[albacur]

You pop up in every post about Google or Facebook and make the conversation about yourself, wallowing in self pity because you didn't land a job there straight out of college. This might sound harsh, but you need to get over it and move on.

[typest]

^^ what this guy said. You named yourself lowiqengineer because your SAT score was “only” 2200. That’s in the 98th percentile —- if it were an IQ test, it would get you into Mensa, the organization for high IQ people!

You talk as if people from FANG (your invented acronym to exclude Amazon) look down on all others, but it seems that you are the one looking down on all others, everyone who wasn’t lucky enough to get into G/FB straight out of college while also building up not just 1, but 2 or 300k or net worth.

These companies you aspire to do behavioral interviews, and I’m guessing you’re failing them.

Take a step back. You won’t “fail” life because you “only” got a job at one FAANG and not another, or because your net worth is only 100k straight out of college....even the sentence I just wrote sounds completely ridiculous.

Your problems are stemming from how you view yourself and the world, which is full of false assumptions. A lot of smart people on HN have told you this —- you should listen to them.

[lowiqengineer]

> These companies you aspire to do behavioral interviews, and I’m guessing you’re failing them.

Don't know why people say this. I'm usually pretty good at behavioral interviews. The problem is the algorithmic interviews (again, this is where my IQ fixation comes from).

IDK man, compared to most everyone else I seem to have failed life at this point given that I have zero accomplishments and little financial security.

[albacur]

> compared to most everyone else I seem to have failed life

Please realize how offensive and insulting this is.

You were hired by one of the most successful tech companies, which most people could never aspire to. You claim that Amazon pays you 80% of what (you assume) Facebook or Google would pay you, which puts you financially ahead of the vast majority of people. By calling yourself a failure, you’re calling nearly everyone on Earth an even bigger failure, which is offensive and makes you look extremely entitled and detached from reality.

> Don’t know why people say this.

It’s because you come off in your posts as entitled, obsessive, elitist, insensitive, and bitter. These are the only sideS of yourself that you convey here, so that’s why people assume you’re failing your behavioral interviews.

Sorry again if I’m being harsh, but you’ve been posting the same stuff here for months, and every discussion gets derailed by people consoling you or advising you, which you invariably reject. Let’s stop going in circles.

[typest]

Serious question: How do you know you're good at behavioral interviews? Have you ever seen the feedback written on a behavioral interview? The companies you're describing don't usually give out feedback to applicants, so you can't know, right?

It sounds to me like you have anxiety. I'm saying this because I have anxiety, so I know what it's like. One hallmark of anxiety disorders is that you think things are true about the world, even though you don't actually have evidence this is the case. Or, you fixate on some pieces of information while ignoring evidence to the contrary, which again is irrational thinking. Or you hold assumptions about how the world works that aren't proven. You should look into cognitive behavioral therapy as a potential solution.

You say "compared to everyone else". But, you have to acknowledge that the net worth and income numbers you named put you into the 99th percentile, right? So, you actually mean "compared to a very small subset of people I have failed", right? And this is just a completely irrational argument. I mean according to this vein of thinking, then since I don't have as much money as Jeff Bezos, I've failed. And the implication then is the whole world has failed. Right?

[lowiqengineer]

I've always passed interviews that focused on behavioral aspects, I've frequently struggled in algorithm focused loops (bombed 2/4 in my Google onsite because, again, I'm intellectually inferior). Besides, until recently G didn't include any behavioral loops.

> "compared to a very small subset of people I have failed"

Compared to nearly everyone at elite universities I have absolutely failed. I'm sure some of them will become the Jeff Bezos of 2050 as well - it's irrelevant that it's still a small number. I don't want to be compared against somebody that works at Cisco or IBM for instance for the work and mental anguish I've put in.

[typest]

Even here you have many false assumptions though. For instance, the Harvard median new grad salary is 69k [1]. So you’re wrong in your assertion that compared to nearly everyone at elite universities you have failed. By your own definition of success, compared to most (by definition of median) people at elite universities, you have succeeded, and it’s they who have failed.

You also have an implicit assumption that people who work at Cisco or IBM haven’t put in work or mental anguish, and you’re wrong. I know many people who worked and studied hard to get jobs at these places.

You’re artificially restricting the set of successful outcomes so that you can say you’ve failed because you don’t fall into that arbitrary set. Not to mention that your entire definition of success as defined by things like money and perks is wrong.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/09/14/sta...

[lowiqengineer]

The perspective is inverted. From the perspective of a Harvard/Stanford/CMU/MIT undergrad working at Amazon is failing, which is nothing to say of IBM or Cisco (this is what I've understood after talking to several). I'd wager that the median new grad TC for Harvard CS students is at least twice that.

[sukilot]

That's completely unscientific content marketing "research".

[manigandham]

There are billions of people worse off then pretty much anyone posting on HN.

Let me repeat: that is thousands of millions of people who can barely even conceptualize the life you're able to live.

[scarface74]

I was about to disagree with what seems like a personal attack but then without looking at the posting history of the poster you replied to and just looking at the username. I have to agree.

On another note, I’m in my mid 40’s spent all of my time bouncing between yet another CRUD job most of my career (not complaining, it’s paid for a decent lifestyle in my relatively low cost of living area) and I’m always encouraging fresh CS grads to go for broke and take the r/cscareerquestions route of “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG”, knowing they will make more fresh out of college than I did until a few months ago.

Someone else’s success is not my failure.