Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unprofessionalism, certainly. Harassment, no. That's simply not harassment.
Please consider how overwhelmingly people disagree with you and give some honest thought as to how you might be wrong.
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Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
161–170 of 213 posts
Re: Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unprofessionalism, certainly. Harassment, no. That's simply not harassment.
Please consider how overwhelmingly people disagree with you and give some honest thought as to how you might be wrong.
You are the only one so far, you might want to look up what "overwhelmingly" means :-)
Re: Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unprofessionalism, certainly. Harassment, no. That's simply not harassment.
Please consider how overwhelmingly people disagree with you and give some honest thought as to how you might be wrong.
Just because people disagree still doesn't mean it's harassment.
Also, nearly this entire post's comments are debate. There are people on both sides. This issue is not black and white, anything but. If you read some other comments, you will see it's not so "overwhelming." A majority, yes. Overwhelming, no.
Re: Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
#164As far as I can tell, the offence here is that he used privileged information (contact details from her job application) to contact her about a personal matter (the date).
Once her application was rejected there ceased to be a meaningful power relationship. Some people seem to be implying that there remains a professional power relationship since she may choose to apply at the company in the future, but I doubt that has any practical or legal teeth. The same could be true of all her potential future employers OR her future employees, vendors, customers, etc...
So what he did was creepy and unprofessional, yes. But let's understand why and to exactly what degree before deciding what the appropriate response should be.
Personally, I would contact the HR department and inform them that I didn't appreciate company employees using the contact details from my application to solicit me for a date.
Re: Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are misunderstanding my point. I am fine with ping-pong tables and beer on tap, if they come with professionalism, where professionalism includes things like not sexually harassing women. Alcohol especially needs to be handled with care, and encouraging employees to have more than one drink is downright irresponsible. My point was that there is a contingent of business-types whose gameplan is to use the fun stuff…
Fair enough, although I think my point about variance in what is considered professionalism is conceptually separate from issues like sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is a crime (or tort, depending on severity). Illegal activity is obviously "unprofessional" in the broadest sense (like assaulting or stealing from a coworker or candidate), but I was using "professionalism" to refer specifically to things which are…
I agree there's some grey zone, and I was definitely a young brogrammer who it appealed to, but I'm now seeing the errors of my ways and I hope younger engineers listen to what I'm saying and avoid those cultures.
Re: Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've heard, most companies will do the explicit math and decide whether to keep him or not. It's not unheard off. Personal Anecdote: I've known a friend, who keeps the most obnoxious programmer around at his company because he wrote the core money making algorithm by himself and is the only one who understands it. The ceo actively protects other employees from this programmer, but won't fire him because the…
No attempt has been made to bring someone else in (either internally or a new hire) to understand the algorithm and the code behind it? Even if this guy is obnoxious, it's smart to have a back up plan in case he leaves.
From what I've seen, people in that position almost never leave.
It seems like for those folks, the most important thing is to be irreplacable. They like being needed, they like being a key person in the operation, more than they like money or doing a good job.
Re: Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
#167So what are the rules for contacting someone you once interviewed in order to suggest social interaction? NOTE: I said "social interaction" rather than "a date" because I'm asking about more general situations. For instance, suppose you interview someone, and (unlike the guy in this incident) are not using the interview to try to find someone to date. You stick to questions specific to the job, plus more general ques…
No, it's not acceptable. I'm assuming you find the contact info by looking at interview records in the scenario you gave. You can't ever use any privileged information for personal purposes.
Re: Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
If he’s interviewing, then that is his actual job. If he’s hitting on people while representing the company in any context, e.g. at conferences, that is his actual job. The way you framed this as a “PR liability” suggests you don’t think there’s anything wrong here, it’s just a question of dollars and cents to the company’s bottom line. That’s exactly the kind of sociopathy that is the problem. You have to stop and d…
Also, my sociopathic HR lawyers says that if you decline to hire someone, and then any one of your employees hit on them, you are exposing your company to a lawsuit alleging that they were qualified, but you elected not to hire them to pave the ay for hitting on them without any repercussions, e.g. embarrassment if they turn you down and tell all your colleagues that you hit on them. Guard against this possibility is…
You're right I don't see anything wrong with the situation as presented. It's funny, guy has some balls to ask for a date after that. I'll agree he was pretty stupid about it. But I see all the time much stupider advances that actually get accepted instead of rejected. I'd say forgive and forget but I don't see anything to forgive. Asking for a date is how you get dates, even if the context for asking is unusual. I'd like for shy men to still be able to hear the worst thing that'll happen is "she'll say 'lol no, loser'", but now the worst thing that can happen is she'll be so offended she'll throw a fit and publicly name you and destroy your career. Thankfully that hasn't happened here yet. "This made me feel upset. How should I handle this, random internet people?" is a reasonable way to approach this if you don't already have a philosophy that says "chill out and move on".
There's a side conversation here that I'm sort of interested in. There is a certain moral obligation to protecting the company you work for and not putting it under risk with thing like discrimination-based non-hires -- but why should sociopathic lawyers get to decide what risks are actually there or not? It's immoral some of the things many companies do in all legality, risk-free. You won't stir up an internet shit storm for every one of them, even if you can get a few. Not so long ago the behavior this woman reported would have not been cause for such outrage and moralizing displayed on this page. What changed in humans since then? I really don't think we've gotten all that more moral. I'd say instead what changed is the sociopathic lawyers became even more powerful, and saw a great and endless revenue stream for themselves by making it easy to destroy people and businesses for these very basic and human drives, faux pas mistakes at worst.
Re: Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if he's a 10x engineer? He's a massive PR liability because of our insane outrage culture, but he's a very valuable asset for, you know, his actual job.
I don't hire nor value 10x engineers. So no problem there. I hire and value engineers that elevate those around them to 10x. And this behavior lowers people, not elevates. So no, that person is not a valuable asset. He's the very definition of a liability.
Your comment sounds good but that's it. It's flawed. You don't hire 10x just people who make other people 10x? Then that person you just hired is 10x.
The person is clearly a liability, it's still possible he's an asset. In simple business terms you have a guy who'll get you sued for 1 million but will make you 10 million. That person while a douche is still a valuable asset. Chances of that ever being the case or anyone ever choosing to keep a known douche about is another thing.
Re: Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?
#170You know, I'm all about being laid back and rejecting traditional corporate culture, because you can be serious without a suit. But you still need the "be serious" part, which somehow got lost between all the ping pong tables and beer on tap. I actually think a big chunk of the industry encourages unprofessionalism, because professionals do really obnoxious things like negotiate compensation. I really hope that the t…
Women get harrased by men wearing suits and ties.