I had a masters degree and 6 years of tech experience in the Israeli Defense Force, and I thought I was god's gift to tech companies. Being rejected by Google fixed my arrogance for me. Working with some excellent people at another startup also helped me show some humility.
Postmortem - I reapplied to Google after 3 years, got hired, and subsequently resigned after 5 months. They're a great company, just wasn't what I was looking for.
1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.
