Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you? • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by simonbarker87 » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

asimpletune wrote: post #11

simonbarker87 wrote: post #9

Really 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.

Haha did he pretend to “walk down the stairs” after that?

Haha, that might have made it a bit less awkward to be honest - heck, even saying “hey, I’ve planned badly, I’m just going to pop up my standing desk” would have been enough

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

#42

Post by m0ck » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

donquichotte wrote: post #33

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…

Props to you for publishing the startup's name!

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

#43

Post by c2h5oh » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

b20000 wrote: post #37

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

Contrary to popular belief in startups US is not just California.

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

#44

Post by nondave » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

b20000 wrote: post #37

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

Depends where in California and where in Western Europe

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

#45

Post by Oras » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

Two years ago, I applied via a recruiter, and made my position clear about my salary expectations.

It was a 30 minutes video call, followed by a test to design a system, which took me around 8 hours to finish (I used sequence diagrams and detailed documentation).

After that it was a meet and greet interview for 45 minutes and I asked for another 30 minutes to ask questions and understand the expectations.

I received an offer few days later, 30% less of what I asked for! I immediately told the recruiter I lost my interest even when they increased the offer to be close to what I have asked for.

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

#46

Post by cglan » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

They've been rude in a variety of ways. The big one though is simply ghosting me after 5+ rounds with no explanation. This has happened a variety of times and reaching out usually gets a non response. It's infuriating.

The others are just not being professional. Wearing pajamas or not paying attention or acting incredibly disinterested. It's really terrible.

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

#47

Post by gorgoiler » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

Interviewing me then offering me a role without an accompanying offer of compensation. Especially after being evasive about comp at every prior step.

Your “competitive” salary turned out to be $65k, after I’d become gotten all excited about the role? Owch.

You want to hear about my market research on the local employment market before you pitch a number? No: that’s your job.

You want a salary range from me despite you having a 10x better grasp on the responsibilities of the role than I do, which also happens to be secret info in the negotiation because you never came up with a written job spec? Well. You are now at the back of my priority list of potential future employers I’m talking to.

If you decide you want to hire me then, I’m sorry to tell say, the next move is for you to make me an offer. We can schedule another chat if you like but I’m just going to pitch why I’m the person for the job again, then wait for you to make me an offer.

No, you also don’t get to know anything about my current salary.

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

#48

Post by drenvuk » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

b20000 wrote: post #21

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…

whiteboard/leetcode is not necessary. discuss a prior project and walk through code of a prior project and discuss it. if you don’t have a prior project, build one. takes only a few days and you will have a new asset you own the IP to. if your interviewers don’t do it this way, pass politely.

This would only be one facet to an interview and definitely not the entire technical portion.

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

#49

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

asimpletune wrote: post #29

WorldMaker wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mean we could have like a bar but that would severely limit opportunities of smart people who can code. It’s one of the best/worst things about our industry. Personally, I wouldn’t suffer, but I think as an industry we're unique in this way and it’s kind of overall maybe slightly better than not.

> that would severely limit opportunities of smart people who can code

Whether or not that's true, is it really important? I guess it depends on your perspective. Do you think the industry exists to provide job opportunities, or to solve real business problems?

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

#50

Post by itronitron » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

Unfortunately, in a job interview it is very likely that the person being rude is doing that in order to test how you respond. I've witnessed it during a group interview and I lost all respect for the interviewer, who was a group manager, especially after they explained in the review meeting why they did it.

Personally I think it is a lame tactic and that there are better ways to learn how a person adapts to a confusing social interaction.