Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

If taking a call at 1am is your version of hell, make sure to interrogate what the on-call schedule looks like. If you're up till 3am most nights anyway and honestly don't mind taking the call at 1am, spend the limited reverse-interview time during your interview to ask about other aspects of role and company culture. (Pick your poison from the Joel Test - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s... )

Same, from FAANG companies. The feel that I get is more like, FAANG companies don't even know what you're going to do. They just want to hire top talent and figure out what you're working on later. They want someone "smart" who can ultimately work on any team, since whatever team you initially land on might be gone in a few months.

The consequence of this made the interview process for these companies feel much more like a "drinking the kool aid" test. When I asked what I would be doing, the sales pitch I got always boiled down to "you'll be working for X" as if that was enough. That might be enough for a fresh grad, but I'm an experienced specialist. Understanding my role and impact are key to my job happiness.

I don't think the intent is to be secretive, its more about - the people in the recruiting pipeline don't even know themselves, or if they do, you might get rearranged quickly, so focusing heavily on the specific work is more of a detriment. You kind of NEED to drink the kool aid since you're buying in to the company moreso than buying in to a specific team, work, etc..

The thing is, when you look for a job, you will often go for 5 to 10 interviews.

On the other end, when I'm looking for someone to fill a position in my team, I will interview at the very least 50 candidates.

That is to say, all things equal, the interviewer has most likely more incentive than the interviewee to go straight to the point, and thus perform a technical check early in the process.

Also, you have to realize than the vast majority of candidates applying for a position are highly unfit for it. Seriously, even for very senior positions, you would be amazed at the sheer amount of people applying with grossly pumped resumes, and overall low skill level once tested.

Even after careful picking of resumes, I would estimate that 80% of candidates end up being obviously unfit after the first 10 minutes of a technical interview. That's why, as an interviewer, I'm not very inclined to have a long open discussion about the job until I have at least some degree of confidence that the candidate is worth it.

Of course that process is unfair for the "good" candidates. Those who apply to positions fitting their skill set. But when you have more than 50 interviews ahead of you, and an actual job to do, you have to make compromises and tailor your process for efficiency.

- Everyone I interviewed on my would-be team felt like they were attending a funeral, never met a more depressed unenthusiastic bunch.

- One of the interviewers wondering why I wanted this job as it was terrible, he stated he was looking to leave and warned me about the company.

- Meeting room of interview room(conference room) reeked of sweat(when no one was there), it was disgusting, this from a company that was heavily funded(going public this year!) also trash on the floor and interviewers unprepared as well.

- Interviewer saying there was not much work here, the company mainly collects royalties from IP and the position would see alot of downtime/doing nothing(manager saying this!).