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

I dislike bad faith questions or tests.

I took part in a Facebook recruitment competition (this was many years ago when it was less obvious how evil they were going to be).

They gave us some data and some notional analytics task and your goal was to maximise a certain prediction metric. The catch was that they had errors/repetitions in the data such that you could exploit it to maximise the prediction score by methods largely unconnected to the notional analytics. This allowed some to get scores miles above accuracy reported in the literature, to the point where it wasn't physically possible to do that well. I'm still not convinced it wasn't an error on their part or that it wasn't an inside job.

I discovered this and basically made the claim that some of the other scores others were getting weren't possible, and in the process of chasing down what the "cheaters" were doing, they came clean with the "oh, it's part of the job to assume/find such problems in the data and exploit it". So then everyone changed their models to include this little hack and the competition continued on the remainder of the data after wasting most of our time.

but it left a really bad taste in my mouth. first of all, the metric is now meaningless in this case, so no, it's not an analysts job to exploit errors to maximise a meaningless metric. secondly, just do things in good faith: if you give me a data set and tell me it's a certain thing, I'm going to believe you. if it's dodgy or you're interested in OTHER things, then tell me so we can stop fucking around, because this isn't real life and I've got no idea what contrived thing it is you're looking for in this finite and time restricted exercise. if you want me to find some contrived thing, then at least tell me that's part of it.

gotchas where they're fucking with you or dishonest about what they're actually doing in the process are the worst. especially if they're actually incompetent, made a mistake and they're too proud to admit that fact.

They flat out lie during the negotiation process.

You get asked to sit in a room for a "couple of minutes". Ends up being more like 30.

You get there, the people you're supposed to talk to "aren't available", they have some other random underlings talk to to keep you busy.

You're talking to them, they act bored or distracted. They play with their phones, take calls.

They whiteboard you clearly without any preparation. Sometimes pulling a problem more or less out of their ass (logically incoherent and/or mathematically intractable).

They give you lengthy take-home problems, which would clearly take 4x as long to do in an actual work environment. And surprise, they don't set up the environment right, or the data you're supposed to go fetch just isn't there anymore (or has changed), or the requirements are just plain incoherent.

Oh and then they ghost you.

I don't disagree. I'm just saying that using the details of a job to negotiate pay is just part of the process.

This happened about Q1 2019 or something like that IIRC.

I went into the interview with a couple of red flags already. The main one is that the person at the recruiting company told me something like I should go in "with an open mind and calm", that they were very "harsh" and they used to do "very tough interviews" and that other interviewees had commented they didn't like it much.

Anyway, I went in.

I met with the Chief People Officer and the Head of Engineering, and yes, right from the start they were... I don't know, maybe they just had a somewhat impatient tone. Not too bad. But as we went on, they got increasingly so. They tended to cut me short on all the questions they asked. I know I sometimes do talk too much, so I just tried not to and that's it.

It was... a bit weird, but just that. It didn't feel that tough.

Then they asked about me having imparted some classes and trainings... "Maybe, 5, 6 people?"

    me> Sometimes more, like 10 or 20. It depends.
    them> Yeah, so then you feel a knot in your stomach, right?
    me> Ah... no, not rea...
    them> What are you, made of stone??
    me> Well, no, but I've done it many times so I don't rea...

They kept interrupting and trying to lead me to say whatever things they wanted. Since I wasn't, they got increasingly aggressive, sometimes raising their voice unexpectedly. They took turns at interrupting, at repeatedly asking some things, etc. They always asked things in the negative e.g. "you surely have never worked with..." or "you probably only know basic JavaScript, right?", and most of that was already in my resume so I had to answer by correcting them a lot.

After this went on for maybe 30-40 minutes, they finally got enough of it and offered if there was anything I wanted to ask.

They hadn't really told me much at all about their project, technology... really about anything, expect for a very generic overview. So I did want to ask. I started with something I thought easy.

    me> So, you mentioned this is a Java project; is it Spring based?
    them> That's none of your business.
    me> Sorry?
    them> You don't need to know. You'll be working on the front so whatever.
    me> Well, I would like to have a better overview of the project. Knowing the technologies may give me a better idea of the general state of the code...
    them> THE CODE IS FINE. We wrote it and it's great code.
    me> Yes, of course, sorry. I didn't mean it that as not being good, just get an idea of the age, the general structure...

Very reluctantly, they explained that it was a Struts (1.2.x) application. But not really. Apparently they had sort of forked Struts internally to do some "tricky stuff" from the JSPs, or whatever. They were really unwilling to explain much at all and the little I got out of them was with constant snorting and chuckling at anything I asked clarification for, like I was waiting their precious time.

I would have but didn't dare to ask much else. And I had lost all interest anyway. So we ended the interview after a few more minutes. I kindly said goodbye. The CPO was amiable enough to shake my hand -again, this was mid-2019- but the Head of Engineering didn't feel like doing that and simply remained seating looking at something or other on their phone.

This would have been weird enough. The next day I spoke to the person from the recruiting company. I told her, without going into details, that I felt they had been quite aggressive, even to the point of being rude. She laughed nervously and agreed that they could sometimes be "a bit abrupt". Anyway, I told her, I wasn't interested; I didn't think any good could come out of that. KTHXBAI and that's it, I thought.

But somehow, it seems they asked the recruiter for my number and, for whatever reason, she agreed and gave it to them. So about a couple of hours later, an unknown number calls and it's the Head of Engineering. They are... well, not cordial, but at least a tiny bit more agreeable than the day before. They ask what I think, about the project, the position, the offer...

    me> Ah, sorry. I already told [recruiter] from [recruiting company]. After our interview yesterday, I don't think this is what I am looking for. The project seems nice but at this moment I'm not interest...
    them> OH, YEAH?! Well, then just know that WE'RE NOT INTERESTED IN YOU EITHER!!

And click, they just hanged up on me.