Ask HN: Dealing with Failed Interview at Google and AWS?

If you want to take that approach, and say "f%!# it, I'm going to buckle down and work my ass off so I do get the job next time" there are a few concrete steps you can take.

1. Find, read, and do the exercises in two or three of the various popular books on "programming interviews". I'm thinking of books like Cracking the Coding Interview[1], Programming Interviews Exposed[2], Ace the Programming Interview[3], etc.

2. The companies you mentioned are well known for asking lots of detailed questions on fundamental computer sciences concepts. If doing "big o" analysis and talking about algorithms in detail isn't your forte, get a couple of good Algorithms course books and go through them. Personally, I'm a fan of the Robert Sedgwick books[4][5][6][7], and the CLR[8] book is a standard in this area.

3. Look over the many various articles / blogs / etc. written about preparing for Google interviews.

https://www.google.com/search?q=google+interview+preparation

I have never applied to Google myself, so I can't speak to that from first-hand experience, but this Steve Yegge blog post always struck me as being excellent:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...

4. Take as many interesting Coursera, EdX, Udemy, etc. courses as you can find time for.

5. Write code any chance you can. Get involved in, or start, an open source project (or two). Volunteer to code for a non-profit / charity or something in your area. Write an app for yourself, to fill a need of your own.

6. Make sure you broaden your horizons and challenge yourself. If you've always written, say, Java or C++ or Ruby code, then make an effort to learn Go, or Erlang or Haskell or Prolog.

All of that said, as I've gotten older, I probably feel a little bit less of the "I'll show you!" thing. I've developed more of a stoic approach, and almost a bit of a zen mindset. There's a lot to be said for a sort of calm, peaceful acceptance of things, even when they are negative. There's a lot more one could say about this, but I don't want to get too philosophical here. I'll just point out that you applied to two... TWO.... companies. Out of like a BILLION possible companies you could work for. Ok, maybe not a billion, but certainly millions, or thousands, depending on where you live and your willingness / ability to travel.

My point is, don't put too much weight on what happened with Google or Amazon. The whole "dream companies" thing is a crock of shit, IMO, looking back on it with hindsight. I've worked for two companies in my career that I once thought of as my "dream" destinations, and neither experience was anything special (neither was bad either), and not worth getting all worked up over.

Final last bits of advice.

1. Read Nietzsche

2. Read Ayn Rand

3. Get drunk

4. Listen to some Queensryche

5. Profit???

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-...

[2]:

I really couldn't figure out the problem but found a video from a former Google engineer who was on a hiring committee for years. If I can find the talk, I'll post the link. At one point during his time at Google, the committee got 10 candidates to decide on. They decided to not hire any of them. After the decision, they were told that the 10 candidates were actually everyone on the committee. So they had just decided not to hire themselves.

The point is a lot of times it is totally random and if one interviewer or committee member has a bad day, they may not hire you. So while skill is definitely required, a lot of luck is also required.

If you did well at all, they will probably call you back in the near future for another position. So stay positive and keep practicing till you get in.

For me, I eventually got a job with a smaller company and now I'm kind of tired of trying to get in. Maybe next year.

The depression you're feeling might be a problem worth working on in and of itself though. Exercise, medication and therapy can all be really helpful, tackle it head on.

The point of my life isn't to become rich. It's to become a better person. These "failed" interviews may be more beneficial than getting the job.

Contact me at bilal at careercup dot com, I will help you out pro bono.

I'd say this just means you can go work somewhere that will allow you to be more then a junior cog in a large corporation.

I'd start with the hacker news "who is hiring" thread that gets posted the 1st of every month if you aren't already watching it.

You: But what if I get a mistrial? I might be smart and qualified, but for some random reason I may do poorly in the interviews and not get an offer! That would be a huge blow to my ego! I would rather pass up the opportunity altogether than have a chance of failure!

Me: Yeah, that's at least partly true. Heck, I kinda didn't make it in on my first attempt, but I begged like a street dog until they gave me a second round of interviews. I caught them in a weak moment. And the second time around, I prepared, and did much better.

The thing is, Google has a well-known false negative rate, which means we sometimes turn away qualified people, because that's considered better than sometimes hiring unqualified people. This is actually an industry-wide thing, but the dial gets turned differently at different companies. At Google the false-negative rate is pretty high. I don't know what it is, but I do know a lot of smart, qualified people who've not made it through our interviews. It's a bummer.

But the really important takeaway is this: if you don't get an offer, you may still be qualified to work here. So it needn't be a blow to your ego at all!

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com.au/2008/03/get-that-job-at-g...

And that all remains perfectly true. I flunked my first round of Google interviews, then tried again (in a different role I've come to conclude was a much better fit, mind you) and now I'm here. You can be too ;)

It helps to have some sort of arrogance about the whole thing. If they don't want you, then whatever. They have brilliant engineers but I wouldn't want to join a big company that already has it all figured out. What's in it for you?

The first time I was rejected for being "too opinionated" for the likely team I'd be in, second time I was accepted. And I'd say the first rejection was spot on too, I don't think I'd have been a good fit for that team.

Bear in mind that a 'failed interview' isn't necessarily a failure on your part; it might just mean that the company doesn't think you'd have been right for the job. If possible do push really hard to get honest feedback in as much detail as possible; if it's a good recruitment process, such feedback can be a goldmine of personal improvement opportunities.

For what it's worth, earlier this week I massively failed whiteboarding two should-have-been-dead-easy questions. Nerves jumped up and bit me. I'm talking near total meltdown in which I complicated a task as easy as swapping two variables using a single temporary.

What can I do about it at this point? Nothing. It's a tad embarrassing, but I'm already moving on. I've finally started reading Okasaki, and am making a project out of concurrently learning Elixir and some distributed algorithms.

I'll probably fail a technical interview again at some point in the future. But behind the scenes, I'll already be a better programmer than I was at that point in time. What else can I do?

It feels rough at first, but don't take it personally. Keep doing what you love and it'll be alright. Last I heard, you can try about once a year or so. In the meanwhile, keep a list of other places you'd like to work and try for them. You might even find another gig so awesome that you don't hunger for G or A anymore. That's kinda what happened to me.

Time will heal.

At the time, I thought I did pretty well but as I went back over the questions, I realized that I missed a lot of the sort of "tricks" of the questions that they wanted to see.

It was really simple stuff, using a hash where I should have used a trie and not seeing an edge case initially, maybe not being super efficient in a design problem. After thinking about it, the result could have been drastically different (worse or better) using a different 4 questions.

CS is a broad problem space, its not surprising to come across something that you fail at and in my mind, thats to be expected. While this time luck wasn't on my side with a few questions I didn't do amazing at, it may be better next time. Its kinda crappy how arbitrary it can seem, but I don't know if there are much better alternatives.

I have a Google interview tomorrow, so I will try my best, but also remind myself that there is a lot of chance involved.

Take a break, then carry on!

What's interesting is that in retrospect, my current role is far more interesting and demanding on all fronts than any of the other teams I interviewed for.

It's hard, but keep pushing. The main thing that differentiates successful people from the others is persistence.

When you don't get hired though, almost always you will err on the side of blaming yourself. I've heard about people blaming the process but I've never met someone in person who did that. And actually I suspect there's a Dunning–Kruger effect working where the more qualified you are the more likely you are to turn a rejection inwards and blame yourself.

I'm not saying that's what happened here, I don't know. Just keep in mind that hiring anywhere, including at amazon and google, can't be a fair process to the candidate. And you're the least objective observer of your own performance.

To OP: I'm really sorry that you didn't get the job you wanted. My path is not the same as yours, but I ran into rejection applying to college, applying to grad school, and applying to jobs after grad school.

In each case I felt terrible. I didn't know how to move forwards or what I was going to do, I felt like the rejection was an indictment of my self-worth.

But I think it helps to keep three things in mind:

- The people on the other side of these interviews are humans - they make mistakes and work off incomplete data. I guarantee you that they know far less about who you are, personally or professionally, than any of your friends or loved ones.

- Your self worth isn't tied to how well you do during an interview, or how many job offers you get, or whether or not your dream company gives you a job.

- Your destination - if you don't give up, you will probably end up where you wanted to go. But almost certainly, you won't have taken the path you originally set out to take. Life is filled with unforeseen setbacks and unanticipated opportunities. Proceed with an open mind and don't feel like you need to have everything figured out right away.