Here's my own little story. (not as bad as the OP)
About a year ago, I was reading Byrne Hobart's excellent newsletter on financial stuff (no affiliation, but it's well worth its money), and I see an ad where they're looking for a head of strategy.
To apply, you simply had to email John Collison (the youngest of the Collison brothers) with your idea about it.
I thought I had a shot, given my experiences, and decided to spend several hours to prepare a memo, that I shared with them.
Of course, I thought, after all this work, and considering that this candidature comes from a respected, still niche, newsletter, and given my resume and past experience (ex AWS - first hire in Europe in 2008 -, ex VMware, etc - I'm not trying to beat my chest here, just stating that I objectively had a good resume for a position like this), at least I should get one chance to interview, or worst case, a simple but kind "we saw your note, not interested, good luck".
Of course, as you can guess, I've never heard back. Reached out again after a couple of weeks, and still nothing from them.
Reached out to a friend who works at Stripe, asked him if he could help with my application. He says he will try, but then... nothing.
Ok, Stripe, I guess you won't have me.
Side note: compare that with how I got my job at Amazon Web Services, back in 2008 [1]. Completely different experience.
Eventually, after I gave up on this opportunity, I decided to make the memo into a blog post [0], omitting or tweaking a few minor details. It might be worth a read, and I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Not exactly. The newsletter is a paid, niche newsletter, and the author stated that you could apply to the job by directly emailing John Collison. It was somehow implied that applying that way was a more direct track than a cold email.
It's also stupid to pay for an ad in a "special" newsletter, mention how candidates can reach out to you, and:
1) Ignore the extra work done by someone to show high interest in the job
2) not even respond at all.
You might see things differently, of course. This is how I see it, and I think that Stripe didn't behave nicely in this particular stance. As stated at the beginning of my comment, this is not comparable to the OP story which, assuming it's completely true and unbiased, is certainly worse than mine.
Thanks for the extra context. Still, I would imagine that an employer would feel free to ghost any email or application from an unknown person unless it came with a specific recommendation from someone they know.
About a year ago, I was reading Byrne Hobart's excellent newsletter on financial stuff (no affiliation, but it's well worth its money), and I see an ad where they're looking for a head of strategy.
To apply, you simply had to email John Collison (the youngest of the Collison brothers) with your idea about it.
I thought I had a shot, given my experiences, and decided to spend several hours to prepare a memo, that I shared with them.
Of course, I thought, after all this work, and considering that this candidature comes from a respected, still niche, newsletter, and given my resume and past experience (ex AWS - first hire in Europe in 2008 -, ex VMware, etc - I'm not trying to beat my chest here, just stating that I objectively had a good resume for a position like this), at least I should get one chance to interview, or worst case, a simple but kind "we saw your note, not interested, good luck".
Of course, as you can guess, I've never heard back. Reached out again after a couple of weeks, and still nothing from them.
Reached out to a friend who works at Stripe, asked him if he could help with my application. He says he will try, but then... nothing.
Ok, Stripe, I guess you won't have me.
Side note: compare that with how I got my job at Amazon Web Services, back in 2008 [1]. Completely different experience.
Eventually, after I gave up on this opportunity, I decided to make the memo into a blog post [0], omitting or tweaking a few minor details. It might be worth a read, and I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
[0]: https://simon.medium.com/stripes-opportunity-reinventing-cus...
[1]: https://simon.medium.com/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-com-...