Interview Humiliation

Assholes can be unavoidable. You may land a job at a point where there are none. Over time they hire more assholes.

Get the offer from the assholes, and use it as a bargaining chip.

The behavior of the interview team was truly appalling here, and this was a good post. It's important to be aware of just how bad things can get in technical interviews.

However, much as I'm always game for a good horror story, I'm more interested in the damage that the ordinary, polite, courteous technical interview/exam may be inflicting on people and our industry.

As I've posted in the past, I believe that tech interviews are essentially entrance exams that software developers are forced to take over and over. Actuaries, for instance, take exams on topics that correlate closely with mathematics classes, like numerical analysis or vector calc and linear algebra. These exams are recognized for what they are - rigorous entrance exams to show competency in core subjects. We don't call these exams "interviews" and leave it to an some dude who sits in cubicle D-12 to decide how he feels like testing an experienced Actuary's understanding of integration by parts today.

The reason I prefer to focus on the polite, respectful, professional interviews is that it helps us see the fundamental problems with our approach, rather than the misbehavior that can occur in any interview situation. I do think that the intense technical interviews in our field have taken the place of the bar, the actuarial exams, the medical boards. However, most professional entrance exams adhere to a code of conduct - students have an associated study path, they get a respected credential (reassuring their peers and hiring managers that they really do possess this knowledge and ability), they are aware of who their examiners will be and are assured that they possess the proper credentials and expertise to conduit the exams properly, fairly, and most of all, consistently.

I really would like to see developers, as a profession, determine how our competence will be established relative to our peers.

Now, one more thing - I said that I prefer to focus on the polite interviews than the horror stories, but I absolutely do acknowledge that a process like tech interviews may be unusually prone to these horror stories. In short, horror stories like this may not be entirely orthogonal to the core issues, they may very much be a common side effect.

Instead of highly respected practitioners and acknowledge experts sitting on a board, we go grab a few developers and hope they know what they're doing. When I defended my MS project, Berkeley didn't go out and grab a few people who seem to know the industry well enough (uh, I guess, oh, he's busy, well, this other dude seems pretty good, have him sit in) and have them decide whether I would receive a degree. I'm not saying there is no variance among experts, some may pass you, others may not, without question. But I could be certain that the people on my committee were qualified to evaluate my work, that I had rights as a student sitting for an exam, and I would receive a lasting and meaningful credential with feedback (not just a "we've decided not to proceed with your application at this time, but we'll keep your resume…).

With such a capricious and chaotic process, yeah, the sort of thing described here is more likely to happen.

I know several people who worked for a company with an abusive culture, and they were definitely miserable. What's interesting is that these types of interviewers attract people who are themselves abusive, and eventually (without outside stimulus) the company becomes a homogeneous mix of assholes. It sounds bizarre, and I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been told the story by trusted friends.

>Why not name the company?

I'm going to guess OP may be 'liable' for damaging the company's reputation.

I make a point to do this in all of our company's interviews. Even if they don't end up working for us, if they speak highly about us to other developers, it can have a positive network effect. And even then, outside of corporate interests, everyone wants to be loved and appreciated - isn't that enough of a reason to be kind to each other even in situations like an interview?