Ask HN: What to do after failing final interviews twice?

There are plenty of non-unicorn places that are awesome to work at. Maybe focus on some startups and other places, you don't have to take the job if they offer you. You are just as much interviewing them to see if it's a good fit.

The other thing too is the more you interview the more comfortable you are with it. You have already experienced probably the tougher interviews out there. Keep at it and you will land somewhere you love.

I don't know the source of this quote, but it was repeated by a physicist in the documentary "Particle Fever".

They just have the luxury of being very picky and rejecting people for no real reason. There are plenty of great tech companies out there, I promise you.

Companies I've worked for in the past have hired far less than 50% of the people they brought in for interviews. It's like a blind date, you know a little about the person, but there's still a lot of missing information so not getting the job is the norm, not the exception.

That said, asking for feedback on what you could improve might provide you with insight. Also, review your resumé, do you think the companies expected a competency you don't yet have?

Head-up, there are lots of big companies out there. Some, like Google, still have a lot of choice in hire, while others (Yahoo comes to mind) can't be quite as picky! :)

Seriously though: get involved with a local users group & meet people interested in your language/stack of choice. Get to know a bit about the smaller places they work & why they do it. Network, look for new opportunities & take a run at some place where you can have some impact.

Disclaimer: due to personal biases and the shared experiences of friends & colleagues, I would _NEVER_ recommend someone who loves their CAREER filed get pulled into a JOB at a big U.S. company. Take my advice with a grain of salt (or perhaps a full kilogram).

Not sure about Amazon's hiring process but from what I hear, you're better off not working there.

I've learned at least with Google, sometimes you get bad luck with the draw...and in my case, I had some quite bad luck with recruiters who weren't the greatest communicators. One technical phone screen was waived due to the team's familiarity with my work, only to be rejected as not what they were looking for for that specific role.

Also, sometimes rejection is a blessing. The important thing is to make the most of your experiences.

Developer interviews are similar to the SATs/GREs/any other standardized test. It's not a test of your general ability so much as it is a test of your ability to do well on a standardized testing format. And in general, the best way to ace those is to practice interview problems a lot.

Apply again next time you are looking for a job, if Amazon and Google really are the sort of companies you want to work for.

Think back on your interviews and figure out what you did wrong, then study up on that.

And next time, prepare very carefully, with a focus on algorithms and data structures. I would use this book, although it's a bit dated now: https://www.amazon.com/Data-Structures-Algorithms-Alfred-Aho...

This one may also be useful: https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Jon-Bentley/dp...

Realize that even if you're doing well, interviewers can still perceive you poorly, and the process is weighted to reflect how much more painful a bad hire is than rejecting a good hire.

Practice is going to improve your performance and put you at ease with the process, and give you a better understanding of when your performance was not up to snuff versus just not meshing with how the interviewers wanted to interact with you.

What's important is that you reflect on things you could have done better in your interviews and learn from it.

I'm assuming you're a software engineer....

You didn't say anything about your skill level or experience, or what level you were looking for. Interviewers are often given a target level to interview you at, and if you are not at that level you will get low marks (though better interviewers will often suggest you be hired at a lower level).

You should have a pretty good idea of how you did on each question. Did you check edge cases? Solid test coverage? Did you ask clarifying questions? How good were your answers? If the obvious answer is O(n^2) then there's an answer that is O(n log n). If the obvious answer is O(2^n) then there's an answer that is O(n^2). Look for infinite loops. Memoization. Recursion, and unrolling that recursion into a loop.

Don't get discouraged. You were just handed a study guide for your next interview in 6 months.

Remember to ask questions about the company. Even if you know the answers. An interviewee that's asking questions looks more engaged and is more likely to get more attention. I like asking questions like "What's the best/worst part of working here?" Things that it's legit to ask more than one interviewer, in case they talk and share your questions.

Acting calm and relaxed, and being able to hold a conversation helps a lot. You're not just interviewing for your ability. You're going to be part of a team, and if your interviewer can't imagine working with you, that may translate into a pass.

Learn something new. Disjoint sets are a great tool for interviews. I've taken questions that the interviewer thought was O(n^2) and solved it in O(α(n)) which grows so slowly it might as well be O(1). I boned up on proof by induction before my Google interviews and it helped carry me through.

Practice interviewing. I went on half a dozen interviews to prep for my interview at Google. I occasionally interview even if I'm not looking. I've had 10 jobs (I used to jump around a lot) and I've probably gone on well over a hundred interviews. Most were practice ones I didn't particularly care about, some were practices that turned into jobs. Very few were specific jobs I was working to get.

You might have just gotten unlucky. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... has a good synopsis of the stress and dejection that not getting hired holds, particularly at Google, and how you might have just happened to get the wrong interviewers.

Try applying for an internship if applicable, the barrier of entry is lower.

Don't get discouraged, I got rejected 4 times at the phone interview level before getting an offer. You should feel proud for going on-site with Google and Amazon already. Try to reflect on your mistakes during those 2 events to make the 3rd on-site interview a success.

if you quit after only two tries, you may have a point.

It's also important to understand that there are many great companies out there. In fact, I think Amazon has a fairly controversial reputation as an employer for programmers, so you very well may have dodged a bullet. I'm really not exaggerating on that either to try to make you feel better. I've legitimately heard lots of horror stories about Amazon.

There are all kinds of reasons companies reject candidates. A lot of them have nothing to do with your competence.

Maybe they had a better or cheaper candidate come along. Maybe the open position was closed. Maybe they thought you were overqualified. Maybe the interviewer(s) had a bad day and rejected everyone. Maybe one of the interviewers is an asshole and vetoed your candidacy over the objections of everyone else.

You have no idea of knowing what happened, even if they did give you feedback. They are certainly not going to tell you that everyone but the asshole wanted to hire you.