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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?

#121

Post by Alekhine »

drekipus wrote: post #115
shaftway wrote: post #110

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…

The policy of asking why you flunked college? Should a company not ask you that? Why are you hung up on flunking martian geology? I don't understand

Not the OP, but it's extremely rude and unprofessional. Nitpicking a guy's college transcripts from 20 years ago? Come the fuck on. His experience and skills should have been enough, asking those dumbass questions is an insult, one that he didn't have to take.

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

#122

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

hw-guy wrote: post #2

When I was 19 and naive, I was interviewed for a desperately-needed summer job selling dictionaries door-to-door. The head interviewer wore a three-piece suit, gold watch, and an expensive haircut. He told me that as a demonstration of my independence and maturity, he wanted a commitment from me right then and there that I would accept the job and sign all the paperwork if he made an offer. If I wanted to go home and…

That contract sounds illegal, but I suppose that's another reason to recruit teenagers who don't know about labor rights (tbf IANAL and I could be wrong).

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

#123

Post by trust_bt_verify »

uptownfunk wrote: post #83
seattle_spring wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right, now he’s got really valuable Paper money that they offer to buy back at a very steep discount. Anyhow wouldn’t feel bad about missing that one!

[flagged]

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

#124

Post by wdg3 »

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…

The relationship between futures traders and farmers is pretty much identical to that between any kind of insurance company and its customers - it's a risk arbitrage transaction where the client (farmers in this case) are sacrificing profit in expectation for a flatter outcome curve which in a properly priced market yields higher utility in expectation, since utility as a function of profit is concave for an individual farmer and much closer to linear for a well-capitalized market maker.

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

#125

Post by paulcole »

I interviewed with a company that kept telling me repeatedoh how “people-focused” they were and how people were the most important thing to them.

Over the course of 3 interviews, I was ghosted by the CEO (had to email to see where they were 10 minutes into the scheduled interview), left with no contact for weeks between interviews and then when I emailed to check in was told, “Sorry for keeping you waiting, we were going to email you today…”, and then they wouldn’t let me read the company handbook before signing the offer letter.

It was a real stark example of telling vs. showing.

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

#126

Post by jpmoral »

dekhn wrote: post #116
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 asked this exact question ("what is the net benefit of currency arbitrage") and nobody has been able to articulate is. Stock markets, I can see- they existed and exist to share risk and profit. But shorting and arbitrage, it's much harder for me to understand those. (and yes, that VP was a sociopath)

Re: shorting. If people who believe a company is undervalued are allowed to trade based on that belief then people who believe a company is overvalued should be allowed to do the same.

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

#127

Post by dekhn »

jpmoral wrote: post #126
dekhn wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked this exact question ("what is the net benefit of currency arbitrage") and nobody has been able to articulate is. Stock markets, I can see- they existed and exist to share risk and profit. But shorting and arbitrage, it's much harder for me to understand those. (and yes, that VP was a sociopath)

Re: shorting. If people who believe a company is undervalued are allowed to trade based on that belief then people who believe a company is overvalued should be allowed to do the same.

Are shorting and longing symmetric? IE, do they influence the market in the same way? They seem much more complicated than straightforward stock purchase and fractional ownership.

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

#128

Post by quanto »

At a tier-1 hedgefund. I got an offer for its branch in Asia, and I was in the US at the time. It said it would like to make an offer, but it said it can show me the employee contract only in person. I asked I need to see the contract before I fly and move to a different country. I did not take the offer. Also, the compensation happened to be 80% lower than then-current compensation.

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

#129

Post by harrisoned »

Nine years ago, during the interview with the manager of a textile company, he asked what my religion was. I said i didn't had any, and then he said "You know what happens with people who don't follow any religion, right?" and pointed down, indicating that i was 'going to hell'. That made me want to quit right there, but i was so much in need of a job.

I wasn't hired in the end, despite doing well on the tests. But it was for the best as everything worked out in the end.

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

#130

Post by stephenr »

I interviewed many years ago at a web agency in Melbourne.

I was coming from contract work for the federal government, preceded by salary work for a state government - both of which allowed me to work flexible hours, eg start at 10, finish at 7 or what have you.

I asked the guy if they supported flexible working hours (this was a year or so before I started working fully remote) - their office was literally the other side of the city to my house so commuting during non peak hours would be a huge benefit for me.

His response: "well we have a standup meeting every day at 8am which you must attend, and we don't allow overtime so you need to finish by 5. But you can take your lunch break any time you want".

They offered me the position a couple of days later and I never bothered to respond.

If your working conditions make government employment look flexible, there's something very wrong with your company.

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