I've had people just be not nice to the point of rudeness, people driving while interviewing, people walking on treadmills out of breath, etc.
Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
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Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#2It shows their professionalism, and how much they value you and your time. Point out their bad behavior and end the interview. They failed.
Consider it a good thing because you might have actually accepted a job there, and then you'd have wasted a ton of time and effort for nothing.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#3They keep giving me questions from TopCoder. Stop doing TopCoder-based interviewing. You're ruining your company this way. I'm offended on principle.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#4They(rude interviewers) think that you are taking something from them, that you are after something they have. They believe that we(people looking for a job) are parasites, so they want to avoid us.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#5Giving a coding assignment that would take 10+ hours and then pinging me why I didn't finish it before the weekend?
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#6They keep giving me questions from TopCoder. Stop doing TopCoder-based interviewing. You're ruining your company this way. I'm offended on principle.
I've walked out on a couple of interviews when they tried whiteboard coding. I politely laughed and said I really don't do performance art. I thanked them for their time and left.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#7Not currently interviewing, but in the past i've failed interviews because I didn't do something that the interviewer didn't ask me to do. This would be something like expecting the interviewee to go in depth about a specific part of the problem that to the interviewee might have thought was trivial, or expecting them to do TDD in a coding exercise when the interviewer never mentioned it. I can brush off overt rudeness, but it's always rubbed me the wrong way that some interviewers expect you to read their mind.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#8Lack of presence. Any interviewer that's not giving the interview as much of their full attention as possible (emergencies aside, of course). I've been on both sides of this, and I feel bad for interviews I've given where I was distracted or underprepared.
Conversely, my best interviews (and 1:1s) have been with people who are fully present.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#9Really minor but I interviewed with a big second tier tech company that you’ve heard of and right after asking me the first question decided that would be the best time to raise his standing desk, which was very slow to raise and required him to sort of weird hover and stand in time with the camera as it rose. Not rude but really distracting.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#10They keep giving me questions from TopCoder. Stop doing TopCoder-based interviewing. You're ruining your company this way. I'm offended on principle.
I've walked out on a couple of interviews when they tried whiteboard coding. I politely laughed and said I really don't do performance art. I thanked them for their time and left.
What? What would you rather have? A takehome? People find a reason to complain about those as well because the ones administering them become really god damned nitpicky.
What I try to give is a three parter simple string parsing manipulation question where you build on each successive part as well as providing both valid and invalid inputs for them to use as test cases. It shows organizational skills and the ability to break down problems into reusable parts as well as the super basics of string parsing. I think being able to do that much under time pressure shows the learned qualities of a programmer since most will go with what's been ingrained into them by way of habit.
I can understand brain teasers being a poor measure of ability but I'm super on board for online whiteboarding when done properly. 45 minutes, no muss, no fuss. No 6 hours on a weekend to make something. No impenetrable question that requires tricks you don't need for day to day work that you can later look up.