I hope you gave them feedback on this, that's really messed up!
The worst job interview I ever had
471–480 of 589 posts
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
I probably would've done the same. "I don't remember what the function is called" would've been fine-ish, but reaching for a regex is just insane.
Why? Unless it's an extraordinarily hot code path, it doesn't matter. A regex once compiled will be quite efficient.
You have a problem, so you try to solve it with a regex. You now have two problems.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Hard to claim the moral high ground if you do eye for an eye. I do not claim the moral high ground. My moral is more flexible, than just "an eye for an eye" or "be nicer than the other side". I can do any of that depending on a situation. I'm starting any communication with the latter, it is a consequence of my upbringing, but if it doesn't work I may do anything. I want to note, I know that "be nicer than the othe…
Agreed. Wasting applicants time should have consequences. I can play along for a little bit to appease people who are intentionally testing how I handle a difficult situation but I am not going to allow an extended waste of time to occur and that's something I want to communicate to potential employers as well
> Wasting applicants time should have consequences.
The consequence is that they don't get to enjoy your competence as an employee nor that of others who don't feel treated well, with implications for their future strength in the market. That's a much stronger consequence that being rude for a moment to somebody who doesn't care anyway.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#474I 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…
> Off to a bad start, it was one of the hottest days in NYC of the year, and I sweat a lot by nature, so in combination with the full suit, by the time I got to the building I was already kind of drenched in sweat.
You'd need a Summer-weight suit for this to be at-all comfortable. "High-twist wool" and "unlined" or "half-lined" are your search terms. Silk-wool blends also OK. Other fabric options for warm weather open up in some contexts (linen and linen/wool/silk/cotton blends, warm-weather cotton weaves like seersucker, maybe even rayon though that's a bit niche) but probably not if you're looking to dress for an interview at a bank in New York. Part of why suits are in-practice expensive and inconvenient (and why only-occasional wearers judge them unpleasant to wear—not unreasonably, given their exposure to them) is that you need at-minimum one set for moderate-and-lower temps ("three-season"), and another set for hot days.
I have one unlined high-twist wool navy blazer that's so cool it's actually kind of a problem because offices often have their AC cranked up on hot days. I end up needing an overcoat or second, winter-weight jacket indoors, LOL. Hold the thing up to a light and it looks like a star field seen from outside the Earth's atmosphere, dark with endless dots of light, so air goes right through it.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard to claim the moral high ground if you do eye for an eye. Always be nicer than the other side. Even for practical reasons. If they think you are a prick, the blast radius can be substantially wider than this specific interview. And for what? The lulz? I'm not saying to accept rude behavior, but one can leave such situations without being rude back or making a scene.
> Hard to claim the moral high ground if you do eye for an eye. I do not claim the moral high ground. My moral is more flexible, than just "an eye for an eye" or "be nicer than the other side". I can do any of that depending on a situation. I'm starting any communication with the latter, it is a consequence of my upbringing, but if it doesn't work I may do anything. I want to note, I know that "be nicer than the othe…
It's easy to be nice in the beginning or when the other side is nice. Point is to be nice even if the other side is rude or wants conflict. In a sense you are giving in to their game if you are rude back. What really hits them is if their counterpart can't be bothered to be rude back.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#476I've had some rather interesting interviews myself, with several of my most ridiculous stories ironically being from here.
One guy -- the reason I started building a tracking tool, after I noticed that his email was autofilling when I went to send him a message -- ghosted me after I wasn't available the first day and time he suggested. Which was also a holiday.
Another place, a stealth startup, was a panel interview with their three founders -- two tech leads and the CEO. The tech leads actually had really interesting discourse, and I wish I could remember the name of the guy who told me that "testing means never having to use my brain for the same thing twice." It actually never occurred to me before that an interview could provide you with useful knowledge, let alone that an interviewer could make a point of imparting those things on purpose. However, their CEO asked me to commit 5 years of my life up while also refusing to tell me anything at all about what the company did.
Within the past year I also encountered one that expressly asked me for things I didn't like about a previous employer; badgered me when I didn't want to elaborate about a specific, traumatizing, walking HR complaint of a man; and then -- after I described vaguely how organizations and their leadership change over time -- explicitly asked me to rate that individual on a scale.
(The other two were a while ago, and Idk that they still exist, but the last company was SerpAPI, who advertises here fairly regularly.)
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#477I once had two onsite interviews with a 20 minute "break" in between. I was given a surprise crossword puzzle during the break to see (if I had a rich vocabulary?, excelled at puzzles?, could come up with synonyms under pressure?). The puzzle was then evaluated and discussed during the following interview.
The job was entirely focused on numbers in spreadsheets.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#478My worst interview was decades ago where the building was a walk-up and the office was on the 8th or 9th floor, something absurd. It was winter, I had layers of warm clothing on, and I walked into the interview a sweaty disaster and when my sweat became drippingly apparent panic kicked in and made it even worse. At the end of the ordeal I had to walk down the steps which also sucked.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a really weird power-trip interview once, and it was the CEO who was joined by a contractor who was ostensibly the technical lead for the project. There was nobody in engineering who worked full-time on the job, everybody was contracted. I was also going in as a contractor so I was aware that the interview would be a bit lighter on process as a result. The questioning very quickly veered away from technical stu…
> I lasted about 6 months and even trying to leave was an ordeal. Like finding your next gig or just not showing up ever again? Because I've worked at a place where someone came in, went to lunch, and they never saw them ever again.
In general as companies decided to treat people like fungible cogs while selling "we're are family" story, it should be expected people will start treating companies like the faceless and soulless entities they really are. When people are laid off and escorted out not even allowed to say goodbye to their coworkers, employees should be just be walking out and doing exactly the same thing to those companies.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#480I 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…
I kinda wish that the industry norms changed such that it wasn't so taboo to just name and shame these companies.