Ask HN: Is it unprofessional to leave a new job where everything is a mess?

(Was that meant as dash or em-dash? Are you speaking of a noun -- "vendeta-developers" -- or did you misspell "vendetta" and are explaining that the vendetta is a set of developers in Asia?)

If I were the candidate, I'd walk out of that interview. No one needs to work for someone this judgy.

> Unless the last employer changed everything radically in the last six months I would wonder about how the candidate got themselves into that situation in the first place.

Have you never bought a product you thought would be great that turned out to be a piece of crap?

Companies make money by selling themselves, and the sales process doesn't stop before hiring employees. Sometimes companies look great from the outside and you can't know what things are really like unless you either start working there or have an insider contact. I've tried figuring out what the workplace and its methodologies are like through the interview process, and it turns out current employees never want to say anything that makes them look bad and middle management dodges questions or sometimes outright lies.

> Does the candidate think their personal goals and wants are the most important thing in an employment relationship?

Yeah, they are, because if those aren't getting satisfied by the employment relationship, we look elsewhere. Why should any employee put the employer's needs over their own?

> I want to respect that every candidate has their own goals and preferences but there's a fine line beyond which those start to seem like demands, or maybe exceptions.

If you don't like their demands, you have the choice to meet those demands or let them go. The employee has the exact same choice. Either your demands are reasonable or they can let you go. This is the most professional perspective because anything beyond that enters the territory of slave driving.

> I may not be against remote work but to have that presented as a requirement or something I have to "align" my team with may be too much at the interview stage.

That's the entire point of an interview! Why would you consider that "too much"? That's crazy to me. If you aren't willing to negotiate or hear what potential candidates are looking for, why should anyone work for you?

I actually interviewed someone who had jumped from both previous employers in an 8 month time frame. In the interview he was very negative to both those groups and wanted to tell me why his ideas where so much better. My interview with him did not last long.