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Fail

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78 pointssiddg19 comments

Brings to mind the quote: "He failed in business in '31. He was defeated for state legislator in '32. He tried another business in '33. It failed. His fiancee died in '35. He had a nervous breakdown in '36. In '43 he ran for congress and was defeated. He tried again in '48 and was defeated again. He tried running for the Senate in '55. He lost. The next year he ran for Vice President and lost. In '59 he ran for the Senate again and was defeated. In 1860, the man who signed his name A. Lincoln, was elected the 16th President of the United States."

While it's important for everyone to learn that thriving past failure is an essential life skill, this post somehow came off more as a humblebrag as I read it. These are "failures" in some sense, but very high status ones. Not looking forward to the raft of copycat humblebrag posts this might inspire.

Um, yeah part of me felt so too, but I was thinking, how else could the guy have phrased it? I mean he's at CMU in a masters program, so to us all his failures feel big, but I don't think that's how he thinks about them. To him, they're all just failures. Nothing more, really.

Sure, but rest assured if he’s human, he has other, less impressive, failures that aren’t shown. This list is carefully curated. And deliberately published. Some other options available to him, since you were wondering, would be a) refrain from posting it; b) use non-humblebrag items to make the supposed point just as effectively; c) make the point without a list; d) use known examples from history. These are all perfectly valid. If you think option a is bad, there are still options b, c, and d. And others I haven’t thought of.

However, the author gets to decide how to write their post. That’s their right, even if it annoys me. But I’m kind of surprised you think there were no other options.

On the topic of failure, I’ve failed to pass facebook’s Data Science interviews 4 times in 5 years. I’ve been rejected at every level now (phone screen to the “more signal” round).

At what point do I give up? Each time I interview, it ends up with me dedicating roughly a week to prepare, and a week recovering from the rejection.

I'm still reeling from being rejected by Google years ago. Inspiring to see you keep trying. Keep it up!

Don't worry, you don't need to keep that painnof rejection alive in your heart for years. A week or two; at most a month. You can always try again. Be strong..

If it makes you feel any better my googler friends complain that really great candidates they liked or even tried to bring in got rejected while people who get the thumbs down seem to get in.

It seems that internally Google's hiring process is universally described as "random".

Thanks :}

I'm a little confused? 1 why aren't you adding more prep time after each failure? 2 why do you keep interviewing with them at all? a job at x fang company isn't a goal in itself? is it because the opportunity keeps coming up about you take advantage of it? if the latter then why be upset? it's like walking by a carnie game and getting a free play and being upset you lost.

Honest question, what's the appeal of working at a place like Facebook these days? It seems like a pretty well known fact that they're a horrible company in terms of their "product" (advertising and data mining). Is it money and experience? Being in my 40's with 2 young kids I don't think I could ever bring myself to contribute to a company like that.

I've thought about this a lot vis a vis "What kind of company do I want to work for."

Despite not being proud of the product, I think I would still be excited to work with/learn from other programmers that are at the top of their field.

For a few years at least :)

Working at a company that makes software for hacking and spying on people that sells to oppressive governments sounds pretty exciting and challenging too. Where do you draw the line?

I will be honest, I like money. Money is pretty much the biggest motivator I have now to get better at my job. The desire to be rich is what keeps the SV boom alive.

Facebook pays well.

I don’t think we think very much about how culture-specific self-improvement and striving for success are. They are ok but they are not universals in the human condition. From some vantage points they just look comical or odd.

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.” - Kurt Vonnegut

It doesn’t take seeing the firebombing of Dresden to cultivate some of Vonnegut’s perspective.

Let me explain how happy I am to read this. This is beyond motivating. In my profession, failure is part of the job. In fact, I'm not in a "job" per se, but a profession, the "practice" of a healing art. Doctor's do not "work." They "practice." They make mistakes, learn from them, and continue on.

I have a child in middle school now. At the parent orientation, the principal addressed everyone. He said he welcomes mistakes, actually encourages them to try and fail, because that's the only way you learn.

This is so important. We’re generally wired to portray only the positive and successful things about our lives, putting on the facade of success despite a much greater rate of failure.

Failing is how we learn - if we choose to learn from our failures.

I wrote a brief thought about this a few years ago[1], I hope you’ll read it :)

[1]: https://medium.com/@simonhamp/don-t-fail-at-failing-9633aed0...

I am pretty sold on the idea that failure of ambition = good, failure of sloth = bad. This post seems to be in line with that.

what is this?

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