Treating candidates inconsiderately in any form
Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
131–140 of 278 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
you're right, I totally missed that detail, i didn't realise it was from 20 years ago.
That is totally bizarre.
Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
#133Nine 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 i…
sounds like a case for a discrimination lawsuit
Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
#134Mercenaries are willing to give their lives on their job, you’d be crazy if you thought I’d cross a red traffic light for your company
Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
if someone wanted to see my university grades after this time i'd confusedly ask: excuse me, i thought this was a senior position not a student internship.
just as frustrating as wanting code samples. none of my work of the past decade is public, and it's not mine to share. all i can show is ancient stuff
Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
#136This is not one incident but it happens to many times — when the hiring manager or sometimes other interviewers as well start explaining how:
- team/company works like a family
- we even party together on weekends
- then things like: we “love and own” our work we only leave once it’s done
Or a place that’s not clear and don’t want to be specific about availability/timing requirements i.e clarity about hours (which is by the way like 100% of job posts here on the HN!!!)
Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
#137Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
#138I 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…
Sounds like the option to work earlier was there? e.g. start at 6 head home at 3
Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
#139I 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.
I wonder too. Some things are really non-intuitive.
I really enjoyed "The Rational Optimist" where it explains things like trade, which tends to make everyone wealthy, while generally the people trading think they are both getting the better end of the deal.
Re: Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 individu…
I understand the mathematics. The problem is that there is a practical asymmetry of information. Large future traders can invest a lot of resources into getting a much better prediction of future prices, while individual farmers cannot. In such scenarios, it is inevitable that farmers will be exploited by future traders into making bad deals.