11:45 p.m.
I was just heading to bed when this email came in. I felt a need to deconstruct it a bit…
Hi Greg,
We appreciate your interest in Mozilla and the time you’ve invested in applying for the Senior Developer Advocate, Add-ons opening.
We have decided to not move forward with your application at this time. I’d like to thank you for talking to our team and giving us the opportunity to learn about your skills and accomplishments. We will be advertising more positions in the coming months. We hope you’ll keep us in mind and encourage you to apply in the future.
We wish you the best with your job search and professional future endeavors.
Mozilla Talent Acquisition Team
So, normally, I don’t name names. But since the sender was no-reply@mozilla.com and it’s a bridge I’m willing to burn, I have no option but to reply in public.
It’s all well and good. This is not the first “thanks, but no” letter I’ve received. It’s not even the worst. When I was graduating college, I sent my resume to Esquire magazine, interested in a potential editorial position. They sent back the form letter they use to reject short stories. Not only did they reject me, but in a backhanded way that implied my resume was a work of fiction.
I would have left this email alone. It’s just this one sentence that needs dissecting.
I’d like to thank you for talking to our team and giving us the opportunity to learn about your skills and accomplishments.
I did no such thing! I answered a job posting via LinkedIn four days ago, filled out a form, and 4 days later you sent this. The whole “talking to our team” thing?? Never happened. Do not gaslight me while you’re rejecting me. Have a little decency.
Also, the pronoun in every other sentence is “we” and it is signed with a team name. So where did “I’d” suddenly come from. Did the alpha version of your rejection letter composition AI become momentarily sentient? Is the team itself actually 5 robot lions and that sentence was composed while they were combined as Voltron?
Look, it’s my mistake. I never should have applied. You apparently are so budget strapped you can’t afford more than one poorly-proofread brush-off form letter… you know, so if you’re rejecting someone without talking to them, a higher form letter budget might allow you to have a version where you don’t claim you talked to them and where you do have collective/individual pronoun consistency.
Thanks, Mozilla. If you want to discuss this further, you can email no-reply@letmypeoplecode.com.