At an earlier point in my life, I had been applying to many well-known big tech companies right out of school (not a top school either). I never got a reply from any of them so I ended up accepting a local job with a non-tech company after months of searching.

But I didn’t give up my hopes and kept applying to big tech, and while I did manage to get the occasional interview with some mediocre companies or the random startup, I also miserably failed all of them too.

At some point during my long period of despair at never getting a better job, my very top pick (and arguably one of the best tech companies in the world at the time) reached out to me. Even more miraculously, I somehow passed their interview (the only tech interview I passed in the prior year) and accepted a job there.

I really enjoyed working there. Some of the best years of my life. And my performance reviews were great too, so the imposter syndrome from having failed so many tech job interviews sort of faded into the background. But after a while, perhaps due to the “hedonic treadmill” mentality, I thought I could do better. So I left to join a startup.

Well, the startup failed, as startups tend to do, but what I didn’t expect and what caught me off guard was that I was now back in the same situation I was in right after graduating from college. Don’t get me wrong—having “the name” on my resume now meant I could get at least one chance at an interview about anywhere. But much like the first round that I tried to forget about, I once again failed all the interviews.

Unfortunately, this second time around never procured a “get out of jail free” card.

So I guess my lesson is: 1) there’s a lot of luck involved in these things, 2) if life gives you a winning lottery ticket at some point, don’t throw it away for the chance to win an even bigger lottery, and 3) that famous saying about “the only actions regretted are those not taken” is absolutely, totally wrong—almost all of my regrets in life relate to taking some action I shouldn’t have rather than inaction.

I started out where the author was. Well, roughly. +Kids, -Secondary edu. I could and did rise above that. And above 3 economy shifts that each reset my biz to zero.

I did not rise above my spouse being swapped for an adult with profound psych issues. I took on the single dad and caregiver roles well enough.

However, I could not overcome the daily sabotage of, well, everything. It's like a TV trope where you are shackled to your worst enemy. But you have to keep them safe and your loved ones safe from them.

It's tough to maintain a job schedule when the police frequently call you during the workday (w and w/o CPS). Or when your transpo is stolen and can't be replaced.

In short, it's particular tough to pretend to be stable. Eventually there are no bridges left to burn.

Might sound stupid, but this major life area being just a rock solid fundament frees up so much energy my peers still struggle with nowadays quite often it’s insane in hindsight. Everyday life costs are lower, some risk taking is possible when someone has your back unconditionally and even supports it (as long as not going reckless), and a secure home base to return to is something I guess even money can’t easily buy. Short of being born already rich I guess that’s a cheat code with similar small odds, and I appreciate it.

Then the „business opportunities“ become just something way more relaxed. Not identity level validation attempts or despair to get into a better life. Which again allows better judgement calls and reintroduces more fun and creativity into many things.

Just my 2c for perspective

I'm now taking time out to try to figure out how to escape the confines of the career path I've taken to find something different.

Open to suggestions of entirely different careers that I could switch to that might have higher odds of not being toxic rat-races full of people telling lies and bullshit just to survive.

But broader experience suggests the world of work just sucks these days (and yes, it's these days - our parent's generation had a brief period of doing 9-to-5 jobs which paid well enough to afford homes, have families and social lives and holidays. We don't get that now.). No wonder large numbers of my generation are dropping out of the workforce...

I think this can be a useful maxim to get you to the next day, but in reality it takes a lot more than one of anything for a fulfilling life. We grow and change and need novelty. We are held in a web of interdependent, ever-shifting relationships - with people, businesses, material goods, ecology. I think that generally people are seeking connection in a broader sphere. To be held in community, to have multiple significant identities (mother/wife/boss), to live in richness and abundance where any one thing is not make or break.

What do you do if the job that makes you an offer doesn't excite you? What if the house that feels like home needs more repairs than you can afford? What if the program that accepts you has crappy funding? What if the person who chooses you has red flags?

Do you say "screw it," cross your fingers, and walk through the door that kind of sucks? Or do you keep looking as long as your resources last you?

“All it takes is for one to work out.” is not the same as "You just need the one [job] that’s the right fit." or "You just need the one [house] that feels like home." or "You just need the one [life partner]."

Author's examples are, spiritually, the opposite of their friend's advice - in fact, "all it takes is for one to work out" is something often said to people who lost hope because they got lost being too picky.

Here is my personal advice to whoever reads this comment. Ignore everything they say on the internet. Do what works best for you. Trust your intuition. Set bold goals. Always learn and strive to become better in everything you do.

If you failed an interview, it’s perfectly ok to be disappointed. Spend a day calling your own self names. It’s normal! The very next day analyze why you failed, see where you need to improve. Rinse and repeat. This will get you whatever the hell you want in this life.

Yes I have nothing to show for it. No money, no deals, no awards... And that upsets me 70% percent of the time. In a healthy way, where it just keeps me going back to the desk same time every day.

Rest of the time I really enjoy just being able to do it and being able to afford the time to do it. As one of the few in my family with degree and withouth second job.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k

I should probably still try that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox

Sheesh. HN is grumpy today.

If you're never done growing, you're never done peaking, nor ever really done trying.

One working out can lead to the next way.

Wishing everyone well who this piece resonated with.

> You don’t need every job to choose you. You just need the one that’s the right fit. [emphasis mine]

You don't need the job that's the right fit. There's more than one. You need any job that fits. (Or that you can make fit you.)

So, if you want to size up the search, let p be the probability that a typical job you apply for will (1) result in you being hired and (2) be a job that fits you. Then the expected number of jobs you must apply to before getting hired to a job that fits you is 1/p. [1]

Say you think p = 5%. Then, on average, you'll need to apply to 20 jobs to land one that fits you.

How many jobs do you need to apply to have a 90% chance of landing one that fits you? If q is the wanted probablity of overall success, then the number of jobs k you must apply to is given by k = log(1 − q) / log(1 − p). So, in this example, k = log(1 − 0.9) / log(1 − 0.05) ≈ 45 applications.

That's a lot of rejections and ill-fitting jobs before landing one that sticks. Which is why it's useful to be persistent and flexible. Being able to make a job fit can dramatically reduce your search.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_binomial_distribution

(The limit is 1-e^(-2).)

So, if you have a LOT of chances to try things that are highly improbable but high upside, your odds are quite good.

>You don’t need every job to choose you. You just need the one that’s the right fit.

When I’m applying for a job, I can apply for multiple jobs at once and interview for multiple jobs over a a few weeks. It’s especially easy when I am both interviewing and working remotely. I don’t have to make excuses to leave work during the middle of the day or worse case fly out for an interview.

The same is true for buying a home, I can put bids in for multiple homes - or in my case just have my homes built in 2003 and 2016. I know the world is different now.

>You don’t need every person to want to build a life with you. You just need the one.

This is one place where of course you can shoot your shot at multiple potential partners and date often. What you don’t want to do is try marriage multiple times if it can be avoided. A bad marriage will wreck every part of your life and a divorce will set you back financially. (Happily remarried for 15 years after a horrible first marriage.)

None of his examples are applicable to starting a business. 9/10 startups fail and even out of those that “succeed” only a small number of those have an outsized return for the founder where they wouldn’t be better off financially working a regular old enterprise dev job for those years let alone getting a job at BigTech.

VCs can make multiple bets at one time and be more assured that they capture the 1/10 startups that succeed than a founder.

There is a huge difference between being able to take multiple chances at once in all of those scenarios and being stuck with the 1/10 choices you make for multiple years.

Why I like the authors interpretation even more is because when the chips are down, you just need the thing to work once (in many contexts) and that might be your golden ticket. Like the one VC that meets you out of a 100, or any of the examples the author wrote.

Ome of the situations in the article is very relevant to me right now.

I'm going to keep reminding myself now:

"All it takes is for one to work out.

And that one is all as I need."

Through these experiences I totally agree, and try to apply it to life, but it's hard, even knowing that it's true. How cool is it for every college, person, job offer, scholarship to want you?

Even though we're looking just for "the one" it's very hard for me to mitigate the feeling of getting rejected, even knowing it was not "the one". Rejection generally hurts, when you care about the goal

When it does, your life will change in an instant.

Job offers passed on because it wasn't the perfect fit. Marriage chances missed because the perfect soul mate must still be around the corner. Good schools rejected because it wasn't their dream school.

Luck often accompanies those willing to accept less than perfect in many cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Anyone_Builds_It,_Everyone_...

It didn't try to maximise by how much it won, but just that it won. Apparently it changed the meta for human pkayers.

If you have the time for it, the movie/doc is worth watching https://youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y

I wrote about Walking Out,[1] but more from a content/digital life perspective. I do follow similar thinking with life situations too.

I’m neither complaining nor comparing, but hey, life dealt a bad enough hand early on. Mother left us when the last of our siblings (sister) was barely 6 months old, and father was never present. My brothers and I survived by working odd jobs, stealing vegetables from neighbors, and running errands for almost everyone in the neighborhood. My brother worked repairing bicycles, cleaning trucks, and giving up studies so I could study. I started teaching the neighbors’ kids in my 5th grade and paid through school, then worked computer stuff to pay for college, and also begged a lot of relatives to supplement for food, books, etc. I know what actual starvation meant. It was only around my 15th year I learnt that winters can actually be warm when I had a sleep-over at my friend’s place where they had warm blankets that was thick enough.

So, my belief is that things won’t work out. Can I Walk Out? Well, “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”

Way later in life, I realized the neighbors knew about our night crawls. That was why they started giving us their vegetable garden harvest, and the “we have some extra cooking oil.”

1. https://brajeshwar.com/2025/can-i-walk-out/

You mean, the first one to say yes. Tbh seems more like first to say yes, not first to be fit and say yes.

> You don’t need every house to accept your offer. You just need the one that feels like home.

Same here. Is easy to find one to say yes. Hard to be “feels like home” && say yes.

> You don’t need every person to want to build a life with you. You just need the one.

“The one” is hard.

>You don’t need ten universities to say yes. You just need the one that opens the right door.

Same. What even means “the right door”? How can you even know before you got in?

I think it’s a bad analogy. At least frame it a more realistic: your only need one job to say yes. Might not be the right job but it’s a job. Same for all other.

Life had to spark only once, leading to the subsequent explosion in variety and complexity.

I did. Met on an app, turned out they lived round the corner from me, we are now married. She is a _very_ unusual person (has to be to work with me) and you wouldn’t expect her to be in a small city, but due to particular life circumstances she had just moved there temporarily.

These days once in a lifetime opportunities are getting increasingly rare... This is something that the lucky few do not understand because they may pass up on once-in-100-lifetimes opportunities just about every single day. The asymmetry of opportunities is massive.

Our system is not a level playing field.

No system in the history of humanity has wasted as much human potential as our current system. Opportunities are completely monopolized.

Thanks for the tip buddy!

There's a false equivalence between -

“All it takes is for one to work out.”

and the following:

- "You don’t need every job to choose you. You just need the one that’s the right fit."

- "You don’t need every house to accept your offer. You just need the one that feels like home. "

The latter assumes that _every_ attempt you make has a chance at being "the right fit", "the one that feels like home". That is not the way things works for 99% of us.

Here in Bay Area, in Silicon Valley, all you need is to try hard and get lucky once.

You have already lost, you can only win.

Same about university or house, or... anything really.

Applicable not just for grad school applications, but also to job apps, startups, and relationships.

Hang in there y'all, all it takes is for one to work out. Keep working hard, kings & queens.

All it takes, is for one to work out.

Making this specific, I used to work in employment advice. As one of the things here is a job search, I'll touch on that one: There are people who have been applying for jobs for decades. I've met many people who haven't been able to get a job in north of twenty years. It's obvious that what they're doing will never work out for them. There may be one job in the world out there that will take them, but just doing a naive search will - in all probability - never locate for them that job. The world is too large and they don't have the time to search even a single percentage of it. What they need to do is to look at all the reasons they're not getting a job and prioritise addressing those:

- Do they have all the qualifications and certificates they need for their target industry? - Do they have recent relevant experience? - Do they have a good CV? - Do they have a decent cover letter? - Do they have a good interview?

Now, that's not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.

The other way in which it's a bad piece of advice is that people aren't machines. When you've spent a great deal of time gambling and losing then the tendency is for people to seek bigger payoffs at higher comparative risks and/or lower comparative chances of success. The tendency is for people to be less likely to do the things, e.g. volunteering, that will improve their odds as their tally of losses increases.

Down thread, raw_anon_1111 posits the position that you've lost nothing by trying - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46091837 - in my experience this is not the case.

People lose time in making the attempts, they lose energy (which is perhaps more important than time,) and they lose sight of other options - which game they're playing, why they're playing it, how they're playing it. It will, in all probability, not work out within their lifetimes - and the reason that it won't work out is that following this sort of strategy has made them the sort of person for whom it is unlikely to do so. Whilst their friends went and volunteered, and took concrete steps, they just kept trying that same strategy on the assumption that at least one was out there for them that met their requirements. And there just wasn't. Not in that timespan.

Now, I'm not saying just give up and never try. Reversed stupidity isn't intelligence. But if you've been trying to make something work out - as a rule of thumb - for six months say, and you're not seeing concrete steps towards success - you should re-examine your fundamental assumptions. Preferably, if it's something high-stakes, with the assistance of a competent third party that you trust. Because maybe you're the problem, and maybe there's something you can do about it. And you'd best find that out now rather than spending 20 years on some warmly meant advice that perhaps isn't going to work out for you.