Rejections
Why do we not talk about our failures?
Here are a few companies that rejected me outright without even an interview. This might be the motivation someone needs to keep trying and hence I believe is worth sharing. I’ve truncated emails to focus on the important parts.
Airbnb
They wrote this huge email with a lot of nice words, but boils down to this.
While this is never easy news to share, we’ve decided not to move forward with your application for this position.
AlphaSheets
<3 for Haskell made me apply. Clear concise reason. If you are rejecting someone, please do it this way.
Hey Jaseem,
Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately we’re in the market for experienced Haskellers, so we’ll have to pass this time. But we’ll keep you in consideration for future rounds of hiring.
Barclays
Again, <3 for Haskell. Probably the only rejection email which made me actually reevaluate things and motivated me to work harder. Neil Mitchell sounds like he knows what he is doing - and my respect for him only increased.
This is also the final nail on my patriotism coffin. Reminds me one more time that your tech career starts 10 miles behind candidates from first world countries. Moments you really wish you were born in some random corner of Europe than India. Made me very sad for being an Indian.
Hi Jaseem,
Not pestering at all – there were a large number of responses to the blog post, and it’s taken more time than expected to examine everyone with sufficient attention – sorry for the delay.
Having looked through your code, I’m afraid that at the moment we’re looking for someone with more Haskell experience. I would say that you are currently on the cusp of reaching that level, but unfortunately the requirement for a visa makes it a much more solid line than it would otherwise be. Given your other functional language experience, if you continue to work on Haskell, please do feel free to apply for future positions.
CloudFlare
I really wanted to work there after they wrote that kickass blog post on mitigating DDOS attacks :/
Dear Jaseem,
Thank you for your interest in CloudFlare. We received your application for the Systems Engineer (Go) position. Unfortunately, we will not be moving forward with your candidacy at this time. We continue to grow so watch our job openings at https://www.cloudflare.com/join-our-team to see if there are other opportunities that fit your background.
Confluent
Well, I kind of really liked Kafka </3
Thank you for your application to Confluent. After reviewing your work and experience, we’ve made the decision to not move forward at this time.
CouchBase
No reply
Digital Ocean
They were looking for a lot more experience but I applied anyway. Not hard feelings here.
Thank you for your interest in DigitalOcean and for giving us the opportunity to consider you for Senior Software Engineer: Distributed Systems. After review, we found that your background does not appear to be a close enough match, so we’re not going to be able to move forward at this time.
Etsy
Same line. No feedback.
Hi Jaseem,
Thank you for taking the time to explore an opportunity with Etsy. We have reviewed your application with the hiring team and unfortunately, after careful consideration, we didn’t feel there was a right match at this time.
These are the absolute worst. How is anyone supposed to improve and apply again in 6 months if they don’t know what went wrong?
Hi Jaseem,
Thanks for your interest in joining us at Facebook as we work to make the world more open and connected. Unfortunately, we have decided not to move forward with your candidacy.
Github
No reply.
Hortonworks
Emailed one their staff engineers, who never replied.
Imgur
It’s been a competitive process, and we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates for this particular role.
Klarna
This is before I wrote Erlang for a year at Fybr. I don’t know what they will say right now.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider you for this role. We have reviewed your background and CV, but we have decided to continue the process with other candidates.
Spotify
This makes sense. I don’t have experience with their stack.
We have reviewed your application and regret to inform you that we have proceeded with other candidates whose background is more aligned with our current needs.
Standard Chartered
I applied twice - Jan 2015 & Sep 2016. You can spend hours polishing the last character in your email, but Don Stewart probably won’t even reply. This is one of the best Haskell teams and would have been a dream job.
I might as well share the email I sent to Don
Hey Donald,
This is the second time I’m applying to SC, and I think it went into /dev/null again.
I understand that you are busy, practically everyone who aspires to get a Haskell job emails you and all other nuances. The first time I applied (30/01/15), I didn’t even get a standard rejection template email back. I imagined the bar to be too high and wasn’t very worried about it. Your recent job post (Sep 30) mentioned openings at all levels and I applied again on Oct 3rd, to hear nothing back from you.
Please let a candidate know if you are not going to consider the application. If you are too busy to do this, please delegate it to someone else so that they will do this responsibly. Asking for people to apply and then not replying at all is a bit sad.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean to be rude at all and if it sounded so, its unintentional. I have tremendous respect for all the work you have done and hope to work with someone like you in the future.
This is due to frustration that its impossible to find a Haskell job even after playing with it for few years and there is no opportunity to grow.
Uber
No reply. Am I that stupid?
Not surprised. I guess everyone with even a slight interest in Erlang is applying there for a job. I cant imagine any company with a better hiring pool than these fellas.
No reply emails.
Cheers 🍺🍺