351–360 of 589 posts
two stories. fun one first. I once did a coding interview entirely in bash. and the poor software engineer giving the interview did not have that as a skillset. so he was deeply confused when I spent like 70% of the time building a massive sed awk xargs one liner. then proceeded to answer every question in order with it. I thought he was so confused by it that's why I never heard back. Turns out it was much stranger.…
That took a turn!
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" but the interview engine is already running at full speed:" I dont know if this is a recent thing, but I had a similar thing where an interviewer was racing forward, and would only accept the answers he had in mind. In Python, he asked me how to search for substring. I was thinking but he started hurrying me. So I said regex and started writing a regex. "No, there is an inbuilt method" I couldnt remember the method…
He was being rude, but I'm equally baffled by your description. It was very weird that you couldn't figure out which method is to search for substring when you have access to google search. And it was triply weird that when he already said he wanted the non-regex way and you insisted on that.
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…
Always trust your gut. Especially when it comes to people. Don't overthink, never rationalize it. Accept your feeling, it's valid. If I learned anything from all my past mistakes in life, it's this.
I left a really good job for a year, to go work for a company CEO'd by a buddy of mine. I had a bad, sinking feeling in my gut from the very beginning when In interviewed with my new boss (not my buddy). Sure enough, I fucking hated working for him, and quit after a year.
When I was leaving my old job, I remember rationalizing it to myself that I would regret not doing it if I didn't try. I have mixed feelings about that job -- not necessarily regret for taking it, but definitely some regrets for how things went down at the end.
With that being said, if I had turned down that job, I don't know if I would regret it now or not. Who's to say?
Anyway, I got my old job back, and lasted there for several more years. It's still the best place I ever worked.
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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…
Don't blame the poor guy who was subjected to this. You're projecting your understanding of what is normal for the interviewer and assuming that the particular interviewer didn't cross any of the lines you wouldn't. Unless you are the interviewer or know their side of the story, there is literally nothing in the post that would suggest your reading is correct.
A simpler explanation: the interviewer was an amateur psychologist with little experience in either interviewing or therapy. They asked "interesting questions," then were overwhelmed by answers they hadn't expected and couldn't gracefully handle. That's it. Please, unless you know more about that particular instance, don't reflexively blame the candidate for what looks like a series of errors on the interviewer's part.
It doesn't matter how much you enjoy your tasks or how good your comp is (unless it's enough to retire early) if you dread your colleagues and/or work environment.
I've declined customers or offers.
I think it's important for two reasons:
-For career growth and learning new skills (which eventually translate to more money), it's important to be in an environment where you want to crack tricky problems and exchange ideas with colleagues. Not to talk about the fact that good working relationships pay dividends later on for networking and such.
-We spend so much of our limited time on Earth working that we should enjoy it as much as possible, which, at least for me, is a function of liking who I work with and how I work.
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Which protected characteristic does "personal relationships" fall under? It's vague enough to mean almost anything you want it to be, and I struggle to imagine any sort of successful prosecution.
There’s a reason interviewers in the US won’t (or shouldn’t) even ask if the candidate has a spouse. If they ask something about that specifically, and the answer indicates some kind of protected status (a man says “my husband” or reveal which place of worship they got married in) and they then decline the candidate, the candidate could make the claim they were denied because they’re gay or practice whatever religion…
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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…
Some good points. Just a heads-up about something interesting I heard/read in training... "Innocuous" icebreaker questions about hobbies, the weekend, or whatever, can be surprisingly problematic. The questions and answers often inadvertently imply things about family status, religion, physical ability/disability, socioeconomic class, age, heritage, etc. that interviews are supposed to steer clear of. For me, this wa…