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Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

One of my personal failures was that I interviewed at danger years ago, but I was deathly ill with the flu, but I wanted to work there so bad I went with the interview regardless and did extremely poorly as I had a fever of 103 or so and I was hardly able to answer questions....

I wish I would have rescheduled that interview as I believe I would have got the job had I not looked like I was about to expire.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11306037 and marked it off-topic. Not the fault of the root comment, which was relevant.

Perhaps they didn't want to hire someone with a reckless disregard for the health of their coworkers.

You're getting down voted but you have a great point. There's nothing worse than working with Typhoid Mary who struggles dramatically in to work no matter how sick she is and coughs all over everyone.

I know what you mean but Mary Mallon aka Typhoid Mary was asymptomatic and wasn't coughing over anyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon

Epidemiologist +1

Hiring manager here. Do not attempt interviews when sick, just reschedule. Nobody's ever going to say no, since if they're interested enough to interview you on a Friday, they'll still be interested on Monday.

Yeah thats why I refer to it as my failure - not because I failed to get the job - but i failed to NOT go to the interview given how sick I was... I was younger and more stupid :-/

If it makes you feel any better, most of us are older and still stupid :-)

People say no to rescheduling all the time.

"Sorry, we really want to pick someone tomorrow morning, so it has to be today."

you don't want to work for those places..

I imagine that might happen at shitty companies hiring junior people.

But for all ranges you're going to want to have people meet with multiple teams and build a profile. That takes weeks and often means that statistically at least one interview Will have to be rescheduled.

People also reschedule all the time. I cancelled my latest interview via voicemail on Saturday, while the interview was for Monday morning. It was one of those 5 person interviews. I was ready to lose the opportunity, but it was rescheduled.

About 5-6 years ago I was interviewing with Apple.

It was a two day interview process. I went in the first day for about a half day, and then maybe after a few days (it's been a while) they said they wanted me to come back for another full day. The day came and I woke up feeling terrible. I called my contact and told them this, and asked about rescheduling, and pretty much what I was told was, "It would be a lot better if you didn't reschedule."

I went in and went through the motions, and managed to enjoy drinking a gatorade at their full cafeteria. After it was over, I went out to my car that had been baking in the sun in Cupertino, and put the AC on full blast in my face as I endured the drive home up 280 trying not to puke in my car. I got home and instantly began 2 days of hell.

I didn't get that offer, but had been contacted multiple times since by Apple. No interest ever again.

companies like google and apple can largely behave as they please during hiring, because the resulting candidate loss is offset by the relatively massive size of the candidate pool. there's always plenty willing to put up with whatever they do.

heh - I was just told by a friend that an OPs guy at apple was "really unhappy there" -- and I said "I am hiring - give me his info", his response was "OH, no - he's not leaving! Just really unhappy"

And if you got the job you probably would have been absorbed into Microsoft after the acquisition and then worked on their failed Kin phone. Honestly I think you got the better half of the deal.

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