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Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

#61

Post by jerkstate »

allo37 wrote: post #44
nameless912 wrote: post #21

I once was interviewing for an internship at a quant firm in Chicago (I was in my Sophomore year I think at UIUC) and my interview went pretty well up to the point of my second-last interview of the day. Then, I sat down with the VP of engineering, and he opened the interview with "so, what do you think it is we do here?" And I naturally stuttered through a canned answer about how they use arbitrage opportunities in…

I'm curious what the answer was. I've read plenty about how the boutique finance sector is basically a parasite that only benefits a small cohort of already wealthy individuals, would like to hear what the other side has to say.

The answer I get from people working at market makers I’ve talked to is that they provide liquidity (so you can buy or sell a security immediately rather than waiting minutes or hours?) and decrease volatility.

An example is onions futures; see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act and check the onions price history: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU01130216/ compared to a commodity where futures trading in common, like corn: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PMAIZMTUSDM where there are price swings but the volatility and frequency of the swings is lower.

I’m a layperson, not involved in finance, but this is the value add I most commonly hear about.

Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

#62

Post by throwaway1995v2 »

Very long take-home assignments, I was interviewing with a startup for a backend position. they gave me 5 days to build a Cinema Ticket Reservation API, this by itself was long since it required managing 5 to 6 tables with it corresponding crud and business logic of each one (and also tests) but apart from that they wanted to see complex data structures, design patterns, caches strategies, be able to "scale", a design diagram, and as a bonus if I wanted add a CI/CD pipeline.

I did only the core app, but none of the others stuffs beacase that looked like way to much unpaid work just to "prove" my ablities.

I should have known better becase they rejected me because the project was to simple, wasn't going to "scale", and did'n used any complex design patterns, a day an a half of work wasted.

Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

#63

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

Back in 2014, I was an intern at a major tech company doing software testing for $13.25/hr. I was about to finish my CS degree and my internship was ending, so I was applying for software engineering jobs.

During a phone screen at one company, they asked my salary expectations, and I said $60K. They asked what I was currently making, and I (naively) answered the $13.25/hr. They said they could do $16/hr, and that I should consider that generous, as I shouldn't expect to get more than 15% more when getting a new job. Also, they would expect 50-55 hrs/week of work.

I noped out. Yeah, I needed work, but I wasn't desperate.

After looking at Glassdoor, I got the impression that this company was preying on desperate new college grads, underpaying the shit out of them while expecting the world so they don't have time to apply for better jobs. One guy, in his review, said that when asked about work-life balance, the manager said "We believe in work-life integration." He noped out just as quick.

Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

#64

Post by strikelaserclaw »

nameless912 wrote: post #21

I once was interviewing for an internship at a quant firm in Chicago (I was in my Sophomore year I think at UIUC) and my interview went pretty well up to the point of my second-last interview of the day. Then, I sat down with the VP of engineering, and he opened the interview with "so, what do you think it is we do here?" And I naturally stuttered through a canned answer about how they use arbitrage opportunities in…

Should have been honest and said "You contribute nothing to society"

Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

#65

Post by jrflowers »

paulddraper wrote: post #56
jrflowers wrote: post #14

I was once asked “why do you want to work here?” while interviewing at a Hardee’s as a teenager.

Standard question. If that's a red flag, the whole world is red.

Yes. After establishing work history, skills, availability and references one would be derelict in their duties to not establish the Philosophical Why before handing a kid the Sacred Mop.

Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

#66

Post by alimw »

"So what might have caused this strange new syndrome in our trading platform?" "Perhaps one of the market participants was doing something different?" "Nope."

Then literally two hours of me stumbling through possible technical issues to do with the internals of a system I had never seen. Even though I had thought I was being considered for my maths rather than my computer skills.

"Well just so you know, it turned out that one of the guys trading on the platform was doing something different." Laughing politely, "but you told me...". "Oh well no that's not what I would consider a market participant."

I call my laughter polite but I suspect it had an edge to it. Anyway he immediately walked me out saying, "we'll send you feedback." The feedback was that I had asked for too much money. (I hadn't asked for anything.)

Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

#67

Post by Our_Benefactors »

distract8901 wrote: post #42

Once I applied to a slightly sketchy indeed posting. The company was named something incredibly generic like WorldProgrammers or GlobalDevs. Within 60 seconds of posting my application, I got a phone call from a very pushy guy with a thick Indian accent, requesting that I fill out a separate application over email. When I didn't immediately respond (because I was at work), I got a series of calls from the 'manager' o…

The scam is that these bottom-of-the-barrel recruiters’ contracts pay out based on providing a certain number of “qualified resumes”, not for actually filling the position. They’re basically doing lead generation, not real recruiting.

After a while you can tell which positions these are by how they are worded and how the recruiters associated with them talk and behave during the call.

Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

#69

Post by seattle_spring »

throwaway19423 wrote: post #25
aprdm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia, like many other tech companies, has many people/teams/departments/division. Is very hard to get a clear view of the world from a single point. Who knows, maybe if you joined you would have hated it too, or loved it ! The story you shared is likely shared by many other companies that went through hyper-growth TLDR: Stuff is hard!

NVidia was truly a spectacular opportunity. So was Microsoft, Databricks, etc. I picked a dud, and didn't realize it until it was too late (just now). Question is .. what are the obvious winners today, and for the next 10 years? Some opportunities I missed but they didn't go anywhere: Docker, Qualcomm. Consumer Devices is a general dud I think. Software and data is where it is at. I dunno?

I remember losing a candidate to databricks around 2012/2013. I thought he was making a bad decision. Hoo-boy was I wrong.
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