Title: I&#x27;m 32+, live with my parents and have failed at 4 different startups in the past 10 years, two since I left my last paying job in 2012. In 2014, I had $0 taxable income (due to being unemployed) and was rejected by the following companies:<p>Google* (third time in 3 years)
Twilio* (x2)
Smartling*
Samsung*
Amazon+
Facebook
Cloudflare 
AppDynamics*
DigitalOcean
Placemeter*
E.W.Scripps*
Hatch
AppNexus*
OpenX
ThoughtWorks*
Roost
... several others I can&#x27;t remember
... several others I can remember, but mutually decided the fit was wrong
... MANY others to whom I submitted a resume and never heard back<p>* = rejected after in-person interview
+ = withdrew, sensing impending rejection
else, rejected after phone screen<p>In addition, I took the GMAT and was rejected by the following schools:<p>MIT Sloan
Stanford Business School
Columbia Business School
Harvard Business School<p>If you&#x27;re thinking &quot;Wow that&#x27;s a lot of calls and interviews to come up empty-handed&quot;, you&#x27;re right. You see, while my resume is (apparently) attractive, I suffer from crippling anxiety, the kind that says &quot;Hey, you have in interview tomorrow! No sleep for you!&quot; It turns out interviewers don&#x27;t like bloodshot eyes, dark circles and a foggy Xanax brain. (Nor does the GMAT.)<p>But finally... last week I had an interview at a major university, got 3 hours of sleep but somehow landed the job (pending HR salary approval). It doesn&#x27;t pay like Google does, but I think I&#x27;ll learn a lot and I&#x27;m extremely grateful that someone finally said &quot;yes&quot; to me. I&#x27;m going to make the most of it and will be a better engineer from the experience.<p>Don&#x27;t give up! If you have any technical skill, whatsoever, someone out there wants to hire you. Just keep plugging along!
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