The sort of stuff where if an employee interviewer says it you think to yourself “nope, this isn’t the place for me.”
Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
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Re: Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
#2If they answer yes to any of the following:
- Have you ever had to work on the weekend or well beyond 5pm outside of your own personal interest/initiative?
- Are we required to be on-call
If there's any hint of "nah, we don't really write tests because we just need to ship stuff, y'know"
Re: Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
#3If they have an interview process that involves a take home project or something similarly time intensive. To me that screams, "I don't care about any family responsibilities you may have, I want a bunch of childless 20-twenty somethings I can burn and churn".
Re: Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
#4I prefer reasonably scoped take home assignment to leetcode "prove me you're awesome in 30 minutes" kind of interviews.
Relying on these kind of signals as a main input is a sign that company didn't think through their hiring process and rather just cargo-culting.
But all that are still secondary concerns: good people can make bad process work, bad people tend to ruin the best of processes.
So for me the only important "flags" are specific people I contact — their attitudes, levels of professionalism, questions they ask, answers they give, their decision process etc.
On all steps of the interview process.
Re: Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
#5If they have an interview process that involves a take home project or something similarly time intensive. To me that screams, "I don't care about any family responsibilities you may have, I want a bunch of childless 20-twenty somethings I can burn and churn".
I failed one of those take-home projects (got about 1/3 of it in probably 3x the time) but felt it was a pretty good experience because it got me to try a kind of coding I'd always been interested in but never did.
Re: Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
#6I've walked out of an interview when the employee doing it took a phone call in the middle of it. It was so rude and disrespectful.
I once got a whiteboarding problem and proposed a solution, and the interviewer gave me a flat out "that's not the one I had in mind". I'd already asked clarifying questions and thought my proposal was reasonable in light of the constraints as I understood them. After a few minutes of trying to play mind reader, I asked, "Is there some constraint or requirement I'm missing?" and they said no. I retrospect, I should have walked out on that one, too. I still have no idea what they wanted from me. Communication goes both ways.
Re: Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
#7When I was 35, I had a mid-20's startup CEO ask me if I still had it in me... what?
Re: Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
#8Coding challenge, HR more involved than engineers, not remote friendly
Re: Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
#9Not so much about words for me, more about the vibe:
Unwillingness to compromise.
Unwillingness to evolve.
Lack of empathy.
Lack of trust.
Lack of flexibility.
A fetish for telling people what to do.
Re: Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?
#10If they have an interview process that involves a take home project or something similarly time intensive. To me that screams, "I don't care about any family responsibilities you may have, I want a bunch of childless 20-twenty somethings I can burn and churn".
That's what all these are.. The 6 hour assignments, the 10pm happy hour team meet and greet - it's not about skill it's about proving you have no other responsibilities.