Like telling a girl/guy you love them before first date.
FWIW, it's a fairly large tech company that pretty much everyone on HN has heard of.
That, or there was 'something' that made them not pull the trigger with you, and they are waiting to interview more candidates.
I'll suggest to keep looking elsewhere,FAST, even if you get another shitty offer, you then can send them an "ultimatum" telling them about your other shitty offer.
You don't have to accept the other shitty offer.
I don’t think we have ever this mean to a candidate though.
Unfortunately there’s a really strange thing that happens in very long interview processes, is the employer starts to think something is wrong because the process has taken so long, despite the process being driven by them.
Anyhow, to your situation…. It is now an employers market and some of them need to feel loved.
So you should effusively tell them that you love the company and love the job.
Personally I don't feel great contributing to the trend of ghosting everyone, and sending a thank you note adds a sense of closure and completion.
The idea of putting in hours, or days, of effort only to learn the salary is minimal just seems like waste of time for everyone.
Weeks? That's just stringing you along, and by the point I'd wonder if they're even intending to hire anyone.
Put a table under each where each row represents your steps though their process, columns are mostly time stamps, offer published, time elapsed since previous step, time since publication. When you've added it to the document, when you've applied, when they responded, when the interview was (if any) Final row (if any) should describe why you rejected the offer.
If you just didn't get hired the entry may be removed.
Put a version number on the document and a pass-worded link to the most recent version.
IOW a detailed survey of the landscape.
"you have work to do, and have the money, I can do the work, and want the money"
But I don't. So it is a transaction and you are one in hundreds of options I have over years. And you should also treat it like that.
Not enough to start my own company, but enough that the options leaning towards those will have the nod. You can be engaged without dedicating your life to it.
For those with not that strong convictions. Picking up reasonably interesting roles and fields where they have some skill coverage is entirely reasonable way to do things. Go for roles and companies you can be content with.
to give an example, i really love what valve is doing for gaming on linux. i would love to work for them. are you suggesting that i should start my own gaming company?
if i really like a company, i want to see that company succeed, not start another.
also, for myself, i really don't want to work for a company whose business i don't believe in. i would, if it was the only option, but if i have a choice then i prefer to work for a company whose business goals and practices i can agree with.
with startups in particular, there is also the issue that, if i don't believe in their business, that means i won't believe that they will be successful and then it doesn't make sense to work there.
But on another level, either because you're getting equity, or because you'd like to stay employed for a while, "believing" in the company is a shorthand for saying you think that the company is going to succeed, so that your equity is worth more, or so that you don't find yourself out of a job on someone else's schedule.
If it were not for the way to get medical benefits via employment, I would pursue a passion versus sit in front of a keyboard and type things up that will not exist in 6 months.
I doubt many plumbers cite a love of modern world development, when they get hired for fixing toilets, or that people assembling washing machines have a passion for clean clothes for other people... or even people working for google don't really have that much passion for collecting other peoples personal data and exploiting it to show ads.
By the way, this definitely doesn't mean to glorify an organization and what they're doing. Far from it. They're just in it for continued existence and making some money, I suppose. But it is nice if an organization has some social utility, as compared to, say, sell advertisements for crap no-one needs. And I think, if that's important to you, you can refer to that when you're applying for a job.
Of course, if you're working in a field where there's much more candidates than jobs, this is pretty meaningless because you have to take whatever comes your way.
there is a difference between the choice of profession and the choice of company after learning the profession.
above we were discussion which tech company to work for, because most of us here are in tech. but tech companies have a wide variety of business goals and practices.
plumbers not so much. they do plumbing. they all have the same business goal, the differences are where they operate and how nice the coworkers are and the work conditions and pay.
for a tech company it makes sense to ask, do i like their product, independent of the job i'll be doing there. for a plumber not really.
I saw a recent interview with the director of the world food bank. So jealous.
- Dave Chappelle
One hand folks complain about automatic scanning and rejection based on just the CVs and here we are complaining about the one instrument, a job seeker has, to express interest in the company.
To go with your date analogy, a cover letter might not need to be a love declaration, but maybe a message that looked at the other’s profile rather than just “what’s up”.
It’s the cult like exuberance that seems to be demands by GP and sibling comments.
As an aside, I saw a cool job not long ago where they wanted your application email to have the subject line "$demonym reporting for duty", where $demonym is the cutesy name, like metamate that employees were supposed to call themselves. That is cultish, and puts me off applying way more than being asked for an sentence on why I'm a fit for the job.
A lot of applicants simply send their resumes to any position that is vaguely relevant, without diving into the details of the role.
A little bit like Van Halen's "Brown M&M clause": https://effectiviology.com/brown-mms/
If they sent the CV, they did deliberate apply for the job.
I always hated writing cover letters, always felt like the employer wanted me to do some groveling before I earned the right to be graced with an interview.
Good thing now I have ChatGPT for the rescue.
In these circumstances definitely. It's a tall ask to accurately evaluate someone romantically or professionally based on a profile/resume and a few hours of face time. I think unions have a good method of doing this actually: people no one wants to work with wash out.
https://bitslap.it/blog/posts/playground-it.html#part-i---ma...
The automatic system separated it and nobody looked at it.
Hyperbole is not an argument.
This really is a filter. We don't want job applications from people who are looking for a job. We're looking for people who actually want to do work at WunderGraph.
We're the first to build a Backend for Frontend Framework, unifying the ideas of API Gateway, BFF and package manager. Our long term goal is to build the GitHub for APIs, a collaborative platform to enable true collaboration between API producers and API consumers.
Either you're excited about this as much as we are, or you just send a CV.
We're not offering you a job. We offer you the opportunity to work together with a smart bunch of people on a very hard problem.
It's simply not enough to say "hi". It's fine if your focus is your private life and you really just need a paycheck. A lot of corporates will fight for you. On our end, we need to filter out people who really just want to fill a role to make ends meet.
It's really not about loving what we do. That misses the point. It's about transparency of our goals align.
> We're not offering you a job. We offer you the opportunity
This gem right here sums up what an employers market means. Every employer thinks they are special and wants an employee who's entire life's journey was only a preparation for the singular great moment of meeting you and building your vision, all for the a great compensation package of 65k/year and dental.
But guess what: you are not special, you are just a workplace and you compete in the marketplace for talent just like everybody else. For economic reasons that have nothing to do with you, you have more negotiating power for a limited time. That is all.
I think it’s perfectly legitimate to not want to hire people with this attitude. Just a few people with this attitude can completely ruin an early stage company.
And the same goes in the other direction: I don’t want to work for anybody who sees me as a commodity they’ve bought in a market. I’m sorry, but I am special: there is only one of me on this planet.
So while it might be true for GP's company, it's not true for the vast number of available jobs. If you are not in the cap table (or have only unfavorable terms), then by definition you are something the company has bought on the market and that's exactly how the company is thinking about you - else the ownership situation would reflect it. It's a business, not a social club, you either own the capital or you are the capital. Expecting anything else in exchange for you unique snowflakiness is self-delusional and the road to abject bitterness, as many ex a googler and twitterer found out.
There may be only one person exactly like you, although with 9 billion people it remains to be proven. But you sure are replaceable by many others with approximately the same set of skills.
"...20 years"
Ohh sorry, we can't hire you. It's a "culture fit" issue. (We aren't allowed to say it's an age filter! It's "culture"- we aren't ageist!)
Look: It’s not that we disagree about how the world works, it’s that we give it a different emotional coloring. Yours sounds bitter and resentful to me.
And it goes both ways. These days I pick a job based on whether the work is going to help me learn what I need to make progress on my side projects. If I was searching locally that would be an entirely unreasonable filter, but so far it's been win-win.
I spend 8-10 hours a day at my job. That's far more than with any of my friends and typically more than even with my spouse in the average week. My coworkers, at least a significant fraction, better be amazing. If somebody comes and basically says, dude, it's just a job, leave me alone, I leave them to their misery. If I am forced to work with them any significant amount of time, I quit an go work somewhere else where I can build meaningful connections with people around me. Cause let's face it, co-workers are a friends substitute in this day and age.
If you really believed what you were saying you wouldn’t have to rationalize it to yourself by claiming that people who don’t think like you must be miserable.
> Cause let's face it, co-workers are a friends substitute in this day and age.
That’s on you. If you’re using coworkers as a friends substitute it’s not surprising you get people who want you to leave them alone.
So does nearly everybody else. I was never told by a recruiter they are looking for somebody to work on mind-numbingly simple things in the company of idiots.
That isn't always an inaccurate description.
I think this can be a trap. I'm not saying that your company does this, but I've learned to be wary of this. We've all heard of game programmers who are in endless "crunch mode" for less salary than they can get elsewhere. They accept this precisely because they want the opportunity to work on something they love. But is it fair of the company to abuse people like that? Is it really the right choice to work at a place like that?
Again, I'm not saying your company is abusing anyone. But when I feel this sort of vibe coming from a company that I'm applying to and have no insider knowledge of, it makes me think there might be that sort of abuse going on, which makes me less likely to want to apply to the company.
[...]
>It's really not about loving what we do.
You do realize your contradicting yourself right?
Honestly, young wide-eyed new-grad me (which I bet is your target hiring demographic) would have totally bought into your baloney of "making the world a better place through minimal message oriented transport layers"[1], but as a gray beard I'd really be happy to be filtered out of your resume screening, as it reeks of cargo cult BS. I'm paid to do a job, not to join a cult and make that my life and working identity.
I apreciate your honesty though and I hope more companies do this so I can easily avoid them and save us both the time.
It might be about confusing passion for the company with passion for the type of work that is part of what the company needs to be carried out as one and the same.
If those things were clearly separated in the attitude of companies when looking to hire maybe people would be more willing to help both the company and in turn themselves succeed.
Otherwise, it's a bit like professing your unconditioned love before you know what you've bargained for, and that seems backwards.
It didn't sound to me like you're asking someone to be a zealot, sycophant, brown-noser, or some kinda corporate drone who drinks the kool-aid and wears the company swag. But maybe I'm misreading?
I say this because I'm fairly niche in my skillset for animation and design, and I only really reach out to studios/ agencies for this very specific skillset, and will turn down jobs (or refer others who might be a better fit) where it's better suited for a generalist or outside of my range. Like, I like doing work within my niche, but it's not my everything or even my core identity.
Doesn't sound like you're asking potential candidates to profess their undying devotion and pile on gratitude. That's just my take. Felt like people might have been reading your comments in a slightly exaggerated interpretation and it could use some other perspectives.
I guess this highlights the problem with the whole recruitment space. This company put out the equivalent of a bad generic resume while complaining about potential employees putting out bad generic resumes.
What we're really just looking for is a healthy mix of passion and experience in the field. I believe that people do their best work when it's easy for them to wake up in the morning, they have low stress, they like their colleagues and don't hate the stuff they are working on. Even better if you're passionate about the work you're doing. That gives you a lot of energy to actually perform the work, and for us we're getting great results. This makes our company more valuable, we get more customers and revenue. We can increase your salary and you live a good life. Everybody wins, no?
So people should not try to read something into what I wrote above that's simply not there.
Tell my why you want to work at WunderGraph. Tell my why you think you'd perform good work. That's all.
Please don't write a cover letter. Keep it simple. The best of the best can say a lot with few words.
I am sure your employees love to to work with your other colleagues on an exciting problem, however, it is just a paycheck in the end.
This is the reddest flag of all on any interview process for me. I discard all companies with this attitude.
Working for a company is not a privilege, it is merely an employment.