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The worst job interview I ever had

oliverio.dev

211–220 of 589 posts

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#211

I'd say I've been fairly luck as far interviews go. The vast, vast majority have been about as straight forward and by the book as they come. Completely predictable ones. But I've had some iffy ones. One was for a small boutique investment firm, for a data scientist type role. I'm not sure if it was part of their "stress testing" routine, but I was given a bash terminal where I had to SSH into some server, find data,…

> "Have you actually done this before?"

I would have got up and walked out at this one, personally.

But at least they let you know how working there would be during the interview :)

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#212
One fun trick I learn (or more like two tricks) is to start working with the person during the interview. If you do a lot of interviews you get to see a lot of different ways to do it. Their job is to do interviews but they never get to see how others do it. You can tell them what they are doing right, what interesting approaches others take, what you would do and how they can improve.

If I notice they cant talk about improving the way they do things I cant get out of there fast enough. It's one of those places where everything goes wrong but you have to actively pretend it's not.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#213

This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer. All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of ever…

I think this is a very cultural thing. When I interview candidates at my current job, we are interested in hearing about their life outside of work, since we want to know how we can best collaborate If they have to pick up their kids in the afternoon, then it's probably better that they work closer with the other parents than of they're late risers who prefer coming to the office at 10

This sounds more like post-hiring admin, unless you're discriminating against parents?

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#214

I was excited, it was a game company, and I'd wanted to get back into games - or more specifically, game engines - for a few years. The tech of this particular company was interesting, an in-house engine developed by wunderkind, of course, and they'd invited me for an interview because I had done a fair bit of low-level work, which would be handy for their rough edges. Apparently. Half way through the interview, I ha…

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Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#215

had a similar unsolicited psych evaluation interview back in 2017 in twitter. There was a VP (or maybe director), who started with "go back in history and tell me what your boss at position X would say about you", and this kept happening for an hour.

The “what would your previous manager say” doesn’t seem like a psych evaluation

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#216

I always wanted to tell the story of my weirdest interview. It's bad in a different way from OP's. This was for a "Machine Learning Engineer" contractor position. - Hi, I'm gobdovan. How are you? says I. The interviewer doesn't bite: - How many prompting techniques do you know? (ok?..) After a couple confused seconds, I respond with 2-3 techniques and ask if I should explain them, but the interview engine is already…

> Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role.

Until this line I assumed this was a screening by HR.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#217

This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer. All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of ever…

I think this is a very cultural thing. When I interview candidates at my current job, we are interested in hearing about their life outside of work, since we want to know how we can best collaborate If they have to pick up their kids in the afternoon, then it's probably better that they work closer with the other parents than of they're late risers who prefer coming to the office at 10

If the interviewer was fishing around for information for when I start work or if I have kids, the only thing that'd come to mind is whether they're trying to frame me as a slacker to disqualify me from the interview process.

Maybe the above is an European thing.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#218

I always wanted to tell the story of my weirdest interview. It's bad in a different way from OP's. This was for a "Machine Learning Engineer" contractor position. - Hi, I'm gobdovan. How are you? says I. The interviewer doesn't bite: - How many prompting techniques do you know? (ok?..) After a couple confused seconds, I respond with 2-3 techniques and ask if I should explain them, but the interview engine is already…

> "What does this tell you?"

Why didn't you answer, that it tells you that his camera is unfocused?

I don't understand how people tolerate this for so long, I'd start trolling the guy after his third question. If he wants to be rude, then I'd retaliate and make sure I have a laugh while he is wasting his time.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of technical people interpret interview questions literally. Like yes of course the prompt starts with a negative - but you don't actually have to answer the question fully and literally, this isn't a college exam. You could for example start talking about how you thought something was a colossal failure only to realize looking back that it was an incredible learning experience and how sometimes the onl…

Is it too much to ask for interviewers not to ask questions where the "right" answer is to give a BS answer?

Interviewing is difficult IMO - asking imperfect people to judge imperfect people in a short time.

In my experience, which is not that great, it's the attitude that people have which is more important than the perfect answers. You're usually hiring for a team so someone who is prepared to be decent to others is essential and IMO their 10xness is much less important than this.

Then I want someone who is interested in computing or things in general - not purely motivated by the money. That sort of person who is going to try to do a good job for the sake of it and who wants to learn something new - who will be ok with doing things they're not yet experts at.

These 2 sort of areas are not easy to have together IMO. If I find people like this I am eager to work with them.

What I get from being the interviewee is that other people are not always looking for these characteristics. They're often looking for someone they can dominate. This is like my point about being part of a team but taken further obviously. In a team you cannot have everything your own way but you get to put your point across and see if you can convince others, as a peon in a feudal system you will have nothing your own way and must not only do but also say and pretend to think what you are told.

Bullshit is just really a test for whether you're amenable to being part of the propaganda. Some people have no trouble doing this but I think there's something about being a programmer that tends away from fakeness. That's not to say that we haven't got an overload of bullshitters but at the root you have to be able to make things that work.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#220

My worst interview was at Uber (their security team). The screening and technical interviews on site were all fine and dandy. At the end of the onsite interviews I spoke with the director in charge of the team. I asked some general questions like, "What's the team's work-life balance like?" He chuckled and said something like they work 60+ hour works. I looked at him and said flatly, "Yeah, I'm not doing that." The H…

> My worst interview was at Uber (their security team).

Worst? It sounds like a great interview where you set a boundary before going into a situation you would not have liked. People forget that part of the interview process is also for the candidate to decide if they want to work for the company.

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