[shawnee_]

Paraphrasing, but it doesn't matter. I'd applied because I admired it as a company that could help you find answers for pretty much anything. I wanted to be a part of that.

Yet clearly was it the intent of the email to inform me in a very specific way that they had scrutinized and deemed my skill set useless for "all" jobs at Google. They went out of their way to tell me that no jobs at Google would be a fit for my "experience and qualifications".

This was 2006 and it had IPO'd not long before. I'd been out of grad school for about two years at that point, and I knew that "growing" companies are supposed to need all kinds of people. It was baffling.

Long story short: this (and other) rejections rendered my self esteem pretty wrecked. This one though I look back to as the cruelest one and what more or less launched me into a pretty severe downward spiral that lasted about four years.

That Google is still (condescendingly) rejecting creative and intelligent people like Mr Howell for not fitting into their mold ... that is still baffling.