by 12300886574321 | 2025-12-07 20:14:55+00:00
I debated not writing this, as I planned on re-applying again, as oxide is in many ways a dream company for me, and didn't want this to hurt my chances if I could be identified and it was seen as negative or critical (I hope not, I'm just relaying my experience, as honestly as I can!), but I felt like I needed to make this post (my first on HN, a longtime lurkerj). I applied in the last 6 months, and against my better judgement, encouraged by the perceived company culture, the various luminaries on the team, the varied technical and non-technical content on the podcasts, and my general (unfortunate) propensity for honesty, I was more vulnerable than normal in a tech application, and spent many hours writing it. (fwiw, it's not super relevant to what I'll get to, but you can and should assume I am a longtime Rust programmer (since 1.0) with successful open source libraries, even ones used by oxide, but also a very private person, no socials, no blogging, etc., so much to my chagrin, I assumed I would be a shoe-in :)) After almost 3 months, I was disappointed (and surprised if I'm being honest, hubris, indeed!) to receive a very bland, uninformative rejection email for the position, stating they received too many applications for the position (still not filled as of today!) and would not proceed at this time, and welcome to re-apply, etc. Let me state: this is fine, this is not my first rodeo! I have a well paying (taking the job would have been a significant paycut, but that's how much I wanted to work there!), albeit at the moment, unchallenging job at a large tech company. What I found particularly objectionable was that my writing samples (urls to my personal samples) were never accessed.

This is or could be signal for a number of things, but what was particularly disappointing was the heavy emphasis on writing in the application packet and the company culture, as e.g., reiterated by the founder I'm replying to, and yet my writing samples were never even read? I have been in tech for many years, seen all the bullshit in recruiting, hiring, performed interviews many times myself, so it wouldn't be altogether surprising that a first line recruiter throws a resume into a reject pile for <insert reasons>, but then I have so many other questions - why the 3 months delay if tossed quickly, and if it truly was read by the/a founder or heavily scrutinized, as somewhat indicated by the post, why did they not access my writing samples? There are just more questions now. All of this was bothersome, and if I'm being honest, made me question joining the company, but what really made me write this response, is that I am now worried, given the content of the post I'm replying to, whether my application was flagged as LLM generated? I don't think my writing style is particularly LLMish, but in case that's in doubt, believe me or not, my application, and this response does not have a single word from an LLM. This is all, sui generis, me, myself, and I. (This doesn't quite explain why my samples weren't accessed, but if I'm being charitable, perhaps the content of the application packet seemed of dubious provenance?) Irregardless, if it was flagged, I suppose the long and short of this little story is: are you sending applicants rejection letters noting this suspicion, at least as a courtesy? If I was the victim of a false positive, I would at least like to know. This isn't some last ditch attempt (the rejection was many months ago) to get re-eval'd; I have a job, I can reapply in my own time, and even if this was an oversight or mistake (although not accessing the writing samples at all is somewhat of a red flag for me), there is no way they can contact me through this burner account, it's just, like, the principle of it, and the words needed to be said :) Thank you, and PS, even through it all, I (perhaps now guiltily) still love your podcast :D