Oxide is the only company where I check the careers page hoping that they have a position which I can apply to.
Happy to see their success. Especially so if you've been following their journey through their podcasts (easily the best tech podcast out there if you care about your craft; no filler, all killer).
I actually did apply, The mere application takes hours upon hours, and for what a generic rejection email.
This isn't the worst though, I recently went through an interview with another startup company, and after six interviews and a take-home project I found myself getting the same generic rejection. The CEO went out of his way to tell me he didn't like my resume since I've had to hop around a little bit to stay employed.
Concerns that should have been handled in the initial call, somehow get pushed back till after I've wasted monumental amount of time.
Things are looking up though, I'm starting a job soon and the entire interview process was more or less a 30 minute phone call with the technical manager. That's it, two days later or so I had a verbal offer. I don't need to change the world, I need to pay my rent.
If you went through multiple rounds it likely means they were seriously considering you but ultimately they didn’t get to a yes. If it’s any comfort that means you did pretty well.
The short stints on a resume is likely not the only reason you didn’t get to 100%, but unfortunately you should know that it’s seen as a pretty bad signal. The general expectation is 2 years minimum at a gig. If you have multiple short non-contract jobs it raises the concern that a candidate doesn’t commit to their jobs, or that they don’t do well at their jobs and are getting let go.
Okay, but if my resume is a concern let's talk about in the first interview. I can't exactly rest and vest for 2 years when the company is running out of money. I had the bad luck of this happening 3 times in a row.
Company A got their funding pulled and shut down. Company B, where I was actually at for about a year and a half, switched owners and shutdown my entire office. Company C merged into it's main competitor and effectively fired most of us.
I will admit I was at one fantastic job and after around 3 years I probably could of stayed indefinitely. But back then I didn't recognize the value of a solid job. If you land somewhere and you're well liked by people, and able to do quality work, you really should just stay there instead of chasing slightly more money.
It probably doesn't work like that tho - they don't know how much of a concern it is. And maybe CEO doesn't see resume until later in process, raises an objection.
That said, the general lack of emapthy from recruiting towards time invested and rejections is astonishing and seemingly cruel or emotionally negligent.
US corps are constrained I think by what they can reveal about denial reasons because they don't want to get sued for discrimination.
That said, it can often feel like, you were kept in the pool as an alt/negotiating foil if they didn't get their first pick, or needed to say "we have another candidate willing to take $YOUR_ASK-$BIG_DELTA.
I think we should approach the hiring gauntlet not as "workshop to see what it's like to work with these folks" but as "battle where we can divine the worst about the people we might choose to work with", but still remain sunny and positive while cannily noting any weirdness.
Hope that helps! :)
After my dates of employment I will parethetically add (bankrupt) or (shutdown) to indicate that it wasn't related to me personally. My best job was 18 months.
Yeah I had a manager grill me like crazy about short stints on my resume while I was interviewing for DigitalOcean. He told me it looked like I wasn't dedicated or trustworthy.
He wasn't my manager so I brushed over it and 6 months into working at DO they started 3 rounds of enormous layoffs that were handled so poorly even the executives doing the layoffs got removed by the board.
So I left and got to add another short stint at a company run by craven morons to my resume :)
I was laid off at my last 3 positions and can really relate to this. If it’s any consolation: how a company handles this is a good indication of the maturity of their management and recruiting function. I also strongly disagree with any assertion that would state “short stints = unreliable employee”. Nobody can make that assertion without confirmation of what caused those stints and the tech market from 2020 - today has been notoriously volatile.
There are plenty of great orgs out there that will soak with you before making assumptions, but as a rule most startups have fairly inexperienced management unless they are founded by a team that’s been through the rodeo a few times.
If they heard from the CEO specifically, it was probably based on the CEO vibe checking the resume as a last step after passing the entire interview process. The CEO may have spent 15 minutes on it.
It was actually a round with the CEO.
I don't feel disrespected or anything, just feels weird to spend that much time interviewing someone.
I would take that very positively actually. At least you got feedback, and from the CEO! It seems to be you performed pretty well! Maybe the 'hopping' was the only distinguishing thing between you and the one that succeeded.
Reminds me of the 6 interview gauntlet I dealt with when interviewing with Hashicorp[1] years ago.
---
[1]: <https://blog.webb.page/WM-025>
Please take this in the spirit in which I’m writing it (i.e. please recognize the occupational disease of “bugs everywhere” and only mock it in moderation; I do appreciate the post itself):
- The Firefox browser on my Android tablet is close enough to a desktop one that I have no problem reading your blog post. The nag feels unnecessary, especially given it obscures part of the header. For what it’s worth, the tablet’s screen is 1600 real pixels wide @ 260 ppi, and Firefox for Android tells the CSS that the viewport is 800 “pixels” wide—if “pixels” were 1/96", then it would be somewhat below 600 “pixels”, so I don’t know where it’s getting that value from.
(And now I can’t stop thinking if I could make a thing in CSS that would look like a plain-text RFC on a desktop screen but gracefully reflow on a narrower screen.)
- The lightweight-markup parser seems to have gotten confused around the phrases “tests and whiteboarding” and “why I wasn’t a fit”.
- The HN link at the end doesn’t work (404) because you’re adding &ref=blog.webb.page to every external link and HN doesn’t appreciate extra parameters (from my earlier encounters with this kind of thing, neither does e.g. Wikipedia).
Excessive amounts of interviews is more likely they were not enthusiastic about him but didnt have anybody else better and were stringing him along until they found somebody else.
I don't buy it. Seems like a waste of everyone's time. Even if you don't respect the candidate's time, it's still a waste of the employee's time, which is valuable to the company.
It’s going to blow your mind that many processes at many businesses are horribly inefficient and waste buckets of human time.
argh, don't remind me.
Certainly we have lots of horrible inefficiencies in my team, but stringing along hiring was not one of them. I understand this is not universal even at our company.
Yeah, I've seen someone get strung along and then finally hired. What happened was that it was a bit of a downturn so there was a limit to the hiring. Another dept somehow convinced the division head that their role was more urgent, so our department was left without approval even though we wanted the guy. It was a poor job market so he didn't land anywhere else even though it was a few months before the approval finally arrived. Everyone felt kind of shit about it. The guy was quite jittery to start with.
That sounds like it was a terrible place, but it was a good department in a somewhat hard nosed company. He ended up staying there 10 years.
> If you went through multiple rounds it likely means they were seriously considering you but ultimately they didn’t get to a yes.
Sure, but one would think then the rejection email would have specifics around the interview and where the candidate did not perform well. Not nit picking on the job hops. If job hops were a deal breaker then why waste the candidate's time putting them through full rounds of interviews?
if you were an experienced/mature tech employee you should probably know that there are real HR reasons why companies are strongly advised not to give too much information in a rejection email. there is only ever downside. your reaction here is a potential red flag.
i'm sympathetic to you, it sucks, why cant we all be nice to each other, and my answer to that all is lawyers.
It could also be that they might be sued for stating the real reason so they went with something that would be dismissed if it went to court.
A friend of mine (in an entirely different industry) went through five rounds of interviews with a company and got passed over for someone internal.
A little while later, the same company reached out and encouraged him to apply again. Five rounds later, and he got passed over a second time.
Fast forward two years and they reached out to him a third time. He's basically convinced that because he's black he's their token DEI interview candidate to make them feel better about themselves while internally promoting the people they actually want, but of course they wouldn't actually say that.
This is the reason. If they make any statement you could contest it in court, so they don't make any statement
> … specifics around the interview and where the candidate did not perform well …
Takes time away from the day job and other candidates.
You're not changing the world either way, you would just be working for a more demanding guy. Fuck em.
This is my favorite response in the thread. We aren't talking about getting a job at doctors across borders or something, we just want to manipulate bits of silicon to increase our networth.
When you say "we aren't" I hope you realize you aren't speaking for everyone. Even doctors across borders probably needs an IT person. There are jobs available for less pay that are fulfilling in other ways. I know I have taken them and am better off for it.
Aside, there is a tech equivalent of MSF: Télécoms Sans Frontières
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9l%C3%A9coms_Sans_Fronti...
I'm pretty sure VC backed companies are by and large doing it to increase the networth of the founders, and hopefully investors.
I don't lie to myself, I know why I do this.
Yea agree, I worked at a bank during covid and helped do some work that tangentially helped relief/social security payments go through. Warmed me heart it did
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A generic rejection is more than I got for feedback; I never heard back. Still, I thought the process of writing the materials was great. I don’t usually take the time to think about the arc of my experience in a holistic way. Do it for yourself if you do it at all; don’t go into it with high expectations for feedback and you won’t be disappointed.
I just reached out to them after the 4 to six weeks had passed. got my decision a few days later
Yeah. I tried that at the eight week mark, but I heard nothing back. Obviously not a process-heavy company, but that’s part of their appeal.
Usually the stated reason is not actually the real reason. They just state something generic that isn’t illegal to admit.
The real reason might be “they didn’t like your vibes” or something like that
Hiring is incredibly complicated when done well. If 'limited fuzzy Boolean windows' over 'complex interpersonal dynamics' is vibes, then we will need to accept vibes.
Vibes aren't a protected category.
They aren't explicitly, but, if you ever find yourself in a position where you're part of the hiring decision, it's best to categorize vibes as protected for anything written or otherwise recorded.
SCOTUS has found non-protected categories can still be protected because they are "proxies" for protected categories. One of the classic examples of this are zip codes[0], which was found to be a proxy for race, because it has a "disparate impact" on people of particular races.
For some people, the 'wrong vibes' are often proxies for cultural things - all kinds of body language contribute to vibes and it's easy to accidentally (or on purpose...) discriminate against a whole categories based on vibes. If you tell a candidate "Hey we just didn't like your vibes as much as this other guy", it could affect your exposure to claims that you discriminated against them based on their race.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Department_of_Housing_an....
> SCOTUS has found non-protected categories can still be protected because they are "proxies" for protected categories. One of the classic examples of this are zip codes[0], which was found to be a proxy for race, because it has a "disparate impact" on people of particular races.
This was probably wrong, both in terms of interpreting the existing law and as a statement of what the law should be. Sometimes bad facts correlate with race; that should not be a reason to deny using the measure for e.g. hiring or lending.
Do "vibes" really matter all that much when you're going to be working 100% remotely? Maybe we should be moving to fully blind auditions for such jobs, where the interview might still be proctored in some way to prevent outright cheating, but the people who make the hiring decision aren't even put in a position where they might "vibe" with the candidate.
I mean, yes. You’re still working with them even if it’s behind a computer screen.
> SCOTUS has found non-protected categories can still be protected because they are "proxies" for protected categories. One of the classic examples of this are zip codes[0], which was found to be a proxy for race, because it has a "disparate impact" on people of particular races.
I realise it may be somewhat beside your point, but that was a Kennedy+liberals vs conservatives ruling in 2015 - so the current SCOTUS would likely have ruled the other way, and decent odds they overrule it sooner or later. Scalia’s dissent was objecting to the entire idea of disparate impact analysis under the Fair Housing Act, so more likely that gets overruled than this specific application of that idea.
This was a statutory interpretation case though, so if SCOTUS overturns the decision, Congress could reverse that with ordinary legislation, no constitutional amendment required. But who knows whether that will turn out to be politically feasible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Department_of_Housing_an...
(Also, you need to change the last period in the URL to %2E to stop HN from mangling it.)
> Concerns that should have been handled in the initial call, somehow get pushed back till after I've wasted monumental amount of time.
Honestly these "reasons" they give are usually BS excuses when it basically amounts to they don't like your personality or looks.
Did I mention no one told me what the compensation package was at any point during the process.
It's a contractor life for me, I work for money, not "purpose" or anything else.
Hell my Facebook (technically a fully owned subsidiary to be fair) interview loop was easier. I didn't get the job that time either, but at least it was straight up.
> Did I mention no one told me what the compensation package was at any point during the process.
In previous HN threads they said something to the effect that they expect their applicants to have read what’s online about their equal base salary. Equity is not equally applied though.
I'm not talking about Oxide here, this was a different company.
Eh. I've been on a bunch of hiring committees. It hasn't been personality or looks. But a combination of things that we probably didn't all agree on and that may not have been able to fully articulate in a short message.
Don't underestimate the importance of timing, for both the company you're applying at and the industry/economy as a whole.
As they say, you can't get blood from a turnip.
Writing this comment reminded me of a personal experience, story time:
Many moons ago I interviewed at a mature startup in silicon valley, they shipped a tiered storage appliance and were in the process of pivoting to a new storage medium (think transitioning from spinning rust to SSDs, something like that).
This was in-person, and everything went swimmingly well, before departing they stated an intention to make an offer and I should expect an email w/offer attached within a week. I got an offer letter, and accepted immediately, as I was super excited about the stack I'd be playing with.
A week before the start date I get a call from a founder, they said I couldn't start because their funding round didn't come through. The economy was going through some sort of financial crisis and it was one of the many blood baths where silicon valley startups shuttered by the hundreds overnight. So in essence, this was a job I got fired from before I could even start, wee!
What followed was a pretty frustrating few months of interviewing and not getting anywhere.
But there is a silver lining to this story, that founder who called me sat on the board of other storage startups. One of them managed to get some water in this funding desert, and its founders reached out to me at his recommendation. I ended up building some great stuff over 4-5 years at that company.
So basically you wanted to have it easy - joining a company with a certain prestige and be over the recruitment process in 30 minutes or less.
Oxide and Friends is the only computing podcast I listen to anymore. It's a bunch of fun and they have insights I actually value.
The original On The Metal podcast they did is incredible too. The interviews they had with computing legends are just fantastic.
I used to enjoy it much more before it became just another podcast extoiling the virtues of AI-assisted coding. I have too many of those already.
I appreciate their treatment of the current AI boom cycle. Just last night they had Evan Ratliff on from the Shell Game podcast[1], and it was a great episode. They're not breathlessly hyping AI and trying to make a quick buck off it, instead it seems they're taking an honest, rigorous look at it (which is sadly pretty rare) and talking about the successes as well as the failures. Personally I don't always agree with their takes, I'm more firmly in Ed Zitron's camp that this is all a massive financial scam, isn't really good for much, and will do a lot more harm than good in the long run. They're less negatively biased than that, which is fine.
[1] https://www.shellgame.co/
Has the audio quality / recording method for Oxide and Friends gotten better?
I have this horrible "completionist" tendency and I got stuck on a 2021 episode where the audio needed post-processing and I just never got around to it.
I loved On the Metal and it was a bummer to fall behind on the new show.
There's absolutely no shame in "falling behind" on a podcast when even the audio itself is subpar, your time and attention is way more valuable than that. If the hosts have problems with that, they can provide sensible extra aids such as high-quality transcripts, to help viewers catch up on what they've missed without placing undue demands on their time.
I love the new podcast but miss on the metal so much. It should be quarterly at least
Same here. As a teenager I dreamt about working for SUN. Oxide comes close in a way.
I already know it is out of my league, however the podcast is great to listen to.
I really tried to like the podcast. It’s been a few years, so maybe it’s improved.
The topics were good. The guests were great.
But Bryan Cantrill was just terrible at letting his guests actually talk.
Bryan, if you’re listening, please let your guests talk. We have a large amount of content on YouTube if we want to hear the Bryan Cantrill take on, well, anything and everything. And it’s often amusing and sometimes right.
People don’t tune in to a podcast with guests to hear the host pontificate. They tune in to hear the guest, and sometimes the guest/host dynamic. When the host talks over the guest, you don’t get either.
After the Jonathon Blow episode, I gave up. Dude had interesting things to say about C, C++, and Rust, but most of what we got was Bryan talking about Rust. I guarantee anyone tuning into the Oxide podcast knows Bryan Cantrill’s opinions about Rust. And firmware. And Oracle. And Linux. Etc. etc.
Let your guests talk.
Well, a couple of things. First, the Jonathan Blow episode[0] was over six years ago. Second, it was nearly a three hour conversation -- I don't think I can be accused of not letting him talk? Third, I definitely remember that I felt I had to interrupt him to move the conversation along. Fourth, I had to pee really badly, I was absolutely freezing, and I was quite concerned about missing my flight to New Zealand that evening with my family for Christmas (which I damned near did) -- and I have no doubt that I was not at my best!
I do try to get better at this stuff, and I re-listen to our episodes to improve as an interviewer. If it's been "a few years", maybe you haven't listen too much to Oxide and Friends? I think we've had some wonderful guests and great conversations over the span of the podcast -- though I also have no doubt that it's imperfect, for which you have my profound apologies!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkdpLSXUXHY
I appreciate the reply and that it's been a while; I will give your podcast another listen.
It wasn't just the Jonathon Blow episode; that was just the point where I said "this is frustrating." For what it's worth, frustration came from knowing that this could be really good: your perspective is valuable, your topics were interesting, and your guests were excellent.
I find this a common mistake that people with strong opinions have when doing interview/guest style podcasts or shows. There's really an art to it; it's not easy to engage guests, keep the show interesting, and let the talk move in interesting ways. That's why Terry Gross and Howard Stern, in very different ways, have had such long and storied careers.
But it's something that people definitely get better at, and I have no doubt that you have. Again, I'll give it another listen.
Is this only based on On the Metal? (If so, those are all from six years ago -- even the ones that were released a mere five years ago.) Please do check out Oxide and Friends[0] -- and feedback always welcome!
[0] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/
These sort of transparent answers are what make oxide and the people behind it such a fantastic company. Thank you for your wonderful contributions to the software and hardware community!
I disagree. I found the 'On the Metal' to be great balance between the guest and the hosts. And Oxide and Friends I would expect Oxide to be big part of it.
And Jonathon Blow manages to talk enough ...
And lawnmowers.
I try to listen to the podcast the main guy's brain seems to be on overdrive can barely talk
I applied last year. But they had too many candidates apply to consider my application.
This is good news for them. I expect there will be more competition for positions there should any open up.
+1 for the podcast.
I would try to apply but as far as I know they require 4 hours overlap with PST which excludes Europe
It doesn’t strictly exclude Europe, we have a few employees in Europe. But as the other reply says, they work slightly odd hours.
> I would try to apply but as far as I know they require 4 hours overlap with PST which excludes Europe
Wouldn't that depend less on where you are and more about your sleeping schedule? I generally go to bed around 04:00Z, up around 11:30Z sometime, seems that would work regardless of location, no?
Unless the position *strictly* requires the overlap (e.g. Manufacturing or Program Management), you can apply. The required overlap is the expected team commitment you should abide to, the logistics are up to you to make it work. If that sounds encouraging, please apply!
I'm happily voluntarily unemployed, but happy to hear my reasoning was accurate regardless, cheers and good luck :)
If I were in college, that would make sense, but I like to spend evenings with my family.
You just need to find the right family it sounds like ;) We both have the same sleeping schedule so works out for us, and we hang out more than ever. But YMMV.
Working for them would be cool, but just getting to work with their gear would be great. I am so tired of commodity Dell x86 servers (and garbage drivers, management hardware, etc) and support technicians who have no resources to actually support the hardware (beyond telling me to update the firmware and pray).
As an AWS heavy user, spinning up an oxide VM really does feel so slick.
Can you name some people who are working there and who you look up to? I need some new idols after the old idols all went up in MAGA and Epstein files .
Well one, don't look up to people you personally don't know. Parasocial relationships are not healthy. Look into your local community for people to be mentors or help you.
That said I like Bryan Cantrill as an engineer and leader, but I would never put him on a pedestal.
On the other hand, it's normal to have heroes, and to need to have them.
This is a child mindset, people don't need heroes. They need leaders that care about them and want to better their communities; these leaders are found within your literal neighbors, friends, and family.
Not really.
One dichotomy categorisation I personally look for in people is: * likes heirachy versus * dislikes heirachy.
I suspect heroes are mostly relevant if you are a heirachy lover? I also believe that heirachy lovers are more likely to believe in evil puppetmaster conspiracies (anti-heroes if you will).
It is a lot harder to find heroes if you dislike authority because your heroes are more likely to avoid heirachical status ladders?
Heroes like Spiderman and Batman? Or strangers that put on a mask, and whose public image is maintained by PR firms?
Not really, that’s what leads to parasocial relationships.
Nobody is flawless and part of becoming an adult is learning to admire specific qualities rather than obsess over individuals.
It's best to avoid idolizing folks. It can give you a skewed set of expectations and lead you to resent them when inevitably they cannot live up those those expectations (which is unfair to them), and possibly lower your own self esteem if you cannot meet those same standards yourself.
Tip that will work forever, even when the ones you replace your old idols with get replaced: Don't have any idols.
Listen to the words, don't follow "personalities", don't listen to specific individuals just because of their status. Not a single time have I been disappointed by an idol, because I've made the conscious choice of not having following any. Bunch of smart people say smart stuff all the time, until they don't. I read everything as if I don't know the author, I think more people should do this and less celebrity worship would make the entire ecosystem better. We need less of it, not more.
I've seen Bryan Cantrill present at a few conferences and his talks are always the best.
A recent one (2025q4) he gave at Jane Street, "Andreessen’s Folly - The False Dichotomy of Software and Hardware":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0JjG0Qfwi8
Is Jessie Frazelle still there? She is very impressive.
no, but still being super impressive. CEO of a company rebuilding a CAD rendering engine because they put an LLM on top of it. So you describe the mechanical specs of the part you want and it models it. Takes all the tedium out of modeling stuff. Super cool and many applications.
Oh cool! That looks like a super interesting product.
https://zoo.dev
They had to do CAD while working on Oxide and realized that it sucked. So she went off to solve that.
that's taking yak shaving to another level!
Bryan Cantrill