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Justifying lower pay with "we just want people who truly believe in the mission"
I'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 tr…
- The interviewer is wearing a suit.
- The interviewer asks "you've worked with [person who now works at our company] before, what do you think about them?". Bonus points if they insist after I give a diplomatic answer.
- "Why are you using microservices?" "Because everyone is doing it"
- Not following up. For weeks.
- "Can you send us your high school diploma?"
- Take home assignment with a time limit.
- No feedback on take home assignment except "we didn't like your approach".
- Developers use separate laptops for coding and for internet access.
- There are three architects on a single project.
Specific red flag signals:
1. Dominated by Windows
2. Too many people in formals
3. Nobody wears badges (and other indicators of a lax security policy)
4. Old/worn out office furniture
5. Low resolution displays
6. Old laptops
7. No evidence of people collaborating or chatting at a microkitchen etc.
Back when in-person interviews were a thing, I’d use the opportunity to just look at the office space. Specific red flag signals: 1. Dominated by Windows 2. Too many people in formals 3. Nobody wears badges (and other indicators of a lax security policy) 4. Old/worn out office furniture 5. Low resolution displays 6. Old laptops 7. No evidence of people collaborating or chatting at a microkitchen etc.
Engineering leadership doesn't understand (or care about) the business side.
Trying to shoehorn you into a role obviously you're overqualified for.
A focus more on time spent and dedication rather than achievements and outcomes.
No clear business model. Maybe it isn't an issue today, but for 99% of businesses it will be an issue soon.
A pattern of getting interns or juniors to do an initial chunk of work, and then getting seniors to clean up after them, rather than letting seniors lay a foundation and the juniors/interns filling in the gaps.
All of these have happened to me: - The interviewer is wearing a suit. - The interviewer asks "you've worked with [person who now works at our company] before, what do you think about them?". Bonus points if they insist after I give a diplomatic answer. - "Why are you using microservices?" "Because everyone is doing it" - Not following up. For weeks. - "Can you send us your high school diploma?" - Take home assignmen…
What's your concern there? (Honest question!) I feel terrible about asking for home assignments but I feel like it's good for people like myself who are terrible about coding live. (I usually have a choice of live or homework.) I put a "limit" as a guideline about what kind of quality to expect, usually with language about things not to worry about. I don't expect/want folks to burn a bunch of time on things.
* If they are a small company who outsources any step of their interview process to another company. If you're only interviewing for a couple positions—people you will work with every single day—take the time to do it yourself.
* If they are a startup that says they are looking for people who are interested in solving exciting problems. For some people, this is going to be an enticement, but based on my experience, what I hear is "we're going to work you like a dog and pay you in equity, and at the end neither your work nor your equity will matter because we're definitely going to go out of business". I recognize this is a bias, but it's happened to me a couple times, and I'm in my 40s now and just not having it anymore. Plus, the problems are never that exciting, they're usually "how to sell a SaaS product that is basically a CRUD app, in a crowded marketplace with lots of competitors".
* If the interview is composed of like 10 rounds of 30 minute interviews, each with different groups in the company, that to me is an indicator that Conway's Law is at the helm of that organization: lots of groups that want input into everything, nobody empowered to make a decision on their own. Plus, it's just not a very good format. Give me a smaller number of hour long sessions where we can actually get into it, rather than racing through pro forma questions.