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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?

#31

Post by c2h5oh »

Mostly by fucking about the pay:

- By refusing to disclose salary range and insisting I should go through the process before they can tell me. They don't get an interview.

- By trying paint their company as a startup despite over a billion dollars in investor money or, in one case, being publicly traded. Used to justify below market rate salary.

- By claiming role is fully remote and then slashing salary range at the very end of the process "if you want to work remotely".

- By offering salary range reduced by 40-70% if you are not in US. Doesn't matter that cost of living in Canada or western Europe is not lower. They are paying for the value I'm bringing, so my location should only matter for tax and timezone purposes.

As for situations you described only once I've had someone join the call while driving - 2nd interviewer. I made a joke about the purpose of the whole process for them to have one more employee not one less because he's driving distracted, suggested we should reschedule when everyone can safely fully focus on the interview. They apologized, rescheduled and then offered me salary of 45% of the lower end of the initial range, because while I was "more than qualified for the role they had a multiplier for Canada that applied here".

Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?

#33

Post by donquichotte »

In interviewed at a local startup [1] and had a nice chat with one of the founders. We talked about 1h. It was pleasant and I got a code review assignment, timeboxed to 1h. Not sure if I managed to do something useful, but I handed back my solution in time and never heard from them again. I pinged them once more, but no response. I have not been able to figure out what that was about... maybe they were trying to get external people to review their code? Like, 1h of their time for 2h of mine? Or were they just not very well organized?

[1] https://www.vay.ai/

Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?

#34

Post by KaiserPro »

kerneloftruth wrote: post #6
sillysaurusx wrote: post #3

They 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.

fuck take home work.

I am not going to spend three hours of work, when I'd rather be doing something else, only to be fucking ghosted. (times by godknows how many companies.)

I got bought out by a FAANG and I am eternally grateful that I "only" had to do four interviews to keep my job. Rather than the real time coding horse shit.

Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?

#35

Post by 3np »

silisili wrote: post #13

Haven't had anyone overtly rude, but one strange experience. Did a live coding and they said something along the lines of being one of the fastest to complete it and scheduled another call. So far so good. Follow up call with some higher up on "culture". The guy seemed like a parody human, reminded me of PC Principal, 'out here crushin it bra on the daily', that type. Except he wasn't some young out of college bro, b…

One of those guys that instinctively need to have every moment filled with talk, and if there’s a moment of breathing room he sees it as his duty to pick up your slack?

If so you were expected to interrupt him.

Yeah, sounds like “not a culture fit”. I wouldn’t have been, either.

Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?

#36

Post by kube-system »

WorldMaker wrote: post #22
drenvuk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What would you rather have? Ideally? Not to assume my resume/education experience is a lie and to instead assume that I've done enough technical work by this point to merit respect that I don't need to prove some "technical merit" via any sort of whiteboarding exercise that is neither anything like day-to-day technical work nor it is it much more than time wasting busy work to give interviewers plenty of room for e…

I give take-homes because they’re a better representation of people’s actual work output.

But I’m not giving them because I think people are lying. I can tell if people are lying about their experience in the first interview. The assignment part of the interview is to assess the quality of their work. Some people do awesome work straight out of school, and some have been doing awful work for 20 years.

We do have standardized testing: certs. But they're of limited usefulness in determining someone's job performance.

Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?

#37

Post by b20000 »

c2h5oh wrote: post #31

Mostly by fucking about the pay: - By refusing to disclose salary range and insisting I should go through the process before they can tell me. They don't get an interview. - By trying paint their company as a startup despite over a billion dollars in investor money or, in one case, being publicly traded. Used to justify below market rate salary. - By claiming role is fully remote and then slashing salary range at the…

cost of living in california is 4x what it is in western europe

Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?

#38

Post by tayo42 »

I had some guy do a phone interview from the beach, idk about rude but that was annoying.

anyone who ghosts after multiple interviews

I find it annoying when people start lecturing me about their hate of some tech.

I did some "open book" on site programing quiz, i looked up the syntax for else if in python and the guy goes "hmm do you really know python?" i switch between like 3 languages, so yeah ill double check syntax...

i need to think of more, i hate interviews. It feels like the smaller the company the worse the interview experience is. funny enough i think facebook was the most pleasant interview i did

Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?

#39

Post by drenvuk »

WorldMaker wrote: post #22
drenvuk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What would you rather have? Ideally? Not to assume my resume/education experience is a lie and to instead assume that I've done enough technical work by this point to merit respect that I don't need to prove some "technical merit" via any sort of whiteboarding exercise that is neither anything like day-to-day technical work nor it is it much more than time wasting busy work to give interviewers plenty of room for e…

A standardized test might actually be ok but I doubt it could encompass all of the technologies that appear over the years which one would use at a company if the company is looking for a specific skillset. That's why we go with resumes. I would be willing to bet that you have at least one thing on your resume that is embellished ever so slightly. Some people take it a bit further than others, which is what these interviews are meant to ferret out.

Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?

#40

Post by erehweb »

KaiserPro wrote: post #27

I had one interview at a financial "family office" where a rich person forms a company to manage their investments. In this case it was a high profile trade who was banned from taking customers. I was brought in, I mined the front of house staff. Its always good to see how they are feeling. Plus if you are nice to them, you get the good biscuits. They looked fine, until they started talking about the CEO/boss. They t…

You mean "Needless to day I didn't get the job"?
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