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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.

> 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.

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 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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

But these are more obvious parts.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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?

Fantastically well said. I’ve also seen people literally flip a coin when unable to decide between some equally skilled candidates.

> 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

Hiring is all subjective (i.e. bs): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41049365

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.

> ...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...?

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James Christopher Kane

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.

    your dream job will not make you whole

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.

> 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.

> 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".

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.

> 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.

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?

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.

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.)

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.

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.”

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.

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.

https://xkcd.com/137/

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.

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 still have to meet a person in computer science who isn't weird

They're in devrel. If they're not publicly visible devrel isn't for them.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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particularly at these high prestige companies where open roles are likely to get thousands of applicants

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.

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.

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?

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.

You shouldn’t even get this emotionally invested in a job you actually have. A corporation can’t love you back.

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.

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

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.

Why?

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

chill. it's a personal reflection on a personal blog.

> 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.

> 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.

Where are these rules from (I asked Claude but it doesn't know either)?

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.