But what really bothers me is that you got a reply from a no-reply address. What the actual fuck. You were there for an on-site interview, this is not the situation where you send people automated no-reply-click-this-link mails.

If their HR doesn't have the time to send a short personal mail (or an automated one from a HR address that doesn't look like it's automated) that might be a red flag on how they treat their employees anyways.

You can try asking them, we at my company were usually happy to tell candidates that didn't pass, why they didn't pass. But we also didn't blow off people with a no-reply mail that were far enough into the process to have been onsite.

The only advice I can give you is to move on and do the next interview. Don't let this get to you.

Yah. Three years ago, When I was fresh out of school, I interviewed at a very popular startup. The interview went reasonably well, with the team lead asking me questions like when I would be able to join and so on. I had a great rapport with their HR guy too. It was kind of harsh to casually get a reject from a automated no reply email.

Two years later. The same guy, the lead of the team randomly emails me telling me I have a "great profile" and if I would like to grab coffee with him. I was amused to find out when I met him in person that he had no idea that I had come there previously. And all the assorted bullshit that went through. To be frank, I never seriously considered the offer the second time around. (I have a policy of never trying the fish if there is a cockroach running around in the floor of the restaurant. )

It is not fucking hard to send a personal email to someone who came all the way for face time with your company. In fact, it says a lot about your company's culture and attention to the little things.

I used to automatically provide feedback of why a candidate did not pass the interview, then I had a few sour encounters where the candidate just did not react professionally. For example, one candidate bemoaned the emphasis on CS fundamentals in our interview. In that case, the candidate was coming in from a mostly front-end webdev background, but our tech stack extends far below the typical webdev "full stack", where knowledge of OS/Networking/Compiler fundamentals is helpful in everyday design decisions. As a small team, we bias towards generalists for now, so while the person might be a great fit for his skillset in another organization, it just wasn't a great fit for us at that time. I tried to explain this, but I received a wall of text complaint email back. I had taken an hour out of my day to write immediate and specific feedback about his interview, and all I got was pushback. This is probably why HR stands between engineers and candidates.

The guy you interviewed probably spent ~4 hours preparing for the interview and then all of the time in the actual interview.

Let's say he takes 7 hours out of his life to interview for your place. The least he deserves is a legit reason why he was declined because your company still benefits from not hiring him. You get to refine your interview process based on real feedback.

The interviewee's time is just as valuable as yours. A wall of text complaint sounds pretty good. There's probably a lot of good feedback in there unless it happened to be filled with insults and other garbage in which case you should have been able to figure this out quickly and then not replied.

Sure. But a form letter from the HR person saying you are not a good fit is way better than your application has been rejected blah blah blah. Tech, especially Data Science is a small fucking place. Making enemies is incredibly bad. I know that I would go out of my way to strongly recommend that any of my friends who are ever rarely in the job market to not look at that company, or the tech lead.

Also, to look at it from other point of you. I once interviewed at another startup where the guy gave me cold harsh feedback as to why I was not the right fit. I still respect him for doing that. It was not the right fit for me. But, I would heartily recommend the place to anyone else who I think would be the right fit.

That would have bothered me too. But it could have been even worse. I've read plenty of accounts of how job candidates didn't get any reply at all after having interviewed for a position. Being busy doesn't exempt a company from the obligation to exercise common decency.

Tbh, thinking about it now; I dont think I would want to work at a company that doesn't have the courtesy to reply to someone they approached to come and interview with them. Particularly someone who was referred there by one of their employees.

Maybe I was just not prepared enough for my conversation with the head of engineering. Still though, I would love to know why.

Thank you for your advice, I feel that's really all I can do. Still, it's hard to not let this get to me.

Don't let it bother you and just think of it as another story to tell[1]. If the no-reply bothers you, then they probably have a lot of other habits in how they treat people that would really bother you if you had got the job. Its the canary in the mine. Don't think of it as getting rejected, think of it as dodging a bullet.

1) my most wtf? story is getting rejected for an internship because the area code of the high school and college I went to was the same. Told me that over the phone. I did at least point out the whole state is one area code.

I have not had something like this happen to me, but I am sure it will get easier after another round of interviews with another company. You will almost forget about this experience after you land a good opportunity, other than for the anecdotal value :-)

I had pretty much the opposite rejection experience. I had interviewed on-site with Stripe, but for some reason was turned down. A week or so later I got a thank you card signed by all the people who had interviewed me. (Actually, the reason I applied was because of a handwritten card in response to the first Capture-the-Flag.)

I've had interviews where you go from frequent emails and phone-calls, everything looks like it is going wonderfully, and then you hear nothing. Silence. Even when you try to chase things up after a few days.

Having no reply is deeply frustrating, although after a few days I guess you learn to take the hint.

I know him he is skilled and certainly worthy of serious consideration....so it has been surprising seeing how many have rejected him after an interview without a courtesy email.

You either weren't good enough or weren't a good fit. I've had situations where I interviewed at jobs where I'm asked "What type of work will make you love coming to work and also what is your ultimate career goal". If your answer isn't exactly what they are looking for, you might not be "as good of a fit as they want".

This is actually a good thing because they are saving you a lot of time by getting you to work on something you like, rather than something might not know you don't like.

With that said, I expect that the tech hiring process will be unrecognizable a few years from now.

If you reject candidates from a no-reply@ email address, there is nothing I or anybody else can ever do to help you in any way ever again. You are beyond help. You've found perhaps the one thing you could do worse than simply going dark on candidates you reject.

While you did OK, you did not ace the 3-1 hour technical interviews, or they thought that you didn't make a strong enough impression in <insert important area for the job/company> - the follow up interview was probably intended to gauge those areas, and you failed to meet their standard.

Don't feel too bad about it, people flunk out of interviews all the time - even if they would be perfect for the job - most places now adopt quite a strict hiring policy because a bad hire is worse for the business than a no hire.

You could try and get feedback form the company but I wouldn't hold your breath. Simply try again with another.

It's funny, I don't mean to suggest this is totally untrue, but opposite to the advice I give (albeit based on a sample size of five). The two best jobs by far were those I got (1) by volunteering for a while until they (unexpectedly) offered me a job or (2) by picking one company I'd love to work for, and persistently trying until they made an offer. Admittedly, those were both with small companies (under 100 employees).

I think going for quality or quantity can both work.

But still, I think your point is valid. Thank you for your kind response.

Further, there might have been non-technical issues at play which are harder to understand/reason about, such as communication issues, confidence issues (both over and under confident), or issues with a perception about how much you cared about their particular product.

All of the latter elements are fuzzy and not worth thinking too deeply about, if you get rejected for those, then you are lucky you didn't end up working there, as it would not have been a good fit for either of you.

I have heard people come out of interviews with negatives as fickle as "they didn't make eye contact."

This doesn't mean that the person was rejected for that reason, but if you are adding up all the reasons not to hire someone, and the sentiment was decidedly negative, then it's going to mean the company will not make the investment in hiring that person.

Lack of eye contact is often considered to be a trait of poor communication. Do you mean to suggest that poor communication is not a valid reason for choosing not to hire someone?

All of human behavior occupies a wide spectrum. It's probably OK to say that on average, people who avoid eye contact may be bad communicators, but it's not universally true and to use that signal as an indication of a person's quality is cheating. If you need someone to make eye contact for you to feel like communication is good, the problem is with how you feel, not with the actual communication.

People who are not good communicators and people who don't seem like good communicators, to the people being communicated to, are at a disadvantage for these jobs, at least until we eliminate miscommunication from human interaction (which I most sincerely hope someone, somewhere, is working on...)

It's worth remembering that many people with Asperger's do not have a diagnosis, or would not consider declaring their diagnosis at interview. It might be worth while for interviewers to gently ask - in the spirit of making reasonable adjustments - about that.

But, really, we know that interviewing is a hopelessly broken recruitment method.

A better question to ask is what can you do to make yourself more attractive and increase the probability of closing the deal with the next company. Think like a salesman.

The fact that you told him you currently make close to what their interns make jumps out at me. Perhaps you think that would make you more attractive, but it may have had the opposite effect.

The head of engineering may have been told by his team that you have a lot of expertise, skill and potential and then all of a sudden he finds out you get paid at an intern level. He is going to ask himself what am I missing? If you are so good why doesn't anybody else value you at that level. People want to have a good feeling in their gut when they make a big purchase and a large previous salary gap may have unsettled that.

A better head of engineering wouldn't we swayed by previous salary, but the truth of the matter is a lot of decision makers are not perfectly rational.

My advice to you is to google strategies for dealing with the "what is your current salary" question and be better prepared for that situation.

When doing Math or Computer homework, you usually are given a clear reason why your grade was marked down.

When interviewing for a job, they will never tell you why they rejected you. For legal reasons, it is risky to tell you. They will always give something vague like "not qualified" or "bad cultural fit" or "other applicants were better", even if that isn't the real reason.

Also, it's normal to apply to a lot of jobs with a low acceptance rate. If employers interview 20 people for each position, (and they don't select better than random) then you'll get an offer for 5% of your interviews.

Once you graduate this will be less of a problem. Most big companies are always hiring. If they like you they'll make an offer. This can still be a problem at smaller companies though. If they only have one or two positions to fill they'll usually tend to be pickier.

Do not assume that you did something wrong. The mistake could be on their part. You made it through all of those technical interviews, so you will be able to find work somewhere!

1. What questions were answered incorrectly/mistakenly/insufficiently? 2. Code review on code quizzes, if they're expected.

It doesn't hurt to call the recruiter to get some feedback.