sideways. Somehow, they seemed to think that a 30-year-old could have 30 years of experience.
I was treated pretty shabbily, a couple of times. It was clear that I was considered a waste of time.
I only made it to a test a few times. I failed the BTree part of one test (of course), and they didn't seem to like what I returned in a take-home, once. I also once failed a Swift test (I had just started programming in Swift), when I applied for an ObjC job. Otherwise, I did passably (but probably not outstanding) on the tests.
I don't know about you but the older I get, the less I take anything in life personal.
I've come to realize that there are so many aspects of life that are not under one's control and shaking your fist gravity doesn't accomplish anything; even more so when it comes to business and professional relationships.
One of my favorite quotes is from "Deuteronomy 18:13", or as the The Coen Brothers aptly put it:
- "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you"
I admit to getting quite pissed off, but I eventually decided that it wasn't worth it, and just retired.
I'm grateful that I had the means. Because of that, I would have been happy to take a lot less than many, if the work interested me, but it never got that far.
NBD. I've found that learning on my own is better, anyway. LLMs have been a Godsend, there.
These days, I get quite a bit done, but I do it on my own terms, and that makes all the difference.
This is what I’m working on, now[0]. Still has a ways to go, though. I should publish it next week.
My heroes are guys like Stu Nicholls and Howard Oakley. I've learned so much, since I decided to retire, and it's accelerating.
[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/series/passkeys/
Not that I’m religious but I looked up that verse and don’t see how the Coen Brothers got that message from it.
I looked it up as well, because I had a guess at which famous verse it was but didn't know it by chapter/verse.
The context of the verse, based on the surrounding verses, is that "simplicity with the Lord"[0] means accepting that what happens, or what will happen in the future, is from God and there's no need to try to figure out what will be out make sense of the uncertainty of life.
I think I can relate that to the GP's quote.
[0] translation to English my own, not sure what the language you saw was. Notably, the word used in the original Hebrew[1] can be translated as "simplicity" but also "wholeness" or "completeness". Maybe that works better? Also interestingly, in contemporary Hebrew, it means "naive"...
[1] תמים
It's the Coen Brothers quoting rabbinical commentary on the verse, not interpreting the verse themselves.
> there is no information in a rejection.
The most helpful job interview I had was when the interviewer broke script and just leveled with me about how I wasn't presenting myself well. There was a shared connection (our alma mater) that must have convinced him to be straight with me instead of hiding how poorly I was doing behind a mask. The HR handbooks say that you should never let a candidate know why they were not selected, but that information can be extremely helpful.
If you're not getting offers, I strongly recommend that you find somebody you trust to do a mock interview. Let them critique your resume, cover letter, posture, awkwardness, lame handshake, etc.
In the United States, most junior/community colleges have career centers that will do this. There are also economic development boards in essentially every town with a population over 1000; they can connect you to places to do mock interviews.
Very helpful for new interviewees, whether just out of college or during a career transition.
The HR handbooks say that for good reason. Telling a candidate why they were rejected means they'll argue with you, or worse, file a lawsuit.
I have done about 75 coding interviews for big tech companies. I have told a fair number of people (around 10) that I would be submitting a no-hire, but then I went on to coach them for another 15 minutes on how they could improve. I never once heard from anyone on the subject and all the people I told were actually grateful 1) that they wouldn't be left wondering and 2) how they could pass the next one.
I'd want someone to do the same.
All it takes is 1 candidate with an axe to grind and I guarantee you'll never give feedback again.
It's fine to build a better world until then.
"Until then" means others will pay for your decision to ignore policy when it happens. It's never on the person who -- with every good intention, full of an instinct to "build a better world" -- willfully ignores the stuffy rules in handbooks and HR guidelines. Instead, when it backfires and someone does threaten to sue, it's precisely execs, HRs, legal who have to deal with it. The rules are there for good reason.
I run our hiring process and my employer is small enough that I would be personally responsible for this
Exactly. The lock analogy is flawed and a distraction. I made a local universe of how I think the world should be. I gave those people the respect I think we all deserve, and hopefully they stand up and do the same. Maybe they are in HR, or become a C-level and institute the same things.
When you comply in advance, you not only let "them" win, there isn't even a them here, just an idea of a possible threat. Fuck that. Anyone can sue for anything, you can't "do stuff so you won't get sued". Frankly, this is cowards take that lets an nebulous idea pollute your world.
We don't have to Joan of Arc or Don Quixote, we can just do the little stuff that changes culture in the direction we'd like to see it changed.
Humans are incredibly valuable across many many dimensions, not letting them know how they can improve is a massive waste and harmful to both parties.
A better world would be one with no locks on doors. But until then, I'm going to lock doors.
Plenty of people keep their doors unlocked until they get stolen from.
Sure. And they accomplished nothing.
Besides living the dream of a high-trust society?
I'm not convinced they'd prevail in court. Seems like one of those truthisms about American litigiousness that wouldn't bear out in practice.
Doesn’t matter. Simply defending against the claim costs significant money, and you can’t recover those costs.
Best to avoid the claim altogether.
Filing such a claim costs money too, and any decent lawyer will tell the claimant that he has no case.
Still dubious. I don't think miniscule risk justifies shitty behavior and making life worse for everyone.
I feel you, but there is a big difference between (a) "justification" in the overall cost versus benefit to all parties involved and (b) the narrowly self-interested thing to do.
A couple years ago I was turned down for a position after an initial screening interview because they said my writing sample didn't meet certain criteria. I felt it arguably did, but I just said "thank you for your time and consideration", and moved on. I was just glad to get a clear "no" at an early stage.
They've probably revised their policy by now, I suspect, but I appreciated that they made the effort.
Their policy will last until they're sued. All it takes is one to ruin it for everybody.
Yeah… the common connection thing is what’s at play here. This is why high-stakes introductions are done through people you know, to show that you can be trusted lest you be a social outcast.
> If you're not getting offers, I strongly recommend that you find somebody you trust to do a mock interview. Let them critique your resume, cover letter, posture, awkwardness, lame handshake, etc.
Slightly odd question but: what if it's the opposite of this?
Interviews are almost never an issue.
I would like to think (and have been told so too) that I'm both technically sharp and knowledgeable enough, and can communicate well enough. I have a firm handshake, and thanks to the ability to happily dive into topics I read up on, I can speak confidently - both on hard facts, as well as my understanding or opinion of any technical matter in my field - for hours maybe, if not longer.
But getting the interview... is.. legitimately hard. Multiple people have said my resume is quite solid, but I rarely get through beyond the base round.
Would you have any tips for just the act of getting a foot in the door, so to say? I'm reasonably optimistic I can take it from there.
(Two things I can probably change - using customized CVs (and a cover letter, where applicable), and reaching out to employees/HR at the places I'm applying at. Though that honestly seems exhausting with so many applications...)
Without any context of culture or country, just trying to be helpful: in my limited (<20 total interviews) experience, I would think about budget issues.
Meaning, what you ask for (or how expensive you are perceived, if you have that strong resumee) for the industry you apply, may be too different and leading to limited access.
Sometimes I feel junior people have it easier (I felt like I did, personally) since the expense in salary is pretty limited compared to either other roles or more senior people
Thanks! However... I am very junior right now lol (<1 YOE)
(I have applied to both competitive as well as more niche firms fwiw, I expect there have been stronger resumes I've "lost to". Though, my degree isn't a "common" one even though it's actually very suitable.)
It's not you. As a junior, there are going to be so many candidates for anything you feel qualified to apply for. It's a numbers game. IMHO, you should still tailor your resume to fit the position. I'd put together a too long resume with everything, and trim off irrelevant stuff so it's down to one page (maybe two, if that's the standard locally) of mostly relevant things for each position; when your resume does get looked at, you want it to pass muster.
Do your best to network. Think about the people you went to school with: who among them would you like to work with.
Every week, send 2-5 of them an email, remind them of what you did in school together, ask them how their summer/etc was, how are they doing at job hunting/if they like the job they found. If you don't mind looking a little desperate, in that email write something like I'm having a hard time getting interviews, have you found anything that works? If you don't wait for their reply... if they got hired, ask if their company is hiring; if they're still looking ask for tips.
Check in with your school's career center. Check in with your favorite professors.
Check in with your parents' friends and your friends' parents.
A personal connection is likely to get your resume looked at closely and not just ignored because there were 1000 applicants and 10 candidates seemed worth interviewing in the first 100, so they didn't look at the rest. It might not get you an interview, but it helps your chances; also, a personal connection might get a referral to an unrelated opening which is unlikely for an unconnected application. I would definitely send a friend's kid to another friend at a different company if I thought that was a potential match, but I wouldn't consider it for a resume that just came in.
I would also guess that in at least >50% of cases your application is never given a fair shot for random reasons. I remember when a company that I was working at was doing intern interviews, they would almost always run out of time to do interviews (this was back when interviews were in person), so they would pick 2-3 schools that they had time to get to (proximity * prestige was the factor there) and everyone else got a blanket rejection.
Maybe it’s because my school wasn't on that list, but I remember feeling like if I got rejected like that I would very much feel like I wasn’t good enough. But it was essentially random.
This is such an insightful take. As someone who has interviewed many candidates, I wholeheartedly agree. While it's important to reflect on how you can improve, it's also critical to maintain morale and become comfortable with rejection during the job hunt. One of the biggest obstacles I've seen; whether with friends, family, or candidates; is the tendency to internalize rejection as a sense of being inherently 'bad.' Of course, once you internalize this belief, any motivation to study is gone. It can be challenging to help people see that this negative self-talk has become the primary barrier to their success.
My recommendation to people is to apply for jobs you know you won't get while also applying for jobs you want. Exposure to rejection really does help take the sting out of the process.
> Of course, once you internalize this belief, any motivation to study is gone
This is definitely not a universal truth.
I know that if I had done better in every interview then I would’ve moved ahead and gotten the job. I guess that’s a different way of saying I was “bad” (not good enough). And it doesn’t affect my motivation in a negative way. I find that it actually helps me want to improve more.
I agree with your sentiment, but what you're referring to is "I'm not good at this task yet" which is different from "I am inherently incapable/inferior". The first can motivate, the second does not- this is supported by a large body of pedagogical research.
https://opentext.wsu.edu/theoreticalmodelsforteachingandrese...
> the tendency to internalize rejection as a sense of being inherently 'bad.‘
OK so just avoid this tendency.
Especially true in today's hiring environment. They probably have hundreds of qualified people lined up for that position. One company recently reached out to me asking me to submit a CV, considering me a good fit for their position. In the end, they rejected me, but they mentioned that they got 1400 applications. If you don't have a personal connection to get you in, it's basically a lottery.
Even sometimes if you do have a personal connection. I've had twice now where I've had a warm intro to the hiring manager, jobs where I had done the kind of work before, and the hiring manager didn't even reply to my emails.
Won't lie, both of those hurt, but I also reasoned it that if that's who I would have been working for, I wouldn't have enjoyed the work anyway.
> you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit
And every role usually only gets one person accepted into it, or at most, a small number. Ideally they want the "best" person for the role (where "best" is highly subjective and context-dependent). Say 200 people applied for the role. Are you really going to feel bad about yourself because you weren't the absolute best person out of 200 applicants? Is it going to be a huge blow to your self-esteem that you might have been the 2nd or 3rd best out of that 200? (And that's assuming their interview process is perfect and accurately measures who the "best" person is, which is rarely the case.)
Rejections are hard. I get it. I don't enjoy them either. But it's so important not to take them personally.
Unsure about the author's financial situation but the calculus tends to change depending on it. I wasn't applying to Anthropic mind you but $50k-80k tech positions with 4 YoE in industry already. I had already burned through nearly all my savings before hitting another interview and rejection (for far less than what I used to make) and then realizing the job search had burnt me out and I was in danger of losing my lease and everything on top of that. I haven't gotten past a phone screen for half a year by now.
When America prescribes that you only deserve health insurance and shelter if you have a good enough job, and you're at the end of your rope financially, it is in my experience very difficult not to take things personally. I was actually pretty good at this earlier on, when I still had savings! But contrary to what some people say, it became harder and harder to stay positive as time went on until it became all but impossible. The last straw was when 13/hr jobs started rejecting me for not having "moving things around in a warehouse" experience.
I'm now having to work an eye-wateringly menial job with no experience requirement just to make ends meet, and even that still isn't enough for my poverty-level expenses. It's not the prestige of the job that bothers me but the fact that it isn't livable. It does feel sometimes that my life could have diverged significantly if I had just passed that interview all those months ago. So much was riding on that final interview and yet I didn't perform to some arbitrary unknowable standard to deserve a livable salary, and this is the end result of my rejection.
I'm hoping that if I get an HVAC certification or something I can just... survive comfortably. I don't think I'd be happy changing careers and I wanted to work in tech until I died or retired, but seems like it's not going to happen at this rate.
That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in the interview or application process.
Best to ask for feedback but of course they won't give it to you. I thought I did really well after 6 interviews with a FAANG company. They let me down by saying that another candidate was preferred. I pressed for feedback a month or so later and was ghosted. So I submitted a privacy request to the privacy and legal team about all and any data pertaining to the hiring process and interview, and was given a massive dump of their talent management system, plaintext notes of the interviews, group chat messages discussing me, etc.
It turns out I had a pretty bad read of the situation; there was some things that I had said that were misconstrued, some bad traits that I wasn't aware of, and then the key reason I was rejected (lack of domain exertise and relevant experience).
Anyways glad I went down this route, I still need to process the data and translate it to improving myself, but as my buddy GI Joe says, knowing is half the battle.
Tell me more about this privacy request you submitted. I wasn’t aware this was a thing.
Not much to it really; took about a month round trip time to get the data; I had to authenticate myself but that was relatively straightforward since I could use my account with the organisation which I used to submit the job application to also perform the authentication (though the actual process is a bit bizarre).
Take Amazon for example that has a privacy query page: https://www.amazon.com/hz/contact-us/request-data
Send a message like this (have ChatGPT to tailor to your jurisdiction):
Dear Privacy Officer,
I am writing to formally request access to any and all personal information $FAANG holds about me under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), specifically pursuant to Australian Privacy Principle 12.
I interviewed for the $ROLE position with one of $FAANG's Australian offices between February and March 2025. While I understand that I was not selected for the role, I am seeking access to any evaluative records, interview notes, recruiter or hiring manager comments, assessments, and other personal information recorded or obtained during the recruitment process.
For the purposes of identifying my records, my name is $FULL_NAME, and I applied via $FAANG Job Portal.
Please provide this information in a commonly used electronic format. If you require any further details to verify my identity or locate my information, I am happy to provide them.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your response within a reasonable time, as required by the Act.
Thanks for sharing. I wonder if it is possible to do in the US.
Also, can you kindly elaborate on what you meant by 'bad read of the situation'?
I had thought I did well in all the interviews but was just bested by another candidate.
But the role continued to be advertised as they were hiring multiple headcount, so it seems the recruiter straight up lied and was trying to let me down gently. Reality settled when I saw all the hire/maybe hire/no hire positions of the interviewers.
I don’t disagree with any of the feedback or angry; I’m using all the data gathered to improve myself.
As for the privacy request, usually you agree to a privacy policy with most firms that say you can request a copy of the data anyway, don’t always need to use legislation to order it.
It's at a state level in the US, so it's necessary to look up your state's privacy laws (California was the first to adopt comprehensive privacy legislation but others have followed). TBH I had never thought about its applicability to hiring process information, since the laws are framed more as a "consumer" right, but it seems possible it's covered under some of these laws.
> So I submitted a privacy request to the privacy and legal team about all and any data pertaining to the hiring process and interview
I'm rather surprised this worked, is there any reason to not do this for every interview?
No, at least the privacy officer I spoke to says it doesn't negative impact how you are considered by the company, and that the requests are handled by the applicable data protection law.
I wouldn't do it for a tiny company / startup where such a request can easily be exposed to recruiter and interviewers, but in those cases you're very likely to receive candid feedback by just asking anyway.
You are my new hero.
There isn't, but you can also sometimes deduce things you didn't do as well if they were apparent. Like, if you couldn't answer a bunch of questions or finish the task on time, and all the other interviews were good, there is a good chance it was that thing, and you should brush up on it.
Sometimes interviews are designed to be a hard grind that everyone fails and it's based on 'did you fail the least', but those are rare and once you've done a bunch of interviews, you can tell the difference.
If your half way through a process, recruiters are often ok to tell you what you didn't do as well on and offer that as feedback and tips. At the end they tend to be quiet so you can't figure out the final reason for a rejection unless you somehow have a friend on the inside that can find out informally for you. If your lucky to get a rejection call, you can even get vague hints as to why it wasn't a go from the recruiter if you have the social skills and the right recruiter. I often play guessing games based on my deductions.
But these are more obvious parts.
"to equate a job interview to a test at school, assuming that there is some objective bar and if you pass it then you must be hired"
This is excellent advice in general.
When you're on Reddit long enough, you'll see posts from men about how they were kind and considerate to a woman, and she still didn't want to date them. But that's not how life works. It's not about putting kindness, skills, effort, and good intentions into the machine and receiving success in return.
You should do these things because you want to. For yourself. Not because you will definitely get any reward in return.
Aim to excel in a job interview because you are good at what you do. Aim for being kind to others because you're a good person. Aim to learn a new skill because you're curious and love learning. Help a friend because you value your relationships.
And be happy because of what you do, because of who you are, because you can be proud of yourself.
The opposite can also be true. The worst job I ever had was where I was hired by a company, and placed on the team of, a hiring manager that had recommended I not be hired. He offered me no support at all. They just couldn't find many people willing to work at the company, and I was naive enough to just be excited that someone wanted me. I left after about 5 months.
I once interviewed a very good candidate - good skills, interest in the business, a few years of experience, could definitely do the job I thought I was interviewing him for - only to find out after the fact that we actually only wanted an industry veteran with very specific, particular domain knowledge, and neither the recruiters nor me and my immediate manager had really caught up to that requirement.
> One great piece of advice and informal mentor gave me long ago is that there is no information in a rejection.
I mean, there might be, in two ways. Sometimes, you just mess up in some obvious way and can learn from that. But you also get a glimpse of the corporate culture. Maybe not for FAANG and the likes - the processes are homogenized and reviewed by a risk-averse employment lawyer - but for smaller organizations, it's fair game.
But as with layoffs, there's nothing you can win by begging, groveling, or asking for a second chance. The decision has been made, these decisions are always stochastic and unfair on some level, but you move on. You'll be fine.
I think the point, which I agree with, was that in the typical case of a stock rejection, you don't know if the errors you think you made had any bearing on the decision. Information you get from the process you would have gotten whether or not you got accepted, so it's not from the rejection.
There are cases where the company gives you some indication of why they rejected you but they are rare in my experience (in the USA, mostly for legal reasons, IDK about other countries). Or they give you information in some other way. Some companies will stop and send you home part way through if it's not going well. That also gives more information.
Agreed. I've been rejected from roles I've been genuinely excited about and felt totally defeated. This last application run I made a concerted effort to protect myself from feeling bad and it definitely helped. Some people can be excellent candidates but ultimately the wrong fit for the role or an equally better or exceptional candidate is also in the pipeline.
I did a LOT of road bike racing a while back. Out of a large starting group (often 60+), one person wins.* Being prepared helps -- you want your fitness dialed and your equipment in good shape. But then Shih Tzu happens, even if you have the equanimity of Lao Tzu. If you conserve energy at the right times and expend energy at the right times -- and luck goes your way -- and the right combination of people work collaboratively -- then you might win. Or flat. Or crash. (Or die, but that's pretty rare.)
In bike racing, winning feels really good, but I don't think people really do it for the winning, because if you dominate one category, _congratulations!_ now you get to compete against the next level, replete with additional helpings of pain, exertion, and whatever the opposite of mental acuity is.
* In contrast to many sports where one of the two participants is guaranteed to win.
> One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is to equate a job interview to a test at school, assuming that there is some objective bar and if you pass it then you must be hired. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better.
This hasn't been true for the interviews I've given. For technical interviews I was given a question and rubrik of what they should say and a clear guide on how to grade them and give feed back about performance. Unless they did something truly bizarre there wasn't room for being subjective
> Unless they did something truly bizarre there wasn't room for being subjective
Without having been there, I have a sense of what you mean, but I do want to add:
1. Statistically speaking, there will misinterpretation and even outright errors on the part of interviewers.
2. As feedback gets passed up the chain, most processes I know about are not formulaic. People make judgment calls. They might be more or less consistent w.r.t. following some ideal, sure. A company might pride itself on consistency and that might be good. Another company might pride itself on adaptability -- changing a process to suit the current need, because maybe the old process wasn't that great.
3. There _will_ be differential treatment, as perceived by the interviewer, even if you behave _identically_!. Cultures are different, comfort levels are different, styles are different! Saying the same thing, with the same tone of voice, with the same timing might have different effects on different people.
I Always give reasons, to them, at the time, if I know them.
There's a real reason. Maybe my perception is bad, maybe they misspoke, maybe they can explain something...
I don't want to be a fool and let a his candidate go.
I'm really picky but I'm also extremely forgiving and believe in improving the person and making it a beneficial experience regardless of the outcome.
Other people don't do this because I dunno, my pet theory is most people forget to be adults
But you know, this kind of information burden is one of the factors radicalizing the youth right now. These people don't just dissappear into a void if they are unwilling to accept that, they're organizing and being drawn to more radical movements to crush you. So is this way of dealing with workers here really that sustainable?
I wasn't advocating for any particular system, just stating the way things are, now, on the ground.
That said, I have my doubts about the true extent of the radicalization of "the youth", at least in the USA, given that the DSA/Mamdani voter base is squarely bougie upper middle class college grads freaked out that elite overproduction has killed their job prospects. Whatever radical things they may do, the result won't be to create more jobs for college grads.
>Whatever radical things they may do, the result won't be to create more jobs for college grads.
They probably won't. But whatever damage is caused likely won't be good for us all anyways. Not everyone is going to have the luxury of being detached from crisis once radicals make sure they feel it too.
Hell, I've interviewed people who were perfect for the job and whom I wanted to hire, only to be told that the financials of the business changed and we can't hire for that position any more.
I'd hope HR told the candidate that the position has been retracted, but maybe the HR system just sent an "unfortunately" email, I have no idea.
There's information there, though, you're just not privy to it (short of radical candor, which I would prefer), so what you're really saying is that there's no information in a rejection for you.
> ...the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better...
Or they liked you just as much as the one they hired, but you lost the coin toss. Or, they hated you because they misunderstood something you said. Or...?
Fantastically well said. I’ve also seen people literally flip a coin when unable to decide between some equally skilled candidates.
Hiring is all subjective (i.e. bs): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41049365
This claim is exaggerated too far in the other direction. I try to spiral in towards the gravity well of truth rather than slingshot out of the solar system.
Same with fundraising.
Yeah I think this is a great mental framework. Getting rejected hurts, it's natural to want to find a reason, and with some self-reflection it definitely can help one grow. But you gotta be very careful about over-indexing on any one interview where the reasons for rejection may or may not have anything to do with what you did and said during the interview (let alone your personhood).
Frankly, if you want to get better at interviewing, it's better to do more general research on what hiring managers and companies want, and then do more interviews to practice communicating that you have the skills and temperament to deliver value.
One specific piece of advice to the OA: this kind of post might feel cathartic, but it doesn't get you closer to your goal. Sure, it will resonate, people will commiserate, and you'll get some dopamine and internet points—but if your goal is to work at a top tier company like Anthropic then such a post can only hurt you. The reality in fast-growing, ambitious companies at the forefront of the AI bubble is that expectations are sky high, and getting things done to attempt to meet those expectations is incredibly difficult for a hundred different reasons. In this type of environment, whatever technical skills you have are not enough. To be successful you need a sustained and resourceful effort to solve whatever problems come your way. One of the most toxic traits is having a victim mentality. Unfortunately it's a common affliction due to the low agency that individuals have in big companies and late stage capitalism in general, but you've got to tamp it down and focus on what you can control (which in practice is often more than you might think). While this post doesn't directly demonstrate a victim mentality, it suggests internalizing the rejection ("My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.") in a way that is adjacent and something that would give me significant pause if I was a hiring manager evaluating for a role in a chaotic company.
> While this post doesn't directly demonstrate a victim mentality, it suggests internalizing the rejection ("My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.")...
Well said. While it might have only been the recognition of that feeling, I do think it might reflect a deeper internalization. Though I'm no psychologist; I only have an intuitive, common-sense understanding of the concept of "internalization".
> ... in a way that is adjacent and something that would give me significant pause if I was a hiring manager evaluating for a role in a chaotic company.
Yes, I can see why some people would have this take. But there are other takes, such as "this person cares and feels things deeply, and as long as they process these emotions, they'll probably come back stronger."
I have no idea to what extent Anthropic or other employers delve into prospective candidates’ blogs; but this strikes me as too much self-disclosure for one’s own good. We all have idiosyncrasies; but calling oneself weird on a now widely published blog article seems like it risks defeating the goal of making oneself an ideal candidate for many job opportunities. Look, many of my own eccentricities have been (net) valuable to be professionally and personally, but it was probably better they be revealed “organically” rather than through a public act of self-disclosure.
This is the age of social media. This person has hit the front page of HN twice now. That's a commercially valuable skill.
At this point, having proved that can do something commercially valuable a couple times now, I think they should run with it. Start a YouTube channel. Keep racking up views. Then, eventually, do partnerships and sponsorships, in addition to collecting AdSense money.
If you like to write or perform for other people, you can monetize that now. This person is good at it. They should continue.
You think too much of HN.
I expect many tech employers also think too much of HN, which is exactly the point being made here.
People think too much of it but also, somehow, far too little at the same time.
Agree. Tough crowd overall. And tougher comment section.
Truth. There's a reason that people say to never read the comments section of HN or YouTube.
Surely many of the kinds of companies this guy is applying to think the same?
As do many employers.
I had a post here sit at #1 once for a day, I had 200k views from it. I think an ad would have been $2k? Not to bad I think
I’ve hit #1 multiple times. HN views are low-value and non-sticky, IME.
Sure I don't think you'll build a following just here if that's what you mean, but there is an audience. If you have the skill and technical knowledge to have articles hit the front page you will get a decent amount of views. Which is what i think this comment chain is talking about
> This is the age of social media. This person has hit the front page of HN twice now. That's a commercially valuable skill.
In general yes, wrt HN it's not; literally in this second post he bemoans that the first one didn't pay off for him.
As someone who’s hired many dev advocates, I definitely value the ability to turn mundane topics into posts that hit the HN front page. If they can do this about something as dull as failing interviews, imagine what they’d do with an actually interesting technical topic.
Failing interviews is a favorite topic for HN, not a "dull" one; this is not the only person who's made the front page about it, and certainly won't be the last. HN's audience contains a large group that believes "tech interviews are stupid and broken" and this is right up their alley.
I don't think it is a strong signal of an easy pivot to influencer-as-a-career.
Influence may be intentionally avoided by managers. Applicant should try the marketing team.
The job they were applying for was DevRel, literally one of the goals of many DevRel roles is getting traction on places like HN
I would actively avoid hiring someone with a major social media presence. Too risky.
Maybe a good point, but honestly, interviewers barely read resumes, they’re very, very likely not going to read your blog, or remember “hey it’s the person from that blog post I ready 7 weeks ago.”
> interviewers barely read resumes
I feel like this is the biggest lie ever told in this industry. Do you, as an interviewer, not read resumes?
I read loads of resumes and the truth is more like everyone are terrible communicators. Especially software engineers. Most resumes are badly formatted, badly typeset, full of errors and give me confusing/contradictory details about what your job responsibilities were rather than what you accomplished.
Most peoples' resumes are so low-effort that they're practically unreadable and I'm trying to read between the lines to figure out what you're capable of. I might as well not be reading them because I'm trying to figure out what you've done, what you're good at and what motivates you and nothing you've given me on that paper helps me do that.
One of these days someone is going to figure out how to cross-polinate technology people and sales people in the office to smooth out each others' rough edges. Whoever does is going to revolutionize industry.
It is true for some companies. That said, in my experience, the more it was visible in an interview that the interviewer read my application, my website, my open-source code etc, the more enjoyable working for that company has been for me. I guess it’s a sign people at such a company give a shit. It transfers to other areas than just interviews led by them. At this point, if I see that the interviewer barely skimmed my CV, my expectations, that this job will be good, plummet.
> I feel like this is the biggest lie ever told in this industry.
It's not. I've been in a number of interviews where the interviewer has told me straight up "I didn't read your resume. Mind giving me a second to give it a scan?"
To be fair, as you mention, resumes are horrible tools. They should only be used as a place to start a conversation, so does it really matter if the interviewer reads it in depth before starting the interview?
Others in the loop (sourcer/screener/recruiter at minimum) almost certainly read your resume for you to even make it that far.
It's starting to sound to me like on both sides of this conversation, up-front effort made can be strong positive signal...
I’m a little confused, because first you challenge me, but then come to the exact conclusion that resumes are largely unreadable. I’ll look for something they claim to have done to dig deep on, see if it’s BS or not, but I’m not reading every X by Y% with my jaw on the floor. FWIW I’m generally on the back side of the process, where someone at the front (is supposed to have) vetted the person already.
> where someone at the front (is supposed to have) vetted the person already.
I think that's a mistake, personally. Each interviewer needs to make an independent decision and relying on the judgement of a screener early in the process is giving that person disproportionate weight towards hiring for your team. Usually that resume screener is someone in HR. Would you trust them to decide who your team hires?
Your posts do indicate that maybe there is a larger segment of folks who don't read resumes than I realize...My amount of rigor may only come after being involved in some catastrophically bad hiring decisions. Like someone I made the deciding vote to hire was stalking multiple employees, was a heavy drug user, did zero work of value and ultimately crashed and burned by getting arrested for coming at someone with a knife. For years HR wouldn't let us fire that person because of their protected class and multiple false claims they made against a large number of employees.
If it’s truly only HR and then direct to full interview panel then I agree with you, but I’ve never worked somewhere where a technical person wasn’t involved in screening. Yes recruiters will winnow the inbound, but usually there a technical phone screen, hiring manager screen, or both.
FWIW this is what I assumed to be true when I said what I said.
And yet still that screening almost always has less technical depth than further interviews. It should not carry the most weight in the process, but because of practices like this it does.
Sorry, can't agree with this. The hiring manager's decision carries the most weight yes, but saying it's biased towards the screen is over-generalizing. I'm sure sometimes it is, but as someone who interviewed thousands and hired hundreds over a quarter century career at many organizations large and small, I can tell you unequivocally that technical feedback can and does regularly override my screening signal.
I expect that for a Developer Relations role, someone read the blogs.
That’s a good point, I’ve been a bit burnt out on strictly eng roles that I projected there a bit
Perhaps the blogs of the candidates yes. On the other hand, perhaps OP will find a perfect fit this way.
Absolutely. Especially for late-stage candidates.
People get hired all the time based on their online content. Or, at the very least, they get interviews when they wouldn't otherwise. Don't forget about the luck surface area!
As a hiring manager, I've read blogs. Heck when reviewing a stack of resumes, "has a technical blog" almost certainly moves a candidate to a consider pile and they are probably getting a callback in the very least.
On one hand I agree with you, but on the other... I don't really want to live in a world where being oneself (a perfectly fine, good self) is a liability.
I know I have privilege in being able to say this, but I'd rather get rejected by potential employers who don't get me, than have to pretend to be someone I'm not.
Being oneself is fine. Being too online may not be.
The phrase “too online” has a connotation that situates it in the 2020s or at worst the late 2010s to an extent that I don’t think really fits a degree of “online” you could have been literally before the invention of the Web.
https://xkcd.com/137/
I believe part of the post is referring to that idea (self disclosure and weirdness) itself, and the idea that the author usually does try to limit it. Even without this specific post, the "weirdness" can come across in an in-person interview and other ways. Some people are normal, some can pretend to be, and others either can't manage to pretend or its too difficult/painful to do for long periods of time.
Its not always bad to expose it and not always bad to get rejected because of it. Personality mismatch can make any job miserable.
Regardless, it feels bad to get rejected and that, I think, is what the article is making a point about.
It's a personal blog. I didn't read this as an employer. Someone greener may read this and think "this guy is really hard on himself but, unlike me, he's done so much more! Maybe we'll always feel this way so I should just be kinder to myself."
The modern internet is stuffed to the gills with branding and bravado. Some vulnerability is fine.
Author here! Thanks for this. This is exactly what I want people to feel :) I'm willing to hurt my chances if it helps others
They're in devrel. If they're not publicly visible devrel isn't for them.
I have to think Anthropic is in high enough demand and looking for high enough skilled staff that any negative social implications from a blog post like this, as tame as it is, would be outweighed, for any actually suitable candidate.
I still have to meet a person in computer science who isn't weird
Most CS people I know aren’t weird and are actually pretty corporate and conformist. But at the same time, the people I know who do open source are some of the weirdest people I know haha
The ratio changed after software engineering became a way to make a lot of money. It used to be there were a handful of well paying gigs and a bunch of "pretty good" jobs, but SE wasn't a huge outlier.
Once people flooded the field to make money, things changed. Used to be if I met another software engineer they'd 100% geek out over technology, CPU architectures, programming languages, etc. It wasn't ever just a job.
Or to put it another way, Microsoft used to be filled with people rocking back and forth in their chairs avoiding eye contact discussing cool tech things. When I went on my interview loop at MSFT I discussed the mornings Slashdot headlines with every person who interviewed me.
Okay, what I said was definitely over exaggerating. Let's say, much more weird people here than weird people I met in other environments
I'll take an eclectic bunch of weirdos who all do and like cool shit over the corpo conformist normies any day. Super easy to suss out who is who when you first meet them. Just ask what they like to do when they aren't laboring under the thumb of capitalism. The cool people will talk your ear off about some esoteric whatever.
Normal people are just weird people you don't know very well.
This field, and especially AI, are so full of autism. I unironically buy the extreme male brain hypothesis for autism because of my experiences in SV.
I've met a few. None in SV, all in "flyover" states/provinces.
SV/NY is pretty concentrated with "non-weird" SWEs these days unless you count "money-oriented" as weird. "CS degree from a top program followed by FAANG or NYC Fintech" was a common default path for reasonably-smart/reasonably-socially-skilled/highly-career-motivated high school students to aim at for a while.
I think software should be weirder. If people have ever used the MRI analysis software afni, I think it’s just the best kind of weird.
I recently did a round of interviews at various AI companies, including model labs, coding assistants, and data vendors. My first takeaway is that, wow! the interviews are very hard, and the bar is high. Second, these companies are all selecting for the top 0.1% of some metric - but they use different metrics. For example, the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in a short period of time. I did not do well. By contrast, another company asked me to spend a day working on a particular niche optimization problem; that was the entire interview loop. I happened to stumble on some neat idea, and therefore did well, but I don't think I could reliably repeat that performance.
To reiterate - wow! the interviews are hard, every company is selecting for the top of a different metric, and there's really no shame in not passing one of these loops. Also, none of these companies will actually give you your purpose in life, your dream job will not make you whole:-)
My career long experience with these types of interviews is you get hired by the company that, when they interview you, you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason. The content of the actual work I’ve done at these companies and how the work is done, is completely different to these interviews and I’d have done equally well at all the places that didn’t hire me because they happened to ask the wrong questions.
I know, because I’ve been rejected and accepted to the same company before based on different interview questions, and did just fine in the role once I was in there.
In short, if you have decent skills the tech interviewers are mostly total random luck IMO, so just do a bunch of em and you’ll get lucky somewhere. It won’t make any rational sense at all later where you end up, but who cares.
>you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason
My experience exactly! I've been lucky in most of my interviews that I was asked about things I just happened to brush up on or had thought about deeply in some past project, so I was offered the job.
And like you say, the job rarely demanded any of the things I was asked about... which worked against me once, where I sailed through the interview process but struggled for the first year to get up to speed in my actual day-to-day job, although I did manage to get my act together before it became a big problem.
Yup! To be honest, it should be obvious via someone’s resume and references whether they’ll be capable of adapting to the job without making them jump through random hoops. People treat hiring devs like they’re hiring a contractor to paint their bathroom, instead of hiring them like white collar professionals who will grow with a position.
Arrrgh I remember an interview where I got this lucky... and I ended up failing it miserably. It was a python-heavy position, and I had been watching some Peter Norvig videos in the weeks beforehand to prepare. They asked me to implement some basic functionality of a poker game, which was EXACTLY what one of the videos was about. I was trying so hard not to copy his approach, and my own 'natural' approach would have been fairly similar (but not nearly as elegant), so by trying to avoid both of those approaches I made a complete mess, haha
And unfortunately, from the point of view of the company, this is a feature not a bug:
* to the company the cost of a false positive (bad hire) is very very much higher than the cost of a false negative (passing on a good candidate).
* AI companies have a large pool of strong candidates to interview
* Therefore they are incentivized to make their interview process hard enough that a poor candidate almost never passes it
* but then it becomes something a strong candidate can only pass with a bit of good luck
This is not “fair”, but it’s a marketplace. The best approach is the one you propose: accept it and don’t take it personally if you miss, roll the dice again.
Why is it that most other jobs especially low skill take the opposite approach? You screw up or demonstrate your incompetence on your first day on a construction job site you are let go right then.
I think it's trickier to gauge in knowledge work because there's a ramp-up period, even for top performers. Just understanding the institutional context that led to the current ecosystem - essentially understanding every Chesterton's Fence you encounter - takes a substantial amount of time.
Typically there's a lot of onboarding, and even a good candidate might not get a lot done in the first month or three... By the time you realize the new hire isn't a good fit, you've spent a ton of time on training.
Otoh, if you hire me to frame a house, it'll be objectively clear you need to get rid of me in the first hour, if not the first ten minutes. I don't know how I'd get past a screening for that either, but still.
They don’t have the money to hire lawyers to pursue discrimination suits, and the potential SME employers frequently don’t have the balance sheet to be collectible.
It’s a different ballgame when you can gamble $20k to make $1M.
They just have a pool that’s filled with bad candidates. They want to disable luck for them.
Ironically, they turn on luck even more.
No it isn't, their strategy is great at increasing the rate at which they select those deadly "bad hires". There's just an insane amount of risk in doing these sorts of tech interview things; code up a quick monte carlo simulation to convince yourself if you like. It's just that the risk doesn't fall on the improperly aligned humans conducting the interview, it's offloaded onto the company.
Exactly, you could just as easily hire a bad candidate because they got lucky, and this happens all the time.
I mean, they could just as easily hire a bad candidate that happened to cram that specific interview knowledge the day before but is otherwise a bad developer.
Personally I don’t agree with the crazy tech interviews at all, no other job on the planet does it like this, even high skill jobs like doctors or professors. They hire based on your experience, your references, and a good chat to make sure you’d be a culture fit. If there’s a serious problem with a doctor once they start the job, they’d be let go, but they’re professionals so this isn’t a super common occurrence.
The exact same process could be taken with developers IMO. If I have a seasoned career, you should hire me based on that, not because I jumped through hoops you set up.
Like the great Mike Tyson once said, "God punishes you by giving you everything you want... to see if you can handle it".
For many, achieving your dreams usually comes with the hard lesson that you had the wrong dreams and that the real dreams you should have had were many of the things you already gave away to get there.
Then again, infinite AI-developer money isn't the worst outcome, either. Something something land among the clouds.
Honestly, AI is far too creative to pick a job that cares about the wrong thing and you are dumped into a feature mill. It’d be the worst time to be at these large companies because the smaller more creative startups are what’s going to be really an adventure in this space, versus the same old run of the mill career treadmill SWE have been given after SWE ballooned in the 2010s.
You have much cooler opportunity in these new companies and product spaces versus the large ships. It really is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
> the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in a short period of time.
I had a bunch of these my last round of interviews, and am not convinced most companies even know what they want from these or how to assess. In the majority of cases it was clear to me the interviewers never even read the code I had submitted.
As an example, one company wanted a full AI Question/Answer system for large code projects using RAG to work on an arbitrarily large code base with an eval suite to go with it and also an API endpoint that could be called to automate asking of questions. You only had 24 hours to complete the assignment from receipt.
It was clear even before this that the company was likely not a good match, but I wanted to implement it for fun anyway. I'd already built all of this in production at a previous job (though it took weeks, which still felt pretty fast) so I knew how to approach it. Got it all done in time, met all acceptance criteria, had it so the entire thing could be run with one line of code (including building the RAG system, running evaluations, starting the webserver for the running API endpoint)... and rejected with no feedback a week later.
The trouble with asking people to write massive amounts of code in short periods of time is that you actually have to review it. I also have to say, despite the competitiveness, I was pretty unimpressed with the technical skills of the people on these teams (mostly smaller AI startups for me). It takes a pretty skilled engineer to assess the quality of a code base in such a short period of time and these teams did not seem like that had a lot of extra time on their hands.
Did you get offended when they rejected your day of work without even commenting? I guess they could've at least flattered you a bit saying it was impressive, but they had to go with another candidate for reasons.
I know I'd be pissed if the work did go uncommented.
I tend to reject full on large homework assignments like that unless I get a guarantee of feedback.
> Got it all done in time, met all acceptance criteria, had it so the entire thing could be run with one line of code (including building the RAG system, running evaluations, starting the webserver for the running API endpoint)... and rejected with no feedback a week later.
that is absolutely insane.
Are you looking? Can I hire you?
> Also, none of these companies will actually give you your purpose in life, your dream job will not make you whole:-)
Some people really do find a whole lot of personal meaning from their work. And that's okay. It's their life.
If someone is the sort of person who might find meaning working for Anthropic, they would find that meaning at a lot of other jobs as well. I think that's a better emssage; not that "you shall not find purpose in your work", but "the purpose you may find from work is not limited to a single or even small number of AI companies".
That is fair. I suppose what I meant is, the idea of working at one of these companies can be really exciting, almost a fantasy, but in practice: it might actually hurt you in many ways. 'Look what they make you give', as a certain character once said. With that said, obviously I think it's cool and worth doing, but there are significant and painful downsides, too.
If the past 25 years of tech companies is any indication of the future of these new AI endeavors, working there will be directly contributing to the enslavement of mankind in ways we can't even begin to imagine yet.
The greenfield projects arising from this leap look benign now, but I can almost guarantee that won't be the case in the next decade once these technologies optimize their revenue generation engines and enshittification takes hold. Humanity will be at the whim of the AI compute overlords much more so than we are now, and that's an inevitable nightmare dystopia that I'm not looking forward to. The gilded age will look like child's play by the time we figure this out as a society.
I suppose that if your ambition is to be on the winning end of that hellscape, then by all means, go for it.
I mean, if there's going to end up being a hellscape it'd be better to be on the winning end than the losing one, right?
I get it, we all want to be somebody, but is the juice worth the squeeze?
They may find a candidate that succeeds, they may not. In the end, it’s up to you to decide whether that kind of environment is for you. I also interviewed at a few AI startups and while difficult, I wasn’t impressed with them. They seem to be too high maintenance with little to no experience.
This is key: the OP seems to be putting them on a pedestal, but if Sturgeon's law holds (and I think it does) then a sizable percentage of what's happening there doesn't smell very good.
I totally agree. My work is a major part of my life. I do my job well and that's important to me.
But I don't care about any particular company. I'm just as happy automating refineries as I am factories or chemical plants. I just want to be a valuable member of a team that gets stuff done.
The blue-collar version of this, which I think distills the essence well: "Does life start when you clock in, or clock out?"
Very critical difference in mindset and the reason a lot of these conversations end up talking past each other.
> To reiterate - wow! the interviews are hard, every company is selecting for the top of a different metric, and there's really no shame in not passing one of these loops. Also, none of these companies will actually give you your purpose in life, your dream job will not make you whole:-)
I wholeheartedly agree.
That said, if you pursue jobs that are at least somewhat aligned with your personal convictions and desire for impact on the world and not strictly based on money, prestige, and power, you might be able to able to derive some greater sense of wholeness through the work. Not "make you whole", but "contribute to your wholeness".
If you only chase money, prestige and power - which if we're honest is central to a lot of the tech industry today - you probably won't experience any wholeness contribution from your work. That's fine, of course. Hopefully in that case you can find it through family, friendships, or community.
There's people whose entire job is to list houses at 50% over the market pricing. And there's people whose entire job it is to offer 50% market price for houses. They only need to be successful once every couple of month. They flood the market with buying and selling signals, that's just the way the market works. I wouldn't be discouraged if my fair market offer were rejected by most bidders in a market, statistically they are professional over/under bidders, that's fine.
They are all roundabout ways of getting to IQ. It used to be Leetcode but since that has become a known quantity and quite gamified, the interviews have evolved. Most of all, I have seen that there is crazy focus on speed and volume. Do a lot, read a lot of code, in little time. They've also adapted for AI coding tools. So the interviews have a debugging component, or take homes are open web, open tools, but again really compressed timelines.
The last bit - don’t tell people. Statistically most won’t reach their end goals, the few that do have reasonable chances of mental breakdowns and or other mental anguishes since - as the philosphers nailed a long time ago - the journey is actually what matters, the destination isn’t.
(Got where I wanted, the fact that I didn’t want enough and could re-set goals helped but still not great to reach the self imposed dream goal.)
Hi, can you share more about the coding assistant interview? Was it a task you had to solve and you were allowed to LLM to speed things up?
Oh, what I meant was, this was an interview with a company that produces a coding assistant. Ironically, you really weren't supposed to use an LLM much for the interview, although I think you could use the company's product if you wanted. The restrictions were a bit unclear to me and I chose to try to code everything by hand, but in retrospect, that was probably not feasible.
The assignment was hard for me for a few reasons: There were many requirements; the requirements as stated were quite unclear to me; and it turned out that they were really referencing a certain standard solution to a standard problem that I was unfamiliar with. So we spent half the interview explaining the idea to me (bad!), and then the other half was me trying to code it up, and I just didn't get nearly far enough.
Thank you. Interesting. Can you share a mock example of the problem you had to solve?
I think a spiritually similar assignment would be: implement multiplayer Google Docs using a CRDT, server, and clients, supporting a certain class of documents that are shown to you during the interview.
And imagine that the CRDTs are not directly explained in the problem statement, but some supporting data structure of CRDTs is referenced, and like clearly there is some way to make all the pieces referenced work together to create a working system, but it's never made explicit.
And imagine that you need to actually implement CRDTs from scratch in the interview, but also integrate them into this client-server document-editing app, which you also need to code from scratch. All in an hour.
This is why I say the interview felt kind of insane to me. But plausibly if I'd previously studied that problem, so that the implementation details were all clear to me from the start, and if I had used the company's coding assistant to the extent allowed, and if I had been in much better coding-things-from-scratch form, I could have done OK. I don't know. It's fine. They were probably looking for a type of engineer that I'm not. :')
This sounds like a take home assignment. Are these type of questions standard interview question today?
Nope, it was a live coding interview, less than an hour. I personally did a double-take at the beginning of the interview. However, the long tail of people who can code up algorithms and apps quickly is very long indeed. There are certainly people I've worked with who are just multiples faster than me in this kind of situation, and I could imagine them passing the interview.
And yet all of these companies' frontend is just plain ridiculous.
Dear Author,
the internet is not your friend, but a kind of alien intelligence - vast, cool, and unsympathetic, in HG Wells' formulation. Publicly melting down (even anonymously) is not going to help you; if anything, you'll just end up feeling more isolated.
You need to work out your self-image issues with a person instead of projecting them onto your environment. That person might be a friend of therapist, or several people helping you with different things, and finding the right person(s) is likely to involve several false starts and blind alleys. You should pursue this work in person. Parasocial relationships are a necessity in this day and age, but over-reliance on them is ver bad for your mental health.
This makes me sad. Please don't speak to people like this. The small pieces of humanity that people sincerely share are about the only thing that it is worth living for. What a dark world we would live in when our public sphere is filled with insincerity. I can't infer anything about you from a single comment but it must be incredibly isolating and lonely to talk to you when you are in this mindset. I can see your good intentions but you have communicated a sadness and defensiveness that presents cynicism as truth.
I feel you've misread me as objecting to the author's sincerity - I don't think there's anything wrong with that! What I meant was that the internet, where all communication is necessarily quasi-personal and heavily mediated, is really not the best place to reach toward for mental health help, and that it's tremendously important to maintain or pursue genuine interpersonal contact, unmediated by screens or abstractions.
I agree. We all have thoughts and feelings and emotions; denying that, making that invisible, hiding the mere fact of your humanity is surely a difficult and sad way to exist. It is OK to feel things; it is OK to write about your feelings; it is OK to publish those writings wherever you like.
They spoke with respect and pointed out that, from the point of career growth, they may need to talk to someone. They pointed out that there might be more effective ways of dealing with what the blog post author is going through. This comment didn't make me sad at all, if anything I appreciated it.
I see the opposite: OP's post sounds like a cry for help, and paints a picture of someone that is not in a good place mentally.
anigbrowl might have been too direct and harsh (I would say the first paragraph of his comment could be worded differently), but he was very clear in the second paragraph about where to go from here.
If this is truly how OP thinks and this post is how they feel about everything that happened, I strongly recommend for OP to look for professional help (with emphasis on "professional").
Thanks!
I normally don't publish sappy essays like this, but I wanted to try sharing a common experience of rejection with a loud call for optimism and self-growth. I'm still learning how to be an authentic/vulnerable person, and I may have missed the mark
I like myself now. I really do. But sometimes that old self-doubt comes roaring back and I have to beat it down with a stick. You're totally right -- internet strangers cannot beat those feelings down for me.
By the time I published this, I was already back in a great headspace and moving on to the next thing :)
My hope is that somebody reads the essay and grows 1% more motivated to grab a stick and beat down their own self-doubts. I'll be sure to put that front-and-center in future essays
In my opinion this type of blogging - writing about genuine personal experience, ideals, feelings - is a positive.
At the end of the day the grandfather comment is more or less correct, the internet is a cold unfeeling whatever. But the act of writing from the heart is deeply, genuinely human and in this day and age I feel that the more human things I do, the better. And perhaps by being more obviously human will inspiring others to be more obviously human, and eventually making the internet (and perhaps the world) less of a cold and unfeeling whatever.
This is the best advice. There was a moment in time where being vulnerable on the net was okayish. I don’t think it is anymore. Its best to work on personal issues with your professional therapist and/or with your trusted group of friends.
This is the advice that I hope the author takes heed of the most.
I'll add that what qualifies as “weird” or “quirky” on the web is probably a world’s different than what did in the past. And the weird and quirky things that people are willing to indulge or entertain in certain online communities does not represent what the rest of the world is aware of or even finds appreciable.
You be you. You will find your people and your place.
It may just be that Anthropic isn't it.
I had a company that was like a white elephant for me for a long time. Got in there, and I will say: It was one of the worst experiences I had in my career.
Not all that glitters is gold, and happiness is often only discovered when it is gone. If you can avoid those two pitfalls in life. You'll do well better than me.
I can’t imagine why someone would want to work for a specific company. Even team to team can go from terrible experience to great experience
It shouldn’t surprise you that people like the work or products specific companies work on and have a dream to work on those too. The actual experience of working there though is hard to know in advance.
In my case, it was more: It was a company where we just kept near missing, and it was a very logical fit.
But it was a bad team fit. 100%.
That said, sometimes one has to have a few bad experiences to actually know what good is.
RSU's. Nothing less, nothing more.
Hear hear. I joined a company which made a prosumer product I truly loved using. However, shortly after jointing i realized the company was nothing that I hoped for (Ancient tech, toxic culture, micro-management. All red-flags you can imagine). Fortunately a small startup made a blipp on my radar and after interviewing with them, as I apparently made a good impression, I got an offer so I immediately switched. I didn't realize it at the time but this happened to be a major inflection point in my career (technologically, socially and economically) for which I will be ever thankful. Not exactly OP's experience but my takeaway is that sometimes, even if you think you want to work at a place, it might not be the best option for you. There are so many more opportunities out there.
Overall, I enjoyed the essay and agree with the messaging. However, there were a few sentences that threw me off. I personally struggle with self-esteem issues, and I found these words extremely triggering, despite being sandwiched between words of self-affirmation.
> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
> I don't mind feeling ugly or low-status or whatever -- I know my place.
> I don't need (or deserve) your sympathy.
It's difficult to tell if this is just rhetoric / sarcasm, or if the writer successfully processed through these initial feelings. Either way, I take these moments seriously because it's not healthy to let these feelings grow.
If you feel like you're struggling, I encourage you to talk to someone -- preferably a therapist, but anyone supportive works like a friend or family.
If you're adamant about not talking to someone, consider reading The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown.
So what would the therapist convince him of? That his work was brilliant irrespective of the outcome? That's just gaslighting. (Not to say that the interview evaluation was fair)
You would hope that it would help him come to an acceptance of himself in such a way that he was less likely to engage in this kind of negative self talk.
The reasons why companies hire or don't hire someone usually have very little with the candidate themselves. From my experience, whenever this machine needs another cog, almost any will do - usually the first one within reach. And when it doesn't, not even the shiniest one will be of interest. So it's probably nothing personal OP
Nah. Every company has its lore about what makes a good candidate and they try to test for that. The lore is often rubbish (as in: there's often little correlation between interview performance and on-job performance), but there is still a process and that process rejects most applicants.
Or maybe it has everything to do with the candidate. They author recognizes they have spent much of their life being an unlikable jerk. Past actions can come back to bite you.
I tend to agree, which makes it all the more amusing that companies brag about being so selective. It seems like largely artificial and random selectivity.
Putting so much self worth into a single job application strikes me as unhealthy. Hiring decisions are have absurdly high variance. Everyone I know has been rejected from a job that seemed like a perfect, usually many times over. I'd say that's far more common than actually getting a given job.
Steve Yegge has a great story about Google HR doing an exercise with the eng hiring committee where they reviewed their own anonymized interview packets and they decided not to hire 40% of themselves.
particularly at these high prestige companies where open roles are likely to get thousands of applicants
I recently interviewed for Anthropic, 6 rounds, recruiter was great, said they were putting together an offer letter. I met one of the managers, then another came back from vacation... and then they decided not to give me an offer.
I asked for feedback, and the recruiter sounded frustrated (about the internal process), because they had a moving bar on what was wanted from the hiring managers. I know I hadn't completely aced one of the interviews (they had me do a second one), and apparently they thought it was good enough on initial review, but when coming back to review it again it was not good enough.
It seems like they are going through growing pains as a company.
I had an interview at a big tech company last year where I had a verbal offer letter which then got rescinded when a VP went over my interview feedback and decided I didn't come across as enough of a team player!
That feedback occurred immediately after another interview where I failed because I didn't show enough individual drive, I had talked too much about working in my team.
The irony was a bit too much.
Probably not even about whether it was good enough at all, just random managers making random decisions by how they were feeling the day they interviewed you. Any time a company has a LOT of applicants, like any big tech company does, the less you should take any info at all from a given rejection or even an offer. It’s kinda random.
You’ll typically get better info only when a company is small and has a role in low demand and they only had a couple of people apply. This situation is pretty rare.
I posted about this in another thread of this comment section; submit a data privacy request for all and any data pertaining to the hiring process and interview, it won't negatively impact your chances in the future.
> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
This is not how to understand this. They may have been hiring for say 50 positions.
They will just fill up those 50 positions with the people who reach a threshold, not stack-rank _everyone_ who reaches the threshold and pick the top 50.
There's little ROI in doing that, and potentially it reduces their list of candidates by taking longer.
You might have been mid way through the test just as person 50 was offered their role.
Here's why it's wrong to think you did something wrong when you get rejected from a job:
Sometimes, a company has multiple candidates that pass the interview with flying colors for a single role. They need to pick someone, and reject the remaining great candidates. If luck or timing was different and you were the only great candidate, they would have just picked you. But now they have a few, and have a hard time deciding who is "better". Often, they kind of punt on hunches, gut feelings, or things that don't really say anything about you at all.
You end up with the "Unfortunately..." email anyway.
If you do happen to get some feedback, well that's actionable. It's something you can improve and the next time at bat you'll be in a better position to do well.
As someone that recently failed a tech interview at the last stage after a long search, the only way to move forward is to just keep moving. Given your motivation and passion, there's definitely another place for you.
Also important to note, just because you like the product doesn't mean you'll love the team, anthropic is a well paying job but it's also just a job.
Somewhat OT but I just don’t like the current iteration of DevRel.
Initially I saw the folks in this field as hype-persons, but their concrete output was tools that were useful for developers. The author did create this! But it was in service of landing a role at the company.
The people that work in this field now seem to mostly just get into beefs on the internet, create funny posts on Linkedin. Which… doesn’t seem very useful for developers.
Why is Anthropic hiring developers? Amodei said that AI will be generating all the code by the end of the year.
Someone's got to tell Claude what to write
Maybe they aren't, they could just be hosting these interviews as a fresh source of data for Claude to slurp up! ... sorry, I shouldn't be stirring up conspiracy theories this late on a Friday.
> I can't turn my weird off, so I think I defensively dial it up sometimes
Hits close to home! For what it's worth, it sounds like you have an admirable level of self-reflection and - despite being painful at times - I expect that this will pay for itself over the course of your life.
I wish I had the courage to post and talk like this more. I really resonated with the authors words as these kinds of feelings make up a lot of my internal monologuing some days.
If you are this emotionally invested in a job without having done it for some time, this is an accidental or insightful act of compassion from an amorphous over-funded company.
You shouldn’t even get this emotionally invested in a job you actually have. A corporation can’t love you back.
> I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.
So the only ones who make it are 100% flawless?
I do my very best when interviewing to ignore honest mistakes and look at the person. My criteria is more around, is this person demonstrating the ability to learn and grow? If so, everything else can be taught or developed.
> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
This is a really bad way of thinking. Apart from the fact that he doesn’t know the reason behind the decision (and this already heroically assumes that there was any reasoning to begin with), why would you make yourself so dependent on total strangers?
Every single time in my life that I’ve failed, there was a silver lining.
The only way to lose at the game of life is to give up.
There’s an old Soviet saying “even when you’re eaten by a bear , there’s still at least two ways out.”
You’re never out of options, there’s always new angles of imagination.
Yeah, I recently had an offer letter in hand, the company flew me out to do a final security review since it was a sensitive cyber sec role, did a 2-hour long polygraph test which went quite well honestly, but then 3 weeks later they told me they have decided to move ahead with another candidate? Made no sense and broke me down for weeks. Totally defeated. I still don't understand how they could move ahead with another candidate if they had already given me an official offer letter, but eh life goes on I suppose.
That would be a rare case where I would reach back for more information. Rescinding an offer is, in my book, a huge black mark against the company and I would consider shaming them in a blog post as well.
Was this your first polygraph? I never had one, but I heard that passing the first one for a high level ticket virtually always takes several tries.
Did they tell you that you passed the poly?
Yeah it was my first polygraph so I was sweating buckets! The polygraph was relatively simple though, they tell you all the questions they will be asking beforehand, so nothing unexpected is thrown at you.
I think I passed the poly cause if I didn't then they would tell me that instead of saying they selected another candidate and honestly I was so depressed and defeated that I just didn't bother communicating with them after that, 3 weeks of constant waiting and reaching out for updates and then finally getting an 'Unfortunately' email kind of did it for me.
Are you willing to name the company? Shame them here. This sounds wrong.
I do not know what the details of the situation were, for example was the offer contingent on additional background checks that you failed or on something else, but if it was related to a US security clearance I would seriously consider filing a request for information -- they are required to tell you their findings.
It would probably be an interesting reading (unless one has a very thin skin) and I would do it just for fun, regardless of the pulled offer. My 2c.
I know there are comments here ridiculing the OP about posting this. Some asking OP to be stronger. All I want to say is posting something like this takes way more strength than what those commenters will ever allow themselves to experience. Expressing is a way of healing and no the internet is not a cold dry space. It is a place of feeling humans who could all use encouragement to show vulnerability like this. I don’t know if OP got some healing from this but a lot of similarly lost readers felt a little less alone.
What did you flunk? There was no interview in both cases..
Agreed. I saw no flunk at all, let alone an interview flunk.
I would expect most of us here have faced many rejections, some of which were deeply painful. When you care about something, some say, losing it hurts. (But was there ever a guarantee? Or was it only an expectation?)
Some people find ways to focus on the process itself and don't couple their well-being to the "end result" (whether success or failure).* This is a practice. You can learn it from others and from experience.
It is one thing to be honest with oneself and say "Yes, this thought is coming into my mind". You don't have to deny that feeling. That is one thought in your head. Acknowledge it and move on. You don't have to repeat it. You don't have to try to 'analyze' it. You can think about something else, and changing your brain patterns is probably a good idea. If the same idea pops up again, fine. Remember to be patient with yourself.
Some ideas that might work for you include: Find emotional support where you can. / Learn cognitive techniques to remind yourself to not fall into ruts. / Put sticky notes on walls. / Do something totally different. / Sunshine and fresh air can do a lot of good.
If one of these things doesn't seem to help, thank yourself for trying it, don't worry, try something else. If you need more support (mental health for example), seek it out.
* And how do you define the end-result? How much you helped people you care about? Maybe a time-averaged well-being metric? Something else? This is deeply personal, and I think it is worth reflecting on.
This whole essay is cringe. They're not your girlfriend. They're not "guiding humanity toward post-scarity AI abundance" whatever the hell that means.
Getting rejected from a job always stings, but it's worse if you build it up to be more than it is. There's a dozen other AI companies out there shoveling the same shit, go apply to them. It's a job, not a vocation. Try to keep it all in perspective.
chill. it's a personal reflection on a personal blog.
> On top of their secret take-home assignment, I independently published diggit.dev and a companion blogpost about my [sincerely] positive experiences with Claude. I was hoping that some unsolicited "extra credit" would make me look like an exceptional/ambitious candidate.
As an employer, such brown-nosing would put me off. Being exceptionally eager to please can be a red flag.
Dear OP, start a high quality AI code YouTube/Twitch/Substack and you’ll do more “devrel” than they ever could.
If it’s really your favorite thing, your content will be world class.
If you do this, I’ll be your first paid sub. Get in the arena, OP (and maybe don’t quit your day job until you’ve gained much more steam! :)
Hey! In my opinion the rejection doesn't really matter.
I really like diggit.dev, your approach, and I appreciate that you use Elm!
Keep pushing forward!
> I can't turn my weird off
Why not?
If you have conscious insight into what behaviour is or isn't "weird" in a specific situation or environment, you absolutely can choose to turn it off, or at least damp it down. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't, and there's no judgement. But if you can identify it, you can choose.
Author here! I should say that I can't turn my weird off quickly and consistently :) The feedback loops in social situations are slow. I've been working really hard on my listening/people skills, but these things take time, and I'm probably just being too impatient
Fair answer - I shouldn't automatically apply my own situation/lessons to others. :)
I do wonder to what extent one could view it as a pattern recognition challenge, though. To an extent, what you wrote resonates with me: growing up, I was probably relatively "weird" compared to the norm of my peer-group, and yes, often either immediate feedback, or recognition of feedback sufficiently quickly, wasn't present.
But it was possible to learn, via reflection after the event. And after n awkward or painful reflections, I was able to analyse which aspects of my behaviour were judged negatively, and over time, those reflections embedded and I was able to slowly change my behaviour. And I never saw this as an 'act' or a 'mask' - I always saw it as a continual process of self-improvement, where the goal was to be better (according to the standards or expectations of the particular slice of the world I was part of at that time) - more sociable, funnier, a more engaging conversationalist, a better kinder friend or partner, whatever.
The (surprising?) positive flip-side to this approach is that as long as you have the right goals (and maybe role models) you can actually end up far more functional and able in many domains than your peers.
--
(I've often said privately that I see life as a continual process of self-improvement, and this absolutely wasn't something I got from parents, teachers, peers or books: it was these formative learning experiences that formed that private philosophy.)
Because sometimes having been "weird" is only recognized in hindsight. Attempting to project a persona, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_masking, is already difficult at the best of times. It's especially difficult under stress, like being in an interview.
I was selected to represent my high school as a candidate for computer science at a state-level competition. The teacher in charge of selection made it clear that he very much didn't want to pick me -- there just weren't any better options. He explained that my portfolio was all based on user skills. Nothing showed a deeper understanding of the underlying principles of computing. I didn't incorporate any of this feedback and was thoroughly humbled later on. It was a well-deserved loss.
Twenty plus years later and I've still never had more useful interview-related feedback and I'm still grateful he was willing to share that criticism. Now, having been on the flip side of the process quite a bit, I especially appreciate how hard it is to provide meaningful "negative" feedback.
I totally get the author’s frustration. I think such motivation and talent is a sign that there would be plenty of other groups happy to have the applicant. The trick to is connect with them, and not get so hung up on Anthropic specifically. Easier said than done though.
I wish I could unread this, gonna wash my eyes now
Why?
Because it's cringe. I'll never understand why people publish essentially personal diary entries in public spaces. It must be some kind of shame kink.
100% agree—
> The first time I flunked an Anthropic interview (ca. 2022), I accidentally clicked a wrong button during their automated coding challenge. It was easy to swallow that failure. I made an honest mistake; I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.
> This is different. I didn't misclick any buttons. My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
That’s a physically difficult passage for me to read, what an awful way to talk about yourself.
>>My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough. >what an awful way to talk about yourself
He's is not completely wrong with his line of thought, but I agree it's awful.
It took me long to figure this out for myself, the truth is that OP needs to grow up, and this is the perfect opportunity to do it.
Too much emphasis on this position and this company.
> I posted diggit.dev to HackerNews and it hit the frontpage!
Again, too much emphasis on HackerNews and the position of a post
What do you want from them? Are you confused or distracted by all this?
This isn't a big deal, just a small thing. Be stronger.
Focus on what will bring long-term peace and benefit. Experience every process and enjoy everything, rather than frustration, self-blame, pain, or other negative emotions. It's always better to find solutions and enjoy the present moment.
I don't want to teach or instruct anyone, just a little of my thoughts. If you feel offended, sorry for that.
The post reads to me like all those movies about the nerd with a heart of gold that the hot girl will recognize and eventually marry.... which only happens in those movies.
Do people really not understand that companies don't care one whit about your personality? They only care about whether you can make them more money. And that extends to interviewers; the number one thing interviewers care about is can you meaningfully contribute to the existing roadmap, not whether you can bring your own unique perspective. This is especially true at mega huge corporate places like anthropic.
> Do people really not understand that companies don't care one whit about your personality?
When I worked at the original incarnation of HBO Max our #1 hiring criteria was "not an asshole".
When I joined MSFT out of college, they were big on hiring for future potential.
In any large company you're going to be reorged to a brand new project within a couple years of joining, so being flexible and capable of learning quickly is of paramount importance.
To you and anyone else who's struggled with the roller coaster of rejection and not feeling good enough I highly recommend stopping what you're doing right now and watching Jonah Hill's incredible movie, "Stutz" https://www.netflix.com/title/81387962 . As someone who recently went through a barrage of rejections and self doubt this movie blew me away and offers practical "tools" that may help.
Great post.
My gut reaction is something like: "don't wait around to be picked, get out there and do great stuff"
Want to help the world get the most out of claude? Go out there and do it at an ability and velocity beyond what others think is possible. Go so hard friends think you're mad. That devs consuming your stuff think you're mad.
Create so much amazingly useful/helpful content and help so many people in so many ways that looking back in 1-2 years at the idea of working for anthropic would seem insane to you.
Hiring is always a sh*tshow. The only thing that matters is survival: keep applying, keep grinding, keep growing.
And if there's any opportunity to show off, don't be shy :)
You’re incredibly talented, Taylor. Their loss, sincerely. If they didn’t hire you, know that it wasn’t the right fit and you shouldn’t be there. Your talents are needed elsewhere.
The disappointment of not getting a job offer seems reasonable. The disappointment about things that are core to who you are seems overboard to me. I feel the author could learn to be more comfortable in their own skin.
Also re this:
> “He’s cute, but he’s too weird”
If someone’s thinking this about you, you’re just not a good fit for each other. It isn’t that you’ve failed somehow. Maybe they’re cute but too “normal”.
I also got rejected by Anthropic, and now I’m working at an amazing startup instead. Anthropic’s hiring process is dumb, you shouldn’t take it personally.
I think a lot of these organizations are just really immature in their hiring because of growth. That’s my experience with Sweden’s Loveable at least.
That coupled with a high amount of candidates I wouldn’t think much of failing one (biased, I ”failed” one this summer :) )
You sound like you'd be a great teammate. Hang in there and best of luck next time.
Hey, I feel you on rejection - it stings. Just remember that, like any company, that place is just a collection of humans making imperfect decisions with limited information. Trust me. Your worth isn't defined by one hiring decision.
I wish I could right like this. The flow is crazy and the words are honest and beautiful.
Not sure how I feel about “front-paging hackernews” as part of a devrel take home test. Obviously, I understand how important it is—I want my devrels to write content that drives front page traffic. But as a HN user…
Author here! Just want to be extra crystal clear that Anthropic gave me a boring/standard coding project. I decided to post a parallel project to HN to demonstrate that I was able to quickly create engaging software. They in no way asked or insinuated that I share anything online
Does anyone value coming off as psychologically stable any more?
> I made an honest mistake; I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.
Follow-up: do you expect companies to fire employees who make mistakes?
> I can't turn my weird off
That might be your problem right there. Deciding you can't do something is always a self-fulfilling prophecy. How hard have you tried?
I learned to turn my weird off a long time ago. It wasn't easy. It took many years. It was painful at times. But I did it. If I can do it, you probably can too.
P.S. You might want to think about whether or not turning your weird off is something you actually want. Being normal comes with its own set of trade-offs. But if you are going to keep your weird you should do it because it's something you decide you want, not because it's something you decide you are powerless to change.
Faking normalcy can often make you more unattractive than being yourself. I suspect that people can sense when someone isn't being genuine about themselves.
Yes, that's what makes it hard. You can't just fake it. It's is the same thing that makes acting hard. Good actors aren't faking it.
You can definitely fake it. Most people at $BIG_CORP aren't half as jovial and excited as they seem. Whatever, it's fine - we don't need to be perfectly authentic at all times, sometimes you can just go with the flow a little.
Is "God actor" a term reserved for only the best actors? :P
> God actor
Oops.
Not true, and why "be yourself" has died as dating advice.
Do not "be yourself" unless being yourself is attractive. Even "be the best version of yourself" doesn't work if you're a brony or some other socially unacceptable group
This kind of shitty blue pill advice is why MAGA, the manosphere, etc are bigger than ever. The rise of fascism is walking on a grave of blue pills.
lol relax. I'm not saying people should never change or that they're all perfect the way they are. I'm saying the opposite: if you want to be an attractive, interesting person, and you're not that person yet, you need to spend the time and energy necessary to actually change rather than faking it. You don't have to drop your existing hobbies (e.g. being a brony is fine) but it's nice to also have a few others you can share with others (e.g. getting into running or music or something as well).
No, the real blue pill is pretending any of your culture war manosphere shit matters or wasting any time thinking about that, because every second you waste on that is a second you could've spent improving yourself.
I like weird people. I think most creative people like weird people. If "weird" means you have idiosyncrasies, then yeah, all of us do. In my experience, once you get to know a person, you realize there is no such thing as "normal".
Now if "weird" in this case actually means "kind of an asshole" then that's a different thing, and yeah, that's definitely worth working on.
"I spent so much of my life being an unlikable jerk" - so yeah, it sounds like that could be (somewhat?) true, or maybe they're just very self-critical.
I like "weird coffee people", and folks that are obsessed with fun hobbies. I'm not so into sociopaths though, so it depends on the kind of weird.
Really refreshing to read this. Sometimes I feel like an alien among the weird for having gone over to the “dark side” (to the normies)
Well, they could also dial down the weird during an interview, and slowly reveal their more personal side as they get to know their co-workers better. This seems so obvious it's barely worth stating, but it seems like there's a false dichotomy in their post (no weird XOR weird).
I mean, everyone is weird when you look really close. But we can be cool with one another. To me it just sounds like they're still quite sensitive to judgement, and looking for explanations as to the rejection. I totally get that, I'm in the same boat. Sometimes you just don't have a good explanation, and you have to solicit valuable feedback elsewhere.
> It was easy to swallow that failure. I made an honest mistake; I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.
what a ridiculous statement
Having been from the other side of the table. You did not flunk anything again.
A job process is not an exam where if you do well you succeed.
Your "performance" plays a small role in whether you are accepted (maybe less than 30%). The rest is:
- The pipeline: that is who are your competitors, is there someone late in the process, is there someone a manager worked with / knows
- Your CV: obviously at the point of the interview, you can't change your history
- The position fit: basically who they're looking for. They might have a profile in mind (let's say someone extrovert to do lots of talks, or someone to devrel to enterprise) where you simply don't fit.
- The biases: And there is looot of these. For instance, some would open your blog and say it's unprofessional because of the UI. Not saying that is the case, it's simply their biases.
So, my advice, you reached hn front page twice in a couple of months. Most people, me included, never did. You clearly have something. Find work with people that see that.
Your site makes me think I have to wipe off my screen
Anthropic from a technology perspective does interesting work, but from a business perspective its long-term viability is unclear. LLM generated slop will unlikely make it through the valley of despair in the Gartner hype cycle.
Rule #3: popularity is not an indication of utility.
Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win.
The fact is all employees that produce intangible assets look like a fiscal liability on paper. If you don't have project history in a given area, than managers quietly add training costs and retention issue forecasts on that hiring decision.
I found the dynamic range anecdote by Steve Jobs (a controversial figure) was rather accurate across many business contexts =3
https://youtu.be/TRZAJY23xio?feature=shared&t=2360
Where are these rules from (I asked Claude but it doesn't know either)?
Rule #6: Perspective is earned, and cannot be given freely.
If I recall, it was mostly gleaned from meetings with startup CEO/CTO after years in operation. Mostly just documents the various cons pulled on technical people... like illegally farming CVs for LLM products, and cheap work Visas. =3
> Perspective is earned, and cannot be given freely.
Perspective is developed rather than earned. Having said that, a numbered list of rules can be given freely. That's, like, one of the points of writing things down or otherwise committing them to long-term storage.
>"Perspective is developed"
That is often academic institutional marketing rhetoric. What seems reasonable or lucrative to the naive is not necessarily worth the legal encumbrances or investment risks.
Rule #16: "One should listen to the person that signs the Checks, as the bank has already validated who is currently in charge of the account". Everyone has an opinion, but some opinions are more profitable than others...
Best of luck =3
> One should listen to the person that signs the Checks...
kek. keknado, even.
DevRel is basically marketing to devs. So it helps to be more marketer than dev. And these are like two opposite poles.
heh i got rejected from google about 15 years ago. I remember exactly where i was standing (outside on the sidewalk), color and placement of leaves on the grass, even the specific joints and cracks on the sidewalk i was standing on when i got the news. I don't hold a grudge or have any regrets but i remember that moment vividly.
But were you non threatening and likable? In many cases that will be a greater factor than your technical competence.
> Over the past decade, I've been striving to spread joy, to do good, to be better. I'm trying so hard.
To give some advice that is loving but entirely unkind: knock it off.
No amount of spreading joy or do gooding is going to make you feel better. It can not, anymore than doing math homework will convince yourself that you are smart.
The problem is not what you want, it's how you want it. Or to put it another way, be the ocean not the wave.
On the bright side, do you think that Claude would pass any coding interview without problems?
I sent my application in a week ago. So what you’re saying is I still have a chance?
The best sales people don't get crushed by rejection. They are clear eyed about what is in their control, what can be learned, and what must be improved in the future.
Then they do this magical thing called — moving on. It's an incredible skill to cultivate.
You're amongst many of us who have also faced rejection.
what was the position? what are your credentials to fulfill that position? I feel like cover letters, and recommendations are just icing on the cake of core skills and experiences, not the entire cake.
Probably auto rejected by Claude screening agent. Nothing PERSONAL.
The author writes "I respect [Anthropic's] approach to responsible AI adoption," Anthropic of course being the asswipes who published this turd[0] on university students' use of LLMs. It starts with the absolute gem:
> AI systems are no longer just specialized research tools: they’re everyday academic companions.
The article basically shrugs its shoulders at the problem of LLM-driven cheating and, to the best of my recollection, shows not a shred of honesty or willingness to face any of the real issues. Fuck Anthropic.
[0] https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-education-report-ho...
Start your own company.
I truly do not understand the use of this public self castigation; it does not strike me as healthy, if anything it’s a cry for help, and I’m uncomfortable being exposed to it.
In some cultures, it's perfectly normal, and not too long ago was generally considered healthy.
See, for example, self-deprecating British wit. Or anyone from the upper Midwest.
There is a big difference between self deprecating wit and this.
Try again in six months. Don't give up.
This is so sad. Can’t imagine weighing my self worth on whether I get a job at a company that’s clearly partly to blame for the economic bubble. So what you didn’t get access to a get rich quick scheme opportunity - move on.
I will add to some of the other excellent comments here: my time as a hiring manager at Apple and other Silicon Valley companies convinced me that I can never know the real reason I do not get a gig.
I saw good people rejected for stupid reasons, illegal reasons, and borderline reasons. It’s just a decision that is personal and largely irrational to the people who control the process.
Many people in a position to hire want someone they believe they can control. Do you come off as a doormat? Congratulations, you are more employable.
Many hiring managers want to be with attractive people. Are you attractive?
Lately I’ve been thinking I might have better odds making a straight shot for ASI on my own over practicing and rehearsing the material that needs to be presented almost perfectly in the AI interviews. I’ve worked at FANG in ML / applied research for almost a decade but still can’t even get a screening interview at the top places without asking someone I know for a referral. And I really hate bugging former coworkers for referrals. Normally end up procrastinating on reaching out until the job postings just disappear haha.
> I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.
I mean--maybe their interview process is overly harsh? They could miss out some good candidates that way.
> I don't need (or deserve) your sympathy.
Hey person, don't be so hard on yourself. The world is already hard enough to just live in. Hoping you find an alternate and maybe more enjoyable career path :)
This is what blogging was, should be, and maybe will be again some day.
Fuck some companies and their opaque, convoluted and too-precious hiring processes.
51 game number hack
> take-home assignment
That's the point at which I would have stopped the process personally.
> That's the point at which I would have stopped the process personally.
Why is that? I love take-home assignments. At least, if it's just an initial get-to-know-you interview, and then the assignment. What I utterly despise is the get-to-know-you interview, then a tech interview with the entire dev team, then a take-home, then a meeting with the CTO.
I will never, ever, ever go through with any job that has an interview process like this again. I always ask up-front what their interview process is like.
If a take-home or anything else (automated half-hour online test or whatever) taking more than a couple minutes and not requiring as much time investment from them as you comes before they've winnowed down much of the field—if it's used as any kind of screener—I'd be out. That time's better spent sending more applications (or, IDK, drilling leetcode) if there are more than a very-few candidates still in the running for a given position.
If you want early stage bulk screeners, go for it, I'm sure you need them, but don't take much of my time or the math don't math.
Because it's time theft?
Why would I spend 4 hours (in the best case scenario, otherwise days) on the very first step of the application process, where, regardless of my resume, I have an extremely high chance to be rejected, while the company puts literally no time in?
Well, that's different. If it's a super challenging take-home, with requirements that exceed 1 page, then yeah, I'd agree. Most take-homes that I've received have been super simple, though. And they're usually not the first step, but the final step, in my experience.
Simple does not mean short. I can give you a one line take-home assignment that will take a lifetime to build.
In any case, if it exceeds one or two HOURS, it's too long. And I have never seen a take-home assignment that did not.
(some companies pay for your time for take-home assignments, obviously that changes everything)
I've been at a past company where we (well, mostly I) set up a take-home that would take a mid-level web dev familiar with the material maybe 15-30 minutes to knock out, basically just to test if candidates could produce responsive CSS layouts and knew how to make a proper web form work. It was wild how many we got back that still didn't account for basic (explicitly outlined) use cases like 'works on a phone screen'.
A take home should come with a project already set up that you're asked to modify.
Most don't and they waste your time setting up all the boilerplate.
Last year I applied to Anthropic. I did one of those HackerRank assessments and scored 49/50 on my implementation of a K/V store with TTL, get/put/append, and some other operations I can't remember.
Right after that, they said there were no positions available. It was pretty disappointing.
wow.
there's only info in a rejection if the company that is rejecting cares about their field ..., meaning so rare almost no professional has ever witnessed anything like it ... ever ...
anyway, ... dude ... if any of the shit you write is true, you are applying at a submissive company while having zero submissive traits except those you fake ...
And here's my dating advice: you want someone you can fight with all the time and chill the next second and then fight again, while knowing you don't want anyone else ... and vice versa ... it's quite likely something along the unwritten but equally sarcastic, cynic, ironic reversed (inversed?) lines of Tim 'The Wannabe-Leprechaun' Munchkins (Minchin) "If I didn't have you" ... good luck
Jesus, this apologizing blogpost... you have zero idea why they rejected you. And yet you are on all fours and praying to a nonexistent god.
typo: post-scarity
I enjoyed reading, thank you
Rejection is just another word for redirection, looking back far enough you will understand why it wasn't a good idea.
oof
Written like AI slop for an AI slop generating company. Great.
Does this really belong on HN? Someone didn’t get a job they wanted. The end.
Do I need to clean my screen or is it just your site