What's the appropriate response as the interviewee in that sort of situation? They've completely turned you off to the idea of working for the company, should you just excuse yourself and end the interview?
Interview Humiliation
51–60 of 94 posts
Re: Interview Humiliation
#52This presentation is bullshit. You have no evidence, nothing valuable to show, just spurious subjective opinions. You've put up a straw man and now are trying to knock it down assuming we are idiots. I've seen enough. Whoever said this is a dev I'd refuse to ever put into an interview again. Hell, I'd be reluctant to put this dev into any meetings requiring communication skills.
Stated in this exact way, word-for-word is quite extreme. Could the author be paraphrasing?
I'm probably nitpicking like a nerd. Even if he were paraphrasing it wouldn't take away from the overall message.
Re: Interview Humiliation
#53This sounds highly improbable, especially the "Oh, wow, Linux, what is this, 2003? I'd hoped I'd never have to see....." comment, I honestly can't believe there are any developers would make such a comment. The OP should name the company if this interview was this terrible.
I don't want to say. Its been almost four years since then. A friend started working there for a different team, and he intimated the team I'd interviewed for was strongly anti-TDD, and very pro-Python. Even he laughed at me for not using a Mac. Recently they expanded too much and laid off 3/4 their development staff including my friend. In all, it sounds like it wasn't a great place. But I don't want to publicly call out a whole company of hundreds of developers because I got stuck with a few bad apples.
I do wish I know who my interviewers were, I want to meet them now and ask them what was up and what they thought of the whole thing. I do remember a few in the room seeming pretty embarrassed about it all, but I think the main three antagonists were their bosses or something.
Re: Interview Humiliation
#54Get baited hackernews, shitty to see this in the top feed. No way in hell this happened. If it did the OP wouldn't hesitate to name the company.
Re: Interview Humiliation
#55This is such comic book villainy I just don't believe it happened as described. I wonder how the other side would describe it.
[deleted]
Re: Interview Humiliation
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's dubious because he didn't respond as you would? I never thought I'd be reminded of victim blaming here, yet here I am. Unless you personally know the OP, you have no idea what the OP's personality is like. Sure, I personally would tear them a new one (civilly) if they treated me like that, but I have non-confrontational friends that would be terrified to escalate the situation like that.
[deleted]
It doesn't matter if you're American or not, nor is it a matter of political correctness or scholarship. It is what it is, and you are doing it. You can try to red herring it and spout off about the American PC crap all you wish, but the bulk of your entire original comment is "This is dubious. This is what I would have said. Why are you mumbling." It doesn't even really need to be paraphrased. It's already so blatant verbatim:
>it is obviously a dubious story. Wouldn't the first thing you would say as soon as you enter the room is that you got an invitation to 9h30 and not 9h? Then what did op reply to their questions such as 'can't you afford a real machine'? he just mubbled? I would reply very harshly to such comments and show them who is the weakling. While they were total assholes, you were not in a desperate enough situation that would justify you to say amen to whatever bullshit they say.
Thanks, quarterback.
Re: Interview Humiliation
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, but as someone conducting an interview, checking your watch every minute waiting for someone to arrive, you don't know what their reasons are. And as the time passes, you start wondering what the hell is up with this person, wondering about all the other things you could be doing, etc. etc. and it leaves you in a bad mood for when they do arrive. No amount of explanation will change the bad mood, I'm not going…
No, just no. A candidate is taking time from their busy schedule and are considering making a contribution to your company/team/project. You should appreciate that more. In the real world, shit happens. There are an inordinate amount of things that can go wrong and delay someone. In this case it's all the worse, since the problem was the interviewers own organization. The interviewer should be apologizing on behalf o…
No, I think there is justification. In the real world, people aren't stoic and patient, especially executives who have their day planned out to the minute. The applicant did everything right here, and I'm not defending the interviewers, just trying to think about how that situation comes about. If the applicant was on time, would the interview have gone the same way? I don't think so.
Re: Interview Humiliation
#58What do you think of the practice of ending an interview earlier than scheduled when you're quite sure that the candidate is not a good fit for the position? The rationale I've heard is that it saves both you and the candidate time. But in practice, during the times when I've seen it done, the candidate ends up feeling really hurt.
I have ended a few interviews early when I was absolutely certain that a candidate wasn't a fit, but only when they were objectively not right for a position. What I try to do in those cases is end the main interview set gracefully, then take the candidate in for a one-on-one and talk to them about where their skills don't fit, and what kind of position they would have more success searching for.
In general, my belief is that any time a candidate reaches out, they're putting faith in me to treat them with the respect they deserve -- everyone is a good fit somewhere, and I have no time for people who want to use interviews as a chance to prove their intellectual superiority or to band the team against a possibly inferior "outsider." Same thing with using whiteboard-heavy interviews as a weapon -- I have yet to hit upon the secret sauce for finessing a candidate who might be a great fit but is floundering with the stress of a whiteboard problem, but I do try very hard to not make them feel like they're failing, while seeing if they can approach the problem in a rigorous manner.
Re: Interview Humiliation
#59This presentation is bullshit. You have no evidence, nothing valuable to show, just spurious subjective opinions. You've put up a straw man and now are trying to knock it down assuming we are idiots. I've seen enough. Whoever said this is a dev I'd refuse to ever put into an interview again. Hell, I'd be reluctant to put this dev into any meetings requiring communication skills.
Stated in this exact way, word-for-word is quite extreme. Could the author be paraphrasing? I'm probably nitpicking like a nerd. Even if he were paraphrasing it wouldn't take away from the overall message.
I wrote it down the quotes four years ago, just because I knew I'd want to write about it at some point. I didn't want to "get back at them", just turn it into something good.
Re: Interview Humiliation
#60What do you think of the practice of ending an interview earlier than scheduled when you're quite sure that the candidate is not a good fit for the position? The rationale I've heard is that it saves both you and the candidate time. But in practice, during the times when I've seen it done, the candidate ends up feeling really hurt.
When I tell them it's X hours, it's X hours, even if we have to start doing katas together pair programming. I therefore try to make certain I want to spend that much time with them before I bring them into an interview.