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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
"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.
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
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?
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...?
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.
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.
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:-)
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.
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.
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)
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
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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?
[+] [-] jp57|7 months ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] eszed|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gwbas1c|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jimmar|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Bukhmanizer|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] spectraldrift|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] commandersaki|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] matusp|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mac-mc|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] analyte123|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] devoutsalsa|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] xenotux|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] InsideOutSanta|6 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] qudat|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] xpe|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tayo42|7 months ago|reply
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
[+] [-] kristopolous|7 months ago|reply
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
[+] [-] corimaith|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] stavros|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pmarreck|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rendall|7 months ago|reply
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...?
[+] [-] jama211|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mgh2|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tdaltonc|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dasil003|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] JamesCKane|7 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] almostgotcaught|7 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] kashunstva|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tibbar|7 months ago|reply
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:-)
[+] [-] anigbrowl|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ilc|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] markerz|7 months ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] 3shv|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pyzhianov|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rurp|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pjm331|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] KerryJones|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] 4ndrewl|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] koliber|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] endymion-light|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pm90|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pumanoir|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] n4r9|7 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] campbel|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kev009|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelcampbell|7 months ago|reply
So the only ones who make it are 100% flawless?
[+] [-] HSO|7 months ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] josh2600|7 months ago|reply
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.