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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?

#101

Post by Volundr »

throwaway1995v2 wrote: post #62

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 desig…

This last search I had one like that. I wish I had done the bare minimum like you did. Instead I spent a weekish on this thing. They were suitably impressed and wanted to do an interview, after which I could expect on offer. A day before the interview I was told the pay for the position was about half what I was asking. Insanely for the skill set they were looking for. Mind you in the HR screen they had asked about expected compensation and I had been direct and upfront in my expectations, so it's not like they didn't know. Just decided to waste my time because they could.

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

#102

Post by willcipriano »

outsidetheparty wrote: post #19

I should have spotted it but didn't: They took me out skiing one day between interviews (they were courting me pretty hard, and good snow was a selling point for the region) and I met the CEO for the first time on the slopes. He wore a full motorcycle-style helmet with a mirrored face visor which he refused to open; it was like talking to a member of Daft Punk. It had fake hologram bullet-holes on it. More importantl…

> mirrored face visor which he refused to open

> he skied like an asshole: cutting people off, sudden stops or changes

It sounds like Mr. Bean was mistaken as a CEO and was just rolling with it.

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

#103

Post by snapetom »

I was relocating from California to NY/NJ and packed in a bunch of interviews over one day. They were all startups, and the first two or three were great. Very professional companies and people.

The last one, the guy was twenty minutes late for an hour interview. I had a hard stop to get to JFK, so I was getting anxious and ready to walk. He finally comes gets me. The place is tiny and everyone is squeezed into two large tables, one being a large round dining room table. No one made a sound, and it seemed like a sweatshop.

Not kidding, we maybe spent about ten minutes talking about my experience, and he took the remaining 20-30 minutes talking about how he was likely going to leave soon to do a Masters in PolySci. Guy was smug as hell. He basically said I should expect an offer, which was great to hear, but seeing the place, and vetting me only after really ten minutes, I thought that was a huge red flag. I withdrew the next day when I got back home.

They sold to a major newspaper about 8 months later. Not sure what the terms were or if it would have been a quick payout for me, but my gut says that would have been a miserable 8 months. The job I took instead turned out to be four years at a great company. It ultimately failed, but I was managed by a sharp boss who I greatly respected, and colleagues who many ended up being great friends.

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

#104

Post by gourabmi »

throwaway1995v2 wrote: post #62

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 desig…

Is this a "Coupon*" company based out of India ?

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

#105

Post by version_five »

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…

What a loser. I probably align more with him than you politically, but I don't go around berating internship candidates about it, it's no way for an adult to behave whatever your politics.

Whenever I have shitty experience like that I always think of the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, there's some part where somebody doesn't deliver and the bad guy loses out, and upon being told he lost something valuable, he says "not as valuable as knowing who to trust". Like you say, it was a bad experience but actually the best possible information you could have gotten.

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

#106

Post by willcipriano »

paulddraper wrote: post #55
nameless912 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last CEO (healthcare startup) told me during my interview with them "but you don't look autistic!" and that should have been the end of the conversation there. When people show you who they are, believe them and all that.

....what was the lead up to that statement? "I'm autistic" "Oh, you don't seem autistic"

"Neither do you brother, could've fooled me"

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

#107

Post by eps »

mikewarot wrote: post #4

"You're not allowed to work on your own projects when you're not at work" The biggest red flag ever

Electronic Arts!

Was told exactly the same, verbatim, followed by "besides you won't have time to work on them anyways".

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

#108

Post by scarby2 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #90
jerkstate wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tra…

One set of markers of a "good" industry or organization is whether they pay for all the harm they create in society and whether their profits are equal to or below the value they create for society. For instance, the oil/car industry pays for basically none of the large negative externalities they create. In this case, I hazard that futures industry captures more value than they create. And that value is extracted fr…

futures contracts work somewhat well for farmers. There's a level of certainty provided and they are reducing their risk so that a low price at the end of the season doesn't ruin them (however they also don't profit from a higher price). As a farmer i would likely prefer to sell a certain percentage of my goods with a futures contract so that i can have less risk of financial ruin.

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

#109

Post by eps »

Tomte wrote: post #23

"You need to send us a handwritten page that we'll send to a graphologer in Switzerland. Nobody is hired without a graphological report." I did that, got hired, and wouldn't comply again. First job after university. Nothing bad happened. Years later I could read the report, and it was nothing remarkable.

Used to work with a guy who moved from Israel and he mentioned that the handwriting analysis is a routine part of the hiring process there.

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

#110

Post by shaftway »

I went through the full deal with an algorithmic trading firm. I blazed through the interviews and given the history I have in finance was able to finish a large on-site assignment with an hour to spare. I was told that I was the first to ever finish it. Second to last step was submitting an official college transcript as part of their background check process. Last step was talking to the CEO.

Now, I flunked out of college, but I spent 7 years on Wall St., and 12 years with MAGMA firms. College was over 20 years ago. I made this clear up front and the recruiter told me it wasn't a problem.

The call with the CEO was two hours of "why did you get a C in Martian and Lunar Geology?" and "Why did you get an F in Intro to Viticulture and Enology?" After that I get the offer (it was all cash and about $150k more than my current role even with equity factored in). I refused and told the recruiter that it was because I was drug through the coals like that. The recruiter's response was "yeah, I know, we keep asking him not to do that."

They called every couple years asking me to reconsider. Always a new recruiter. And every time I told them exactly why I refused and asked if that policy had changed. Every time I was told it hadn't and the call ended.

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