The worst job interview I ever had

https://www.oliverio.dev/blog/the-worst-job-interview-i-had

by oliverio • 2 months ago

659 547 2 months ago

I have a lot of interaction with mental health professionals, due to an organization in which I participate. Have, for the last 45 years.

Many, many of them are "Doctor, heal thyself" type folks. Definitely non-boring people. I am quite sure of this, for reasons that I won't go into, here.

Sorry it didn't work out, but you dodged a bullet. Take it from me.

hyperhello• 2 months ago

Are you quite sure it was a real business and not just some weirdo pretending to be a business for fun?

robertclaus• 2 months ago

I think the post said early stage startups... So maybe both?

goodroot• 2 months ago

Yikes. Good thing you didn't wind up there.

The furthest I've gone in these jazz style culture interviews is asking people what they do outside of work for fun. This was for fully remote async positions. And it was important to know you had other stuff going on because the mental/personal health risk in failing at remote work is massive and life altering.

If, through wherever that discussion went, I wasn't 100% sure that you could stand on your own feet and wouldn't sink into the abyss, it was impossible to move forward. It was a tough line to walk sometimes because you don't want to pry personally. But that doesn't appear to be a universal opinion, it turns out.

nicbou• 2 months ago

That question would not be received well in many places. What candidates do in their private time is none of your business.

nomel• 2 months ago

Not sure why this is downvoted.

Even if I wanted to, these questions aren't allowed in the company I work for, along with feedback related to "team fit". This is dictated by execs, dictated by legal, because it has nothing to do with proving competence, and opens up for employment discrimination lawsuits since you're persuading them (you have to understand the power dynamic) to reveal potentially protected info. For example, if a man say "Oh, I go hiking with my boyfriend!", he could also say "They didn't hire me because I told them I was gay!". Or, even "I spend time with my kids." since familial status is a legally protected class where I am.

As a person who does interviews, I have exactly zero interest in what people do for fun. I just want competent people that are nice to work with (in a productivity sense), and I only have 45 minutes to prove that, knowing that nearly everyone fucking lies. I see it serving no purpose other than helping enforce some monoculture within the group, because, genuinely, why else would you ask about free time activities during an interview?

Related, the only time I've asked this was early on when I didn't know how to interview. The only time I've been asked this, and answered, was with people who had just started interviewing (small startups and new hiring managers).

pjsmith404• 2 months ago

I think that's the best you can do for culture fit, cause at the end of the day it's just "can they shoot the shit and are they pleasant to be around". You can't really know a person technically or socially until they've been in the job for at least a little bit though.

dnnddidiej3• 2 months ago

Hmmm. Maybe overindexing on anecdata. Did that one guy go a bit crazy once?

I think you gotta trust adults to be adults.

icedchai• 2 months ago

I would've ended the interview. "I don't want to waste any more of your time. It's clear to me I won't be a good fit here. Thank you for the consideration." <end call>

badc0ffee• 2 months ago

Even if you hire a cracked engineer, it’s probably not gonna be a good experience all-around if you can’t make a human connection.

"Cracked engineer" is throwing me, but maybe I've just never seen the word cracked used this way before. Should it be "crack", like "crack team"?

Avicebron• 2 months ago

It's a fairly common english phrase that originated out of the gaming culture of the US in the mid 2000-2010s.

"He's so good (plays aggressively) he must be on crack" sort of became "he's cracked", etc. Now that the people who were killing CoD lobbies are writing code full time or running companies, its seeped out.

Actually I think "it's cooked" came from this as well.

stuxnet79• 2 months ago

I have heard this term and used it myself but wasn't aware of the etymology.

Funny enough, I've only ever heard 'crack team' used in a professional context.

If 'cooked' diffuses to corporate at the same rate then I'm very much looking forward to 'cooking the ops' during standup in 2035 :P

jszymborski• 2 months ago

Notably, if someone is "cooked", it's bad. If someone is "cooking", it's often (but not necessarily) positive, most commonly in the form "let him/her cook" or "he's/she's cooking".

dugidugout• 2 months ago

I believe it was emergent from FPS gaming culture, particularly following the popularity of Apex Legends. In Apex Legends you have an energy shield which serves as a buffer of hit points. When playing cooperatively it is useful to communicate when this energy shield is "cracked", thus the line "they are cracked" emerged. This originally meant a target player's shield is down in Apex Legend specifically, but it was then the Fortnite (and broader FPS) community which took this phrase and warped it to mean someone is precise or an excellent shot. Today it is certainly used in the context the original poster intended.

edit: Looking again, this may be overstated. Apex-era gaming culture likely helped popularize the usage, but considering older idioms like "crack shot," the actual etymological root is more likely there.

Ogre• 2 months ago

I'm with you, came here to ask this too. This is how I would have read it:

"Crack engineer" someone who is an excellent engineer, I feel like this goes back to at least the early 20th century, certainly long before gaming culture.

"Cracked engineer" a damaged person who is an engineer

Shrug. Language changes all the time!

pibaker• 2 months ago

I have never seen it used in this way before around 2021, but it has become popular since then among the Twitter and YouTube tech influencer circle. Maybe that's where OP picked it up.

sliechty• 2 months ago

same, i've heard "crack engineer/team/etc" but cracked sounds to me like u fucked em mate

mbf1• 2 months ago

Sounds like a behavioral interview that silicon valley sometimes uses - the questions are designed to ascertain how you deal with difficulty, stress, and certain situations which they absolutely can't legally ask about directly - they are looking for you to discuss challenging times where you succeeded by working harder, doing more than peers, etc. It's not about shaming you, and understanding what they are looking for and why is key - they want people who stick with them through difficult times that they anticipate having.

For interview questions like these, they can only tease about what they are really after - finding employees who "go the extra mile" or "stay late" or "don't give up in the face of adversity". They are looking for you to find evidence of these patterns to corroborate your story. If they drove you to the answer they were after, it wouldn't be a passing score in their interview summary write-up.

bcyn• 2 months ago

Agreed. Reading the rest of these comments are makes me feel crazy / like I’m missing something. It doesn’t sound like the interviewer was making the candidate divulge traumatic information - but rather assessing how they deal with adversity.

talkingtab• 2 months ago

There is, and should be, a red flag for these situations. No make that RED flag. If you go into an interview that leaves you feeling the least bit helpless or at someone's mercy then run screaming. Not politely, not quietly. Just say to calmly to the person that you find the situation abusive. It is. As you go out, if you see anyone or have a chance to talk to anyone, just tell them you found that your interviewer to be personally abusive. That you will not be willing to take the position if it is offered, that you will share you perception with others around you and expect an apology.

Then fall down and appreciate that you did not end up in that situation. And tell everyone you know not to apply or work there.

robocat3• 2 months ago

Are you being glib or unrealistic?

You're going to find many red flags for any job, perhaps severe flags.

But you need a job.

Or you have to roll the dice because you have deep knowledge of the red flags for your current job.

Who finds 10/10 perfect jobs via an application process?

Note: I probably shouldn't be commenting since I don't need to apply for jobs and conditions here are likely different from yours.

jvanderbot• 2 months ago

I disagree that you'll find "many red flags for any job"

I've interviewed at dozens of companies, received and accepted or rejected at least 20 job offers in my life, and rarely encountered true red flags. This is very different than saying it's a perfect 10/10, all life is about tradeoffs. What GP is saying is that "there are things that are not worth any tradeoff, and you'll know them by ... ", which is good advice, esp for young people, who might be willing to make uncomfortable personal sacrifices to obtain a job.

We may be there someday, but we're not there yet.

chaps• 2 months ago

Sure, but there are some jobs that are so bad that this advice readily applies to. The sort of job that takes you away from your life, family and friends in a way not entirely unlike poverty does. It's good to recognize whether working somewhere will turn into this because it's... hell... working at those places.

hluska2• 2 months ago

Wacky question. But if you shouldn’t be commenting, why did you? Or was that one of those fake ‘I shouldn’t say anything’ that people do when they’re being jerks and don’t want to get called out?

I’d like some clarity. :)

roadside_picnic• 2 months ago

There's a difference between "red flags" and "imperfections". Every team has faults, which if you're experienced at interviewing/working many places, are usually pretty easy to figure out. These are distinct from "red flags".

Early in your career it can be hard to distinguish the two, but once you've joined a company where there really were "red flags" you quickly learn to differentiate.

Many people are reading the author's interview uncharitably as simply misunderstanding how to answer non-technical question, but I have absolutely been through loops (thankfully rare ones) that did have a "let's press on sensitive issues and see how tough this candidate is" round (one place brought in a consultant who bragged about his experience working with hardened criminals and terrorists to build out a true psych profile on candidates, I declined after learning he had had some "trouble" at a previous high profile job)

Sounds like you've never worked for a truly toxic org, which is great. But, especially if you're interviewing with smaller startups (as the author mentioned), there is a lot more variance and some truly messed up teams (and some truly remarkable ones as well) out there. I've noticed that HN increasingly doesn't have people that work at startups any more, so many people are probably less familiar with what's out there.

trusted_bro2• 2 months ago

Similarly, if you find yourself working for a manager who uses power and fear as a lever, stand up to them or walk away.

robocat3• 2 months ago

Yeah boss. Wise up. Get confident. Learn to set good boundaries.

  Meekness is weakness.

  Don't be beta'd into submission.

padolsey• 2 months ago

covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.

And this was for a mental health startup!? Please name-and-shame them. Awful.

booleandilemma• 2 months ago

I was asked what my hobbies are during an interview once and it made me believe they were just looking for a personality hire or a pretty face.

bobanrocky• 2 months ago

Umm .. pretty standard & generally lame line of questioning at many companies/countries. Sounds like you were offended or surprised by it?

freehorse4• 2 months ago

The mirror side of this is when almost all the intern applications/cover letters we used to receive contained a paragraph about the hobbies of the applicant (all domain-irrelevant). I find that weird but I guess it is sort of common nowadays?

toast02• 2 months ago

I was involved with picking a candidate for an internship in 1999, we had three candidates and they all mentioned basketball on their resumes. I think it's just something to help the resume fill one page. And help provide a direction for a 'validate the resume' interview.

Sometimes, if the hobby shows leadership etc, it might be relevant even if the domain isn't.

ryukoposting11• 2 months ago

I have a one-liner in my resumé that lists "interests." basketball, baseball, photography, music, the outdoors, privacy and digital human rights. With the heading, it takes up half an inch of paper on the second page, which I only provide in a PDF.

If anything in there is a disqualifier, I don't want to work for you anyway. If you need any more info than that, ditto.

nephihaha2• 2 months ago

This is quite common. Hobbies may suggest to them an attention to detail, working well in a team (sport) or leadership abilities.

guywithahat• 2 months ago

Especially in recent graduate positions. I maybe won't make sense if the interviewee was 35 but if they're 21 there's just nothing else to talk about. That said, at least in software, the right answer still includes something about coding or building things.

cbdevidal3• 2 months ago

Beats my worst interview. For some reason I mentioned that I like reading. The guy then demanded to list the last ten books I read. I just named ten random books that I had read at some point in my life, even in childhood. Pretty bizarre. Glad I didn’t get that job.

TurdF3rguson• 2 months ago

I mean, what's the cutoff for something like that. The last book you read seems innocent enough. The last 3? No red flag yet... 10 though is kind of a lot.

cbdevidal3• 2 months ago

I couldn’t even tell you the last ten I’d read recently, and I thoroughly enjoy reading.

sdenton42• 2 months ago

"Actually, I just pulled up your goodreads profile, and it looks like your eighth-most recent book was 50 shades of grey. In addition to having a faulty memory, you're reading work-inappropriate material. Finally, you read that in 2021, so clearly you don't care about reading /that/ much. Dismissed!"

thinkharderdev• 2 months ago

Honestly asking for any specific number is a deeply weird and off-putting question to ask.

dylan6042• 2 months ago

Asking for a list of 10 is a pretty specific version of a natural conversational follow up "what have you read lately?" Sounds like a coder with bad social skills. Like a bad sitcom where I could totally see a Sheldon asking that as a response

cbdevidal3• 2 months ago

The little bit I knew about the guy, coder with bad social skills does seem to be a fit.

nitwit005• 2 months ago

I got "tell me what you're passionate about" last time, and I'm curious what a bad reply would be, because I showed them a silly comic I drew on my phone. Apparently that was fine.

ungreased0675• 2 months ago

A pattern I’ve noticed on high performing teams is that individuals were or are excellent at something, anything. I suppose that could be an interview question, but people may not want to share their competitive barbershop quartet videos with a stranger.

JackFr• 2 months ago

“Passionate? Jethro Tull should be in the rock and roll hall of fame.”

cmdoptesc• 2 months ago

Asking you to name a book or two to continue the conversation is fine, but 10 is ridiculous. That interviewer literally pulled the "oh you like _____ band?! name 5 of their albums" meme on you.

OJFord• 2 months ago

I can imagine getting myself into a similar fix. I'd like to think I'd calmly clarify that while I enjoy it I don't get through as many as quickly as I'd like; I'm currently reading blah, and previously blah and blah, but I can't recall the last ten.

Because they're presumably just trying to call bullshit, since it can sound like such an easy probably oft-recomended 'hobby' to say you have, so it's 'oh yeah well what have you actually read recently then', not actually 'I now therefore expect you to have perfect recall over your read catalogue'.

elzbardico6• 2 months ago

I would go by something like:

"The industrial society and its future" - Theodor Kaczinski.

"The communist manifesto" - Karl Marx.

"Rules for Radicals" - Saul Alinsky

"Hitler's War" - David Irving

"The Souls of Black Folk" - W.E.B. Du Bois

"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" - Tom Pickety

"Las venas abiertas da America Latina" - Eduardo Galeano

"The question of Palestine" - Edward Said.

"Grapes of Wrath" - John Steinbeck.

"The conquest of Bread" - Kropotkin

"Problems of Leninism" - Josef Stalin

If adventurous, I'd cite another one I've read that should not be mentioned amongst educated XXI century folks, as they think reading a book means you agree with the author.

Not the last 10 books I've read, but books I've read along my life and that would maybe make the guy think twice before considering making me an offer.

dnnddidiej3• 2 months ago

Non zero chance you make a friend by citing the list! Or you get the boot. Especially when the Atlas Shrugged reading startup founder is deciding.

Biganon2• 2 months ago

"Mein Kampf, ten times."

analogpixel• 2 months ago

Would be funny if the interviewer wrote the exact same blog post; "I had the worst candidate interview today, I asked him a simple ice-breaker question before getting into more technical stuff, and he just went off about his family and relationships for an hour; weirdest interview I ever gave."

genewitch4• 2 months ago

you think that's what it was? The people with 100% of the power in this situation did everything 100% correct and you're not victim-blaming at all?

atoav2• 2 months ago

It was a textbook example of the double contingency of communication¹. In communications it doesn't only matter what each side is objectively saying. It matters what the other side expects them to hear. And that goes both ways.

In this case the interviewer asked these questions to get to know the candidate in a professional setting, so they expected a diplomatic or professional answer. The candidate however misjudged the interviewer intention behind the questions, took them literally and answered them truthfully. Neither of these people is technically sporting a wrong position, yet the communication broke down.

That being said, the idea that you can choose not to talk about certain things is pretty basal when it comes to communications. If you have a trauma nobody can force you to talk about it and you should also not talk to everybody and their dog about it (and I know people who constantly do this and have a tendency to regret it afterwards). It costs you nothing to say that you can't think of any specific day, or talk about a day where a old boss at a shitty student job abused you, to frame it in work terms. To talk strategically or diplomatically is a skill that is needed in many positions. And that candidate displayed a total lack of that ability.

That being said I am not particularly fond of that type of question myself. Both as an the person carrying out an interview and the person going to one. I am more interested to see how a person tackles certain situations than to have them tell me stories about it.

¹: see https://www.orientation-philosophy.com/glossary/double-conti...

AussieWog932• 2 months ago

"Victim blaming" because of a bad interview. lolwut

tibbar• 2 months ago

The description of the interview seems like it was explicitly non-technical, though.

hluska2• 2 months ago

“He kept talking about dead babies, failed relationships and the time he cheated in an exam in grade five. Fifteen minutes in and I wondered not whether I would hire him, but if he would kill me and wear my skin if I didn’t. Or did. Little difference.”

huhkerrf• 2 months ago

I've had that before. I asked a woman to walk me through her career (I told her I've obviously seen the profile before, but I'd love to hear the elevator pitch directly from her) and she started off by saying,"Well, you need to know that I was raised in a cult."

And, yeah, I feel bad for her. But also: time and place.

I passed on her because she didn't have the technical skills, but that was definitely a case of the setting not being right.

schnebbau3• 2 months ago

Yep. This is definitely an OP-is-autistic problem, or is perhaps inexperienced. Not an interviewer problem. Keep it professional. If an interviewer asks a personal question then you simply refuse to answer (politely), or steer it back towards a professional context. If they persist then you end the interview.

eithed6• 2 months ago

It might be cultural as well; I'm Polish and living in UK made me change my habits of answering "How are you?" questions. Same with Dutch from my experience - there are cultures where people say what's on their mind without the "I'm fine, how are you" bullshit.

To be fair though, drama-dumping goes beyond that

lukeasrodgers• 2 months ago

"definitely an OP-is-autistic problem" is an absurd claim to make about an internet stranger, and violates comment guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

missinglugnut• 2 months ago

From the details I read in the post you are almost certainly wrong, not to mention being reallying condescending.

The interviewer has control over the room. They steer the conversation. They could have stopped this at any point. Instead they encouraged OP to go deeper for 90 minutes.

That wasn't OP misunderstanding a question, that was an interviewer enjoying the power trip.

v0x• 2 months ago

I don't agree. While yes, it's definitely possible the interviewee handled it poorly, I have seen enough poorly conducted interviews to say it's just as likely the interviewer was the problem.

My best guess is that as a mental health startup geared toward expanding access to therapy services, they were fishing for candidates who had some kind of experience with the industry, or who could prove their fealty to the mission. For example: "After grieving the loss of my brother, I tried to obtain counseling services. But my private insurance didn't cover that, and when I looked for supplemental insurance, I was stuck in a byzantine maze of options. There was no centralized and easy way to see what might be covered, and for what cost; all of it was hidden behind sales reps you had to contact over the phone. That's when I came to understand the value of the kind of service ACMECORP is looking to introduce into the market."

lokar• 2 months ago

I had one job, where at the very end of the process there was a multi-hour evaluation by a psychologist / consultant they used. Went over my full life history, school, jobs, etc.

It was all disclosed up front, so no surprises. Not really that bad.

sdenton42• 2 months ago

I fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics, but they were, in fact, non-technical — covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.

Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way... These kinds of questions are part and parcel of non-tech interview processes.

You can redirect with some subtlety "Well, my hardest ever day at work was..." to avoid talking about dead babies or whatever. Your interviewer doesn't get to look over your whole life history and determine whether your /truthfully/ chose the actual hardest ever day. So really it's a chance for you to say "Here's a [big] challenge I once faced, and here's how I survived/overcame it."

nsvd2• 2 months ago

In fact, being able to "play the game" so to speak is probably part of what the interviewer is looking for.

throwaway89864• 2 months ago

It is also possible that they were trying to see, if the person had traumas that would interfere with their ability to work with toxic content, do red-teaming / etc tasks.

rsoto• 2 months ago

Yeah, OP just unwinded himself, no filter. You can be truthful and open with friends and family, close people to you. You absolutely shouldn't when talking with strangers.

morkalork• 2 months ago

Then strangers shouldn't fucking ask questions that could have answers that make them uncomfortable. Just a thought.

johnfn• 2 months ago

You are technically correct. But you must admit it sounds pretty bad to say "Yeah, the idea of the behavioral technical interview is the interviewer asks questions that look like they admit honest answers, but you should actually lie to them, and they expect you to lie, and actually it's a charade you play with your interviewer, and if you don't understand this (which is never explained to you) then you will immediately be rejected."

I can definitely understand the perspective of someone who has done few interviews not understanding this and being upset/confused!

thaumasiotes2• 2 months ago

I paid for interview coaching at interviewing.io. This is the coaching I got about the behavioral interview:

- "There is no place for honesty in a behavioral interview. No one is going to check your story."

- Tell a story about a time when you got into a dispute, ideally with your boss, over a work-related issue, and you won the dispute.

- If you have no relevant story, I [the coach] will write one for you to memorize.

stared• 2 months ago

If they ask questions but expect fake, censored or cherry-picked answers, it says a lot about their culture.

Pro tip (for life, not only interviewing): never ask a question you don’t want to hear answer to.

freehorse4• 2 months ago

But why ask about "the hardest day in your life" instead eg "the hardest day at work"?

Personally asking this kind of personal questions sounds very weird. You can evaluate soft skills and culture fit by asking more relevant, professional questions. Except if the reason to ask this kind of more personal questions was sth else.

TylerE• 2 months ago

The cynic in me says because they want to select candidates whose work IS their life.

cwnyth4• 2 months ago

Notice that the blog post author did not provide exact quotes. In fact, they explicitly state they do not remember the wording. It's very likely that they did, in fact, ask about biggest challenges, and the author misunderstood.

MattGrommes• 2 months ago

Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way.

Cut to the interviewer telling his friends about the weirdest interview he ever conducted, with a guy who unloaded all his life issues on him instead of focusing on work. :)

ekms• 2 months ago

I've done a couple bay area startup interviews where the interviewer specifically asks for 'personally / family' related anecdotes. With the explanation that they view their company as a literal family and want to make sure candidates would fit in. So I'm inclined to believe OP's description and understanding of the question

mcv2• 2 months ago

covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
talking about failed relationships, family struggles, and interpersonal challenges in previous work environments.

I think that's an interpretation that wasn't necessary (though I agree they're terrible and risky interview questions). I'd stick to hard challenges is my professional life, hard problems I had to solve, etc. My personal life is none of their business.

And I think there's the possibility you may have been rejected for sharing too much. But I agree that kind of question does invite sharing too much.

tombert3• 2 months ago

Not the OP, but having been in many similar interviews, I feel like it's an easy trap to fall into, especially if you've not developed a good bit of curmudgeonly cynicism.

At least when I've done these interviews, they will be extremely friendly, and they will at least act interested in everything you have to say. It's very easy to overshare when you think the audience is actually interested in what you have to say.

mcv2• 2 months ago

I'm an oversharer, so I'm absolutely vulnerable to that trap. It's important to remind ourselves not to fall for it.

rigonkulous• 2 months ago

I was excited, it was a game company, and I'd wanted to get back into games - or more specifically, game engines - for a few years. The tech of this particular company was interesting, an in-house engine developed by wunderkind, of course, and they'd invited me for an interview because I had done a fair bit of low-level work, which would be handy for their rough edges. Apparently.

Half way through the interview, I had an epiphany. I really didn't want to work there. It was cultural, it just wasn't going to fit.

I didn't waste any more time. Half-way through a white-board challenge, I put down the marker and said, plainly, "okay, I've seen enough, I don't want to work here - thanks and let me not waste any more of your time", picked up my coat and left.

It wasn't a bad interview. It wasn't a terrible one. Nor was it because of the whiteboard question, or anything like that.

I just didn't like the guys. That's all it was. And I couldn't stand the idea of working for them - just the way the interview proceeded. I don't need to give details.

It was really the only time I ever got up mid-interview and left.

jval43• 2 months ago

Always trust your gut. Especially when it comes to people. Don't overthink, never rationalize it. Accept your feeling, it's valid.

If I learned anything from all my past mistakes in life, it's this.

AussieWog932• 2 months ago

I had to check your profile after reading that first line.

Fortunately 2016 join date, "No AI used in my comments".

But holy cow that was uncanny after months of Claude

MiscIdeaMaker992• 2 months ago

Same.

I left a really good job for a year, to go work for a company CEO'd by a buddy of mine. I had a bad, sinking feeling in my gut from the very beginning when In interviewed with my new boss (not my buddy). Sure enough, I fucking hated working for him, and quit after a year.

When I was leaving my old job, I remember rationalizing it to myself that I would regret not doing it if I didn't try. I have mixed feelings about that job -- not necessarily regret for taking it, but definitely some regrets for how things went down at the end.

With that being said, if I had turned down that job, I don't know if I would regret it now or not. Who's to say?

Anyway, I got my old job back, and lasted there for several more years. It's still the best place I ever worked.

pan693• 2 months ago

I had something similar years ago. I applied for a job at a company, size around 150 people. Did two rounds of interviews which were great. They wanted me to offer the role. However, as a third round, I was going to do a meet and greet with the CEO and he was going to yay or nay me. At point I dropped out. If a CEO can't trust his delegate managers to hire the people they see fit for a role, then thanks but no thanks. That's not a company culture I want to spend most of my waking hours in.

anyfoo7• 2 months ago

I don't know your particular situation, so it might be totally different, but I think this is commonly just a formality and a friendly chat.

It's a chance for you to meet the actual CEO (or VP or whatever in a larger company), and also for them to get to meet you in advance, instead of effectively getting "blindsided" by a new person (to exaggerate a bit).

Usually, by the time you've gotten to that point, the decision to hire you has well and truly been made. I don't know what then would need to happen for the actually rather secondary function of giving the CEO the opportunity to veto to become relevant. I'd be curious hearing about anyone who's ever experienced it (on whatever side). I guess it can be a safeguard against vastly unaligned values, but I suspect it's very rare.

But primarily, and effectively, it's usually just a meet-and-greet. And it's hard for me to blame a CEO (or VP etc.) for at least getting to anyone who's going to enter a mutual contract to effectively become part of their company.

smcin• 2 months ago

If you got to that point it's just a formality, and unless you somehow blow it the job is (probably) already yours, if you decide you still want it. You seem to have jumped to unwarranted assumptions about the company culture; quite possibly the CEO does want to make sure the culture is good and remains good. It's not necessarily a binary test of whether the CEO can't trust delegating to their managers; it's also your constructive opportunity to use that conversation to get more insight into where the company, strategy, product/service, customers etc. are going. A good question to ask the CEO is about the broader impact of your role: that should get you some useful insight, also you compare the delta between what the CEO says vs what the senior managers said vs what the recruiter said; they don't need to be identical but they should broadly agree, and it shouldn't reveal any fundamental disagreements or ambiguities (e.g. "your role is incremental support of product X" vs "totally rewrite it in language Y in the next 9 months"). Listening to their response should also give you subtle behavioral cues about who in the company does/doesn't have influence, credibility and where the pain points are: you can't generally get that from the previous interviews, and it can be a faux pas to explicitly ask.

(PS: if you find reasons to suspect the CEO isn't delegating effectively to managers, then ask the CEO an open-ended question "How much do you do yourself vs which tasks do you delegate to your managers?" then listen carefully to their answer. And it's still not necessarily a red flag, it may just be a new or inexperienced CEO, or maybe overcompensating for one or two bad hire experiences at current or previous company. Compare to their answer to "How do you assess new hires within the first 90 days?").

The only (minor) negative I'd take from this is that it still behaves like a small startup scaling quickly, and they haven't yet figured out how to to scale interviewing and hiring for when they get larger... but that's overall a good complaint, it shows they're still growing. It's much better that your signoff interview is with the CXO (or VP) than the Director of HR, or an AI bot. Honestly I'd pay more attention to how many days/weeks/months it takes them to make the hiring decision than how many management layers were involved; that's a bigger tell of organizational dysfunction.

Don't overthink.

gamblor9564• 2 months ago

You made the right choice.

The only time a CEO should be meeting a hire is if the company is a tiny startup, or the role will be working regularly and directly with the CEO.

Otherwise, it's the worse kind of micromanagement. If the CEO wants to meet the new face they do so after the person starts, and this is the norm outside of tech.

meerita4• 2 months ago

I don't get why people downvote this.

SenHeng2• 2 months ago

My friend has been contracting at $STARTUP for a couple of years now with a revolving 2 month contract. His managers have not attempted to hide the fact they would likely end his contract once they've managed to hire a full timer into the team.

Sadly, their CEO has veto-ed every single full time hire they've tried to bring on for past 2 years now.

tristor2• 2 months ago

I don't agree, but I think your perspective is valid so I upvoted you.

I've worked for companies that did this, in fact I'd say this is commonplace at startups and small companies, at least till around 500 employees or so. If I ever start another company, I'd operate the same way as a founder/ceo. While Dunbar's Number probably puts an upper limit on the number of people I can truly know in my organization, I think it's incredibly important as a leader to have the possibility of putting a face to a name inside the one endeavor (company) you are wholly responsible for. That doesn't say anything about my trust or lack there-of in the people below me on the org chart.

I almost feel the opposite. I've turned down jobs because I want to understand the strategic direction and the folks I was interviewing with couldn't adequately explain it and they were unwilling to let me meet the folks high enough up the chain that they could as part of my interview process. If I can't get the time of day out of the founder during one of the most important decisions (hiring) that their company makes, they're certainly not going to give me the time of day once I'm in the door and that means I have effectively no feedback mechanism. Why would I want to work there?

elzbardico6• 2 months ago

If it was Blizzard, I can completely understand you.

torben-friis• 2 months ago

I have never done what you did, but I am going to take note of the fact that it is something one can do. Because I've certainly had the same moment of realization a few times, and I went through the motions anyway.

tonyedgecombe2• 2 months ago

I've been on the other side where I decided I didn't want to hire the candidate. I'd ask them some leading questions so they could get out early if they wanted.

mannanj• 2 months ago

Good. and you saved time by doing this. It feels more the right thing.

meerita4• 2 months ago

I had a similar experience with another company. At one point during the interview, the HR department asked me to do a really stupid exercise, despite the fact that I am an engineer with over 20 years of experience.

I wrote an email saying I would not pursue the position, and they wrote back asking me to have another interview with them. I politely declined.

They probably understood that their method was not good.

mattmanser• 2 months ago

I had a similar thing where they were going through my code from a takehome.

It was with an architect and a lead developer and the architect was really rubbing me up the wrong way. Stupid nitpicks that were all style preferences. Not at all talking about the actual code. I start pushing back and he starts getting a bit combative, which sets me off a bit too as these were the days jobs were plentiful.

At some point he offhandedly mentioned I didn't need a particular line of code in the startup config. So I say, "Yes, that's required, it initializes the routing". He quips back, "No, that line's not necessary at all, you don't need it". The lead dev is looking completely exasperated at the architect at this point.

I paused, started a screen share. Went to the line. Commented it out. Ran the program and it fell over.

I then said, "I'm not interested in working with you, thanks for your time, bye"

m463• 2 months ago

I remember interviewing once and they told me what they were working on.

I was actually familiar with the product, but it had some glaring shortcomings, and I kind of groaned a little inside.

And I told them that I liked some things about the product, but then I unfiltered sort of pointed out what was wrong. I really wasn't interested in working on it (though I didn't say that outright)

And then they decided they loved and needed me. (and I didn't go there)

Sort of like dating I think. Show a little skepticism and you might unintentionally get more interest than if you were open and sincere.

pelotron• 2 months ago

I think the skepticism was the sincerity they were looking for.

alexandre_m• 2 months ago

It's basically the confidence and being blunt.

Pretty much like that Office Space scene when main character meets the Bobs.

Unbeliever69• 2 months ago

Nothing will take years off your life better than working for people you don't like in a company you don't want to work at.

I guess that is the problem with the current state of the world. Employers hold most of the cards and people are desperate to find and retain employment. As someone who has coupled themselves to the wrong trains more than I'd like to admit, I'd encourage all young engineers to ask themselves, "Is work more important than your mental and physical health?" Don't underestimate the affect of toxic people, management and companies on your brain and body. Over time you may pay the ultimate price; an early death.

JellyBeanThief• 2 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony should be n our vocabulary.

firesteelrain• 2 months ago

I left mid interview for a game company too. It was likely due to bad interview skills on behalf of the interviewer.

tombert3• 2 months ago

I have a two way tie for the worst interviews I've ever had, for very different reasons.

First, in 2023 I interviewed for a startup as a lead architect.

They had me do some virtual whiteboard stuff, and so I was drawing rectangles and cylinders and mentioning things like "database" and "message queues" as generically as I could.

They would interrupt me and say stuff like "Which message queue? Where do you download that?". The interview went on for a long time, with many bizarrely-specific questions for a whiteboard interview, but I figured that it was just their way to make sure that candidates didn't bullshit them by handwaving away important details.

They did make me an offer a few days later, but not for as much as I wanted. That's fine, no hard feelings over that.

But then a week later the CEO emails me asking for technical help on a question. I was on the train when I got it. I don't remember the exact question but it was something to do with RabbitMQ and Redis, and it was pretty easy, so I just typed out a quick answer to my phone and replied without even really thinking about it. Then another half-hour later he responds back to my reply asking for more detail on everything.

After his last reply I sent a response like "I am happy enough to continue this conversation but I'm afraid I will need to start billing the time it takes for me to reply. Give me a call and we can discuss the rate.

He didn't reply.

And then I realized something: this company was using interviews as unpaid consulting. That's why they were asking for bizarrely-specific stuff during the interview, and that's why the CEO was still trying to get free consulting out of me even afterward.

Really pissed me off, and I am very glad I didn't accept their offer. I am generally a person who is happy to help answer technical questions for free [1], but I felt like my trusting nature was kind of weaponized.

---------

Second was last year at a big bank.

I was really excited for this job, so I showed up to the interview in my best (and only) suit, made sure everything looked nice, and had studied for many of the technical questions I thought they were likely to ask the previous night.

Off to a bad start, it was one of the hottest days in NYC of the year, and I sweat a lot by nature, so in combination with the full suit, by the time I got to the building I was already kind of drenched in sweat.

Once I get in, they start giving me some conceptual algorithm questions on the whiteboard. I don't remember the exact question, but I remember they asked the runtime complexity of my solution and I said "Looks like O(n + log m) where n is the length of list A and m is the length of list B". One of the interviewers very confidently corrects me an says "You got your n and m backward".

I look at the board, go through my solution, and, no, I actually hadn't gotten the variables backward.

I have no idea what you're supposed to do in a situation where you're right and the interviewer is wrong [2], so I just do a trace through my solution and explain that, no, my variables were appropriately assigned. He still confidently "corrected" me again.

At this point I really don't know what I'm supposed to do, because I'm not going to just lie and say "oh you're right", but if I'm wrong, then I do want to know why so I don't repeat the mistake in the future. So I ask him "Ok, let's trace through this again because I really don't think my understanding is wrong here".

It was this bizarre gaslighting experience, because he would agree with every premise of why I thought the answer was O(n + log m), and every reasoning step along the way, but then still insisted I got the answer wrong. I do really know my Big O complexity, I have been doing this for a very long time, so eventually I just said something like "I guess we need to agree to disagree" because my time for that interview was almost up.

Then there was another interview immediately afterward. The interviewer started asking me very specific questions about Java Spring MVC (like about which annotations to use and whatnot)

Now, I don't have Java Spring on my resume, I haven't touched Java Spring in more than a decade, and Java Spring was not in the job listing. I didn't even consider studying Spring MVC because the listing didn't even mention that this would be web-based.

So I tell the guy something like "umm, I don't really know Spring. I know how a web request works so I'm happy to answer conceptual questions on the whiteboard, but I'm afraid I would have to learn the specific syntax".

And he responded "Well this is not a junior role. You shouldn't have to learn."

So of course I get the specific Spring questions wrong, and fine, if they wanted a person who knew Spring, that's ok, even if they should have put that in the job posting.

But then he asked me to, on the whiteboard, design a basic web request where there was a global counter [3]. I use an AtomicLong, which to my understanding is what pretty much every human who writes Java uses for counters.

He asked me why I used an AtomicLong, and I said "because it's what everyone uses, and because it doesn't block and because compare and swap for a small surface area like that is pretty cheap".

The guy then, corrected me, and told me to use a mutex. I said "I don't think a mutex is necessary here, if it's just a counter I think an atomic is fine."

He was very insistent, and told me to rewrite it with a mutex, and at this point I am starting to question my own competence, so I yield and just rewrite it with a ReentrantLock, which he again "corrected" me saying that I should use `synchronized`, and at that I push back and say "no, ReentrantLock is fine".

I left the interview feeling like a moron; I was so sure about this stuff before, but maybe I didn't have the understanding I thought I did.

I'm friends with a few graybeard C and C++ programmers on Discord, so when I got home I told them the questions and asked them how they'd solve them, and they solved the problems in the same way I would have.

Then I realized that this interviewer, who was principal level, didn't know what an atomic was, and I think he also had no idea how to use ReentrantLock, and so when I used them he just assumed I was wrong. Moron.

[1] And that's still true; feel free to email me if you want to geek out about software :)

[2] And it seems like the answer I get for that varies between each person. I'm not sure anyone knows.

[3] With, to be clear, no further arithmetic or anything being applied to it, before someone asks.

trusted_bro2• 2 months ago

Dodged a bullet. There are good banks (eg Goldman) and shitty banks (eg Bank Of $Large_North_American_Country) and not a lot in between.

tombert3• 2 months ago

I don’t want to say the bank’s name, but let’s give the pseudonym of “Morgan” to the first, and “Stan” for the second.

interviewitis2• 2 months ago

Off to a bad start, it was one of the hottest days in NYC of the year, and I sweat a lot by nature, so in combination with the full suit, by the time I got to the building I was already kind of drenched in sweat.

You'd need a Summer-weight suit for this to be at-all comfortable. "High-twist wool" and "unlined" or "half-lined" are your search terms. Silk-wool blends also OK. Other fabric options for warm weather open up in some contexts (linen and linen/wool/silk/cotton blends, warm-weather cotton weaves like seersucker, maybe even rayon though that's a bit niche) but probably not if you're looking to dress for an interview at a bank in New York. Part of why suits are in-practice expensive and inconvenient (and why only-occasional wearers judge them unpleasant to wear—not unreasonably, given their exposure to them) is that you need at-minimum one set for moderate-and-lower temps ("three-season"), and another set for hot days.

I have one unlined high-twist wool navy blazer that's so cool it's actually kind of a problem because offices often have their AC cranked up on hot days. I end up needing an overcoat or second, winter-weight jacket indoors, LOL. Hold the thing up to a light and it looks like a star field seen from outside the Earth's atmosphere, dark with endless dots of light, so air goes right through it.

gabolaev• 2 months ago

It’s kinda ironic that after interviewing with a mental health startup, you ended up so emotionally disturbed that you might now need some actual mental health support to tackle the thoughts it brought up. I’m sorry you had to go through that.

siliconc0w• 2 months ago

These are essentially sociopath screens where they expect you to memorize some STAR stories and regurgitate them on demand. And I don't mean screen out.

kxrm2• 2 months ago

Let me preface this by saying, I know this might be a privileged take. However, I've had some bad interview experiences but one thing I have never had happen and I never will do is cross the "just business"/"personal" line with anyone I may or am working with.

hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.

I would take these types of questions as "from a professional standpoint". If the interviewer corrected and wanted personal answers, the interview would be over.

WatchDog• 2 months ago

...I never will do is cross the "just business"/"personal" line with anyone I may or am working with.

Just in an interview situation, or you will just never be open to a personal friendship with anyone you ever work with?

kxrm2• 2 months ago

you will just never be open to a personal friendship with anyone you ever work with?

Building relationships with colleagues is possible but I have tried to be careful. I have made some friends over time that were once co-workers. However, they were only able to move to full friend once they moved on to other teams or companies. I don't see someone I work with day-to-day as a personal friend. I compartmentalize them, keep the relationship professional and cordial.

Moving someone to a personal friend has risks, especially if there is a chance you may work for or with them again. Some personal friendships may be able to outlast work drama, but so far I haven't had that happen for me. I've lost a few along the way due to negative conditions at work.

Have you had a personal friend that stayed around after leaving a bad situation at work? Any pointers?

simgt• 2 months ago

Thanks for that sensible answer, had to scroll down quite a while to find you there.

The real problem is that for many people it takes a while to realize you're being abused, in that case it was only a while after.

I highly recommend learning the basics of persuasion and how to manipulate people. It helps identifying the signs early.

psadauskas2• 2 months ago

I had an interview many years ago, that wasn't nearly as traumatic, but the interviewer asked me about my failures like 4 different ways.

- Tell me about a time you made a professional mistake. - Tell me about your biggest failure. - Tell me when you last shipped a bug. - Tell me when you took down production.

Never asked me about my accomplishments, or the positives. I'm prepared for being asked about making mistakes, and have a few examples ready to give depending on the job I'm interviewing for, but to get asked so many times in a row was just deflating.

I'm glad I didn't get that job.

throwaway271818• 2 months ago

I think a lot of technical people interpret interview questions literally. Like yes of course the prompt starts with a negative - but you don't actually have to answer the question fully and literally, this isn't a college exam.

You could for example start talking about how you thought something was a colossal failure only to realize looking back that it was an incredible learning experience and how sometimes the only way to learn big lessons like that is by trying the experiment. And how it's only a failure if you stop. But you kept going so it wasn't really a failure.

Honestly we should probably take a page out of politicians' or media trained people's playbooks and not even answer the question as asked but relentlessly steer towards what you really want to talk about.

strken• 2 months ago

I too am capable of waffling to an interviewer. My favourite "took down production" story is a segue into why, when your interns ask you to look over the command they're about to run against the prod environment because they're not 100% comfortable, you should do it, and a broader chat about infrastructure-as-code and review processes.

I don't think it's good practice for the interviewer to require the ability to dissemble from software engineers, though.

pacman1282• 2 months ago

Is it too much to ask for interviewers not to ask questions where the "right" answer is to give a BS answer?

shoo• 2 months ago

I conducted a few hundred software engineering interviews while working for a non-tech corp. Aside from technical problem solving & programming interviews we'd also ask a few behavioural questions -- including asking about times where the candidate had made a mistake at work, or a time at work where they were very frustrated.

What we were looking for

- people unwilling to admit they'd ever made a mistake -- red flag

- people who could reflect on the situation and say what they'd do differently in the future

- ideally, people who could use their mistake / failure / bad situation as an example of how they then took initiative to improve things by doing blah blah blah

People who were able to give an ideal response had clearly practised for this kind of question & knew how to play this part of the interview game.

Behaviours valued by one type of potential employer may not be valued by another. Small businesses & startups might value folks who take initiative and have a bias for action. In contrast, regulated megacorps might value folks who are great at consulting stakeholders and getting buy in before making changes, and steer clear of people they believe will go off and do stuff unilaterally.

One rule of thumb for handling these kinds of behavioural questions is "STAR" -- situation, task, action, result. Use the prompt for the question as a way to pick an example, then figure out how to frame an answer that shows you doing something to improve the situation. There's a fair chance that your interviewers are trying to mash your response into a STAR format in their own notes, even if they don't hint for you to respond in this way.

psadauskas2• 2 months ago

Right, I'm aware, and like I said, I expect those questions, and I have several examples I'm prepared for, and can tailor it to the interviewer. Like if it was a devops role, I could talk about when I took down production and what I learned from it. Or I could talk about when I failed to properly manage a junior if the role was more management-oriented and what I learned from it. Or when I badly architected a feature, and what I learned from it, and so on.

What I _wasn't_ prepared for was 4+ of those questions in a row, and _zero_ questions about my experience, or strengths, or anything else. The questions were more of the type "when did you stop beating your wife?". In retrospect, I think the interviewer already had someone they wanted to hire, but were forced into it by HR due diligence or something.

livealife• 2 months ago

Name and shame company: Canonical

They make us write essays and life stories and reject in 24hrs.

Felt the exact same frustration.

nailer3• 2 months ago

Sad to hear - putting these things on Glassdoor can help more people avoid these situations.

loloquwowndueo2• 2 months ago

Canonical spends a lot of money and effort to “scrub” negative reviews from glassdoor. At a minimum they reply to, and dismiss, concerns raised there but I recall mentions of ways to outright have some bad reviews deleted. Source: I worked there.

parados• 2 months ago

Second this. Canonical is currently winning the race to the bottom for tech interviews (I'm speaking with a couple of decades of experience on both sides of the table). They use lots of AI on their side (of course, none allowed on your side). A strange focus on your school years. Dark patterns in technical questions with no opportunity to get clarity. Ghosting afterwards. Interviews always involve some asymmetry but Canonical exploits that to the maximum.

duskwuff• 2 months ago

Don't forget the exceptionally long interview cycles. I've heard some stories of candidates getting strung along for 6+ months to eventually get rejected.

eximius2• 2 months ago

Earlier this year I was told I failed an interview because when asked why I wanted to join a company, my answer "could apply to other companies in the same stage of life." They apparently required me to be _uniquely_ interested in their company. There were other oddities about their interview process.

Some interviewers just want to feel special.

elzbardico6• 2 months ago

Assume that every singlemotherfucking breathing human you find in your life wants or at least likes to feel special, and that any company that asks you that question wants you to massage their ego a little bit.

Don't think much about it, just believe what I am telling you. It is going to save you a lot of grief.

toast02• 2 months ago

That question may be a little bit praise seeking (especially in other contexts), but it's also a way to ask if you did any research on the company, or do you just spray and pray.

If you took time to do a little research and validate that you fit more than 'i need a pay check and you have paychecks' that's valuable for the company. Your judgement may be poor, but you self screened, so that's an extra screening.

genewitch4• 2 months ago

Dale Carnegie floating around this thread a lot.

Remembering (and using!) someone's name is a magic spell, too.

not_the_fda• 2 months ago

Thats the thing I love about recruiters. I won't be looking for a job, and a recruiter calls me about one that sounds interesting.

Come interview time someone will ask why I want to work there. My answer is: "You called me, why should I want to work here."

JSR_FDED2• 2 months ago

As nonsense as this is, you should always have an answer at the ready for why you’re uniquely interested in them. If they don’t ask, volunteer it.

If their interviewing results in a handful of qualified candidates, guess which one they’re going to go with?

65102• 2 months ago

I always counter the question by asking them why they are uniquely interested in me. That way they usually skip the question. (You should still have an answer ready for all of the obvious questions)

Biganon2• 2 months ago

I mean... He knew, you knew (or should have known), but it's part of the silly little dance you have to do to flatter their ego.

Imagine having a first date with a girl and saying "you're basically the only one who would talk to me on tinder, but I could date someone else". Technically correct, still not something you say unless you're pretty far on the spectrum.

Halian2• 2 months ago

What were the other oddities?

ryukoposting11• 2 months ago

Every time I've been asked this question, I answer with total honesty up to and including the one-word answer "money." I got an offer with that, by the way.

I'd prefer not to work for a firm that's smelling its own farts. I'm happy to have worked for several firms where I really believed strongly in the product and the mission, and I've left companies when I felt they had lost sight of their mission. But at the end of the day, it's a job. I give you labor and expertise, you give me money.

pureagave• 2 months ago

I came here expecting it was a yet another story about Canonical.

garrickvanburen• 2 months ago

My worst job interview ever - in-house creative team at telecom company in downtown Chicago.

I walk into a darkened cubicle farm, down to the only lit corner office for a 'lunch interview'.

Interviewer is sitting at their desk eating a hot pocket on a paper plate.

Didn't even offer me any.

First interview I walked out of.

Not the last.

mawadev• 2 months ago

I think the author was reading too much into these questions. I bet these people came up with random questions they thought were deep, especially coming from a mental health lens, but struck a nerve in the author. They essentially weren't prepared for the raw human experience that was shared here.

I think regardless of whatever you face during an interview, true mastery is to let your humanity at the door and pull up a facade. If you cannot do it in that context, you dodged a bullet imho.. you wouldn't be able to recognize yourself a few years down the line working there with them daily.

awesomeusername• 2 months ago

I know many people like you. Don't project your mentality onto someone else.

People who can "pull up a facade" are a subset of the population

esperent• 2 months ago

true mastery is to let your humanity at the door and pull up a facade

Or say "screw that" and go find work that lets you be a human, not a repressed shell. I'm in my 40s now and have followed that my whole life to great benefit. Barring about two months in a open-plan hell hole in my mid twenties which I still look back on and shudder, mostly out of empathy for people who spend their whole working lives that way.

lz400• 2 months ago

Truth is, most people who interview people have no idea how to do it. I know because I've done hundreds and nobody ever trained me or explained to me how to do it properly. Over the years I've seen so many people on both sides of the table that I developed a method and I got semi-functional at it but so many people doing interviews shouldn't that bad experiences should be almost expected by now.

ryukoposting11• 2 months ago

I've done at least a few for every company I've worked for. Ironically, the smallest and worst-managed one is also the one that put the most effort into training me on how to do interviews. I'm not sure what to make of that.

donatj• 2 months ago

I've been working as a dev for over twenty years now and have had my fair share of interviews. The very worst I ever had was about six months ago.

I'd had a fantastic initial interview, it seemed like a perfect fit and interesting tech. Overlapped a lot with some work I'd been doing recently. They made it sound like my experience was a great match and they were exited for me to move forward. I was the most excited I've ever been after a job interview.

The second interview a couple days later was a one-on-one with the CTO. After about five minutes of pretty friendly get-to-know-you chitchat he asks if I have any questions about the position. I ask about what my day to day would look like and he replies "I don't know, and that's the problem. I don't like to lead people on, I'll be honest I don't see a position for you here."

It was such a sudden slap in the face that my brain just completely shut off. I kind of just stammered out an "Oh... Um... Thank you for your time"

I didn't get to talk about my experience ... at all. Not a single mention of my twenty years of across multiple tech stacks my resume doesn't even begin to scratch. I've never been judged so quickly or so blindly.

Later that day, out of sheer frustration I email him back trying to explain that I'd felt like I didn't get a chance to talk about myself and all the ways I'd felt like I was a great fit based on the previous interview and how my experience applied.

I never heard anything back.

codemog• 2 months ago

Seems like you dodged a bullet. Hard to hear when you’re looking for a job, but not every job is a good opportunity.

globular-toast2• 2 months ago

Yeah. It's kinda like when someone gets infatuated with someone but they don't reciprocate. Do you want to be with someone who doesn't like you? Of course not. Find someone else.

atoav2• 2 months ago

Congrats on not working there I guess. Apparently that CTO wasn't worth working with anyways

npodbielski• 2 months ago

He probably perceived you as a competition. If you do not like playing politics that probably was for the better.

11mariom• 2 months ago

+1. My worst experience was tech interview for TL… with current two most senior persons in team, with no-one else supervising the process. That couldn't go well.

ryukoposting11• 2 months ago

This is hazing, and OP is right to be upset. They were put into a Catch-22 by the interviewer and I see no reason to believe that was accidental.

I see a lot of replies that accuse OP of oversharing, and that's bullshit. In any job interview, the expectation is that you answer questions to the best of your ability. If "I'm not comfortable answering that" is an acceptable answer, that is an exception to the norm and it should be made clear ahead of time.

tamimio• 2 months ago

Boy oh boy, the shenanigans I saw when it comes to job interviews are enough to write a book, not even joking, it was easier to start a business than getting hired as an employee, because building a business you talk with mature, goal oriented adults, who only care about what value that business will add. In jobs, that’s the last they care about nowadays, from morons in the HR, to power hungry managers, to contracts that I would say borderline exploitation with minimum regulations to protect the employees.

One job they got offended to ask for a negotiation, despite it was them who changed the original job posting. Another job took 4 interviews (plus one redundant, as it seems they forgot they had that interview with me) over 4 months only to send a generic “thank you” email. Another job, the interviewer seems was hostile just to have the interview. Another one the questions in the first interview were stupid, supposedly technical but extremely shallow, like tabs or spaces.. yeah, I got asked that! Another one refused to change a word in the contract because it’s a “template”, it felt like applying to a service rather than a job. And many other stories, like a company sent me a ticket for an interview in another country, only to find the team is disconnected from what the recruiter wants, they paid for the trip tho.

European companies seem slightly better than North American ones, but for some reasons bringing up the money talk early is a taboo topic? Had few calls and noticed that, they got shocked asking such question, even though it’s great to know so we don’t waste our time.

I never negotiated money, funny how that sounds, but it isn’t my no1 priority, all I wanted is a mature workplace and working with goal oriented people where nothing else matters that much than delivering the results, it seems it was impossible.

MattRogish2• 2 months ago

This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer.

All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer.

This is interviewing 101 and unless this is your first ever interview I would find it odd, and stop you immediately and say “I meant, worst day at work”. They should’ve done that.

Unless they explicitly and unambiguously say “tell me about the day your mom and dog died in the same day when you found out you had cancer” they mean “tell me about your worst day _at work_.” And even if they ask about the time your dog died (they won’t), they are not asking you “tell me about the worst day you’ve had in your life”. They are asking “tell me about a time you experienced adversity and overcame it, exhibiting problem solving, resilience, and grit AT WORK. (Or - if you are operating in executive mode or you like to live dangerously - some non-work context that maps obviously and unambiguously to a work context).”

You failed the “knows how to interact with people in a professional setting” part of the interview. Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity). Or the “read between the lines” part.

Yeah, inartfully asked questions - but also totally flubbed the answers.

Sorry, chalk it up to you had a bad interview or day or whatever, and never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work”.

anyfoo7• 2 months ago

And even if, for the sake of argument, they legitimately did ask about your personal life instead of your work life... you normally wouldn't answer any of that. (In fact, it could very well mean the end of the interview, from the interviewee's side.)

That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you like to hike? Oh, I did that, too. Might I suggest hiking there and there? I bet you'd like it. Anyway, moving on!" Common ground helps conversations flow.

But an employer asking about your personal relationships? Your needs, fears, and desires outside of any technical context? (My needs, fears, and desires from compiler toolchains are totally within scope.) Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory. They have no business of asking.

fsckboy2• 2 months ago

Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory

OP didn't say that, he said "hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges" and then characterized it (his opinion) 'similar “trauma-baiting” questions'

asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect you to answer it. Young people often don't have enough other experience to fall back on, and in a context in which you are expected to make yourself look good, the filter that is expected is to emphasize something that you were successful/resourceful at.

neilv3• 2 months ago

Some good points. Just a heads-up about something interesting I heard/read in training...

"Innocuous" icebreaker questions about hobbies, the weekend, or whatever, can be surprisingly problematic.

The questions and answers often inadvertently imply things about family status, religion, physical ability/disability, socioeconomic class, age, heritage, etc. that interviews are supposed to steer clear of.

For me, this was best illustrated by one of the https://www.linkedin.com/in/lornaerickson/ funny video skits, in which the interviewer character was using "innocuous icebreaker" chat aggressively to try to extract information all over the no-no list of things you aren't supposed to ask.

(Then the skit was funny again, after the fact, when I was in an interview with some barely-out-of-school founder, who was intentionally doing one of the things from the skit...)

gopher_space2• 2 months ago

Just an aside:

Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: [...] Common ground helps conversations flow.

`smalltalk` is a misleading term for an interesting form of protocol negotiation.

fsckboy2• 2 months ago

It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer.

you are stating your opinion as fact, and I don't think there is a basis beyond your opinion, you simply don't know.

I agree with you the interviewee could have handled the questions better to not be so revealing about himself, setting boundaries the interviewer was crossing, but it might have been precisely the intent of the mental health company interviewer to elicit responses like that to stay away from emotionally wounded people.

mavelikara• 2 months ago

Adding “this is my opinion” to every post would be tedious, rt? :-)

neilv3• 2 months ago

Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity).

I think that "generally..." is a little harsh.

The person might just not have worked in a stereotypical corporate drone environment before.

Or they might normally have been able to handle the corporate drone interview theatre, but are overextended by the context (e.g., laid off in this job market, which can easily be more stressful and existential than most actual work situations), and a bad interview hazing just yanks on that.

There's going to be more and more overstressed people showing up to tech job interviews, and people on the other side of the table will need empathy and understanding, if they're going to make good assessments despite the context.

MattRogish2• 2 months ago

Thank you; you’re right - context matters and now more than ever there are a ton of folks looking involuntarily. Grace is always needed, but now especially.

Aurornis4• 2 months ago

The job is described as "founding engineer at a mental health startup".

Generally getting called in for a "founding engineer" interview is code for a company that doesn't have money for a full salary but hopes they'll find someone willing to work for some token equity grant. These jobs usually come with amateur founders who aren't good at hiring. They could have really been pushing for life experiences, thinking they were doing some breaking-the-mold interview technique.

I do agree that every candidate should know to deliver answers in the context of a work interview. Even when the interviewer starts asking personal questions, you bring it back to something related to the job every time. Everything that comes out of your mouth should have a focus of showing how you'll work well at this company because you've worked well in the past at other companies.

The interviewers may have been shocked when someone didn't know this and actually unloaded their personal life struggles without a filter. I bet every other candidate they talked to had been giving interview-appropriate answers so they didn't realize how broken their questions were.

Chalk it up to a learning experience. I am certain you didn't miss out on any great opportunity with these amateurs. You will probably never see them again. We all have embarrassing work experiences at some point, but this is a good one to learn from and then promptly try to forget.

victorbojica• 2 months ago

I was also part of this sort of interview once. They specifically asked personal questions - parents stuff, relationship, etc. Definitely not work related. It was indeed a very strange and exhausting experience. I could've definetly refused to answer some of the questions or drop out of the interview altogether, but not sure why I haven't.

So yeah, this type of interview exists so I highly doubt the interviewer interviewing OP was asking about work stuff...

BugsJustFindMe2• 2 months ago

They specifically asked personal questions - parents stuff, relationship, etc.

In the US any employer who asks you about personal relationships during an interview is opening themselves up to an illegal discrimination lawsuit.

ido• 2 months ago

Doesn’t that open them to discrimination lawsuits?

olbeefy• 2 months ago

At that point, I think I would have just started making things up or telling stories from other people I knew. Some random interviewer has literally no right to be asking me personal questions so I have no problem improvising some fun answers for them.

wolfi1• 2 months ago

my father was a turd miner in virginia and his father was a goat ball licker (c) Stephen Colbert

nkrisc3• 2 months ago

If they’re specifically asking about personal things like that then those are very inappropriate interview questions.

cdud34• 2 months ago

Rejecting the question is actually how you pass. Open with "I leave everything private at home when at work hence my answer for the work position is: [here the answer but scoped and formulated to your work life and NOT to your private life]".

jolmg• 2 months ago

Besides the point about separating personal and work life, there's the aspect of having the self-respect to maintain your own privacy.

You wouldn't answer deep personal questions from a random stranger on the street. Some questions might've been too invasive to answer were even some family and friends to ask them. Yet, it seems they felt like they should answer some interviewer they just met.

It's ultimately the responsibility of the person answering to select what and how much of themselves to share, depending on the relationship.

If the interviewer were to ask, "tell me your most embarrassing moment you had while having sex with someone", you wouldn't answer that. If they asked "tell me about the hardest day of your life" and the real, real answer was somehow that time you had that embarrassing moment while having sex with someone, you still wouldn't answer that. You would answer with what you'd be comfortable sharing with the random interviewer, if anything, else you can just decline the question.

The "embarrassing sex" is an exaggerated example. You can set your limits differently, in order to not feel

completely emotionally drained

as the OP put it. Setting your limits such that your personal life is outside of what your comfortable sharing with the random interviewer would be appropriate.

GP comment on separating personal and work life said to imagine they tacked "... at work" at the end. You can also imagine "... that you're comfortable with sharing" as a more general rule.

chaosharmonic4• 2 months ago

I once had an interviewer ask me, several years back, about the religious affiliations of my college.

It's supposed to mean "at work," but that doesn't at all mean that you can assume the interviewer is going to understand that.

overgard• 2 months ago

Legally, asking personal questions in an interview that are unrelated to the job is a huge minefield, ie, you could be opening the company to discrimination lawsuits. Huge red flag that the company isn't very professional.

alanbernstein• 2 months ago

Do you experience many "life challenges" at work?

dnnddidiej3• 2 months ago

Or at uni, at work-likes (volunteering, toastmasters etc.). It has to be in the pursuit of a commercial-like goal really. But yeah avoid friends, family, travel, pets...

bigfatkitten• 2 months ago

This is interviewing 101 and unless this is your first ever interview I would find it odd, and stop you immediately and say “I meant, worst day at work”. They should’ve done that.

They don’t like it when I tell them about the day I performed CPR on a guy who jumped from the roof of the office building across the street.

globular-toast2• 2 months ago

I'm prepared to give the author the benefit of the doubt here. We weren't there and maybe they really were asking what the hardest day of their life was. Your take is the author is completely incapable of basic communication, essentially.

traumabaited• 2 months ago

Absolutely not. I've been in an interview like this, and the interviewer specifically prompted me for for personal struggles, which I had to then fake having been way more affected over '"friends" asked me to take a photo so I'd be out of it' type incident than I actually was, just to satisfy them.

"... at work" expectation in an interview advertised as non-technical can be ableist screening anyways. Gonna poke that elephant since you're drapping it.

nailer3• 2 months ago

never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work”

I think the mental health startup part and the wide scope of the questions (hardest day in life, not hardest day in career) made it clear that this meant what it said.

Scandiravian• 2 months ago

I think this is a very cultural thing. When I interview candidates at my current job, we are interested in hearing about their life outside of work, since we want to know how we can best collaborate

If they have to pick up their kids in the afternoon, then it's probably better that they work closer with the other parents than of they're late risers who prefer coming to the office at 10

lljk_kennedy• 2 months ago

This sounds more like post-hiring admin, unless you're discriminating against parents?

supriyo-biswas3• 2 months ago

If the interviewer was fishing around for information for when I start work or if I have kids, the only thing that'd come to mind is whether they're trying to frame me as a slacker to disqualify me from the interview process.

Maybe the above is an European thing.

knorker• 2 months ago

An employer making career-affecting decisions for their employees based on whether they have kids or not sounds like a great way to get sued.

That said, I have been asked if I had kids, in an interview. Later in my career, when I was trained to perform interviews, I was explicitly told to NEEEEEVER ask that. And if the candidate volunteers it, to basically pretend you didn't hear it.

sateesh• 2 months ago

What if the team they're interviewing for doesn't has any parents. I think probably it is fine to ask about their life/interests outside of work. But if the interviewee isn't comfortable answering those it is better not to push

darkwater• 2 months ago

I don't know where are you from or where do you work, but this sounds like a big "no-no" in an interview setting if you are based in Europe.

It's totally something you can bring up later, when already hired, if the job description made clear that it gives you flexible working hours.

lukan• 2 months ago

"The follow-up, they described over email, would be a bit non traditional - a ~90 minute culture fit chat"

"I fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics, but they were, in fact, non-technical"

"This person gave the impression that it was a safe space to share"

I mean yes, the correct way would have been to politely decline to answer - but it very much reads as the intention of the interviewer was to get into all the personal stuff, to better evaluate - and sueing them possibly the right move.

ramon156• 2 months ago

You're so right, i prefer my colleagues perfectly mentally healthy, can't have these issues around!

.... why can we never find hires?

I think people (especially HR) need to realize we all pretend to be mentally sounds. These issues make us human, and if you are trying to filter by this, you'll end up with maskers as colleagues.

denkmoon• 2 months ago

If you're interviewing, you get that kind of mismatched response and don't jump in to clarify the scope of the question, I'm not sure that says much about the culture you're supposed to fit into.

neoden• 2 months ago

is scoped to "… at work"

It should be but nothing guarantees you from meeting an interviewer that somehow misunderstands their role and then you will be in a situation when you need to choose what to do next: try to be open or resist. Once during an interview (for a software engineer position) I was asked if I had a family and when I replied that I didn't, I was asked why. You might be able to cut it down in an appropriate way but in a situation of stress (which a job interview represents of course) you might not.

GJim2• 2 months ago

I was asked if I had a family and when I replied that I didn't, I was asked why.

In Blighty, that would surely have garnered a response along the lines of 'they were all lost in an industrial accident involving a steamroller and a packet of Lurpak'.

Jean-Papoulos• 2 months ago

From the way this is written, it's clear that the interview was not about "at work". If it was the interview would have stopped OP to say it after the first question, which obviously didn't happen.

havnagiggle• 2 months ago

I was being interviewed by two owners of a small engineer firm. They asked, "tell us where you see yourself in 5 years". I rambled for ~30 seconds about marrying my girlfriend and other personal details. I still remember their faces; super awkward, and then they slowly clarified: "we meant professionally" hahaha. It ended up fine in the end, but I feel like there's probably some missing education on social culture of interviewing somewhere and you just have to have those experiences at some point to understand.

wink2• 2 months ago

What about when they ask you to prepare something that is definitely worded as you should talk 5min about a random non-tech (so kinda explicitly non-work) topic (with some examples like poems and songs iirc) and then they are completely weirded out when you talk about a hobby?

But it was also part of the worst interview I have ever had and these misguided 5 minutes for a weird intro were on the low end of the wtf scale.

jrflo2• 2 months ago

Another pro tip for interviews: even if they explicitly ask for something like "the worst day of your life, including personal circumstances not at work", just answer about work anyways. You don't have to answer every question as posed. Pretend the worst day of your life was at work and was work related. There are a lot of interview questions asked as bait. If someone asks "What is your greatest weakness?", you better not respond with your actual greatest weakness.

freehorse4• 2 months ago

In my understanding, interviewers expect sth like:

What is your greatest weakness?
I am too good at my work

squigz2• 2 months ago

As an autistic person, it's nonsense like this that has made me dread every interview I've ever done.

duxup• 2 months ago

It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer.

If the interviewer did in fact share their personal trauma story as the author says then it would seem to indicate that was what they were asking for.

I know of places where that kind of sharing was the norm.

Gimpei• 2 months ago

I’m inclined to believe that you are being too charitable to the interviewers. This is an early stage mental health startup. They totally could have been asking very personal questions. I believe this used to be standard when interviewing psychoanalysts. They could have stopped the author at any time too. That would be the most natural thing. I’m inclined to believe that it was a clown show and they conducted borderline abusive interviews. Shame on them. But also, beware early stage startups. It’s a real roll of the dice and the dice are weighted against you.

chaosharmonic4• 2 months ago

These aren't at all the same thing though.

A candidate can be aware that these kinds of questions are supposed to have boundaries, but that's different from whether an interviewer understands or respects that. And if they don't, those people are also in a decision-making capacity that doesn't often empower you to just say "no."

Even when those things are scoped to "...at work," there are still answers that happen at work that are equally inappropriate to go digging for. "Tell me about a time you experienced adversity," for instance, could turn up health or family details that people might have juggled with their jobs -- things that you aren't actually supposed be considering as a factor in these decisions.

I also don't know, when someone is spending 90min screening you for "culture fit," that you can assume they're asking you for things that are strictly related to the job. They should be, but that's different from whether that's always a realistic presumption you can make.

Kholin• 2 months ago

I've met the same type interview recently, but not on the phone, it's a online web forms. I just write those not that important and positive memories, because I don't trust them from the start. Also, on the next step of the form, there's a statement shows they will use AI to analyze my personality. I feel uncomfortable and told them I don't like their way of interview and just end it.

jimt1234• 2 months ago

One thing I've done in the past when interviewing candidates is to create a hypothetical situation where the candidate doesn't know how to proceed, like some difficult technical issue. I'd also tell the candidate that their manager and peers are all unavailable. Then, I'd ask how they'd go about trying to resolve the issue and proceed. Honestly, I was never looking for the correct resolution. Rather, I was just looking that the candidate had some basic process for troubleshooting and figuring stuff out on their own. If someone said, "I'd search Stack Overflow until I found the solution.", that was usually good enough. However, all too often, candidates just couldn't understand what was being asked, like they independent troubleshooting was an unrealistic skillset. I'd say, "Just walk me through how you'd approach solving this issue." Some candidates would fully melt down, saying, "I don't know. I can't proceed."

efortis• 2 months ago

A hiring manager asked me a question like those. I said: "sorry I'm not prepared, I don't remember from the top of my head." Right before that interview I was a solo founder. He said something like: "ok, so you just focus on the work?" "Yes." I got the job.

phacker007• 2 months ago

You dodged a bullet my fren.

bitbasher• 2 months ago

My worst interview was at Uber (their security team).

The screening and technical interviews on site were all fine and dandy. At the end of the onsite interviews I spoke with the director in charge of the team. I asked some general questions like, "What's the team's work-life balance like?"

He chuckled and said something like they work 60+ hour works. I looked at him and said flatly, "Yeah, I'm not doing that."

The HR person called me after the onsites and was completely puzzled. She said she never seen a candidate pass technicals and not get an offer. She suggested sending me to another team (I declined).

OutOfHere• 2 months ago

I feel you. I once had a second-level manager interviewer suggest that I work through the lunch hour while on the job. I terminated that interview process the same day.

matwood2• 2 months ago

My worst interview was at Uber (their security team).

Worst? It sounds like a great interview where you set a boundary before going into a situation you would not have liked. People forget that part of the interview process is also for the candidate to decide if they want to work for the company.

GJim2• 2 months ago

Ummmmm

Interviews are a two-way thing. Don't forget that.

Frankly, far from being your worst interview, this was one of your most successful ones.

helloplanets• 2 months ago

So... You've never had a bad interview. Congrats!

dbgrman• 2 months ago

had a similar unsolicited psych evaluation interview back in 2017 in twitter. There was a VP (or maybe director), who started with "go back in history and tell me what your boss at position X would say about you", and this kept happening for an hour.

nailer3• 2 months ago

The “what would your previous manager say” doesn’t seem like a psych evaluation

comrade1234• 2 months ago

I've had that kind of interview. I kept avoiding the questions because it's not their business. He kept asking. I didn't get the job but that's fine.

I've always worked with people I don't mesh with. We fight with each other. We even yell sometimes. But that's ok. We don't need to be a family and in fact I feel major ick at the thought (weird polyamory shit) - they're gross. But they are competent and consistently bring us more customers.

sbinnee• 2 months ago

I can share mine. It was a job interview with one of the fastest growing companies. They were expanding sales positions in APEC region, specifically Korea. I am not really into sales, but I thought okay because it was such a big opportunity to work for this company.

I got three rounds of interviews including technical ones, then I had an interview with my potential team lead. The first thing he asked was about my MBTI personality test, which I hate and didn't pay much attention to learn mine. It seemed every encounter in Korea began with this MBTI test, but common in a job interview? I honestly answered him that I don't know my MBTI and just described my personalities in general. Then he started describing his MBTI and told me that I may not be the best fit with him because this and that.

A few days after, I got an email "... sorry". I don't want to believe that his MBTI question attributed a lot to this decision.

justomsharma• 2 months ago

After reading your blog : I would say : interview depend totally on candidate on how he/she wants to drive, its never like an QnA, unless you are giving a HR round. its like : you say something : other person asks more about it : you explain more. and this is how an interview is driven.

The feeling you expressed is a true feeling of a candidate after the interview : but you are thinking that you did everything best : I would suggest to think from interviewer's shoes as well : how you gave interview : if you are someone taking interview : and candidate gave this responses : would you hire him or not

if not then what could he/she do better...

Reflect like this...

steelframe• 2 months ago

I had an eerily similar situation in a behavioral interview I had with a company where I had a very strong internal referral from a very senior person. I didn't have any time at all to prepare for the interview and was super stressed out that week because of a cascade of work and personal problems all hitting me at once. In hindsight I probably should have asked for the interview to be postponed by a couple of weeks.

In short, I hadn't prepared at all for the interview loop, so I didn't have any of the standard responses "ready to go" for the behavioral interview. We ended up meandering into a bunch of stuff from my personal life, and I didn't have the presence of mind to course-correct it myself. It didn't help that the interviewer actively encouraged me to keep talking about the personal non-work experiences. I got the impression that the interviewer was self-deluded into thinking that they could do some kind of psychological evaluation of me, even though they clearly (in hindsight) had no formal education or training in doing that sort of thing.

Anyway, same story. After a few days, generic rejection letter, and no more communications. I can only imagine my interview loop feedback must have been horrific to overcome what I am certain was a strong internal referral by a very senior and well-respected employee at said company who I had worked with closely for several years (and he'd sung my praises at our previous company many a time when giving perf feedback). I keep replaying the behavioral interview in my mind and realize I must have come across really awkwardly to the hiring manager. In the end I felt much like the author of this blog post did, personally rather than professionally rejected.

I'm resolved no longer suffering pseudo-psychological behavioral interviews. If I get any questions that I feel cross the line between professional and personal, I'll firmly respond that I do not feel comfortable discussing non-work-related issues in a job interview.

pm90• 2 months ago

I believe the authors reading of the situation: its likely the interviewer wasn’t intentionally being cruel; most likely its this startups “unique thing that makes them stand out”; quirky twists that every startup attempts to make them stand out from the rest.

Honestly though, I think it ultimately worked out best for all parties. Its clear that the startup didn’t value someone that could be so vulnerable, and hopefully the author ultimately found a place that did.

My personal perspective is that for super early/founding engineer type roles you absolutely have to bring a greater part of yourself to work; you will be working over the weekends, working late, celebrating together and such… generally that environment is closer to a college club or fraternity than a corporation.

gobdovan2• 2 months ago

I always wanted to tell the story of my weirdest interview. It's bad in a different way from OP's. This was for a "Machine Learning Engineer" contractor position.

- Hi, I'm gobdovan. How are you? says I.

The interviewer doesn't bite:

- How many prompting techniques do you know? (ok?..)

After a couple confused seconds, I respond with 2-3 techniques and ask if I should explain them, but the interview engine is already running at full speed:

- What is PEFT? How many PEFT techniques do you know?

I say I know LoRA and start to explain it, but the interview had no patience for answers longer than their acronyms. Before I knew it, I heard frantic clicking.

- He starts sharing his screen while I am still talking about LoRA in the background. Puts up an empty car from Google Images and commands: "Model the relationships between cars and people positioned inside the cars over time."

Uncertain of how to satisfy the inquiry, I start foolishly questioning what the task is supposed to be: vision? simulation? dataset labeling? self-driving cars?

But the interviewer doesn't budge. Doesn't give a specific task or context. Simply ignores the questions and stoically refuses to elaborate. The stars speak to me, and I guess he wants a relational mapping of some kind. Turns out I am right. This was supposed to test basic SQL table modeling.

At this point, I decide I'd sit through the interview just so I can collect all the questions. I am not disappointed:

- How many agentic frameworks do you know?

- What is the name of OpenAI's embedding model, and how many dimensions does it have?

- Then, the last ordeal lands: interviewer takes out a piece of cardboard that has "context engineering" written on it and asks: "What does this tell you?". His camera is unfocused, I ask if he could read what it says. Instead he repeats: "What does this tell you? What does this tell you? What does this tell you?".

I ask if he is the ML team lead. Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role.

skrebbel2• 2 months ago

Did you get the job?

gobdovan2• 2 months ago

No, but I gained something just as valuable.

After the interview, the recruiter who introduced me to this job said they had another role for me. But first, he wanted links to the other positions I'd applied to, what those positions were paying, and how far along I was with each one.

I told him I wouldn't do that and he said that it was ok. Haven't heard from them in a year or so, but I'm sure that other interview is in the bag.

sirnicolaz• 2 months ago

I hope for his mental sanity that he didn't

janussunaj• 2 months ago

It's also pretty sad that now "ML engineer" means prompting...

Dumblydorr2• 2 months ago

Exactly. Not 4 years ago I was rejected from a job for not having enough NLP experience. Can you imagine that today? Someone being hired to do NLP in the market of LLMs?

nkozyra• 2 months ago

On the one hand I understand this fairly deeply.

I started doing "ML" ~ 20 years ago building classifiers people would laugh at today and even at the time barely impressed people when they were 95% correct.

I moved into NLP and built NERs that missed 2-10% of named entities per document routinely. Best of breed approaches and models rarely fared better.

Learned the cornerstones in school for ML; linear regression, ANNs, traditional RL, image classifiers, A* bots, etc, most of which got baked into transformers later on.

Then the transformers went from interesting novelty to useful. I couldn't build a useful one locally, but the toys versions were still fun to play with.

Then the novelty LLM went from useful to generally applicable. Then they became a silver bullet.

I still can't build one locally. I can distill or build or fine tune if you give me some rented GPUs. But to call this ML is very much a stretch.

I still use the traditional ML a lot, but mostly for evals and analysis.

I get being naturally bummed by this but I can't justify feeling anything but vaguely nostalgic about it. Someone with a $20 subscription can mog anything I can build with the skills I picked up.

If someone hands you a silver bullet you'd be a fool to decline it and spend your time hand casting a crude piece of brass. If the difference between 95% and 99% means you know how to aim or oil the gun, that's the world we live in.

Building a good RAG pipeline or prompt optimization or LLM consensus is dumb stuff that produces a better result than anything I could do from my 2010 ML/AI textbooks. I don't lack the knowledge or capacity to compete, I lack the compute.

That's the job now for 99% of companies.

zeafoamrun• 2 months ago

Holding up a cardboard board in a video interview? This is so deranged.

ludicrousdispla• 2 months ago

I wonder if the letters were hand-written or cut and pasted from several magazines.

bilekas2• 2 months ago

That is quite funny, I would have certainly left.

Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role

Those elite frontier mobile devs and their overwhelming power!

tracker12• 2 months ago

TBF, your current title/project isn't the same thing as what you're capable of... I have a lot of experience with both front end and backend systems.

I was brought into a new job as a UI expert, but still had some opinions on the backend approach... I overheard a conversation that included, "what does he care about the backend, he's just a UI guy." I don't think I've been quite that pissed off any other time in well over a decade at a workplace.

supriyo-biswas3• 2 months ago

I've had an interview like this in the past. At the time, I chalked it up to a power trip and the indignant behavior that comes along with it, as it is especially embedded in the culture of the country that I'm based out of.

Having said that, talking to a relative, I found out that this style of "interviewing" is often done when they already have someone for the position, but need to show (for compliance reasons, or otherwise) that they tried finding candidates, and only their preferred one qualified.

akdor1154• 2 months ago

I chalked it up to a power trip and the indignant behavior that comes along with it, as it is especially embedded in the culture of the country that I'm based out of.

That's a very globally-conscious way to refer to the USA!

ljm4• 2 months ago

I had a really weird power-trip interview once, and it was the CEO who was joined by a contractor who was ostensibly the technical lead for the project. There was nobody in engineering who worked full-time on the job, everybody was contracted. I was also going in as a contractor so I was aware that the interview would be a bit lighter on process as a result.

The questioning very quickly veered away from technical stuff and into stuff like, "where do you stand spiritually?" and other questions probing into whatever bizarre cosmic insights I could pull out of my ass at the time. He was the really intense kind of boss who wants to make sure you know of it with the hard back/shoulder slaps and micromanagement, and I could see his office from the boardroom which basically had an array of monitors all wired up to CCTV so he could watch (and hear) people from the comfort of his desk.

If any of that wasn't a red flag, getting hired literally 5 minutes after leaving the office was probably the biggest. I lasted about 6 months and even trying to leave was an ordeal.

giancarlostoro7• 2 months ago

Having said that, talking to a relative, I found out that this style of "interviewing" is often done when they already have someone for the position, but need to show (for compliance reasons, or otherwise) that they tried finding candidates, and only their preferred one qualified.

Or they only want candidates from a specific country to apply which is seemingly the case. I've heard from very talented and capable developers that they're getting auto-rejected once the interview reaches someone from a very specific country, no matter how good they did prior. I've also been personally told by people I know wouldn't BS me, that had my name sounded like I was from a particular country HR would have contacted me for an interview, but because I'm none of the countries some companies seem to only hire from, I get ignored. There's a problem with tech hiring and nobody wants to talk about it because most people are unaware.

matwood2• 2 months ago

Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role.

Until this line I assumed this was a screening by HR.

ordu2• 2 months ago

"What does this tell you?"

Why didn't you answer, that it tells you that his camera is unfocused?

I don't understand how people tolerate this for so long, I'd start trolling the guy after his third question. If he wants to be rude, then I'd retaliate and make sure I have a laugh while he is wasting his time.

teiferer5• 2 months ago

Hard to claim the moral high ground if you do eye for an eye. Always be nicer than the other side.

Even for practical reasons. If they think you are a prick, the blast radius can be substantially wider than this specific interview. And for what? The lulz?

I'm not saying to accept rude behavior, but one can leave such situations without being rude back or making a scene.

AJRF• 2 months ago

Why doesn't stuff like this happen to me, i'd have so much fun with a guy like this >:)

babafun• 2 months ago

You have to respect this guy's patience tho

shantnutiwari• 2 months ago

" but the interview engine is already running at full speed:"

I dont know if this is a recent thing, but I had a similar thing where an interviewer was racing forward, and would only accept the answers he had in mind.

In Python, he asked me how to search for substring. I was thinking but he started hurrying me. So I said regex and started writing a regex.

"No, there is an inbuilt method"

I couldnt remember the method. He asked me to google it, but there are dozens of string methods.

"I could use a regex?" I said and tried to show him how.

He ended the call, and 5 min later the agent called me to say my Python was sun-standard so they wouldnt be going forward.

This guy was a permanent employee and supposedly an expert

stemchar• 2 months ago

I probably would've done the same. "I don't remember what the function is called" would've been fine-ish, but reaching for a regex is just insane.

raincole3• 2 months ago

He was being rude, but I'm equally baffled by your description. It was very weird that you couldn't figure out which method is to search for substring when you have access to google search.

And it was triply weird that when he already said he wanted the non-regex way and you insisted on that.

anktor• 2 months ago

Commenting just to go against the other two answers. I think it's fine to not remember things, no matter the apparent simplicity.

Quite surprised by others finding this as a... Surprise? I get there is people who never experience this, but they also not know anyone personally to whom this would happen?

teiferer5• 2 months ago

I like such interviews. They tell me it's not a place I want to work at without wasting much time finding out.

Kim_Bruning• 2 months ago

   if "needle" in haystack:
      print ('haystack.__contains__("needle")')

Is probably the obvious/canonical answer to the question of trying to find a substring.

So obvious that -to be fair- I blanked for a moment too. But 'in' is an operator, not a method (even though it calls __contains__ under the hood) . The question might have been slightly malformed?

jubilanti• 2 months ago

The interviewer was right. If you don't know "if substring in string" by memory, your python programming is substandard. This should be automatic for anyone who works with python as a primary language. But if you can't even Google to find "if substring in string", why would anyone pay you even minimum wage to be a programmer?

bee_rider2• 2 months ago

I’d call this an understandable mistake on the part of the interviewer. “in” is a pretty commonly used operator. But it is also a bit unusual/trivial, in the sense that most languages would have a method or a function instead.

It’s the sort of thing where if you’ve written, like, any Python at all, it’ll be somewhere in the back of your head. It’d surface immediately on the job. But if you’d been using any other language earlier that day, it might not pop up reflexively, or in interview-stress mode.

It’s essentially trivia, and over-indexing on trivia is a mistake. But if they were a Python writer every day, I could see why they’d incorrectly expect everybody to have “in” in their l1 cache.

gspetr6• 2 months ago

Step 1: https://www.google.com/search?q=list+python+string+methods

Step 2: Parse the output with your eyes. The method is literally called "find".

This one-trick pony failure mode could perhaps have been fine for a guy who did Java and nothing but Java for 10 years, but you are supposedly the person who runs "pythonforengineers" website...

100% correct call by the interviewer.

eudamoniac2• 2 months ago

I've never understood this extremely common complaint. First of all if one can't remember the substring method in the language they are interviewing for, that's a red flag; extremely common standard lib functions should not be a subject for googling. But let's account for nervousness, okay. If that same candidate can't find the method by googling, it's a no-hire from me, easily.

"python find substring" gives you a valid answer on every single result. This story, and most like it, is incompetence in the python language, in googling, or both.

randusername• 2 months ago

I had an experience like this. I showed up and was handed a 50 question pen-and-paper exam on C# trivia, like the result of cursed operator precedence chains. I am not a C# programmer.

No small talk, no discussion of the role, no discussion of my experience or interest in the position. I kept trying to decline and open up a more conceptual conversation on relative importance of things in software, but they really cared about grading my work.

Easily 2 out of 5 interviews I've taken expose spectacular miscommunications between HR / management and future coworkers.

Xunjin• 2 months ago

What the actual F lol

haspok• 2 months ago

I had such an interview once. The recruiting agent explained to me beforehand that this is kind of a "stress-technical" interview, supposed to test my real knowledge as I would have to answer the questions without thinking, almost instinctively.

My interview happened on the phone while I was commuting on a crowded train, and was extremely successful - at the end, we both agreed that we were not looking for each other :)

This was back when leetcode was just coming in full swing (early 2010s), which since then replaced it completely. I think the (startup - coincidence?) company that was trying to hire simply didn't have the money to pay for a leetcode hosting service, a phone call costs nothing after all, only time...

i_am_a_peasant• 2 months ago

This is the best thing I've read all day thank you. I laughed so hard!

Oh man imagine if they asked the janitor to interview you and he just goes at it like it's the defining moment of his entire career.

misja111• 2 months ago

Whenever I'm in an interview (almost) like this, I happily remind myself that interviews work in two directions: they are also for me to evaluate my possible employer.

giancarlostoro7• 2 months ago

I don't know what I would do, I've never had to hang up on an interview, but I just might have especially after how it ended.

Aurornis4• 2 months ago

I ask if he is the ML team lead. Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role.

Some times I run into companies like this: The people you talk to are so visibly inexperienced that you can't comprehend how the company functions, let alone makes money.

Some times it's a zombie company. They received funding or got a windfall from some early business moves, hired a ton of people, and now they're floating through the industry transferring money from customers to salaries as long as they can while their customers slowly leave for better options.

Some times it's a company with horrible management skills. They promote people who play the game instead of doing the work. The person in charge of the ML initiative only wanted to say that they hired MLE people for a new ML initiative for their resume. They grabbed someone who wouldn't complain or talk back and gave them the job of interviewing MLE engineers. That person ChatGPT-ed some questions and ran through a list in each interview, knowing their job was to go through the motions. The interview filters out everyone who would hate that environment, selecting for more people who know that the name of the game is going through the motions and pretending to do work while avoiding getting fired.

burnte• 2 months ago

I've had very few bad interviews, I've had very few interviews that didn't lead to offers, but I've declined a few. One was semi-recent and it was in in-person in-office interview but the CEO joined remotely. We chatted for a few minutes, then the COO came into the room and we began the interview. The CEO asked one question in the beginning, then the COO asked all the questions. The CEO sat on the screen like a lump. I felt weird, and asked him directly a few times if he had questions, he'd shake his head and gesture to the COO.

Later I got a call from the recruited saying the CEO was unhappy, that he felt "he couldn't get a word in edgewise" but he was willing to "give the interview another chance." I said I was sorry to hear that, and that if the CEO didn't feel he could speak up freely in a 3 person meeting then I wasn't the right fit for that environment.

The COO called me later, the truth was that everything I had said about future planning aligned with their previous CIO who had left after long disagreements with the CEO but that the board liked the plans and my resume. I said no thanks, that the CEO isn't someone I want to work with. If everyone has to constantly cater to the CEO and make sure he feels included, that's not a workplace, that's a kindergarten.

chadgpt3• 2 months ago

I had one a bit like this, the interviewer was a nontechnical guy who just had a list of questions.

muffa• 2 months ago

I had an interview like this, I got annoyed and just responded with "I don't know" to all of his questions. Then the CEO of the company offered me a position, politely declined ofc

mojo74• 2 months ago

"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."

Tangurena2• 2 months ago

Dude, we got this gig from the app Turtle Flipper.

abustamam• 2 months ago

I wonder if such companies realize (or care) how much good talent they're losing by keeping bad talent.

tracker12• 2 months ago

Hard for some to know when they have the ear of higher ups.

drrob2• 2 months ago

It's a good job I wasn't being interviewed for this job, as I have not one iota of a smidge of a clue what PEFT and LORA are. And I have no idea what varieties of prompting technique there are.

minimaxir• 2 months ago

PEFT is more niche as it's a specific library (https://github.com/huggingface/peft) that creates LoRAs, but for a machine learning engineer working with LLM models outside of just prompting an API, it's within scope to know why/how a LoRA should be used.

tshaddox• 2 months ago

I kinda wish that the industry norms changed such that it wasn't so taboo to just name and shame these companies.

bilekas2• 2 months ago

I do think sometimes the interview process can be weird as hell, but if one is to name and shame it doesn't help really, they could change their processes and even take feedback but if there's a constant record of the oddities it can turn off potential perfect fits. I've been shocked how many people will base their approach off of Glassdoor reviews from 5 years ago for example. I think it's fair for a company to improve, plus it makes for funny posts like this!

Also I'm not sure it's such a tabboo as it is a stigma on the applicant!

complianceowll2• 2 months ago

I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound like an absolute Chad. That, sir, is a Giga Senior Alpha Chadus Maximus.

ksd482• 2 months ago

LOL! My knee jerk reaction was going to be "dude, it's sarcasm". But you are way ahead of me :)

bicepjai• 2 months ago

This was a fun story. I appreciate your patience, I would have said thanks and left after the cardboard box show

tsukikage• 2 months ago

Genuinely opening up is a mistake. The incentives for these clearly mean that they actually select for candidates who are capable of glibly blagging their way through an extended conversation without saying anything inconsistent, weird, compromising or of substance.

This isn’t usually a required engineering skill. I’m guessing the interview was designed for salespeople and/or middle management.

IshKebab• 2 months ago

Yeah, definitely just tell them what they want to hear on the personal question front ("tell me about a time..."). There's zero benefit to being truthful and zero downside to blagging it.

eithed6• 2 months ago

I'd say it depends - evaluate the vibes. I spent 8y and recently 7y at a company where I genuinely responded with what I thought. But I'd say it's a matter of the audience - some people want to hear certain things and deciding if you can share these thoughts is up to you. It also allowed me to make decisions - if people don't care what I think and want sycophancy is this the company I want to be working at? I understand though it depends on one circumstances = you have to grin and bear it

p0w3n3d• 2 months ago

I am sorry to hear this. If you were perceiving the space as safe and then you felt abused, I think this is something you should report. Maybe people working in mental health startup are experts in mental health, but there are very strict rules and guidelines that forbid abusing this "power" with other people, especially when unwanted, uncertain etc. During my therapy I've learned that the therapeutist is having monthly update on their actions with their supervisor, so they wouldn't do things that are for example unethical, or direct me in the wrong direction for some reason.

As other people mention in comment, this surely have been error of the interviewer, and in my opinion the feedback should be left.

BugsJustFindMe2• 2 months ago

The problem seems to be that you treated a professional job interview like a therapy session and showed yourself to be a person who brings up situationally inappropriate subjects without a filter.

I’m a little ashamed remembering myself talking about failed relationships, family struggles

It sucks what happened, but, yeah, you need to establish filters for yourself. No matter what they ask you, it's an absolutely terrible idea to bring up your failed relationships in an interview. Something tells me they did not ask for that private information specifically and you just decided it would be a good idea to volunteer it, otherwise the story would have said so.

It does not matter what you think they asked. You are the one in control of the words that come out of your mouth. This was poor judgement all around.

niraj898• 2 months ago

My first interview was the weirdest one, as i was so panicked that i started lying to the interviewer.

nephihaha2• 2 months ago

That isn't uncommon.

sevenseacat2• 2 months ago

Heh, I once interviewed at a place that asked me to sit the Oxford Capacity Analysis test as part of the process. (The Scientology personality test, for those unaware.)

I politely declined, which seemed to confuse the interviewer, but he moved right along. I still got the job lol

cobertos• 2 months ago

What was the job like? That's quite the thing to move past and then still get the job on

kjs3• 2 months ago

Quite! I draw a hard line at 'cult recruitment' in an interview. Personal preference.

sevenseacat2• 2 months ago

A bit culty, if I never hear talk about hatting and going on post again I'll be quite happy. So many practices and stuff that I didn't realize were Scientology-related until I looked them up later

andsoitis• 2 months ago

It is OK to be rejected. Showing vulnerability (in a professional manner) can be a sign of strength and trustworthiness, but one should also be resilient when it isn’t a match and not dwell on it too much. Ego is the enemy.

JSR_FDED2• 2 months ago

This sounds less like an interview and more like they’re gathering data to train their mental health model!

cess11• 2 months ago

Right, you should never, ever, make yourself emotionally available to a prospective employer. They might seem friendly but they are not.

ryukoposting11• 2 months ago

s/a prospective/any/g

TrackerFF3• 2 months ago

I'd say I've been fairly luck as far interviews go. The vast, vast majority have been about as straight forward and by the book as they come. Completely predictable ones.

But I've had some iffy ones.

One was for a small boutique investment firm, for a data scientist type role. I'm not sure if it was part of their "stress testing" routine, but I was given a bash terminal where I had to SSH into some server, find data, and write a program to manipulate said data, and write it to a database. The problem was very straight forward, BUT one of the interviewers was practically hanging over my should for 60 minutes straight, commenting every other minute "No, no, you should...", "This looks wrong", "Have you actually done this before?", "Why don't you know..."

I tried my best to just be professional, and walk him through my thought process. In the end my program ended up doing exactly what it was supposed to, with optimal performance - but I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I thought to myself that I'd rather go unemployed than work under that level of passive-aggressive micromanagement.

But in the big picture, that's nothing. I have friends that have experience explicit age, sex, and race discrimination. Ranging from "Why should we hire [the caste this person "belongs" to]?" to "You better not get pregnant if we decide to hire you"

squigz2• 2 months ago

"Have you actually done this before?"

I would have got up and walked out at this one, personally.

But at least they let you know how working there would be during the interview :)

65102• 2 months ago

One fun trick I learn (or more like two tricks) is to start working with the person during the interview. If you do a lot of interviews you get to see a lot of different ways to do it. Their job is to do interviews but they never get to see how others do it. You can tell them what they are doing right, what interesting approaches others take, what you would do and how they can improve.

If I notice they cant talk about improving the way they do things I cant get out of there fast enough. It's one of those places where everything goes wrong but you have to actively pretend it's not.

lawgimenez• 2 months ago

I also had a remote interview for an Australian agency company. I went to their website and it was all Australian folks, name, photos, etc. Their website also has a video of them working inside the office, having a meeting.

When I joined the call it was just a couple of Indian persons, with the video resolution of one fella so low, it was hard to make up his face. The other one was a female which did not turned on her camera for reasons she mentioned something she was sick and don't like turning it on.

I had lots of remote interview, but this one is just borderline creepy.

daemin• 2 months ago

That sounds quite scammy, like it could have been designed to scam applicants or people that wanted to hire that agency.

Then again maybe giving an image of a more normal "white/multicultural" Australian office might make it easier to sell services into the Australian market.

VimEscapeArtist• 2 months ago

I've only had one terrible interview as the candidate, but there's one I conducted myself that weighs on my conscience. It was my first job in IT, and I was still a student back then with no real experience to speak of. A young guy came in to our company who was clearly very stressed, and I kept asking him hard questions - probably not to actually assess his competence, but to prove that I was the one who knew my stuff. That was 20 years ago and I don't remember the details anymore, I only remember that he was stressed and I just treated him cruelly with those questions. It wasn't anything offensive, I just keep recalling that moment and I regret it. Today, if I were conducting any interviews, I would make a real effort to make the person feel comfortable, even if they don't know everything or are a weak candidate.

a-french-anon• 2 months ago

Did the same once and I am still pretty ashamed; I must have been in a bad mood or something. I remember asking this guy who just got out of university to explain what "volatile" means in C.

syl5x• 2 months ago

I had an interview with a CTO back like 2 years ago, I already passed the 3-4 interviews 2 of which were technical and I am on this cultural fit interview with the CTO. The guy enters the call everything seems normal and he begins with his questions which were absolutely insane. First he asked me how did I improve in my work, since I work in cyber I explained to him that I am following latest trends, and getting security certificates like OffSec and other hands on stuff, even CTFs. He is not satisfied he asked me about specifics and to dive deep, okay.. I've explained to him how OSCP, OSWE and OSEP worked and possibly even shared some of the exam ranges scenarios, again he wasn't satisfied and asked for specifics I am already baffled and I was thinking "Does he want me to share the CTF flags or what". Anyway after back and forth with me saying that I don't understand what he wants me to say, he moves forward with "Now what about outside working hours". I sighed and explained that this is taking at least 90% of my free time as well, but he kept asking that he does not care about work and wants to know what I do outside work. Okay I play table tennis quite often and I train it, HE IS NOT SATISFIED (mind you he asked for specifics as well) and in the end he sighed and just said "so you are not improving outside work". I am on the verge of clicking the end meeting button but I kept going. Next question was, have I done any proactive work during work hours, I explained what I did, what tools I've written for the developers and he again asked for SPECIFICS, I said that at this point I am starting to worry about my NDA, and explained that I won't be sharing what I did specifically. He was frustrated and started explaining me that he does not know my clients or whatever or anything about me so it won't matter, which is absolutely laughable but I refused to share anything. Next thing he said is that I am bombing the interview and he has 0 value from this conversation, and I was like okay sure I didn't know that I should bring value into your company/you without even starting. He was now really frustrated started to use words like "fucking" and so on, explained to me how the interns in the company were having a better answers and how his mom would do a better job at this. I was like "???? lmao". Now telling you this I am not sure why I did not quit the meeting but here we go the next question, which I do not remember exactly but I distinctly remember that he said "that's a perfect answer". And since this is becoming long enough I would spare the rest of questions which were absurd once again. Needless to say that I wasn't chosen nor I would have chose them even if this was somehow a pass.

meerita4• 2 months ago

Man, I would never want to be in your shoes that day. What a pain.

LoulouMonkey5• 2 months ago

As we're all sharing some bizarre experiences we've had, I feel I have to chip in.

I had 2 very weird interviews with the same FAANG company, before actually joining the company in 2021.

Anyway, we're in 2011 and my career in tech has just started. I hear back from a recruiter regarding a role I've applied for, and to be considered for this position it is mandatory to be fluent in French. Which shouldn't be a problem as I happen to be French.

The recruiter tells me that the person that was initially supposed to interview me first (a native French speaker) is currently off sick, and that his manager will be interviewing me instead.

I'm in a room in the lovely old offices of this company, by the Bord Gais theatre for those who live in Dublin. The manager I'm about to spend the next 30 minutes with is American, and majored in French. At least according to the recruiter.

She greets me with a "bon matin !" which doesn't sound right in French, but that I immediately realise is the literal translation of "good morning!". She mumbles a few things which I now can't remember, but something along the lines of "la entretien il est aujourd'hui dans le Facebook, pourquoi ?". I just smile at her while trying to process what she just asked me. But I can't, so I ask her to repeat what she just said. V2 of her question is even worse, and we spend the next 5 to 6 minutes trying to understand each other. Eventually she switches to English and goes on to tell me how she moved to Dublin from the US a couple of years ago.

A few hours later, the recruiter emails me and tells me that unfortunately, being fluent in French is mandatory for this role and that I obviously am not.

Funny thing, I've been in Ireland for 16 years now, and I know a ton of people who also had some very weird interviews with this same company, all roughly between 2010 - 2017: like for instance a hiring manager who had brought her dog to the office (and therefore to the interview room). The dog kept barking / jumping on her, and she very clearly didn't pay any attention to the answers my friend was giving her (he didn't get the role). I could go on with stories like these ones for hours. All at the same FAANG company, all in Dublin, all between 2010 and 2017.

Like I said earlier, when I eventually joined in 2021 the interviewing process felt a lot more professional.

underdeserver• 2 months ago

Was this a technical role?

LoulouMonkey5• 2 months ago

Not really, it was technical support through tickets.

I don't exactly remember the specs, but French and SQL were the main requirements. Actually, more French than SQL.

shrikant• 2 months ago

Wow, why do you think the communication was so off? (I don't know much about French)

My guess would be that the intervewing manager was just translating English sentences directly into their French worded equivalent without actually following the rules/grammmar, and so it was confusing -- right?

I initially thought they might be attempting to read off a Google Translate conversion but I suppose if that interview was face to face then that'd be implausible.

LoulouMonkey5• 2 months ago

My understanding of the situation is the exact same as yours. Which I find funny now, but obviously not that much back then.

The interview was in person, and she only used her laptop to take down notes. I remember thinking to myself "jeez she could at least have prepared some questions" but nope.

I'm glad it happened though, as I've told this story dozens of times since and it still manages to make me laugh :)

codeduck• 2 months ago

Better than my interview at a Apple, where one of the senior engineers who was supposed to interview me didn't show up - twice in a row.

I'd been recommended for the role by colleagues who'd moved to Apple; I gave them some rather pointed feedback for them to pass on to the hiring manager and moved on.

LoulouMonkey5• 2 months ago

An interviewer that doesn't show up is really bad. Not matter where you work, you'd probably end up having a chat with HR if you did that twice.

Sorry about that buddy!

mrguyorama2• 2 months ago

Seeing as the entire point of FAANG having offices in Dublin at that point in time was a tax evasion strategy, they probably didn't give a shit about hiring or actual employees.

LoulouMonkey5• 2 months ago

Some people say that things might start changing soon due to layoffs. I personally very much doubt it.

narag• 2 months ago

I had a pretty weird interview with this crazy french guy that after a couple of minutes, started acting like a telepreacher and demanding passion or something.

But the most frustrating one was with an attractive smiling girl that praised the founder as a genius, dismissed my experience and refused to talk money. She said the next step was a "group dynamics" with the team. I said no thanks. Cult.

In general, I get the job when I reach the technical guy. Except that time that, after being approved by the technical lead, I had a chat with the dept head, that asked some inane what are your hobbies questions and rejected me, really because of too high salary. Later the same company reached me, when he was replaced.

msftr1• 2 months ago

I had a weird experience interviewing for a company recently. I'm in cyber security and I'm no way a SWE (my CV clearly shows that) and apart from the odd python/shell/powershell script I'm not a developer.

Job description matched 95% of my skills, and I thought it'd be a great opportunity to move to a more lean company, in a challenging industry. First interview with HR went awesome. For the second one I had a whiteboard to code a random problem. I never had a whiteboard before as I was never a SWE before. I tried my best but yeah not exacly what I've been doing for the last 15 years. There was a couple of system design questions which I think went well.

But anyway, received a rejection email a couple days after. What shocked me most was that I wasn't asked a single security question. Literally nothing about authZ, authN, threat modelling, vulnerabilities, frameworks, intelligence. Nada. All these things were listed in the role description, though.

I was upset but yeah, maybe they didn't know what they really wanted.

meerita4• 2 months ago

Cultural fit is important. You don't want to work with people who are not morally aligned with you or the company. A rotten apple can ruin the entire basket, but the problem with these cultural fit interviews is that the people who run them often use the wrong framework for their questions.

Who cares if you had trauma when you were 16? Will a past trauma affect your future at the company? Does the interviewer have a psychology degree to conduct such an interview?

In any case, do people have the right to a second chance if they did something morally questionable in the past? I've conducted over 2,000 interviews in the past 20 years, and I've learned a lot. The best indicators of a good candidate are not questions like "Tell me your weaknesses" or "Tell me about a mistake you made."

The best indicators are whether the person spent time learning about your project, your company, the people who work there, the technologies, the product, the vision, the financial status, and the investors. That shows more interest than answering "Tell me about your hobbies."

Havoc• 2 months ago

The interviewer certainly didn’t mean tell me about your failed romantic relationships

That’s a misread of note

antran22• 2 months ago

I have had my fair share of terrible interview as well. The key thing I learnt is that the interview is an opportunity for me to understand the culture of the company and judge my fit there as well. I know that the phrase "dodge a bullet" is used to death in those kind of situation, but if the interviewer is behaving unprofessionally you can safely assume the people in the company will be unprofessional in a lot more other area.

As an instance, I had an interview with a CEO of a consulting firm. He took the interview while on the metro, so half the time on the call I couldn't hear what he said at all. When the call ended, I send a message to the HR person giving quite a critical feedback and stopping any further process with the company. A few months later I talked with one of my friend who worked there for 3 months. The CEO and the legal department overlooked some certain paperworks with regard to employment insurance, and when the taxman came and gave them a heavy fine, they hide the situation from everybody until the situation became unfixable. The company went bankrupt essentially overnight and most of the employees has a 1-year plus insurance gap with no practical way to sue for it back.

Moral of the story: if the interview feels wrong, email them and decline going forward right away. Give yourself the satisfaction of consciously dodging a bullet.

cucumber37328422• 2 months ago

I'd rather work at a company where the interviewer smokes a cigarette in the conference room than one where they give off rigidly hierarchical "nobody has any agency" vibes. Sure we might go bankrupt but I'll have to put up with a whole lot less dumb "we don't pay you to think" bullshit and morale will be way higher the whole way there.

Halian2• 2 months ago

I'd rather neither firm be allowed to exist.

TrackerFF3• 2 months ago

Indeed. I've had a bunch of jobs, and my experience has been that the job interview sort of reflects the people and structure / organization you'll be working with.

To put it this way: The best places I've worked at also had good interview rounds, while some of my least enjoyable employers had less enjoyable interview rounds. The absolute worst interviews have been at places I didn't get an offer, or I didn't pursue afterwards.

If the person interviewing me is rude, glued to their phone, uninterested, and in general indifferent to what happens - I'm going to assume that's a reflection of how the company culture is. I can also understand that not all people tasked with interviews will bring their A game every time, and that there may be external factors at play - but those places usually show a pattern.

I've yet to interview at a place where the interview was terrible all around, and then find out that the company is gold.

NickC25• 2 months ago

Moral of the story: if the interview feels wrong, email them and decline going forward right away. Give yourself the satisfaction of consciously dodging a bullet.

I wished I had known this earlier in my life.

I once interviewed at a healthcare startup ran by the brother of someone very closely related to the current occupant of the White House. This was 3 weeks after I graduated college.

I went through the first round, no problem. 2nd round, it was Halloween, and a nurse dressed up as a cow (spotted makeup and all) comes into the room and asks me to role play a situation where I have to deny life-saving insurance claims to a cancer patient who's been given a life threatening diagnosis.

Halfway through the exercise I asked the interviewer - "so, this is an insurance company, and the insured has been paying premiums for a while, probably 10s of thousands of dollars, and they have what is otherwise effectively a terminal diagnosis...and you're asking me to deny this person their only chance at survival?". I was given the response of "that's how insurance works"

Sad.

trolleski• 2 months ago

Psych eval without consent is unethical to say the least. And I disagree, the culture fit is not important at all - the way of working, the products, the attitude towards work all good, but the culture fit is a scam.

animal531• 2 months ago

Cultural fit is the number one predictor for a successful fit, however a big wall here is with certain personality types (especially surrounding IT).

In general we don't open up easily to strangers and hate personal questions. We consider many social questions to be just fluff and will either brush them off or pick something with far too much personal information.

These issues especially surface when being interviewed by a non-IT worker.

estetlinus• 2 months ago

Trauma baiting was a new term for me. Must’ve felt awful. Your story made me think of this old Far Side comic, where the psychotherapist just writes “he’s nuts” in his notebook[1].

[1] https://pin.it/7S4LVwrr6

jazz9k• 2 months ago

My worst was right out of college. It was for a really small company that needed a web developer.

I showed up, and it was two guys that were around my age.

They seemed annoyed by the interview, it was completely unprofessional, and I was told I didn't get the job because I didn't like a specific sports team.

I found my next job the next week at 3x the pay.

telmop2• 2 months ago

I've had quite a few too:

* The most recent one: I was doing an "AI assisted coding interview". The problem itself was simple. I gathered clear specs, I explained what I planned to do. I was supposed to use AI so I wrote down the main function signatures I expected (the API boundary) and wrote in the prompt what I wanted Claude to do. I wrote no code myself other than editing the output. When I got rejected, I was told it was because "I wrote too much code myself".

* Once I was asked a brain teaser. I solved the initial problem, but one of the follow-ups made it significantly more challenging. I wrestled with the problem for a few minutes, and realizing I was going around in circles I stated so and told the interviewer I wasn't sure how to proceed. I was expecting a tip or at least an acknowledgement, but I heard nothing. Blank silence with the interviewer staring at the screen. Since it was a zoom call, I thought my internet was down, but when I asked "hey, can you hear me?", he replied yes, and went back to radio silence. This was a pattern of the interviewer throughout the interview. Later on, after this question I implemented an algorithm and was asked for its time complexity. I mistakenly said O(n) (I forgot the initial sort), and the interviewer literally just stared at the screen and said nothing until after 10 seconds or so when I realized my mistake and corrected it - at which point he acknowledged and moved to the next question.

* Another one that happened two times (at different companies) is getting asked a very vague question, like "how do you fix a bug in production" (to which I reply with 'I try to replicate it locally, I go through logs, etc') and then being told by the recruiter the interviewer didn't like that my responses were "too generic".

TrackerFF3• 2 months ago

Regarding the first you posted, it sounds very much like a "feature" sweatshop. Meaning that they have some product with customers, and will implement absolutely every single request they get from customers - and really just want prompt engineers that will ship out updates as quick as possible.

IME, there's been a rise of those for the past 1-2 years. They not only embrace AI/slop coding, it is a core part of their business model.

telmop2• 2 months ago

Unfortunately I fear this is going to become the standard in our industry. Everyone will be forced to rely on AI to "ship faster", to trade learning for short term speed.

bacchus123• 2 months ago

Two years ago I applied for a position in the Swiss Federal Gov's IT departement. The interview rounds went well, I liked the team and the atmosphere was good. They told me that I was the best fit from the people who have applied for the position. Before the last interview, which was with the HR and the "boss" of the departement, i got an email which described how the onboarding happens. So I went there on the next day and they started grilling me. I didn't put my pre University education in the CV and they thought that I'm hiding something from them. They also thought that i'm like 20 years younger than I am, although I told them multiple times how old I am and my age was as well in the CV. It ended without a contract signed. I had to send them all that stuff, like old school certificates (20 years old!) that weren't relevant for that position at all. After a month or so they told me that they do not want to proceed with my application since they found someone who better fits the position. The dude from the team called me and told me that the HR had vetoed me out. Crazy shit. You better don't throw your elementary school grades away!

Hendrikto• 2 months ago

HR is such a joke. The world would be better off without that farce.

ambicapter3• 2 months ago

Seems like they already knew who they wanted to hire, but HR wasn't in on it.

arikrahman• 2 months ago

Usually I do my best to answer questions in a business context and prepare different STAR scenarios based off past experience.

scwoodal• 2 months ago

AI makes it trivial to narrow down who this company might have been despite the anonymized details. Mostly a heads up for future posters who want to truly avoid it.

thrw123• 2 months ago

Interview at Microsoft Serbia, around 2018-2019, for a general Junior Software Engineer position.

My expertise was in Machine Learning (this was way before LLMs and the current AI craze).

The first guy knew what ML was, but advised me to round up my knowledge with low level coding, cause ML is too abstract and isn't very useful.

2nd and 3rd guy gave me a mix of stupid brain teasers and high school math, coupled with questions about obscure C++ libraries (despite me clearly saying I've only done C++ back in high school and don't really ever use it).

The 4th guy, however, was the actual bizarre part. He was completely introverted or something, kept looking at the desk and eventually whispered to me:

HIM: Write an API for a book with chapters. It should be able to flip to the next chapter and flip to the next page.

ME: Sure, no problem, that's trivial. By the way, when the user is at the last page of a chapter and calls nextPage, should it give null or skip to the first page of the next chapter? What if it's the last chapter/page and the user is calling nextChapter/nextPage? Give null? Throw error?

HIM: Write an API to flip the pages and chapters of a book.

ME: Yes, I understand. But if I'm at the last page should it give null?

HIM: The book has pages and chapters. Your API should be able to navigate to the next page and next chapter.

ME: So you keep repeating the question over and over again, and not answering my question.

HIM: I don't know how I can say this any clearer, the book has chapters and pages and your API should navigate to the next chapter and page.

ME: You know, I'm just gonna write this with the null thing in it and we'll go over it line by line.

After a minute or so, I go through the lines and we get to the null part, I look at him while I'm explaining the line and his face shows no pattern recognition to my question. After I finish going through the code, he just picks up his stuff and says "Thank you for your time".

So was this a behavioral interview in disguise or what even happened there?

dlivingston• 2 months ago

This reads to me as if he wasn't prepared for the interview and said the first open-ended design question he could think of.

dzonga• 2 months ago

worst interview you had: but can't name the company.

exact reason why software engineering interviews will never improve. candidates due maybe desperation, lack of assertiveness or masochism - keep getting abused but won't take action.

name & shame. you get ghosted - or get a rejection email one day later. maybe start cutting interviews short too - if you don't see why you would wanna work at a place.

pvdebbe• 2 months ago

I remember a moment in an early job interview. My resumé was all proper for this entry level junior position and everything was checking out. We turned to smalltalk to round up the interview.

"What sort of music do you like?"

(What sorta ques... you don't just throw this in without a warning. ahh I'm blanking out. What was it that I listened to last night??)

"Uhhh Mike Oldfield is one..."

"Ohh... (pause) ewww. But we won't let this hinder your application heh heh"

"hee..."

I got the position and rose to senior rather quickly. I didn't have any interactions with this guy since after this one interview. Maybe for the best. He didn't mean bad, he was just a bit out of his element 2nd-seat interviewing for devs.

mettamage• 2 months ago

I had something similar to OP. "What was the worst fight you've ever had in your life?"

I asked "you want me to answer that honestly?"

"Yes"

So I did. It was from when I was seven.

They didn't proceed forward with me. But quite frankly, I wouldn't have proceeded forward with them either.

ryukoposting11• 2 months ago

I'd answer this one honestly. A kid took my Nintendo DS and I tackled him.

alexcraviotto• 2 months ago

The real question is... what they expect? What would be the perfect fit for this interview? Someone with irreversible trauma?

the_af2• 2 months ago

I hate to victim-blame because it's wrong, uncalled for, and also everyone has these kinds of lapses of reason and trip up. It happens to all of us.

That said, these job interviews aren't therapy sessions; they are roleplaying games where everyone must understand the rules and just pretend, so when they ask you "what's your biggest flaw" the only valid answer is "I'm too much of a perfectionist".

ubermonkey• 2 months ago

Years ago I interviewed at a company that later became infamous owing to a series of posts on TheDailyWTF (https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Virtudyne_0x3a__The_Foundin...).

It was... weird. I had a friend who was working there, and I needed a gig. At the time, in the city I was in, this constituted a pretty big advantage.

The role would've been customer facing but technical, which is where I've spent my career. I answered some reasonable panel questions, and then they had me give a preso on any technical topic I liked. I'm good at that, so I aced it.

Then we got to other questions: specifically, questions from me.

"Are you currently profitable?"

They were not. This, in and of itself, isn't a problem, but it leads to the next question.

"At your current burn rate, how many months of operating cash do you have on hand?"

(murmuring) "Two, but our founder funds us as we need it."

"Are there specific milestones that are tied to additional capital infusions, or any formal agreement, or is it all just at his discretion?"

"It's discretionary but he's very committed to the company."

Having already had negative experiences with one-rich-dude companies, I thanked them for their time and left. I was VERY surprised when they called me a couple weeks later to MAKE A SERIOUSLY LOWBALL OFFER, which I literally laughed at. At least the dude who made the call seemed to understand the company was insane.

My friend jumped ship shortly after. He had more tolerance for Weird Startup Shit because of family money, but it got too weird even for a guy who didn't need the income, if that tells you anything.

porknbeans00• 2 months ago

two stories.

fun one first.

I once did a coding interview entirely in bash. and the poor software engineer giving the interview did not have that as a skillset. so he was deeply confused when I spent like 70% of the time building a massive sed awk xargs one liner. then proceeded to answer every question in order with it.

I thought he was so confused by it that's why I never heard back. Turns out it was much stranger. The recruiter died. Took them months to figure out his backlog.

2nd story.

I am the responsible party for some poor persons worst interview. And I still feel awful about it. Like they were panicking cause they really wanted the role, and honestly the interview questions were unnecessarily hard and designed to induce stress ( not my call just company decision. personally I can see some of the logic for it but I question the efficacy ). result is this poor kid was spiraling. So I tried to throw them some confidence builder questions... but they were so far into the spiral they bombed those too. And like... I KNEW they knew the answers from previous parts of the interview. But like, they just lost it mentally.

I was told later they spent like 10 minutes in the bathroom recovering before doing the next stage of the interview.

I fucking hated that interview. I still think about it. Wish I coulda just sat down with em after and just apologized and told em they didn't do anything wrong. They just had a bad day and that's fine. It happens. They can try again. Like... I hate someone took it that badly. I hate I was unable to get em that confidence boost they needed to show off their skill.

Experience sometimes just plain leaves scars for everyone.

csswizardry• 2 months ago

fun one first […] The recruiter died.

That took a turn!

ryukoposting11• 2 months ago

Damn. I'm grateful I've never had that happen in an interview I've run. Then again, I've never had an employer give me a set of questions to ask.

dataengineer56• 2 months ago

15 years ago a FAANG flew me from England to the US for a grad interview. The HR recruiter met me for a coffee before the tech interviews started and said she'd ask me some gentle questions to ease me into the day.

She opened with "do you believe in god?" Not knowing laws or workers' rights in a foreign country then I had to give a very stunted, mumbled response. I complained after I got back home and was told she should not have asked that question.

simonebrunozzi• 2 months ago

My worst was with Digital Ocean, a dozen years ago. Total shitshow, top to bottom.

MiscIdeaMaker992• 2 months ago

I remember having this interview with an HR person several years ago (like in the early 2010s) where she asked me all these vague, difficult to answer questions. None of them were technical, and I can't remember a single one of them now, but they reminded me of the vague questions we get from various IT audits.

<< insert "dodged a bullet" comment here >>

chapz• 2 months ago

I don't think this was a job interview. I think they needed research for their own project, and they used you as a test subject under the cover of a interview for a job position. They probably tested what type of questions work best to get information from the subject in their project.

storus• 2 months ago

My worst interview was bringing my interviewer to a state of shock and hyperventilation from pointing out an error in their math formula they confidently showcased after telling me my prior answer was wrong. 10 minutes of intense breathing with a shocked expression on their face appeared, I was worried the person would collapse in front of me and didn't know what to do. In the end the interviewer collected themselves and told me they knew from the start I was right and were just testing me. And I instantly knew I failed that interview loop.

FinnLobsien• 2 months ago

Something I've learned over the years is how much it matters to feel good about the people you work with, and how much intuition matters in interviews and hiring generally (for both sides!).

It doesn't matter how much you enjoy your tasks or how good your comp is (unless it's enough to retire early) if you dread your colleagues and/or work environment.

I've declined customers or offers.

I think it's important for two reasons:

-For career growth and learning new skills (which eventually translate to more money), it's important to be in an environment where you want to crack tricky problems and exchange ideas with colleagues. Not to talk about the fact that good working relationships pay dividends later on for networking and such.

-We spend so much of our limited time on Earth working that we should enjoy it as much as possible, which, at least for me, is a function of liking who I work with and how I work.

mkoryak3• 2 months ago

Back when I was younger and interviewing candidates for a startup where I was one of the oldest engineers my favorite "fit" question used to be "tell me your favorite 4 letter word".

I never actually based my decision on that one, only the technical questions.

This is an example of where I (probably) contributed to making some people feel uncomfortable and I wouldn't do it now.

dpark6• 2 months ago

tell me your favorite 4 letter word

Stop

mkoryak3• 2 months ago

If you answered that, my past self would have appreciated your answer and maybe even stopped. I mostly got things like: "code", "cash", "love" and one time a "fart"

IAmBroom• 2 months ago

An interview is a date between a company and a new employee. If either one of them acts inappropriately, or gives off strong "bad chemistry", the other party learns it is a red flag.

Sometimes these red flags are ignored because one side is desperate (lonely, horny and attracted, needs a job, needs the role filled soon). That's always a bad thing.

misbau• 2 months ago

They showed you their true colours early and saved you the hustle of joining an organisation like that. I will rename the article "my narrowest escape!!"

farmdog• 2 months ago

During university, I had an interview for a quant role. I was asked an option pricing question, and then the interviewer immediately picked up the phone, asked something, then spent the next 2 minutes yelling at the person on the other end. I had a question, so I looked at him during this, and he paused, said "Why are you looking at me, you have 3 minutes left?" and went back to his stream of expletives.

To this day, I still don't know if it was part of the interview or the interviewer's working style. I learned a few new curse words and insults from the exchange, but mostly the signal to tell me I didn't want to work there.

shevy-java• 2 months ago

And I think it’s worth sharing not because I want to shame the company or individuals (I’ve left them anonymous), but rather to suggest some reconsideration for founders and hiring managers in the same boat.

Now I want to know the name. Companies that use psycho-tactics should be known to us.

pavel_lishin• 2 months ago

I still remember an off-site team building event that I (luckily) skipped the first half of, where our tech lead tried to speed-run some intimacy building by going around and asking what everyone's biggest fear was.

I had just recently become a parent, and if you're a parent reading this, I'm pretty sure that we both have the exact same biggest fear in our lives - and it was absolutely not one I was willing to fucking share, even with those coworkers that I felt close to.

sharadov2• 2 months ago

Sorry OP you had to go through this - not knowing your circumstances, but golden rule, once the interview starts getting invasive, please cut it short and move on.

Recently I had an interview for a contract position. First off, it was a zoom interview where the interviewer did not have his camera on.

He promptly asks me to share my screen - which I found odd, since I had no content to share with him.

Next - he tells me to go the top right screen of my mac and asks me to disable bluetooth.

I said am not going to do it, since I had my airpods connected and within the next second I also told him am not interested in proceeding with this BS interview.

There are boundaries of human decency, which you should never let anyone cross.

at-fates-hands2• 2 months ago

Had something similar happen.

I get on the zoom call. Told it would be a general interview and same thing. No camera, then asked me to show my drivers license and social security card to prove my identification.

I asked why they needed this in the first interview. He stammered back and forth and then reiterated the interview would not go forward until I confirmed my identity by showing my drivers license and SS card.

Yeah, sorry bud, that's not happening and hung up. I kept wondering how many others got taken by this scam.

sharadov2• 2 months ago

Big red flag - definitely identity theft there!

FrustratedMonky• 2 months ago

Reading through these comments is pretty sad. I didn't know how bad it had gotten. Haven't had to look for few years.

asmnzxklopqw• 2 months ago

Wth, are you people crazy? Never, under any circumstances, don’t share personal details during job interviews.

Instead have a list prepared with the BS question list like: what is your greatest achievement, what is your biggest failure, how did you deal with some difficult relationship in the team, how did you unblock some item etc etc. Use chatgpt for preparation, what you say there has to be very vague and not pointing to any of your previous employers or colleagues.

No way this part of the interview process should be something where you, excuse my French, display your underwear, but instead you should be able to prove that you are capable to deal with some difficult inter human situations.

eithed6• 2 months ago

Yeah, this - interview is a performance after all

alphabeta3r56• 2 months ago

My worst interview: The recruiter forgot about me. Then joined 5 mins late, asking me if we had actually scheduled something.

I said yes, so assembled 3 people 20 mins to listen to my presentation on my PhD work. No questions at the end of the presentation, sent a mail 2 mins later telling me they are not moving forward.

loloquwowndueo2• 2 months ago

Sounds like you dodged a bullet my guy.

eithed6• 2 months ago

Why can't people own to their mistakes and reschedule

par• 2 months ago

I hope you gave them feedback on this, that's really messed up!

chaosharmonic4• 2 months ago

I've had some rather interesting interviews myself, with several of my most ridiculous stories ironically being from here.

One guy -- the reason I started building a tracking tool, after I noticed that his email was autofilling when I went to send him a message -- ghosted me after I wasn't available the first day and time he suggested. Which was also a holiday.

Another place, a stealth startup, was a panel interview with their three founders -- two tech leads and the CEO. The tech leads actually had really interesting discourse, and I wish I could remember the name of the guy who told me that "testing means never having to use my brain for the same thing twice." It actually never occurred to me before that an interview could provide you with useful knowledge, let alone that an interviewer could make a point of imparting those things on purpose. However, their CEO asked me to commit 5 years of my life up while also refusing to tell me anything at all about what the company did.

Within the past year I also encountered one that expressly asked me for things I didn't like about a previous employer; badgered me when I didn't want to elaborate about a specific, traumatizing, walking HR complaint of a man; and then -- after I described vaguely how organizations and their leadership change over time -- explicitly asked me to rate that individual on a scale.

(The other two were a while ago, and Idk that they still exist, but the last company was SerpAPI, who advertises here fairly regularly.)

onlypassingthru• 2 months ago

I once had two onsite interviews with a 20 minute "break" in between. I was given a surprise crossword puzzle during the break to see (if I had a rich vocabulary?, excelled at puzzles?, could come up with synonyms under pressure?). The puzzle was then evaluated and discussed during the following interview.

The job was entirely focused on numbers in spreadsheets.

subpixel• 2 months ago

My worst interview was decades ago where the building was a walk-up and the office was on the 8th or 9th floor, something absurd. It was winter, I had layers of warm clothing on, and I walked into the interview a sweaty disaster and when my sweat became drippingly apparent panic kicked in and made it even worse. At the end of the ordeal I had to walk down the steps which also sucked.

nekusar2• 2 months ago

Ive had a few stinkers of interviews.

One when I was 19 was for a 3rd shift stocker at a "family business". Guy straight up asks "Are you married?". Sure, its illegal to ask. Not like a jobless 19 year old could do anything.

Ive had a few jobs claim "pay band was from x to y. And surprise it was x-20000 to y-50000.

One interview (an HN company) did the interviews. Got back round 2, seemed interesting. The "third round" was do like 20 hours of github work to prove me. Told them my going rate was $100/hr. Never heard back, surprise surprise. Cant remember the company.

Applied to Oxide. They want a whole litany of crap filled out. And what do you get? A form letter 2 months later. Should have slop'ed it. I guess this doent really count, since it wasnt EVEN an interview.

bcantrill2• 2 months ago

Sorry to hear that you viewed it as a "litany of crap", but if it's of any solace, if you had slopped it, the result would not have been immediately different -- but you would be marked in our system in such a way that subsequent applications would also be disqualified.

It sounds like we're not a fit for you either, though, so maybe just as well!

nekusar2• 2 months ago

Im guessing you dont get that much feedback about the process. Or, you do and you dont care.

The process stank, wasted my time, and got HR slop form letter as a result months later. A deny is normal. The way it was done was a big FU.

throwaway2037• 2 months ago

Years ago, I was interviewing a woman with a teammate of mine. He loved to ask the question: "why did you leave your last job". He asked it (as usual). She looked at him and said: "I was being sexually harassed by my manager. I reported it to HR, but they did nothing. I left to protect myself." Brutal. It was like an axe was thrown into this guys heart. Short story: He never asked that question again.

ifh-hn• 2 months ago

But did she get the job?

kevin_thibedeau• 2 months ago

I interviewed at a global leader in industrial cameras for an EE position. The interview slate had a slew of people from various disciplines but no EEs until the very end. Their last EE on staff was an over tasked H1-B who broke down in tears as I asked probing questions about what the job would entail and learned that the whole engineering team responsible for their legacy product line was axed in favor of reselling commodity cameras repackaged in expensive boxes. Everyone else knew nothing about what I was expected to do other than magically reverse engineer without any documentation.

Their lobby was filled with expensive midcentury furniture and their promotional materials had this weird cult like worship of their founders who were driving everybody into the ground. "Work hard play hard". I happily dodged that bullet.

nedt• 2 months ago

Automattic, the company behind Wordpress, is so proud of they way they are working and the clear process for interviews. They invite you to a Slack channel, you get information before hand so you know exactly what they are looking for.

When I interviewed with them I've already worked with PHP for 20 years, even working on the Zend Framework, experiences in Javascript, HTML and CSS, leading projects for the longest time. But the interviewer I had seemed not to be interested very much. Shortly after the interview they threw me out of the channel, so I couldn't get to the information they shared yet they told me "Come back in a year when you are more experienced". Experienced in what? Well they never answered.

Of all interviews I had during that time they were the worst. Not really human. They saying "Automatticians are curious, driven, compassionate, tenacious, autonomous, friendly, independent, collaborative, communicative, supportive, self-motivated, and amazing with GIFs." I haven't even seen them posting a GIF.

tristor2• 2 months ago

The worst interview of my life was at Meta, and it was bad enough that I have permanently blacklisted them as a place I will /never/ work. I get contacted by Meta recruiters relatively often despite the fact I let them know after the fact that they were horribly unprofessional and I would never work with them after that experience (setting aside any ethical concerns, which I also have).

I've had several other bad interviews in my career though, and almost all of them were small companies / startups. It was also obvious, sometimes in the moment, that it was bad because the person interviewing me lacked the maturity, experience, or professionalism to be conducting interviews of anyone. Many times that person was the founder. I consider those all dodged bullets.

It's always important to remember that interviews are a two-way street, and the way someone conducts an interview can tell you a lot about them and about the organizational context they operate in. Do you want to work there?

Balgair• 2 months ago

The worst I ever had was a dream to others, possibly.

The way I knew that I was not going to work there is they had a net $72,000 401k matching - the maximum allowed.[0]

Suffice to say, if that is what they have to do to keep folks on, it's gotta be some really crazy stuff going on in there.

[0] I remember it being 25% at the time, but the IRS says that it's a set dollar amount these days, so I will go with that.

ryukoposting11• 2 months ago

You turned down a job because they had good benefits?

dangus• 2 months ago

This is a good life lesson to OP of the freedoms they have in these situations.

An interviewer can choose to ask whatever question they want (within legal boundaries).

You can also choose to answer however you want. The interviewer asked you to mentally drain yourself recounting trauma. You didn’t have to give them that.

“I appreciate your approach in asking about the most challenging day of my life. However, I’ll keep my answers in the scope of the workplace moving forward.”

The worst job interview I ever had

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