Startups obsessively want you to be passionate
“He failed to make an impression of the person who is wanting something or looking for something particular. He is not happy with his current job, but his expectations seemed to be quite blurred. Which is surprising for an engineer of his level.”
This is the feedback I received after a job interview. It hurts. It’s true, but it doesn’t make it hurt less. It reminds me of all the feedback I got from women I dated with or tried to date with.
And it pisses me off. Women expect you to be committed before there’s anything to commit to. They love guys who fall for them. If you want to give it a try, go out for dinner, no candle-light first, it comes later. We could go and watch the Incredibles 2 together. Not that I’m interested in it, it’s just a movie I’ve seen advertised enough times so it stuck in my subconscious. Any movie would do, I just want to share my attention between a storyline that’s not too demanding and your face, maybe my witty comments, too. I don’t want to pretend you’re the person I’ve been looking for years. I don’t want to tell you I never had sex before or I didn’t enjoy it.
I know the feeling when a guy looks you in the eyes, you see the softness, you see how the otherwise reserved and cautious person slowly lets his protecting shield drop. You can see his naked soul. That soul repeats a single mantra: your name. This is a spiritual experience given so few times in a life. Don’t expect it to happen on the first date. If it happens, rejoice and be suspicious at the same time. There are guys who can bring magic into their eyes, who can’t juggle 5 balls, but can do the equivalent with their eyes. They can do a soul striptease every other day, they are pros when it comes to falling for a woman. I’m not saying this is the case, but it’s something to watch out for.
A job application is like a quest for a romantic relationship, the first real interview after the screening is a first date. Hiring managers of IT companies expect you to be passionate about their product and their technology. Why do you want to work with us? We use angular.js and kafka and foobarbzr. What are your strong emotions about them? Have you spent sleepless nights when angular 1.7 came out? Tell me a story of your love-and-hate relationship with javascript.
They are standard dating questions. What do you like about me? What makes me different from all other women you dated with? I’m wearing this crazy little grey skirt with a polka-dot shirt. I noticed there’re three other women in the room in a grey skirt, so you have to work harder to tell me why you picked me.
Women who play this game end up realizing this is a sure way to sorrow and solitude. Love at first sight is not better than love at the hundredth sight. I’d even risk the latter relationship has more emotional stability and will play out more beneficial in the long run. Some learn this lesson between two slaps on the face from life, some from a friend during a night at the bar with countless beers, some from a psychotherapist for big bucks.
But companies can play on this game. If you can’t be the passionate lover on the first interview, they won’t think twice to reject you. Just turn back and look at the queue of brilliant job applicants lining up. They have all what it takes, from angular to kafka, from the love of organic fairtrade coffee to a penchant for gender issues. Some even have that shine in their eyes that makes the knees of the hiring manager tremble.
Oh, I can understand companies have a number of reasons to be passionate about your being passionate. They think you’ll be motivated from day one and stay like that until the end of the world or an IPO whichever comes first. They think if you have a solid plan for your life and you’re executing the plan in a focused and ruthless way, you’ll do the same with their product. They want to tell a compelling story of their startup along the lines, “it’s been a struggle, but loved every moment of it”. But I think the most important reason is they want to be loved their job applicants, because they’re having such a hard time to earn the love of their customers.
