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The worst job interview I ever had

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Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#151

Post by cwnyth »

Aurornis wrote: post #133
fsckboy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory OP didn't say that, he said "hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges" and then characterized it (his opinion) 'similar “trauma-baiting” questions' asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect…

> asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect you to answer it. This is not a standard job interview question at all. In fact if you tried asking this at any company with a legal or HR team, you'd get pulled out of interviewing people until they could train you appropriate job inte…

Keeping in mind the context of the original parent comment, yes it is 100% standard to ask about the "hardest day of your [working] life." I wouldn't ever put it like that, but asking about difficult challenges and how you overcame them is completely normal. The blog post reads to me as someone who is oblivious about the subtext of these questions.

When I ask that kind of question, I'm not asking you to share about a breakup, or death of a parent, or some other non-working issue, and I would think it very inappropriate for you to do so (thus, the quick rejection email). Instead, I'm asking about how you navigated losing all your code due to a backup issue or how you dealt with a difficult client or coworker or even some problem at work that threw you for a loop for weeks. That's the subtext of these questions, as the original commentator also made quite clear.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#152

Post by cwnyth »

freehorse wrote: post #96
sdenton4 wrote: post #27

I fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics, but they were, in fact, non-technical — covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions. Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way... These kinds of questions are part and parcel of non-tech interview processes. Y…

But why ask about "the hardest day in your life" instead eg "the hardest day at work"? Personally asking this kind of personal questions sounds very weird. You can evaluate soft skills and culture fit by asking more relevant, professional questions. Except if the reason to ask this kind of more personal questions was sth else.

Notice that the blog post author did not provide exact quotes. In fact, they explicitly state they do not remember the wording. It's very likely that they did, in fact, ask about biggest challenges, and the author misunderstood.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#153

Post by trusted_bro »

tombert wrote: post #41

I have a two way tie for the worst interviews I've ever had, for very different reasons. First, in 2023 I interviewed for a startup as a lead architect. They had me do some virtual whiteboard stuff, and so I was drawing rectangles and cylinders and mentioning things like "database" and "message queues" as generically as I could. They would interrupt me and say stuff like "Which message queue? Where do you download th…

Dodged a bullet. There are good banks (eg Goldman) and shitty banks (eg Bank Of $Large_North_American_Country) and not a lot in between.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#154

Post by simoncion »

genewitch wrote: post #144
elzbardico wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume that every singlemotherfucking breathing human you find in your life wants or at least likes to feel special, and that any company that asks you that question wants you to massage their ego a little bit. Don't think much about it, just believe what I am telling you. It is going to save you a lot of grief.

Dale Carnegie floating around this thread a lot. Remembering (and using!) someone's name is a magic spell, too.

> Remembering (and using!) someone's name is a magic spell, too.

When it's done to me, it's the magic spell of "I Distrust You". A time or two is fine, as is its usage if one is -say- in a group conversation where it can be difficult to understand to whom one is speaking, or -say- one needs to get my attention when I'm focusing on something else.

In my many years of personal experience, I've found that people who behave as if speaking my name to me is a magic spell absolutely do not have my best interests at heart. At best, they want to manipulate me into doing something that I don't wish to do. I recognize that my opinion is not universal, but I am absolutely not the only person on earth who's like this.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#155

Post by [deleted] »

fsckboy wrote: post #117
anyfoo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if, for the sake of argument, they legitimately did ask about your personal life instead of your work life... you normally wouldn't answer any of that. (In fact, it could very well mean the end of the interview, from the interviewee's side.) That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you…

> Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory OP didn't say that, he said "hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges" and then characterized it (his opinion) 'similar “trauma-baiting” questions' asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect…

[deleted]

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#156

Post by atoav »

donatj wrote: post #81

I've been working as a dev for over twenty years now and have had my fair share of interviews. The very worst I ever had was about six months ago. I'd had a fantastic initial interview, it seemed like a perfect fit and interesting tech. Overlapped a lot with some work I'd been doing recently. They made it sound like my experience was a great match and they were exited for me to move forward. I was the most excited I'…

Congrats on not working there I guess. Apparently that CTO wasn't worth working with anyways

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#157

Post by pm90 »

I believe the authors reading of the situation: its likely the interviewer wasn’t intentionally being cruel; most likely its this startups “unique thing that makes them stand out”; quirky twists that every startup attempts to make them stand out from the rest.

Honestly though, I think it ultimately worked out best for all parties. Its clear that the startup didn’t value someone that could be so vulnerable, and hopefully the author ultimately found a place that did.

My personal perspective is that for super early/founding engineer type roles you absolutely have to bring a greater part of yourself to work; you will be working over the weekends, working late, celebrating together and such… generally that environment is closer to a college club or fraternity than a corporation.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#158

Post by gherkinnn »

morkalork wrote: post #84
rsoto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, OP just unwinded himself, no filter. You can be truthful and open with friends and family, close people to you. You absolutely shouldn't when talking with strangers.

Then strangers shouldn't fucking ask questions that could have answers that make them uncomfortable. Just a thought.

"How are you?" "How was your weekend?"

It is common for people to ask a personal sounding question but expecting an impersonal answer.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#159

Post by atoav »

genewitch wrote: post #43
analogpixel wrote: post #24

Would be funny if the interviewer wrote the exact same blog post; "I had the worst candidate interview today, I asked him a simple ice-breaker question before getting into more technical stuff, and he just went off about his family and relationships for an hour; weirdest interview I ever gave."

you think that's what it was? The people with 100% of the power in this situation did everything 100% correct and you're not victim-blaming at all?

It was a textbook example of the double contingency of communication¹. In communications it doesn't only matter what each side is objectively saying. It matters what the other side expects them to hear. And that goes both ways.

In this case the interviewer asked these questions to get to know the candidate in a professional setting, so they expected a diplomatic or professional answer. The candidate however misjudged the interviewer intention behind the questions, took them literally and answered them truthfully. Neither of these people is technically sporting a wrong position, yet the communication broke down.

That being said, the idea that you can choose not to talk about certain things is pretty basal when it comes to communications. If you have a trauma nobody can force you to talk about it and you should also not talk to everybody and their dog about it (and I know people who constantly do this and have a tendency to regret it afterwards). It costs you nothing to say that you can't think of any specific day, or talk about a day where a old boss at a shitty student job abused you, to frame it in work terms. To talk strategically or diplomatically is a skill that is needed in many positions. And that candidate displayed a total lack of that ability.

That being said I am not particularly fond of that type of question myself. Both as an the person carrying out an interview and the person going to one. I am more interested to see how a person tackles certain situations than to have them tell me stories about it.

¹: see https://www.orientation-philosophy.com/glossary/double-conti...

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#160

Post by defrost »

cwnyth wrote: post #151
Aurornis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect you to answer it. This is not a standard job interview question at all. In fact if you tried asking this at any company with a legal or HR team, you'd get pulled out of interviewing people until they could train you appropriate job inte…

Keeping in mind the context of the original parent comment, yes it is 100% standard to ask about the "hardest day of your [working] life." I wouldn't ever put it like that, but asking about difficult challenges and how you overcame them is completely normal. The blog post reads to me as someone who is oblivious about the subtext of these questions. When I ask that kind of question, I'm not asking you to share about a…

> Instead, I'm asking about how you navigated losing all your code due to a backup issue or how you dealt with a difficult client or coworker or even some problem at work that threw you for a loop for weeks.

Cubicle drama, hey?

Easy stuff. I've got a million+ SLOC behind me, no real cubicle stories worthy of note resulting, just had a few days at work clearing air strips at high altitude in Papua, had to work for a couple of weeks at gunpoint after one of our lovely clients detonated a nuclear device near enough our plane for the shock wave to affect the flight dynamics, nearly lost a whole boat to a fire under the kerosene filled float cables in the Spratly Islands region (after getting boarded constantly by various gunboats).

All good though.

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