[LaFolle]

When I got a job at one of the FAANG companies I told a friend how many rejections I got. The friend said: “it’s easier to narrate your failures once you’ve emerged victorious”.

She was right, I realized.

Now I’m looking for job again, have been rejected by 4 companies, no offer in hand yet and I’m open about it.

[worldmerge]

Thank you for this. I recently graduated in May with a bachelors in CS and looking at LinkedIn has been very discouraging. I know it's unhealthy to compare yourself to others but it's hard, especially when you see a lot of other people having success. Before the pandemic I was banking on going to EYEO and SIGGRAPH to network with people in the creative technology space to break into it (my goal is to be a creative technologist like the Google Creative Lab), now I'm just trying to finish a personal project to showcase my skills (can't wait to share it with Hacker News), find a job, and apply for grad school in a program like NYU ITP, or a Human Computer Interaction program.

[caseysoftware]

> I was banking on going to EYEO and SIGGRAPH to network with people in the creative technology space to break into it

The secret to networking is to "network" when you don't need anything. If you meet people in your (intended) field, get to know them, learn, learn, learn, and generally establish yourself - even a little - before you need it, you'll be 100x better off when you do.

If you wait until you need it, you can come off as needy, desperate, or one of those "I only hear from them when they need something" people. I have a former friend that literally the only time I heard from her was when she was looking for work. I got in to habit of "Oh, she emailed.. must be looking for a job!" Don't be them.

[baxtr]

On a larger note: I find looking into LinkedIn quite depressing. Everyone is happy and excited and successful. There is no real value in most posts. Rather, they’re usually a variation of this:

”#supergrateful and #blessed for meeting super inspiring %SomeoneImportant today #growth #entrepreneurship %hipsterstartup #nopause”

I try to stay away from it as much as I can.

[commandertso]

Hang in there!

I’ve had a long career in technology, and for most of it I was doing project and product management, with some light coding on my own time as a hobby. Five years ago I’d finally had it with all that and went to a great coding boot camp. I did end up landing a job after that, but it was a grueling experience to go back to zero in finding jobs.

Comparing yourself to others can be incredibly draining. Not only are many of these people at different stages in their careers than you are, but you’re seeing the best faces they can put forward when you look at LinkedIn.

My advice is - own who and where you are right now. You have done a hell of a lot of work to get where you are now, and you can be proud of that. And if a company isn’t looking for someone like you - if 20 companies aren’t - that’s not on you. Keep working on your craft, keep following what networking angles you can in this crazy year, and keep the faith.

[gregsadetsky]

Hey! You might want to look into the public Creative Developers slack -- http://creative-dev.herokuapp.com/ -- there's a good community there.

Also, look into what the School for Poetic Computation is doing -- https://sfpc.io/

Happy to send you (a lot) more references / ideas of places to which you could apply, digital artist centers to follow, etc. Reach out! (email in profile)

Oh, and also -- https://www.recurse.com/ :-)

Cheers

[emit_time]

I had 11 onsites (over the course of 6-8 months) at mostly normal tech companies before getting an offer at a FAANG.

Now I've been here 6 months.

Really crazy, and I have no idea how this ended up happening. Probably a combination of studying more and getting better with every interview, finding my weaknesses and fixing them. Along with a combination of bad luck with getting rejected so many times, and good luck with the final acceptance of where I am.

Interesting thing is that I think my offer was more towards the higher end of band for this company, so who knows.

[Guest42]

What are your specialties? Place I work has openings for .net and java web app devs and full stack

[keanebean86]

I've been rejected by Google once, Amazon like 10 time (I even had an onsight in 2017), Facebook once, and Microsoft once. Apple didn't even say they didn't want me.

[hhs]

> “it’s easier to narrate your failures once you’ve emerged victorious”.

This is similar to survivorship bias, and its relationship to cause and effect stories.