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What companies have you rejected, and why?

Microsoft HiMyNamIs
Apr 7 33 Comments

Me:
Facebook <—- Data scandal
Amazon <—- culture & seemed underwhelming
Apple <—- Already worked there, wanted something new
Raytheon <—— Ethical reasons
Twitter <—— Meh
LinkedIn <—— Joined Microsoft
EA <—— Wanted to join a company which had multiple products outside of gaming.
Some Startups <—- Was over startups.
FinTech Companies <—- Wasn’t into fintech

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 TOP 33 Comments
  • Google bogleheads
    Warning: humble brag 😁

    I had 10 on-sites, resulting in 8 offers. I chose Google finally.

    // *From final offer stage* //
    Facebook: culture
    Amazon: culture and comp and benefits (also practice interview). Work wise, I felt this was most interesting though.
    Intuit: comp
    Atlassian: comp
    Lyft: tough call between Google and Lyft, but didn't want to commute to SF
    Box: practice interview
    Stripe: practice interview

    // *Rejected sooner* //
    Robinhood, Credit Karma, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Slack, ServiceNow (interviews were scheduled well after I had multiple offers in hand, so decided to drop off)

    // *Companies that rejected me* //
    Apple (on-site), Uber (on-site), Elastic (resume review)
    Fwiw, this was my 3rd reject with Apple. I don't know what I do wrong there!
    Apr 7 16
    • Facebook shamrock
      True, Fb is cutthroat but the upside is promotions are faster if you are up for the challenge.
      Apr 7
    • Barclays PLC FAANGHNTER
      What is OP's core skills that he gets so much?
      Apr 7
    • Google bogleheads
      Large scale distributed systems

      Its a relatively old area with several expert engineers now, but it still remains in demand for some reason.
      Apr 7
    • Barclays PLC FAANGHNTER
      Hmm It's there to stay I suppose.
      Apr 7
    • Google bogleheads
      The cloud race has definitely helped, I'll likely retire well before the demand decreases (or so I hope).
      Apr 7
    • Oscar 🐨koala
      How do you become good at DS? Everywhere I go just plug in kafka/storm.
      Apr 7
    • Google bogleheads
      Kafka just helps with one class of problems. There are several other classes of problems with building a robust online system such as strongly consistent databases (such as Google spanner), timeline consistent delivery systems, ETL to offline, etc. We are in an era where each of the big companies want to build their own systems rather than using an open source alternative. So there are lots of opportunities to build the next set of systems that solve different problems at scale.
      Apr 7
    • Facebook gd5wv9
      Why do you not like Stripe and only use them for practice? I heard it's a great company.
      Apr 8
    • Google bogleheads
      Stripe is great from a business perspective, I'm sure it'll do very well. However I did not get a strong feeling of an engineering focused company. Most things are not built in-house, for example. Lots of things still in ruby, and they're trying to get on Go for years. Lots of tech debt that felt deprioritized because of the focus on business. They still have huge monolith code base which is not scaling well for them. They're dependent on a single cloud provider and not been able to diversify to other vendors.

      On the flip side, culturally they are great, and were quite open about these challenges during the interview. Their interviews were also quite pragmatic, not the usual leetcode grind (for example in one of the interviews I was asked to find a bug in an open source library and suggest fixes with pros/cons, then implement one of them). I see some of Amazon leadership traits such as customer obsession baked into their offering. Many of their APIs written years ago still work even if only a tiny portion of their customer base use it. For this, I feel confident that the company will do well because of the customer focus.

      This is not bad, but I prefer companies that are a bit more tech focused.
      Apr 8
    • Facebook gd5wv9
      Thanks for sharing for perspective with such details.
      Apr 8
  • Apple hakunanaMa
    Qualtrics - practice, needed to visit Seattle to see friends
    Intuit - practice
    Realtor.com - practice
    Apr 7 1
    • Microsoft HiMyNamIs
      OP
      Lmaoo, using interviews for free travel. Nice 👌🏻
      Apr 7
  • F5 Networks RRA
    FB has contacted me a few times in the last few months. I just can't bring myself to reply, even though two years ago this would have made my day.
    Apr 7 0
  • Uber jYw5sh9
    Facebook: can't stand the idea of having to use Facebook at work, deleted my account a while ago and not going back especially at work

    Google: does anyone actually work here? Half-baked products, people writing treatises on internal mailing lists and quora instead of building something, earning high TC but what's the point?
    Apr 7 1
    • Google / Eng catburglar
      Lol people don't work at Google?
      Apr 7
  • Microsoft / Eng FreshPrinc
    Google - work was more interesting at MS
    Apr 7 3
    • Apple
      patnaput

      Apple

      PRE
      Amazon
       patnaput more
      Haha
      Apr 7
    • Microsoft / Eng FreshPrinc
      Haha? You work at a big company so you should understand that not all teams are equal.

      Microsoft has interesting projects and boring ones. So does Google. I was choosing between an exciting project @ MS vs a boring one at Google. Here we are.
      Apr 7
    • Microsoft FucMatlab
      @Microsoft I chose MS because they gave me the opportunity to be a PM, my background is deep learning Engineering, I def had opportunities in that space but I really want to be an executive one day as opposed to a principal researcher. Other companies wouldn’t consider me for the position (PM).

      My pay is amazing, and I’m learning alot. I have 0 regrets about my decision!
      Apr 8
  • Facebook Haggle
    Google: meh, got a downlevel and comp was equal or less than fb. Seems like lots of politics and bureaucracy.
    Uber: really tough call but decided that the improvement in TC wasn’t enough to justify leaving fb yet what with all the benefits and pretty good projects.
    Amazon - TC was low, Seattle offer meh, culture.
    Doordash - preferred fb offer as wanted liquid stocks.
    Apr 7 0
  • Amazon TRoyPrice
    Um.. OP is just humble bragging
    Apr 7 0
  • Salesforce zenForce
    Amazon - culture
    Bloomberg - No RSUs
    Belzabar - culture
    YOE 2
    Apr 7 0
  • Groupon xxxtentacl
    Dick fight dick fight
    Apr 7 0
  • Amazon Leigh
    This is insightful! Thanks all for posting
    Apr 7 0
  • Oscar 🐨koala
    Award goes to Microsoft.
    Apr 7 0
  • Amazon keepLeeti
    OP, you have rejected in what way? Did you have offers you turned down, or just rejected on your own, without trying an interview?
    Apr 7 0

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