[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you deal with rude interviewers?
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Ask HN: How do you deal with rude interviewers?
I've had an interviewer laugh in my face when I told them my
favorite language was Scheme. Then they just walked out in the
middle of the interview without saying a word when it wasn't going
well, leaving the other interviewers to continue without them. At
the time I didn't say anything, and just continued the interview as
if nothing happened, but in retrospect, I think I should have
politely terminated the interview myself, as I don't want to work
with rude, unprofessional snobs, but I'm wondering what people here
would have done, and how you've faced rudeness during interviews
yourself?
Author : pmoriarty
Score : 271 points
Date : 2022-05-11 11:56 UTC (11 hours ago)
| [deleted]
| lumost wrote:
| You will deal with many rude individuals. I'd recommend
| approaching this as a simple lesson that you don't want to work
| with this company, and finish the interview. You can follow up
| with the recruiter and decline politely regardless.
| Lio wrote:
| I once had a 3rd round interview where I was lead into a room to
| await a senior exec who wanted to personally vet me.
|
| So I waited...
|
| An hour went by and a PA came in to apologies and say the big man
| was on his way but still on a call.
|
| Another 30 minutes went by and I just walked out without further
| discussion.
|
| I did get the job in the end and it was a decent gig but I still
| wished I'd left then interview sooner.
|
| Luckily we work in an industry where kissing arses generally
| isn't required. That doesn't mean you can or should be rude but
| it goes both ways.
|
| Don't be a doormat.
|
| If someone laughs when you say Scheme is your favourite language,
| it's perfectly fine to smile back at them and ask them why
| they're laughing.
| mariojv wrote:
| It's been several years since I interviewed, but I do recall one
| Zoom interview where the panel was in a physical room and one of
| the people on the panel was just on his phone texting or
| something for around half of the interview.
|
| I basically just ignored the behavior and continued as normal,
| professionally, with the other interviewer. Eventually, whatever
| I was coding up finally drew the rude interviewer's attention.
|
| I made it to the next round, which I passed, and was ready to do
| a final round but ended up going with another offer before
| proceeding with them. After reading a bit more about the work
| culture at the place and seeing the interviewer's behavior, I
| definitely don't regret it, even though their RSUs would likely
| be worth quite a lot today. Work life balance and culture are
| important so that you're not miserable in your job.
|
| My advice is: continue the interview professionally, but take the
| rudeness into consideration before you take an offer if it comes.
| Worst case, you're out a few hours of time and learned a bit
| about a different company. Also don't assume the worst. With the
| interviewer who was texting, I chose to believe that maybe he had
| some personal issue going on rather than thinking that my
| behavior triggered the rudeness, which helped me finish up the
| interview.
| dorkwood wrote:
| Why is Scheme your favorite language?
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| Strange this is getting downvoted here of all places. I like to
| think HN is a place that would enjoy this conversation
| regardless of their own view.
|
| Let keep the good intent and intellectual curiosity please.
| phil294 wrote:
| I guess it's mostly these guidelines: "Eschew flamebait.
| Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. [...]
| Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or
| post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead. [...] Please don't comment
| about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it
| makes boring reading."
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Why do people have favorite languages? Programming languages
| are more like tools than say, video games or novels. If someone
| said they love screwdrivers/impact drivers and hate
| hammers/nail guns, well... okay. You can build everthing with
| screws instead of nails, but this can create problems and
| probably isn't the optimal solution.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Same reason I guess some tools are better to work with than
| others. I definitely like my iFixit screwdrivers set more
| than a generic set I've bought years before: there are more
| different bits actually used in things I need to disassemble
| and assemble, the things are sturdier, they feel nicer to
| hold in my hand, there is this nice magnetic pad so my screws
| are not lost. Now if I have no choice but this shitty
| screwdriver, I'll use it, sure, as long as it doesn't break
| (this has happened), but when I have a choice, I go for
| better tools.
|
| What's so incomprehensible about this?
|
| Of course if you do a half-assed job all the time, you may
| afford to not care about your tools. I want to excel at mine,
| so I definitely have preferences.
| TillE wrote:
| Right, I certainly have languages I'm more comfortable with,
| largely because of experience. I have a few languages I
| _dislike_.
|
| But I couldn't tell you my _favorite_ language, it doesn 't
| really make sense to me.
| xisukar wrote:
| From Dijkstra:
|
| >The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on
| our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.
|
| Obviously you should use the right tool for the job, however
| in the realm of programming languages someone might find a
| language's model of code structure better than other
| languages and more in tune with his/her way of thinking.
| chlorion wrote:
| I am not sure the comparison to regular tools is very
| accurate.
|
| For many people, programming language and
| compiler/interpreter design is one of the major parts of
| computer science that they are interested in. Language
| development is an entire subfield of computer science on it's
| own!
|
| Languages are a lot more deeply complex than what they may
| appear on the surface, and choosing a specific one for a
| specific task is also a little more complicated than choosing
| a nail vs a screw, with the tradeoffs not always being so
| clear cut and there being many more factors and "dimensions"
| at play. Style is also a big part of it, with some people
| just preferring certain styles and opinions more than others.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I'm not wedded to my favorite language. Right tool for the
| job and all that..
|
| Still, when given the choice I prefer to work in a language
| that's easy and clear, rather than one that's painful and
| convoluted.
|
| Sure, I might be able to do the same in another language, but
| I'm reminded of Alan Perlis' advice to _" Beware of the
| Turing tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of
| interest is easy."_
| forinti wrote:
| I really enjoyed Lisp and Scheme while in college, but I never
| got to use them professionally.
|
| I think we would be better off having core business rules in
| one of these languages instead of having to rewrite them every
| decade or so in the current fashionable language.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It's very simple, elegant, and powerful -- like no other
| language I know (and I've learned well over a dozen, of a
| variety of paradigms).
|
| It's easy to write, easy to read, and easily does everything I
| need. I prize clarity over almost anything else when
| programming, and Scheme lets me do that way more effectively
| than anything else. There's very little syntax or boilerplate
| to get in the way.
|
| It's also very consistent, and I like that.
|
| The worst languages feel cobbled together or congealed rather
| than designed. Scheme is the opposite of that.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Heh, your reasons for loving Scheme are basically word-for-
| word why I love Python.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| python is more or less a scheme with syntax training wheels
| that make it a bit more beginner friendly.
|
| Not being facetious either. it has the same semantics and a
| lot of python's early adopters were former lispers.
|
| That said, scheme the language is much more powerful than
| python. in exchange for the easy syntax, python lost macros
| and took on a crippled lambda syntax.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Scheme is a lot smaller, simpler, and more elegant than
| Python.
|
| Though I like that Python takes some inspiration from
| Lisp, it has a lot of unnecessary complexity and
| inconsistency which leads to a lot of gotchas.
|
| Python's additional syntax make it less readable and
| harder to write for me than Scheme. It's only more
| "beginner friendly" if you're used to Algol-like
| languages, otherwise Scheme is simpler to understand.
|
| Just my 2c
| missmossmass wrote:
| A rather disdainful experience I had with Refurbed.com a couple
| months back: interviewer immediately reaches out to schedule a
| meet then proceeds to ghost you with the pretext that they were
| busy/sick. Only for them to later brag about their 0.5% success
| recruit rate. On Glassdoor and other sites alike, more than 60%
| applicants rated them negatively. What a garbage recruit process
| and honestly incompetent interviewers.
|
| Do not enable such. Walk out. End it.
| keyle wrote:
| It sounds like you fare well not working there.
|
| I have terminated politely some interviews that didn't sit right
| to me in the past.
|
| Something along the line of saving everyone's time and that I
| don't see myself a good fit at the present time.
|
| It's like a date gone wrong, you're not paid to be there neither
| to fake for approval. If it's not a good match, let the seat for
| someone else and find your own elsewhere; respectfully of course
| as the industry is small enough that another interviewer in that
| room might be a future colleague.
| Lio wrote:
| I like this reply, I think it nails it.
|
| You're there to show that you're a professional, so that's how
| you act at all times.
|
| If you decide the company isn't a great "cultural fit" then you
| can politely and professionally move on.
|
| Same with leaving a job in general. As soon as you decide to go
| there's no reason to not be as polite about it as possible.
| imroot wrote:
| I interviewed for a position on HN's "Who's Hiring" thread a few
| years ago. They asked me to do four different tech screens...but
| the kicker was, that they were all the same question.
|
| During the second one, I mentioned that this seemed a lot like
| the first one, but, did it anyway, a different way. During the
| third one, I literally just used the same code/approach I did on
| the first one.
|
| During the fourth one, I refused and said, "Hey, this...isn't for
| me." and then had two weeks of HR emailing me almost every day
| asking if I'd reconsider.
| agiacalone wrote:
| That kind of thing weirdly trips up people, though.
|
| I mean...not you or me or probably most people on HN...but it
| happens.
| lampshades wrote:
| I decide not to work there and then tune out the rest of the
| interview. I'll continue the loop for practice.
|
| If I don't like them after a few minutes of meeting them, I can't
| imagine how I'll feel when I have to spent a majority of my day
| dealing with them.
| baby wrote:
| I would probably have laughed as well thinking you were joking
| (my experience with scheme was kind of like brainfuck but with
| parenthesis)
| lamontcg wrote:
| Being an introvert I'm not quite sure I'd terminate the interview
| loop myself, but I'd probably stop trying to sell myself for the
| rest of the loop and start trying to figure out if I could ask
| questions that would reinforce that I shouldn't work there. My
| brain would go to the place where I was trying to teach myself
| how to better interview companies for their behavior--you're in a
| situation where you know you don't like this company, so what
| other data can you gather about that, and what questions could
| you ask of future companies that you interview at?
| wollsmoth wrote:
| The only thing I can think of is maybe this person thought you
| were lying. Picking a more obscure language to seem cool, or to
| make follow up questions more difficult. But I don't think they
| behaved appropriately in any case.
| [deleted]
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I really only faced rudeness when I was a junior engineer and
| didn't know better. I was brought in for a round of interviews
| and there was rudeness in two of the early interviews. I quickly
| lost interest in the company. (One interviewer was very rude
| about my working solution, and another interviewer was rude to a
| junior member of the staff.) When the recruiter followed up with
| me, I didn't have the maturity to give a frank report about the
| staff.
|
| ~20 years later, I should have politely left after one of the
| sessions. I should have found the hiring manager, told him that
| "I don't see myself working out well here," and then given much
| more candid feedback to the recruitment agency.
|
| But also, from that experience, I've learned to guide candidates
| more if they don't give me the answer I'm looking for.
| Specifically, if a candidate writes what I think is a sub-optimal
| solution, I'll say something like "can you make it faster?" or
| "can you make it more robust?" I _never_ expect a candidate to
| read my mind the first time, especially if the candidate is
| feeling overwhelmed.
|
| If I was in your situation, I probably wouldn't have walked out
| right away. If I was turned off the company, I'd have stayed
| until a break between sessions. If I was still interested or
| curious, I'd have discussed this particular employee with the
| hiring manager or HR rep.
|
| I've only "walked out" of an interview once; it was a phone
| screen and it very quickly was obvious that I wouldn't be happy
| there. I told the interviewer that I really liked their product,
| (I really did,) and I wished them luck. (I really did wish them
| good luck too.)
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| In the 2-3 times it has happened to me:
|
| What I want to do: Walk out
|
| What I did: Stay there in shock, wondering what to do, and
| seething in anger on the way home.
|
| Its like anything else--unless you regularly meet rude people,
| you are at a shock when you do meet someone
| um3shg wrote:
| falkenb0t wrote:
| I had a very similar experience (though not quite as extreme)
| with a Comcast interview. The interviewer would ask me about my
| experience and either cut me off before I could answer or
| practically insult me when I would give an answer to the effect
| of "I don't have experience with this specific technology but I
| do have plenty with this equivalent tech." It left a bad taste in
| my mouth afterwards but honestly, like many others are already
| saying here, that guy did me a favor by letting me know right up
| front that I would not like working there.
|
| I was fortunate in that it was only a 30 minute phone interview
| so I could just grit my teeth and wait it out but it is entirely
| reasonable to terminate an interview if you are not being given
| respect.
| ISL wrote:
| I don't think there's a need to terminate the interview at the
| moment of the incident, especially as they're a precious window
| into the culture of a company. You may learn a lot from watching
| the reaction of the remaining interviewers over the remainder of
| the interview.
|
| Assuming that the interviewee chooses not to pursue employment at
| the company, it seems optional but appropriate to leave
| constructive feedback with the recruiter/hiring manager on the
| way out.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Just roll with it. You really don't have much context on the
| laughter or the leaving. Both could have valid reasons. And maybe
| they don't and the person is an idiot - just roll with that too.
| anotherlab wrote:
| This thread has mentioned that it was unacceptable for the
| interviewer to walk out without saying why they were leaving, or
| even saying goodbye and thanking you for your time.
|
| While that was an enormous red flag, so is that they had laughed
| in your face about your choice for a favorite language. That
| person was extremely rude to you and that behavior was accepted
| by their co-workers.
|
| While wanting to end that interview right on the spot is a
| natural reaction, I would have kept going. Depending on the size
| of the your market, you could get tagged as that person that
| bailed in the middle of the interview. Depending on how the rest
| of the interview went, you could be direct and ask about that
| interviewer and if that was indicative of the company culture.
| [deleted]
| mgdv wrote:
| If the interview was like this, what does it say about the
| culture of the company? Either way, I would have politely
| terminated and left
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| As a fairly experienced interviewer, having administered well
| over 200 both as an employee and an independent... these guys
| dropped the ball - hard.
|
| If you are interviewing somebody, you are not there as
| 'yourself', you are representing the company and their
| engineering org, and by my understanding, it is exceedingly poor
| form to present the company as inconsiderate and to burn bridges.
| Even if you're having a bad day and the candidate is a poor fit,
| you suck it up and remain professional and collegial.
|
| The one who walked out should be removed from the interviewing
| pool. Maybe they're a good engineer, maybe not, but if they act
| that way consistently then their attitude and self control are
| not cut out for interviewing.
| housingisaright wrote:
| If something like this happens and I realise there is 0% I want
| this job - I just mentally check out & stop answering questions
| as well as I can etc. Although I think it is better to be honest
| about how you feel, end the interview and avoid wasting anyones
| time.
|
| It feels bad being disrespected and it is sometimes hard to shake
| off, but at least you probably dodged a bullet and weeks/months
| of wasted time.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| You did the right thing. Better to leave the interview on good
| terms and turn the job down than make a scene yourself and risk
| burning a future bridge (you never know when you might run into
| these people again).
| gradschool wrote:
| I can imagine it would have been upsetting but in time I'm sure
| you'll grow jaded. Since we're sharing stories, my last
| interviewer seemed eager to think I was an idiot (rightly or
| wrongly) and I couldn't summon the motivation to talk him out it.
| He asked if I know what reading and writing to a database means,
| and I asked if that was what he was asking me, and rather than
| answering he just moved on. When it got to the point of him
| saying that a person who knows absolutely nothing about databases
| might not be a good fit for the job, I told him I won't get my
| hopes up, thanked him for the interview, and wished all the best
| to him and the company.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Remember that you are interviewing the company as well.
|
| Identifying a toxic company through a rude interviewer saves you
| time and effort.
| omoikane wrote:
| This is a signal that you might not want to work for this company
| anyways. Interviewers should be aware that they are representing
| their company during the interview, and will be spreading an
| impression of their company beyond just the one candidate that
| they are currently interviewing.
|
| (I have not been in this situation but have had the reverse
| happening to me where the candidate walked out on me after
| performing poorly in the first few minutes. I asked if they want
| to at least stay for lunch, but they seemed like they were in a
| hurry to run away.)
| kmod wrote:
| I think the interviewing process is an extremely informative view
| into what it's like to work at that company. The exact steps to
| take depend on how bad it is / how much you want the job / other
| context, but I think it's a safe assumption that they are
| treating you like they treat their coworkers, and that this is
| not unusual behavior for the company.
|
| I've ended a few interview processes at companies due to things I
| observed during onsite interviews (not necessarily rudeness), and
| with the benefit of hindsight I think those were absolutely the
| right call.
|
| I did have one particularly rude interviewer once, but since it
| was in finance I thought it was a "stress interview". I took the
| job, and it turns out that this person was just toxic and the
| company had a culture of tolerating toxic people if they were
| high enough performers. I'm still glad I took the job, but the
| experience definitely was strong evidence of the link between
| what you see in an interview and what you get if you work there.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| At one point, I called out an interviewer during the interview on
| his bad behavior. However, this is not a good solution. I think
| he learned his lesson, but it certainly cost me a good
| relationship with anyone else at the company. Thankfully, it was
| a startup and I didn't need the job.
|
| The best solution in my opinion is to complete the interview,
| then politely inform the HR person that you are no longer
| interested in the job. If you are doing an onsite interview, you
| can feel free to leave during the middle of the day. When they
| ask why, politely say that you don't believe that this will be a
| good fit, and thank them for their time.
|
| Rude interviewers imply rude colleagues - if they are rude to you
| when they are on "interview behavior" you don't want to know what
| they are like otherwise.
| ideonexus wrote:
| I have social anxiety disorder, which I deal with in the
| workplace by putting on a "Customer Service" persona. So in any
| interview, I consider the interviewer as my customer and I want
| to make them happy. In an interview for a previous job, the Lead
| Architect was very aggressively putting me through several
| technical questions and at one point he told me I was completely
| wrong in one of my answers. When I politely tried to explain why
| I believed my answer was correct and offered to demonstrate on my
| laptop, he got angry and stormed out of the interview, leaving
| his two embarrassed looking coworkers to continue.
|
| It was a bad experience, but the other two interviewers were very
| nice and I really wanted to work for this non-profit, so I sent a
| follow-up email apologizing for upsetting the Lead Architect so
| much, saying that I thought it was just a misunderstanding, that
| there were multiple correct answers, and provided some
| documentation to further explain why I answered the way I did.
|
| I got a job offer that afternoon, and two weeks after I started
| they fired the Lead Architect. That same week, I went out to
| lunch with the team, where one of the interviewers told everyone
| about how I made the Lead Architect look so stupid during the
| interview and that I was so incredibly nice about it that they
| knew they had to hire me. Turns out it was a workplace where
| everyone highly valued politeness and the Architect had been
| antagonizing and bullying everyone for years. Ended up being one
| of the friendliest places I've ever worked.
| lmas wrote:
| Aww man thanks a lot for your story! Kindness is really the
| only way to treat people, including yourself. And you totally
| owned it!
| ipaddr wrote:
| The way you handled that should be taught. Great job it sounds
| like success will follow you wherever you go.
| shnock wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your story. I found it educational and
| will work to emulate some of your described behavior.
|
| I bet that lunch made you feel great!
| xisukar wrote:
| What a nice turn of events! You literally killed the Lead
| Architect with kindness haha
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but saying your favorite language is
| Scheme would get A LOT of interviewers to laugh, especially in
| the enterprise world where Java and C# are dominant. These aren't
| usually Hacker News browsing people, and if they have any
| association with Lisp, it's through a college course, rarely
| independent interest.
|
| Are you sure he didn't just walk out because he had other things
| to do and knew the others could take over?
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| In general, if an interviewer even laughed at a candidate for
| saying Visual Basic, I'd rip them off the interviewing team
| permanently, and reconsider whether they needed to work for me
|
| What the enterprise world does for languages isn't relevant.
| This level of disrespect, while representing my company, is
| deeply unacceptable.
|
| The fact that this person felt this was acceptable shows this
| company's management does not keep a proper workplace.
| foobarian wrote:
| > but saying your favorite language is Scheme would get A LOT
| of interviewers to laugh, especially in the enterprise world
|
| Or maybe the guy was partial to Haskell or Clojure or similar!
|
| Or maybe he just came out of a long painful meeting where he
| tried to persuade a committee to let him build a new service in
| Scheme, but failed.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| More like a nervous laugh.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Pretty much, unless asked, these places don't really want to
| hear about pure interests. You say Lisp in terms of industry
| relevance, they might be thinking "Okay, this guy is clearly
| a luddite and would make a scary employee".
| ericbarrett wrote:
| As an interviewer, I'd never mock somebody for saying their
| favorite language was Scheme (or any other language). I'd ask
| why it's their favorite, and maybe that day I'd be the one
| learning.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Here's my own best guess as to why they laughed:
|
| All the people I was interviewing with recently graduated from
| a top comp sci school.
|
| A lot of people have very limited experiences with Scheme in
| school, where they're usually forced to use a primitive Scheme
| from a million years ago. So they consider it to be a toy
| language, maybe suitable for education, but completely
| impractical for industry use.
|
| They tend to have no experience or knowledge of modern, full-
| featured Schemes with large library ecosystems.
|
| I wasn't asked why I liked Scheme, and wasn't given an
| opportunity to explain any of this or make the case for Scheme.
| We just launched directly in to whiteboarding... after which
| the interviewer who had laughed at me walked out.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I don't mean offense by this, but did they actually ask what
| your favorite language was?
|
| Either way, you have to understand why a regular firm would
| laugh at that. A lot of these run of the mill places are
| thinking in terms of API's. They don't really care about
| combinators, run time AST manipulation, or true benefits of
| dynamic typing.
|
| My guess is they're cranking out Apps, or some sort of cloud
| deployment.
| arethuza wrote:
| If pmoriarty was asked what his _personal_ favourite
| language was I 'd regard Scheme as a pretty interesting
| answer if I was an interviewer as it would indicate, to me
| at least, a genuine passion for the subject.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" did they actually ask what your favorite language was?"_
|
| Honestly, I don't remember. This was quite a few years ago,
| and at this point I don't remember whether they asked --
| probably not -- or whether I just blurted it out, because I
| love Scheme.
|
| What I most remember is the slap in the face I got in
| response to sharing with them something that I loved, the
| awful whiteboarding session, and that same interviewer
| walking out without saying anything.
| pdpi wrote:
| As an interview question, "What's your favourite language?" is
| only interesting if you don't ask it having a "correct answer"
| in mind.
|
| Depending on when you learn that you have to leave, you can
| either say "Sorry, I won't be able to stay for the whole
| duration of the interview" or "Sorry, I'm needed elsewhere, my
| colleague will handle the rest of the interview". Leaving
| without saying a thing (even if it's just a nod and a smile) is
| more disruptive for the candidate than saying nothing.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| That is true, it's not the nicest way to leave, certainly not
| how I would. But we all know "no nonsense" people who behave
| this way. All I'm trying to say is there's no definite reason
| as to why he got up and left.
| whistlerbrk wrote:
| I really dislike how you continue to dismiss or question
| what happened to the OP while continuing to find excuses
| for this type of behaviour.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I really dislike how you commiserate over this post like
| he's some sort of victim.
|
| OP should humble himself because A. It's not really that
| big of a deal, it's an opinion....about a dead language
| B. it's kind of an expected response in this industry. He
| also says himself that he doesn't even know if he asked
| what his favorite language was.
| arethuza wrote:
| It doesn't really matter _why_ - I don 't see any excuses
| for rude to someone in an interview - particularly someone
| who has just supplied a perfectly reasonable answer.
| Minor49er wrote:
| > As an interview question, "What's your favourite language?"
| is only interesting if you don't ask it having a "correct
| answer" in mind.
|
| It becomes interesting when it's naturally followed up with
| "why?"
| denysvitali wrote:
| You post the company name online and make bad press.
|
| The way he behaved isn't just disrespectful, it's completely
| fucked up.
| setgree wrote:
| There was a good thread on red flags during an interview last
| year https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26426602
|
| Repeating what I wrote then:
|
| >I once got stood up for a round of interviews -- I showed up,
| waited, emailed them multiple times to let them know I was there,
| and then 30 minutes later they wrote to me to ask if I could come
| in another day (rather than meeting me at the front desk where I
| was sitting). At the time I was just annoyed that they had wasted
| my time, but in retrospect, the real red flag there was that no
| one took responsibility -- "there was a scheduling conflict" was
| as much as I got.
|
| As to how you handled this particular situation, OP -- I think
| you handled it fine and I wouldn't worry too much. I think most
| of us would have been flummoxed by this person's extremely
| unusual behavior.
| shaggie76 wrote:
| There was a recent article that bubbled up HN that I can't find
| with life lessons from a wise old programmer that posted a new
| list every year.
|
| One of the things that stood out to me from hist list went
| something like "discover the thrill of being extremely polite to
| people who are rude to you." Being no saint myself this really
| resonated with me.
|
| I wouldn't walk out, and I certainly wouldn't take an offer, but
| I'd stay for the interview for the trill of behaving excellently.
| mark-wagner wrote:
| It was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31199300
|
| > It's thrilling to be extremely polite to rude strangers.
| shaggie76 wrote:
| Thank you!
| buescher wrote:
| I had a couple interviews when I was young and callow and really
| needed the job that still stick with me. One was with a large
| company that's still around. The HR manager accused me of lying
| on my resume after I interpreted something like "where are the
| stretchers, c'mon, everybody exaggerates on their resume?" as
| "discuss the limits of what you claim on your resume". I learned
| later this line of questioning is promoted in some books as a
| "trick" for getting people to admit they lied on their resume. I
| was pretty rough around the edges back then, so I was rude back,
| which I regret.
|
| I am now a hiring manager and have conducted countless interviews
| at this point.
|
| You did the right thing continuing the interview professionally.
| Assume the most charitable interpretation. You don't know the
| whole situation with the jerk. Maybe he just started and this is
| the start of a chain of problems that will get him fired. Maybe
| he just needs training on how to interview. Maybe he's OK
| otherwise but they'll never let him interview anyone else again.
| Maybe he's only sort of a jerk normally but he was leaving for a
| funeral or something.
|
| There's just no good reason to get yourself a "not now, not ever"
| note in the company's files and your interviewers' memories just
| to indulge a bit of social revenge. That said, use your best
| judgment and certainly remove yourself from an interview for
| illegal, dangerous, unethical, or threatening behavior. The
| crazies are out there.
| akhmatova wrote:
| _Then they just walked out in the middle of the interview without
| saying a word when it wasn 't going well, leaving the other
| interviewers to continue without them._
|
| Then you should walk out as well. Explaining calmly but
| confidently why you are doing so, of course, to underscore the
| fact that you can still be a professional even when they are not.
| But either way -- the interview had clearly lost any purpose by
| that point, so the sooner everyone can cut their losses and move
| on, the better.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| easy. you immediately flag the job in your mind as NO and move on
| mentally. try to be polite and diplomatic but still abort ASAP
|
| what I do
|
| life is too short, and good engineers in too high of demand, to
| put up with toxic people or groups in your life. trick is to spot
| them early, before you've said YES and began a serious mutual
| time investment
| q3 wrote:
| Just say "Sir, I have given you an argument, I am not obliged to
| give you an understanding" and then hop out the window.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Disappointed that this wasn't Feynman. However thank you for
| bringing it to my attention.
|
| My unequal trade,
|
| "The rain, it raineth on the just, And also on the unjust
| fella, But chiefly on the just, because, The unjust steals the
| just's umbrella."
|
| edit: I was obviously thinking of "I can only explain it to
| you. I can't understand it for you." but that appears not to be
| Feynman either. Oh well!
| lizknope wrote:
| I'm in semiconductor design not software but we write a lot of
| scripts.
|
| One of my good friends is an analog custom layout expert in
| Cadence Virtuoso and its built in scripting language SKILL is a
| version Scheme / Lisp. If you told him that your favorite
| language was Scheme he would probably try to hire you just for
| that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_SKILL
| jhgb wrote:
| Wow. So in the past I used to tell myself "it's the Cadence
| RESEARCH Systems that has something to do with Scheme" (they
| used to make Chez Scheme before Cisco bought them), but now
| you're telling me that both Cadence RESEARCH Systems _and_
| Cadence DESIGN Systems have their own Scheme dialect. That is
| in no way confusing! :)
| endisneigh wrote:
| Wow, what company is this?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I'd like to say, but that would be unprofessional.
|
| This was a long time ago, and they were a very small startup.
| Odds are you haven't heard of them. It's definitely not any of
| the big names.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I can handle rude interviewers all day. It's the (outlier) ESL
| ones that present my greatest difficulties. I know they're trying
| their best and so I sit through the interview because I want them
| to not know I'm miserable if I leave. Still, we both know nobody
| will be getting a callback afterwards.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Pushy interviewers are my favorite, since that's my personal love
| language, and combative people usually respond well to
| appropriate pushback. Plain rude? I'll walk out first, watch me.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| When I had such experiences (very rare) I continued the
| interview, then I left and never came back. Life is too short for
| something else.
|
| Oh, and I told all my friends to avoid those companies. It was a
| nice gesture for my friends, not a "cancel X" move.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| An interview is a two-way street. Presuming you're the candidate,
| the organisation is selling itself as much as you are you. The
| key difference is that there tend to be more candidates than
| positions --- the employer has a superior BATNA (best alternative
| to negotiated agreement).
|
| That said, I've had several interviews I'd concluded I wasn't
| interested quite early in the process. In one case I wrapped
| relatively quickly, and immediately told the recruiter I was not
| in the least interested. In another, the situation wasn't
| hostile, but was _so_ bizzare I continued the interview simply to
| try to understand what the heck was going on.
|
| It would be extraordinarily rare for an interview to pose a
| direct threat, so continuing with a viewpoint that the experience
| is simply practice doesn't hurt. I've also had other staff who'd
| interviewed me and then left that position contact me with other
| offers, so from a networking perspective, the experience can
| still be useful.
|
| There were other opportunities I should have passed on but did
| not. Having additional options is extraordinarily useful. Those
| are among my regrets.
| ddingus wrote:
| [morbid curiosity piqued]
|
| Yes, what was so bizarre?
| what_is_orcas wrote:
| I'd like to hear more about the bizarre interview, if you're
| willing to elaborate.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Interview had been made by a founder, who wasn't present to
| interview me. I'm not sure they even existed.
|
| Interview was conducted by a recently-hired, recently-
| graduated (and _very_ fresh-out-of-school) developer.
|
| The business prop just didn't make sense.
|
| After about 15--20 minutes, I was just trying to make sense
| of the situation / why they were even at the firm.
|
| I watched for further developments from the company for a few
| years, I'm not aware that anything ever came of it, so at
| least this one time my sense that this could never pan out
| was in fact correct.
|
| (Stupid ideas often have a much longer runway than seems
| remotely possible, especially when money also gets stupid.)
|
| I don't recall the name of the company any more.
|
| They were in search space, and are neither alphabetic or
| waterfowl-inclined.
| spicymaki wrote:
| > At the time I didn't say anything, and just continued the
| interview as if nothing happened, but in retrospect, I think I
| should have politely terminated the interview myself...
|
| This is an awful experience and I think it is better to not
| second guess yourself after a traumatic experience. We are not
| machines, we are human beings, and getting shot down (in a cruel
| fashion) when the stakes are high is not something we should be
| expected to handle well.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > traumatic experience
|
| Someone being rude to you is not traumatic.
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| Don't work at that company
| tomerv wrote:
| That is extremely unprofessional behavior from that interviewer.
| But how did the other interviewers respond? I think that the
| "correct" response really depends on that: *
| Other interviewers don't say anything -> ask what's up, and
| whether this means the interview is over. Point out that you
| don't feel comfortable continuing like this. * Other
| interviewers show they are "on your side", i.e. as confused as
| you and don't endorse that behavior -> continue the interview,
| and maybe later try to figure out what happened. Consider it a
| yellow card (in Football speak). Make sure that you don't ever
| work with that specific person.
|
| Of course, this is all easy to say from the comfort of my desk!
| DavidWoof wrote:
| Is it really all that unprofessional? We're completely missing
| context here. Maybe I'm just too forgiving of people's quirks,
| but I've definitely had people smile/chuckle when I've said my
| favorite language was Haskell and that's led to interesting
| conversations rather than uncomfortable silences. People laugh
| at all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons: the fact that
| the interviewer had any reaction at all to an obscure language
| seems like a positive thing to me.
|
| And leaving when the "interview wasn't going well", makes me
| picture OP struggling at the whiteboard and somebody not
| wanting to interrupt him. Sometimes people have to leave. To
| me, this fits into the category of devs often being unthinking
| rather than actively rude, and those are completely different
| categories to me.
|
| I feel like we too often ascribe malice to people for what are
| often just cultural differences.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| _To me, this fits into the category of devs often being
| unthinking rather than actively rude, and those are
| completely different categories to me._
|
| I want to address this quote because I've been this guy, and
| I've had to train myself out of habits like these. When one
| acts without thinking the results are often quite rude. Not
| thinking through your actions and the impact those actions
| will have on others _is itself rude_!
|
| Now, I don't mean to ascribe malice here either, but you can
| be quite rude without malice. Intent matters, and its worse
| with malice. But simply being "absent minded" is also rude!
| Good people acknowledge it, apologize and move on. Some
| people dig in their heels and won't concede. YMMV. :)
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I was immediately more successful and worked less when I
| decided to be a nasty person. I kept a nice moat around my
| tecnhical work and always exuded confidence.
|
| Once walked out of a big meeting in frustration with a
| bunch of upper microsoft partners. The head of ops said
| something like "Well the only guy who actually knows what's
| going on just left. so the meeting is over" (at a fortune
| 500).
|
| I was an asshole. the whole team was assholes. We burnt out
| after about 18 months and 4 acquisitions.
|
| I don't want to be that person anymore
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Yeah, I've been that guy too. I agree it isn't pleasant.
| Sometimes I feel _driven_ to be that way by the actions
| of others. Thats when I know its time for me to step
| back, reassess, apologize if necessary, and try to move
| forward.
|
| But god damn do other humans make it hard.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" leaving when the "interview wasn't going well", makes me
| picture OP struggling at the whiteboard and somebody not
| wanting to interrupt him."_
|
| They were interrupting me constantly during the
| whiteboarding. That was actually one of the other things I
| didn't like about the team. They wouldn't give me time to
| fully answer their question before butting in and telling me
| how they would do it. Half the time I felt like they were
| solving it for me. When I expressed my dismay they told me
| they didn't actually want a solution from me but were just
| trying to determine whether they could work with me or not,
| because that's how they came up with solutions at their
| company.
|
| In any case, they clearly had no problem with interrupting
| me. So when the person who had laughed at me later just got
| up and walked out during the interview (after the
| whiteboarding) without saying a word, it did seem kind of
| rude.
|
| I've been in lots of interviews throughout my life, and never
| once did anyone act remotely like this.
|
| Of course, I could have misinterpreted them, and maybe their
| laughter was good-natured (it seemed condescending to me).
| Maybe they had some good reason to leave in the middle of the
| interview, but they could have just excused themselves.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I only whiteboarded once as a junior role. It was actually
| kind of fun, but they gave me a skills appropriate
| question, had some good feedback, and let me do the whole
| thing in pseudo C code.
|
| I had good feedback too! It was a sort of take on a
| sorting/search problem with a ton of inserts if I recall.
| Each loop I had, I was reallocating the size of the array
| by 1 or so. They pointed out, hey, we actually know the
| size up front right? Let's just allocate the perfect amount
| right up front.
|
| The better other interviews I had weren't whiteboarding as
| much as talking through a problem. One is the famous
| "Urinal Algorithm". you walk into a bathroom with 10
| urinals. Where do you stand? No right or wrong answer
| there. Now you walk in as a second person.. where do you
| stand?
|
| A second was a sort of "Whats the minimum number of steps
| you can take to determine where an element is in an
| array?". you know getting 'hotter/colder' like the kids
| game, but you can jump around. It's not stated in all
| algorithmic terms, but you can figure it out with a bit of
| grasping around and its important for me to see someones
| process than it is to memorize an algorithm.
|
| it forces a junior person to think through a problem, with
| some guided help and as a more senior person now, i see
| that's more valuable in assessing if a junior person can
| fit in with your style of teaching.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "When I expressed my dismay they told me they didn't
| actually want a solution from me but were just trying to
| determine whether they could work with me or not, because
| that's how they came up with solutions at their company"
|
| I would say that has a certain logic, too and maybe all in
| all you were just not a good fit for that company culture.
| Not that you lacked skills, but simply that your social
| norms are not compatible with that company (the company
| seems special, though)
|
| It seems both parties should have ended the interview more
| early.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" how did the other interviewers respond?"_
|
| The others completely ignored it and acted like nothing unusual
| was happening... though I did sense that one of them was
| uncomfortable when the interviewer who had laughed at me just
| got up and walked out.
| [deleted]
| appleiigs wrote:
| When meeting people for the first time, I will often say
| something quirky just as test. Their reaction is great info to
| have. There are so many different reactions that a rude
| response is a major red flag and I'm done or wary from then on.
|
| Good responses are, on one side of spectrum, they think it's
| funny and interesting. In the middle (also good responses) they
| or ask why or politely disagree. On the not so good, they
| politely disagree but think you're stupid without saying it.
| Then, out of all those response options, if they pick being
| rude, then you have a very strong indicator.
| feoren wrote:
| Out of curiosity, can you give some examples of quirky test
| things you say?
| appleiigs wrote:
| It should just be part of the conversation... it's
| typically contrarian to what the conversation is
| discussing, or opposite of your stereotype.
|
| If they're discussing alternative music, I say "uh, i like
| Taylor Swift". If they're discussing cars, I'd say I love
| minivans ("they're so useful!").
|
| After reading the OP comment, saying my favorite language
| is Scheme is one I might try when talking programmers haha.
| In this case, I don't know anything about Scheme, so I'd
| see their reaction and just say I was just joking.
| edm0nd wrote:
| Hello I like Taylor Swift and Minivans can we be friends?
| crispyambulance wrote:
| There is likely something else going on that the OP wasn't in
| on.
|
| The person who was rude might have been in a situation where he
| didn't want to hire someone but was compelled to, so his
| reaction might have been an unskillful projection of not
| wanting to go through the process. The others could very well
| have been mortified to the point of inaction or pretending it
| didn't happen. There's no way they could justify the behavior
| of their colleague.
|
| In any case, yeah, it's a sure sign of a toxic environment.
| That said, if the OP was in the right head-space, he could have
| used it as an opportunity for humor to take the edge off and
| help him and the others feel better.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I don't understand why someone would laugh at Scheme, but it's a
| minor thing. I would ask what's funny about it and ask him what's
| his favourite language.
|
| Seeing an interviewer leave during interview would leave me
| pretty unfazed as well.
|
| Overall, I wouldn't personally register this interviewer as rude.
| If it went over my threshold I would have just left.
| fredrb wrote:
| My worst experience was when an interviewer told me to stop doing
| the exercise because time was up, and proceed to say that they
| could "solve this exercise in 30 seconds by copy-pasting an
| answer from StackOverflow". They mentioned in the beginning of
| the interview that I could Google whatever I wanted and then said
| I "should've taken the hint if I wanted to complete the
| exercise".
|
| The complete interview was a joke. The person didn't know which
| position I was applying to; another guy joined the interview
| halfway through and asked if he should take over; and the worst:
| the main interviewer was boasting about working 12 hours a day as
| a contractor and getting double the salary from the actual
| employees.
|
| They didn't make an offer.
| jagger27 wrote:
| That's brutal. I can't imagine laughing in someone's face in any
| circumstance during an interview, and especially not in this job
| market.
| p0d wrote:
| As a teacher (former sysadmin) I find that ignorance and
| aggression often work closely together. I would have seen out the
| interview and moved on.
| alexashka wrote:
| The same way you deal with rude people everywhere else in life.
| An interview is just a conversation.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| With intense gratitude for the fact that I will only have to
| interact with this person once for an hour, and not five days a
| week, eight hours per day, forever.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I had a terrible interview at Citadel. The interviewer basically
| messed up all the things that we as an industry have learnt not
| to do over the last 10-20 years. Not just the format, but it was
| adversarial, trick questions, he interrupted all the time,
| belittled my ideas, and was generally an unpleasant person.
|
| I dealt with it by declining the offer I received and making sure
| to give feedback about that interviewer directly to the HR team
| and that he was a contributing factor. While considering the
| offer I enquired about whether he would be in my reporting chain
| and made it clear that was a dealbreaker for me.
|
| Apparently the guy gave me the best feedback of all my
| interviewers. Why then did he need to be like that?!
| aaron695 wrote:
| hcrean wrote:
| At the point you feel they are being rude, you know you don't
| want to be dependent on them for your income. There is nothing
| more to do here but waste everyone's time.
|
| This is the core truth of the situation. Be gentle with how you
| tell them this; but not telling them, or letting them believe
| something else is fundamentally dishonest.
| thisistheend123 wrote:
| Interviewed at Samsung ( Noida India) around 2016, where exactly
| the same thing happened with me.
|
| Was being interviewed by a panel of 4-5 people. The main guy, who
| I presume was the hiring manager stood up in the middle of the
| interview and left the room, seemingly unimpressed with my
| answers.
|
| Thankfully I didn't get through and heard many horror stories
| regarding their culture in later years.
| onion2k wrote:
| Burn a bridge and have some fun. Start asking questions like "Is
| rudeness acceptable at your shitty company?", "Is that guy too
| stupid to understand Scheme?", "Do you think I'd lower my
| standards enough to work for you?" etc.
| folkhack wrote:
| I do what I use to do on dates that weren't working out. I
| politely explain, "hey I'm not feeling this, nothing personal - I
| just don't think it's going to work out. I don't want to waste
| anyone's time so I am going to go home." Say this confidently and
| without a hint of anger to avoid conflict.
|
| People will get bit flustered but just kill 'em with kindness
| repeating the three main things in the quotes:
|
| * Not feeling it
|
| * Nothing personal
|
| * It would be rude to waste your time
|
| They'll eventually get it as you pick your stuff up and leave. If
| it's an interview I will thank the person for their time/the
| opportunity with a handshake on my way out the door.
| dominotw wrote:
| you can't do anything other than to just hang up and move on. You
| don't have to tolerate this kind of behavior.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Be honest with the next interviewer, tell them what happened and
| tell them you don't think you're a good cultural fit for the
| organization if they have that kind of person on staff.
|
| The next interviewer can either try to explain away the behavior
| "Yes, that guy's a jerk, but don't let him taint your perception
| of the organization", or maybe they'll say "Yeah, this is the no-
| nonsense culture we like around here, if you can't take
| criticism, then you're probably not a good fit".
|
| Either way you'll have more information about whether or not you
| want to work there.
|
| Tierh
| notananthem wrote:
| Depends how you want to handle it. If its rude, address it in the
| moment as you would a rude colleague. If its someone you'd report
| to, ask the other interviewers if this is to be expected (hint;
| it will be, but asking cements in these peoples' minds that its
| effecting hiring). Be loud and honest and mostly don't work
| there. There's a million places to work right now, but make it
| known why you won't deal with people's bs, or better yet address
| it in the moment and let them know its not acceptable. If its
| just "perceived rude" but fine, then great, you both learned
| something. If its fine and you just thought wrong, great lesson,
| you learned you were mistaken.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I'm curious about the "you're interviewing the company" comments
| here. I think that's true in a lot of places, but some will run
| algorithms interviews by entirely different teams. Is getting
| rudeness from a random person out of 10k enough to have you
| reconsider in those cases?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It was a very early-stage startup. All the people in the
| company were interviewing me at once. There were no others.
| evgen wrote:
| The thing to remember here is that this is not 1 person out of
| 10k, it is someone this company/team has specifically selected
| to perform the role of both interviewing you and trying to
| maintain your interest in the company and role. If a hiring
| manager is so bad that they would put someone like the person
| who OP encountered into a hiring loop then it is a good
| indicator that either the company is poorly managed or that the
| people who were not involved in the interview loop are even
| worse.
| nullbytesmatter wrote:
| Probably. Where there's smoke, there's fire.
|
| I still prefer overt rudeness to silent back stabbing, one
| upping sabotage though.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I used to be a recruiter. Have conducted thousands of interviews.
| Before I had my first big-boy developer job, I was interviewed by
| this rude manager and his boss (who was not rude) who thought he
| could get a 2 for 1 by hiring me to develop his websites while
| also working the phones as a recruiter.
|
| Now, anyone with any sort of sense will tell you that it's stupid
| to enter into a negotiation (which is what interviews are, even
| if you're probably not discussing acceptance and pay right away)
| without knowing about who you're talking to. And while I didn't
| have any specific knowledge of the inner-workings of his company,
| I was definitely familiar with his industry.
|
| I've always made it a point to carry a notepad with me when
| interviewing with people. I have a section of points I
| specifically want to highlight, and also a section on specific
| things about the company that I'd like to know more about. Turns
| out that rude-ass over there on the other side of the desk
| couldn't answer some pretty basic things about his own workplace,
| down to the commission structure for new hires. Things that a
| self-assured future captain of industry (as he presented himself)
| should have definitely known.
|
| At the end of the interview, I thanked them for their time and
| also told them that I did not think I would be a good fit due to
| my perception of their corporate culture. I don't know what
| happened after that, but I do know that as gracious as the owner
| was, he was staring daggers at his employee about halfway through
| my grilling.
| formjk wrote:
| I recently interviewed at a startup where I faced a very bully
| interviewer. First a bit of background about me ..I have few
| years of gaps in my career due to family responsibilities. But
| whenever I have rejoined work, i have always enjoyed the work and
| loved working in development role with active coding.
|
| The start of interview felt like he had made up his mind, being
| lady, with so many years of gap in between, may be she is no good
| for coding role. I was asked a question for which some particular
| answer was expected, which is commonly used for that domain, but
| since I had never worked in that domain, the answer didn't click
| instantaneously..
|
| And the very next question he asked me in next 2 mins time was
| "you don't know the answer because you haven't been coding ? "
|
| I politely conveyed that just because i dont know the answer to
| this question, doesnt mean i do not code. Its simply means that i
| have not worked on this particular problem and probably next time
| they should screen people with those particular skillsets. And i
| didnt continue the interview.
|
| It felt good. I didn't want them to bully me just because I am a
| candidate (and not employer) and tht too the one with not
| extremely impressive profile. Even if I had cleared the
| interview, I don't think I would have accepted to work with that
| company.
| stefanmichael wrote:
| I try to cut it early to stop wasting time, especially if its a
| small company and you will likely be working with that person. I
| had to do this twice out of 5 companies I interviewed at from YC
| a couple years back.
| FabHK wrote:
| Not sure how it is now, but in investment banking interviews,
| interviewers definitely used to be rude or obnoxious sometimes.
| To an extent, this was a deliberate move to test a candidate's
| reaction. If the pressure rises when the market goes south on the
| trading floor or when preparing an important presentation for a
| merger, temper might rise as well, and there is little time for
| niceties. Dealing with it reasonably graciously is an important
| qualification for working in that kind of environment.
|
| Now, I'm not advocating being an asshole. But when working with
| top people in high pressure environments it certainly helps if
| you can deal with assholes. It is a bit reminiscent of Postel's
| law: Be strict in what you send, but tolerant in what you accept.
|
| In this case, it could be that there was some other important
| meeting the person had to attend, and didn't want to interrupt
| the interview process with an explanation or goodbye.
|
| If you conclude that this is not the environment you want to work
| in, fair enough, and concluding the interview politely at that
| point would certainly have been an option - it seems that the
| organisation and you were not a good fit anyway.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| One good way of dealing with that sort of rudeness is to
| confront it directly, _being extremely polite_. "Excuse me???"
| with a directed look. "I'm not sure I understood you correctly,
| but did you really mean to imply..."
|
| Watch the walkback.
| FabHK wrote:
| Yes, or just ignore it. Experience with non-neurotypical
| people, or other cultures, can help you learn how to just
| shrug things off that you could otherwise perceive as rude.
| And then you can shrug it off even if it was intended to be
| rude.
| xmaayy wrote:
| I think the intention though is to confront it rather than
| just ignore it to either help the interviewer realize its
| not acceptable, or just make them less likely to do it
| again.
| whalesalad wrote:
| The same way I deal with rude people anywhere in life: call them
| out on it.
| leke wrote:
| If the interviewer is very talented, and has instead of delusions
| of grandeur, realisation of grandeur, he may well get away with
| it. I knew such a person in a company. The less experience and
| knowledge you had, the less he would respect you. He was actually
| pretty chill with other smart people, but of course this didn't
| make him a good human being.
|
| I think you did well to stay in the interview. Hell I even would
| have taken the job if it was offered. I mean if you are desperate
| for work, you have to just deal with it. You can always stick up
| for yourself in the mean time.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I leave
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| First, I would just be glad I dodged a bullet. Then probably just
| send an email to the recruiter and/or hiring manager about it and
| move on.
|
| Your intuition to end the interview yourself is good as well.
| FpUser wrote:
| Being in a market for decades I do not remember a single case of
| an interviewer being rude. Incompetent sure but never rude /
| impolite.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I think your answer was appropriate. It's very hard to find the
| best response in this kind of unexpected situation. Probably best
| to continue the interview, and report the bad behaviour to the
| recruiter/HR.
| bitwize wrote:
| > I've had an interviewer laugh in my face when I told them my
| favorite language was Scheme.
|
| Anyone who has contempt for the beauty of Scheme is a liability,
| not an asset, to your team and you can safely recommend no-hire.
| nouveaux wrote:
| I had to control-f too far down for this comment. I would have
| a hard time working with anyone who laughed at the idea of
| anyone's favorite language, let alone a language like Scheme.
| There are reasons to dislike Scheme but it's hard to argue
| against how amazing the language can be.
| mirntyfirty wrote:
| I've had a couple phone interviewers get much too aggressive at
| which point I told them it looks like they'll need to find
| another candidate. Strangely, they both called and emailed back
| apologizing at which point I went elsewhere on my merry way. I
| think it's necessary to have a certain amount of patience with
| interviewers but that certain boundaries have to be respected.
| _wldu wrote:
| I always ask what is your favorite language and why. And I've
| never laughed at the answer. I'm genuinely curious to know why
| they feel that way. I've learned a lot from the answers (about
| the candidate and about the language they like most).
|
| If someone laughed and walked out. I would ignore it. I would be
| surprised at that type of reaction, but would remain professional
| and make a mental note to not work there. That's a very bad sign.
|
| Diversity is what makes us strong. This applies to programming
| languages and differences of opinions as well. Sure, someone has
| to call the shots and make a decision (we will all use Go or
| Java) but having devs who know other languages, and have strong
| views as to why they like them, is a good thing.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| As someone on the other side of the table, if someone doesn't
| feel an interview is going well (either because they can see they
| aren't going to get hired or because they don't think they would
| accept even if they were offered), I want you to politely tell us
| something along the lines of "I'm sorry, but I don't believe this
| is the best fit for either of us. I appreciate the chance, but I
| think we should end it here." Each side shakes hands with a
| smile, and we go on our own ways. In the end, it's a waste of
| your time and our time if either side has already made up their
| mind. We, the interviewers, end interviews early semi-frequently
| (for example, if one is going poorly we will just skip a coding
| test). There's no reason the interviewee can't do the same.
|
| Just be polite about it. Don't burn any bridges. You never know
| when the other interviewers (the ones who stayed in your case)
| will be interviewing you at another company and remember you for
| leaving a bad taste in their mouth.
| protontorpedo wrote:
| Let me politely disagree with you. I conduct interviews
| regularly and often the candidate's perception about of own
| performance doesn't match reality. More often than not, they
| are worrying about aspects of their code that we don't really
| care about, or concerned about some mistake they made. It's
| better if both sides just commit to completing the interview,
| even if you have strong feelings it isn't going anywhere.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _Let me politely disagree with you. I conduct interviews
| regularly and often the candidate 's perception about of own
| performance doesn't match reality._
|
| Agreed. In my own case, when I'm interviewing people I
| frequently ask at least one or two questions that I really
| don't expect anybody to know the answer to. It's more of a
| "here's your chance to really extra impress me", but _not
| knowing_ the answer is in no way an indication that you aren
| 't qualified. One of my favorites of this type is "Can you
| explain the difference between deadlock and livelock?"
| Anyway, when asking stuff like that I make it a point to
| always try to remember and emphasize to the candidate "there
| are no auto-fail questions here, and not knowing the answer
| to this does not mean we won't want you", etc. I've
| interviewed (as a candidate) enough times to understand how
| nerve wracking it can be, and I try my best to help the
| candidates not feel intimidated or whatever.
|
| And yet, I think sometimes people stumble on a single
| question, and suddenly get more nervous thinking that they've
| "failed the interview". Interviewing is not an easy process,
| for either side of the table.
| Lio wrote:
| Being told by a candidate that they don't know the answer
| to something is a really useful thing to hear.
|
| There are times when you want someone to show initiative
| and come up with a solution on the spot and others when you
| really just want someone to clearly say, I don't know.
|
| It's always good to have at least one question where
| someone can demonstrate that intellectual honesty.
| FabHK wrote:
| > I frequently ask at least one or two questions that I
| really don't expect anybody to know the answer to.
|
| Just to expand on this: It seems really optimal, in terms
| of extracting information, if the candidate can answer
| about half the questions (maximal entropy, if you will).
|
| If the questions are too easy and the candidate nails them
| all, you're wasting time. If the questions are too hard and
| the candidate fails them all, you're wasting time. You want
| to quickly get to the limit of the candidate's knowledge,
| and spend some time there.
|
| This is particularly true if you aim to cover several areas
| of interest quickly.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| +100.
|
| It's another 20 minutes or whatever. Just smile and continue.
| arethuza wrote:
| My interview for my current role started with a mild
| disagreement about some aspects of the structure of the
| interview that caught me off guard - so I thought I had no
| chance.... :-)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Having sat on many panels I'll suggest there might be reasons why
| someone might seem rude. After a great curry the night before I
| once had to interview holding back what we call "Gandhi's
| revenge" around here. The scowl on my face probably terrified the
| poor kid, and then I made a dash for the toilet.
|
| Practice interacting and being in a professional conversant
| situation without reading too deeply into what you think is going
| on for the other person. Accept the situation on face value with
| the best and worst interpretations in mind, but not in effect.
| That's good for negotiating too. If you feel on the defensive
| because of an implied power relation, or misunderstanding, hold
| that thought, wait and see, it could get interesting.
|
| Since you allocated the time anyway, make the best of a recon
| opportunity. If the interviewer _is being rude_ , the fact that
| you are unruffled makes you the bigger person. Smile politely and
| you may unbalance them. Save any grand decision for the end.
| goodpoint wrote:
| One can very easily say "sorry I don't feel well" and walk out
| immediately.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| I disagree. It's unnatural to ignore nonverbal communication.
| If you had to take a shit and you were talking to the CEO of
| the company, wouldn't you do your best to hide that scowl and
| be polite?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Why not just be open about it?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Yeah, I would just say I have a bathroom emergency and
| excuse myself.
|
| Any human being should understand.
| nso95 wrote:
| Finna shit my pants g2g
| zamadatix wrote:
| "I think I'd be a perfect culture fit for this company".
| tomrod wrote:
| So many people will fit here :D
| Shish2k wrote:
| > It's unnatural to ignore nonverbal communication
|
| In my experience, most people _do_ pay a lot of attention to
| nonverbal communication... and they 're really awful at
| interpreting it. Basically taking any vague body motion as
| evidence in favour of their preconceived ideas :/
|
| My communications got noticably smoother when I made a
| conscious decision to ignore the majority of nonverbal
| communication; and if it seemed like somebody was trying to
| say something, I'd explicitly say "Hey, I get the impression
| that you're <angry/sad/etc>, am I reading that correctly?"
| and go from there rather than assuming.
| evandale wrote:
| > and if it seemed like somebody was trying to say
| something, I'd explicitly say "Hey, I get the impression
| that you're <angry/sad/etc>, am I reading that correctly?"
| and go from there rather than assuming.
|
| I like this and am going to try it!
| b20000 wrote:
| a recruiter for a space startup which shall remain unnamed but
| which anyone can guess who i am talking about, called me one day
| because of my experience with realtime embedded stuff in c/c++. i
| told her politely i was happy to consider applying but that the
| compensation was going to have to be significantly increased for
| me to consider joining, and she could not understand why i
| expected to be paid for my experience and education, background
| etc. after all, who doesn't dream about working for a SPACE
| company????? i then also mentioned i will not do any coding
| interviews, under any circumstances, but that i was happy to
| share samples of my work and talk about decisions i made
| designing hardware and writing firmware, middleware and user
| space applications. she then balked BUT WE ARE SENDING PEOPLE TO
| SPACE! and insinuated i must be a fraud or liar since i refused
| to deal with their standard bullshit procedure. the conversation
| then quickly ended with her turning it back on me and making me
| feel like i was completely stupid / unexperienced / incompetent
| etc. needless to say i will never work for these entitled people.
| aklemm wrote:
| Well, all I can is it's good to be old enough and financially
| secure enough to happily give them a "fuck you" and walk out
| myself.
| worik wrote:
| I had an interview for a job as a Perl programmer in the late
| 1990s.
|
| At the time I had about three years programming Perl, and I was
| keen to work in the (at the time) hot area of programming for web
| sites. I was working in C++ on Windows, fun enough but not as fun
| as Perl (it was the 1990s)
|
| I prepared carefully for the interview. Making sure I was clear
| about what I was expert at, what I was good at, and the parts of
| Perl that I was not so good at. At the interview I started out by
| carefully detailing all that I was expert and good at, took about
| five minutes, I thought it would help because if what I was good
| at was not what they wanted I could get back to work and no harm
| done....
|
| After my careful exposition the first question the interviewer
| asked me was: "Can you do object orientated Perl?" Clearly they
| had not understood a word I said, they were asking questions from
| a list after waiting for me to finish and I did not want to work
| for this firm. What a waste of time.
|
| So I decided to see just how much of their time I could waste. I
| carefully answered all the questions from their list, in as much
| excruciating and technical detail as I could. I watched them
| squirm. At the end of the list, there was the pro forma "any
| questions?". You bet! I had a lot!!
|
| In the end the interviewer was standing behind my chair, not
| quite physically pushing me out, but clearly very pissed.
|
| I was correct about not wanting the job. Three years later, after
| the company went broke, I had a contract trying to fix a site
| they worked on. Where their idea of OO Perl had been An Object
| for a SQL table, AN Object for Every Row, an Object for Every
| Value..... A huge mess.
|
| That was my first experience of "HR interview first" using
| outsourced HR firm. What a waste of money, and a red flag
| emerged wrote:
| noodle wrote:
| I don't work for that company. A company that would allow that to
| happen is probably not a company with a culture I'd like to be a
| part of.
|
| In your specific example, depending on how the rest of the team
| reacted, I might've also just stayed to the end.
| wkimeria wrote:
| I have not faced that level of rudeness, and I do think for
| something so egregious it is totally valid to terminate the
| interview (while explaining why), but I'd be curious how the
| other interviewers handled it.
|
| If that happened I would actually directly ask the other
| interviewers "Did I do something wrong or say something to offend
| him/her". Put the ball in their court and hear what they have to
| say.
|
| I also love swat535's suggestion to end the interview with "Thank
| you for the opportunity, I don't think I'm a good fit for this
| position"
|
| Also, you are right, I'd treat that as a data point into whether
| this is a company you want to work for.
|
| I once had a company ask me to interview (one of their recruiters
| reached out to me) and I was so so on it, but curious, so I took
| time off and scheduled a technical phone interview. 5 minutes
| after the interview should have started (I was waiting for the
| phone call and wondering whether I had messed up the scheduling),
| I received a brusque email from the engineer meant to interview
| me "I don't have time to interview you, reach out to our
| recruiter". You can bet my interest in the company tanked and
| when the recruiter tried to re-schedule me (without so much as an
| apology) I declined and ask they not contact me in the future.
| Because I figured either.
|
| 1: They hired jerks 2: Their engineers were so stressed that they
| viewed an interview as yet one more burden.
|
| I have been on the other side where a candidate we were
| interviewing (at the time I was a junior engineer and my
| interview partner was a Senior engineer). The candidate was so
| rude/condescending to her (but not to me, I wonder why) that
| after we finished our interview session we told HR and they
| cancelled the rest of his interviews and thanked him for his
| time.
| schmookeeg wrote:
| I'm always grateful when an interviewer shows me this side of
| them early in the process, it really saves everyone some time,
| and I dodge a bullet.
|
| In your scenario, I'd have probably just smirked at the (I hope
| embarassed) remaining interviewers, and said "welp, anything else
| you guys wanna discuss before I go? Because I think I see where
| we're all headed here" or some other lighten-the-mood banter.
| Then we can exchange recipes or new restaurant hotspots, shake
| our heads at how ridiculous tech can be, and be on our merry
| ways.
| tpict wrote:
| I once had a phone screen for a full stack SWE position where the
| interviewer was laser focused on the fact that I had previously
| held the title "web developer". The entire interview was spent
| defending myself from accusations that web developers "don't
| write code", or that "they're more about design" etc, while my
| resume described past job duties that were a 1:1 match with the
| JD. The canned "we'll be in touch shortly" was said with a
| chuckle and I never heard back from them.
|
| At the time, I was in desperate need of a new job or else have to
| leave the country, so it hurt to be dismissed so readily.
|
| These days I'd be more inclined to excuse myself early, but on
| the other hand, who's to say that this one person is
| representative of the company and their culture? Maybe they're a
| recent hire. Maybe I would have enjoyed the subsequent
| interviews. My only regret is that I didn't share my experience
| with someone else at that company.
| nullbytesmatter wrote:
| Consider yourself lucky. You got to find out the place wasn't for
| you before accepting an offer there and wasting more of your
| time. They did you a favor.
|
| It didn't happen to you, it happened for you.
| yakak wrote:
| You aren't there to fix them or help them hide their faults to
| future candidates.
|
| Mainly you want to leave a good impression on the other people in
| case you meet them elsewhere in the future and only show a lot of
| initiative fixing something like that if you are being hired in a
| role that actually focuses a bit on those soft skills.
|
| Personally, I once got far too involved in discussions with HR at
| a place where it clearly wasn't going to work out and they are
| high enough volume that it never mattered.. but I would prefer to
| have practiced the skills of never showing my hand and continuing
| along to learn more about their part of industry.
| pengaru wrote:
| Sometimes people have bad days, sometimes those days overlap with
| being pulled into an interview.
|
| I wouldn't get too hung up on it personally. It sounds like you
| behaved maturely and kept your cool, that's a desirable trait.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I would pair that with making them explain though. 1, It's fair
| and reasonable. No one reasonable can have a problem with it.
| 2, The response is more informative than the initial event
| itself.
|
| If it's unusual, then they should have no problem saying that
| and even apologizing. Or do they act like that was fine and why
| are you such a baby?
|
| Basically the same way I'd react or expect anyone else to react
| to the same action in any other context.
|
| "What's up with that guy?" or "What was that?" Should be easy
| enough to answer.
|
| The difference between "We don't know, and we apologize for
| that." and "What do you mean?" tells you more about the culture
| than the intial act by that one person.
| HomeGear wrote:
| How does one determine it was a "bad day" verse a bad person?
| The answer to which is critical in a job acceptance.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's just another of myriad variables to weight when
| considering the opportunity vs. others. Maybe the bad
| interviewer data point just bumps up the minimum compensation
| you'd accept for that particular opportunity, assuming you
| even get an offer.
|
| What's important here is you don't react to a bad interviewer
| unprofessionally by becoming a bad interviewee, producing a
| high probability of creating no offer at all.
|
| Friction occurs in any professional setting, how you handle
| it is part of what you bring to the table as a potential
| employee. Keep your eye on the ball; pursuit of the best
| offer one can garner.
|
| What you do with that offer is completely orthogonal. Even if
| you decide in the moment of that bad interviewer being a jerk
| that you'd never work for the company, there's no reason not
| to still kill it and discover what compensation you're
| walking away from. Plus it's just plain good practice at not
| empowering individuals to negatively affect your
| behavior/performance.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| You ask them and see what they have to say about it.
|
| An event like that is actually a kind of a bonus because you
| get to see how they handle that, do they think it was bad
| behavior or are they used to it and expect you to be used to
| it.
| pengaru wrote:
| > You ask them and see what they have to say about it.
|
| > An event like that is actually a kind of a bonus because
| you get to see how they handle that, do they think it was
| bad behavior or are they used to it and expect you to be
| used to it.
|
| This is not good advice.
|
| Don't squander _your_ interview time on such HR nonsense.
| You 're there to market yourself, it's a first impression
| type situation where you have the inquisitive attention of
| multiple stakeholders.
|
| For all you know that guy who's already left the interview
| process is just a Scheme hater and has basically done
| everything within his power to obstruct a Scheme enthusiast
| from finding a job.
|
| Voluntarily squandering more of your interview time on
| friction he created is not in your best interest, it's just
| empowering him.
|
| If you later are concerned with offer in hand, you can
| always have that conversation before accepting. At least
| that way you've demonstrated an ability to prioritize your
| use of time appropriately and not simply react emotionally
| in the moment.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| What are you talking about? What squander? Someone does
| something and you ask "What was that?" Let them say "That
| guy hates Scheme" or "We don't know, sorry about that.",
| or fail to.
|
| This much is basic human respect you give to anyone in
| any context.
|
| It's not good advice to suggest any less.
| pengaru wrote:
| _When_ you ask that question matters.
|
| By immediately spending more time on such nonsense you've
| chosen to give it top priority.
|
| Surely you have more important things to communicate to
| the remaining interviewers in _your_ interview, than
| someone else 's behavior.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| How much time do you imagine this consumes? You seem to
| be bringing a lot of weird ideas and assumptions to
| something pretty small.
| gigatexal wrote:
| See it for what it is: a red flag. Recently I had one where I had
| a feeling but threw it to the side because I thought I would give
| the person the benefit of the doubt. But then in email
| correspondence with who would have been my team lead or project
| manager/owner it became crystal clear that this person's
| personality and mine would not work. It also illuminated a lack
| of professionalism as well.
|
| I have been in this industry 10 years now. I am not a million
| dollar a year 10x engineer but I have taken jobs that paid well
| but that were horrible environmentally and know now that if I
| feel ominous things in just the interview then that's all I need
| to know to avoid a potentially toxic workplace.
| osrec wrote:
| As a younger guy, I used to really try hard to impress at
| interviews, regardless of the poor behaviour of the interviewers.
| Once I got a bit more senior, my tolerance for squirm-inducing
| tactics reduced drastically. By this time, I had conducted a few
| interviews myself, and knew what was appropriate and what wasn't.
|
| The minute I suspected any kind of inappropriate questioning, I
| used to just get up, thank them for their time and walk out. If
| you're getting stupid questions thrown at you, the interview is
| pretty much a lost cause anyway, so why waste time?!
|
| A little later, I discovered an even more enjoyable way to end a
| "lost cause" interview, that can repay to the interviewer some of
| the discomfort they caused you.
|
| Once you sense the interview is going south, and the interviewer
| is unnecessarily enjoying putting you under pressure, as a final
| resort, request that someone from HR be called to observe the
| interview. Even better if you have the HR reps number, so you can
| call them directly! Say that you feel that the methods being used
| in the interview are inappropriate and unnecessarily
| pressurising. It's no good sending an email after - you need to
| strike before the interview is over, while the iron's hot.
|
| It really changes the mood in a beautiful way, and lets you get
| your own back on power-tripping trash bags. You obviously won't
| get the job, but that's probably for the better, given the trashy
| people you'd be working with!
|
| Note: I worked in finance, where horrible interviews are sadly
| quite common.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| This is hilarious. I can think of a few situations where it
| would've come in handy. Thanks for sharing.
| 1minusp wrote:
| Wish i had had the presence of mind to pause and do the same in a
| recent interview (where despite 'pushing back' against a counter
| comment, the interviewer insisted that I didnt 'push back'
| enough). I retrospect, i had asked a couple of probing questions
| in an earlier interview about his funding for the initiatives he
| had proposed, and he might not have taken kindly to those
| questions (unjustifiably, i feel). Another git on the panel
| yawned in my face halfway thru a 45 minute interview. I've been
| in more than one interview situation where the interviewer seems
| tired out, hasnt had a good nights sleep etc. Comes across
| incredibly rude.
| agentultra wrote:
| Did the other interviewers in the room continue on without saying
| anything either?
|
| That's so strange. I'm not sure how I would have reacted to that
| but I don't think it would have been very kind. I like having a
| few good high-brow, back-handed slaps to throw around when I need
| to put rude people back in line. But walking out laughing? That's
| so surreal I feel like I would have simply done the same. I
| imagine it would've seemed a very chaotic scene to those
| remaining.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Did the other interviewers in the room continue on without
| saying anything either?"_
|
| Yep. They didn't say anything and continued as if nothing
| happened. Though I did get the feeling that one of them seemed
| uncomfortable after the interviewer who laughed at me walked
| out without saying a word.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Interview is a mutual process. The company checks if the
| candidate suits it, and candidate does the same about the
| company. I would sincerely thank that person, excuse myself and
| finished the interview.
| tristor wrote:
| If this happened to me, I would drop the call. But I would say
| something first so it is abundantly clear why.
|
| "It's obvious the workplace culture here is not conducive to
| professional collaboration. I'll be ending the call here, you can
| remove me from the candidate pool."
|
| That's it. No need to grandstand. Don't apologize. Don't thank
| them for their time since they've blatantly wasted yours. Just
| say why you are dropping off, then do it.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| In many difficult social situations, including this one, it helps
| to have a canned sentence ready to deploy.
|
| "Gentlemen, it's clear to me that we're not a good fit here.
| Let's not waste anymore of our time"
|
| Say it 10 times in front of a mirror or something and just push
| the mental button when you need to.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I can't help being reminded of the "Choice" PSA from The
| Stanley Parable:
|
| "If you find yourself speaking with a person who does not make
| sense, in all likelihood, that person is not real. Allow the
| person to finish their thought then provide an excuse why you
| cannot continue talking."
|
| https://thestanleyparable.fandom.com/wiki/Dialogue#Choice_Vi...
| bsder wrote:
| Maybe, but I'd probably finish the interview _anyway_. It 's
| good practice for learning how to calm down after you've been
| upset/slighted/abused, and you've already likely allocated the
| time.
|
| I might make a quick crack like: "Wow. Must be important.
| Anyhow, let's get back to what we were doing." in order to see
| what the reactions of others are and whether I get an apology.
| But I might not. Shrug.
|
| However, the probability of my taking a _job_ there would be
| close to zero after that. It 's just a huge red warning flag.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Might want to practice it as "folks" instead of "gentlemen" so
| the occasional woman doesn't trip you up.
| worik wrote:
| There is no gender neutral term (is there?) for "gentlemen".
|
| "My noble friends"?
|
| "Good people"?
|
| Does not quite feel the same. Perhaps it is my linguistic
| habits too ingrained
| pestatije wrote:
| Yeah, and at the same time avoid the "gentle" part. Being
| rude disqualifies them as gentle
| [deleted]
| KerrAvon wrote:
| But using "gentlemen" (if gender appropriate) in that
| situation qualifies you as polite and considerate. It's not
| about them.
| narag wrote:
| _Folks..._
|
| [Not an English native] Isn't that a little too informal?
| Bugs Bunny came to mind.
|
| Is "ladies and gentlemen" somehow out of fashion?
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| For my next magic trick...
| worik wrote:
| In the modern world gender neutral is more than "both
| genders".
|
| Some women get pissed at being called a "lady".
|
| It is a minefield, but better than using low English
| phrases like: "folks", or "guys" (that is a gender neutral
| slang term in my world)
|
| Always use high English when talking business. Formal
| language every time.
|
| Fuck the cunts!
| lostlogin wrote:
| The medical comedy show 'Getting On' covers this in the most
| cringe worthy way, with a senior female doctor addressing a
| group of juniors (male and female) as 'gents'.
| [deleted]
| dymk wrote:
| Gentlepeople
|
| Gentlefolx
| bendbro wrote:
| The point was to _not_ look like a dweeb!
| wccrawford wrote:
| I would just leave out the world altogether. There's no need
| to address them. They know who you are talking to.
| ddingus wrote:
| Or just say, "everyone"
|
| This is all just flow and it depends on the speaker. Having
| a bit of a lead in can help some people. Gets in the way
| for others.
| rendall wrote:
| It bears repeating
| ddingus wrote:
| Dang it!
|
| Not sure how that happened.
| ddingus wrote:
| Or just say, "everyone"
|
| This is all just flow and it depends on the speaker. Having
| a bit of a lead in can help some people. Gets in the way
| for others.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Another suggestion I've heard for this is "you all".
| ddingus wrote:
| Yes very common in the south. The funny one is, "all you
| all."
| Hasu wrote:
| No one in the south says "you all", that's Yankee talk.
| It's "y'all".
| ddingus wrote:
| Exactly right. I was using the voice dictation and it
| didn't type the short form.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| It doesn't have the same power if you don't say who you're
| addressing. Yes, it's logically obvious you're speaking to
| the people in front of you, but this isn't computer logic,
| it's human interaction.
| SilasX wrote:
| Exactly. If it didn't fill some communicative function,
| the vocative case would have fallen out of use a long
| time ago.
|
| For my part, I prefer "amigos" in all but the most formal
| contexts, except ... that's arguably not gender neutral
| either.
| spicybright wrote:
| +1 on the practice. I don't have enough fingers and toes to
| count the number of times I sounded like an ass and didn't
| communicate my message clearly enough because of the heat of
| the moment.
| ISL wrote:
| Yep -- even a single preparatory iteration makes a huge
| difference for many tasks.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| +1
|
| Perhaps have a harsher/rude version in case you see someone not
| respecting your time and are being rude.
|
| "Folks, it's clear to me that I don't want to work here. I
| don't want to waste any more of my time".
| [deleted]
| KerrAvon wrote:
| There's no need to match their rudeness. Take the high road.
| Your karma is your own.
| mekoka wrote:
| OP's approach is punitive enough and really is all you need
| in most situations. Although sinking to rudeness can be a
| natural and spontaneous manifestation of anger, it's rarely
| worthwhile. When facing a rude or angry person you further
| lose because they managed to pull you into their own personal
| hell.
|
| Such disagreeable situations call for calm and playful
| assertiveness. You catch the opposite party off guard by
| politely calling them out and exposing them for being an
| asshole. You leaving thereafter also strips them of the
| opportunity to correct their immediate behavior and thus,
| robs them of a chance to demonstrate that it was, in fact, a
| misunderstanding. That can be quite frustrating, since most
| rude people really like to project the veil of being decent
| human beings and hate the idea of someone thinking less of
| them.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| I used that once a few years ago with a very rude CTO/VP Eng.
| They had given me a "coffin" problem (e.g. expected to fail)
| during the interview. I was working on it overnight while
| sitting with my elderly mother-in-law in the hospital. I spoke
| with them that next day, with 0 sleep, but still gracious and
| apologetic that I'd not finished every element of the problem.
| I didn't tell them why.
|
| They didn't like the not finishing part. I got an email later
| on saying thanks but no thanks. I asked them if they wanted to
| see the work they asked me to do. That piqued their interest.
| They then asked if I was still interested.
|
| I said, "No, I think we are done here."
|
| Assholes are a major red flag. You really need to avoid them.
| Your life will be much better without them. Look up the
| companies on glassdoor, search for the people you speak to
| ahead of time, see if there are any major issues. You'd be
| surprised at how easy some of these are to find with careful
| digging. Though you need to be adept at filtering disgruntled
| people seeking reputational revenge versus specific critiques.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > It's clear to me that we're not a good fit here. Let's not
| waste anymore of our time
|
| IMO this effectively terminates all possibilities. IMO it might
| be more effective to say a break in the convo adding something
| tailored to what you're feeling/observing.
|
| "I'm getting the sense that something's off here. "
|
| Distracted/Disinterested - "Is there something more pressing
| you need to attend to?"
|
| Rude - "Can you tell me about your company values and how you
| treat eachother?"
|
| Superiority - "Can you tell me a bit about how CompanyX mentors
| and develops new talent?"
|
| etc -- put it out to them assuming the best, but implying
| you're now interviewing them about their qualities.
| medler wrote:
| This is such a good response. Rather than shutting everything
| down and walking out, which could itself be perceived as
| rude/arrogant, you allude to what you're perceiving and start
| a conversation about it while assuming good intent on their
| part.
| pfortuny wrote:
| You might have pointed that out to the other interviewers to show
| that you are below no one, and you do not allow being laughed at.
| That may lead to a much more interesting interview.
| effnorwood wrote:
| giantg2 wrote:
| I had a tech lead and manager interview me for an internal
| position. The tech lead was on her laptop the whole time. The
| manager asked her if she had any questions. So she asked me
| something. I started giving my response and she went straight
| back to her laptop. When I was done answering, she didn't say
| anything or even acknowledge my answer. There was a long pause
| and the manager picked back up. I finished the interview.
|
| Before I could decline the position in the system, they called me
| and offered the job. I said something to the effect of "thanks
| but I'm don't think it was a good fit. Good luck in the search".
| Then he started pressing me for why I'm turning it down. I told
| him I didn't think I would get enough support/growth from the
| tech lead if they can't even take time for the interview (also it
| made me think the team might be overworked).
|
| Then the manager called my current manager. Both managers
| couldn't understand why I turned it down. How? How can they not
| understand that even after I explained it?
|
| So in summary, I finished the interview and declined the offer. I
| would have withdrawn my application but didn't get to it fast
| enough.
| FatalLogic wrote:
| >I think I should have politely terminated the interview myself
|
| Yes, do this. Walk. The behavior is unacceptable and tells a
| terrible story about the company culture.
|
| Perhaps if the remaining interviewers apologized immediately, you
| could reconsider, but probably not.
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| > I told them my favorite language was Scheme
|
| Well done for being honest and not tailoring your knowledge set
| to the requirements of the position, like many people do. Often
| people learn something just because it's advertised fiercely in a
| company's 'requirements'. This is why I refuse to learn React,
| Vue, Angular etc because although they're required often, a
| baseline of HTML, CSS & JS will outlast the new 'soup of the day'
| framework.
| vsareto wrote:
| I'm with you in general, but Angular/React have been around
| long enough that they're no longer trendy new frameworks
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I'm interviewing as well lately. I haven't run into anything
| remotely like this, but I've ended several interviews early.
|
| It's totally okay to call it if you know you aren't interested.
| In fact it's more polite to save everyone's time. I'd recommend
| opening up to the idea that the interview is yours as much as
| theirs, and you can leave any time you'd like. Just be very
| respectful about it.
|
| What happened to you is bizarre. Many many years ago I had a
| slightly drunk guy interview me and tell me I wasn't the right
| caliber for his team, haha. That was so weird. Maybe I should
| have gone in there totally hammered and I would have gotten the
| job.
|
| Sometimes you just know it isn't meant to be though and you've
| got to just call it.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| hmmm. Sounds like it was a group interview in real life?
|
| I think after that person had left the room I would probably
| interrupt the interview to ask who that person was and what their
| role is. Then I'd ask about the general culture of the company.
|
| I think I'd be curious to know if that was someone who would be a
| peer or someone higher up the chain. In either case I might pull
| out of the process though. I have met enough "brilliant assholes"
| in. my life I have little interest in working with anymore of
| them.
|
| I'd also be curious to know why he is involved in the interview
| process.
|
| might depend on how bad I need/want the job. If the company is
| big enough I'm unlikely to see that person then I might just let
| it slide. I don't know the specifics of where you are in your
| career and job search, but this is a great time to be looking for
| work in tech.
|
| I don't think I'd terminate the process there. You're already
| there, you might as well get some interview practice in. If you
| get an offer and you'd like to decline because of that interview
| experience. Tell them!! CC as many people as you know there too.
|
| Good luck with your search, and sorry you went through that. It's
| unacceptable.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It was a very small, very early stage startup. All the people
| in the company were interviewing me at the same time (live, in-
| person, in one room), and if I was hired I'd work intimately
| with all of them.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| oof. Yeah, I think I'd probably keep on truckin just for the
| practice but I'd have serious reservations about accepting an
| offer. I've had interviewers seem kind of dismissive before,
| but what you described was pretty bad imo.
|
| if they ended up extending an offer I would decline and say
| why. A company that small probably needs that fellow and
| they're unlikely to fire him about this. Maybe he was having
| a bad day.
|
| Probably small consolation but this experience is a good
| story and frankly if this is how they are to work with, I'd
| rather see it revealed before joining. As awkward as it was
| imagine finding out that you made major life changes just to
| work with some assholes.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| My co-founder from a past startup and I were once pitching a
| well-known investor. He put his feet up on the table and pulled
| out his phone.
|
| My co-founder paused, and very calmly said something like "X, if
| this isn't a good use of your time then tell us so we don't waste
| ours, either". He immediately put his feet down, his phone face
| down on the table, and politely paid attention the rest of the
| pitch. He obviously didn't invest but we walked out of there with
| our heads held high.
| ergocoder wrote:
| The wording is a bit confrontational.
|
| I'd just ask if this is a good time. Otherwise, we can
| reschedule.
|
| Then, I can decide later whether I will actually reschedule.
|
| It is never a good idea to add shading like that.
| throwaway_1928 wrote:
| Or not confrontational enough.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont think it is shade, it is direct and to the point.
| saila wrote:
| The advice to not add "shade" seems to be predicated on some
| perceived power differential, but everyone's time is equally
| valuable. Regardless, I don't see any shade. It's just direct
| and to the point.
| ergocoder wrote:
| "Shade" is subjective. It is better to ensure there is no
| shade at all.
|
| > perceived power differential
|
| Not really. It is game theory.
|
| You earn nothing by throwing shade apart from emotional
| satisfaction.
|
| It is only beneficial to go above and beyond to ensure
| nobody feels any shade to anybody. You never what you will
| need in the future.
|
| > everyone's time is equally valuable
|
| Trying to repeat a tautological statement is a shade, IMO.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Game theory without taking human memory and emotion is
| flawed.
|
| If you never see the person again and you've held your
| head high you will feel more confident.
|
| If you play game theory the emotional damage might haunt
| your next interview.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| The wording might be, but it's hard to convey the tone, and
| in my opinion, my co-founder's tone was both forceful and
| polite. I wouldn't have been able to pull it off myself.
| wazoox wrote:
| Ah yeah, I remember that guy that was supposedly the investor's
| expert that we met right after lunch.Obviously his meal was
| copious and also helped with large servings of alcoholic
| beverage, so after 15 minutes of our explanations (we were
| sitting in front of him at his desk) he started snoring audibly
| with his head down on his chest... We looked at each other and
| waited for a solid minute before trying to wake him up with
| some gentle coughing.
| daenz wrote:
| Sounds like a "shit test", as in "how much shit will these
| people take." It's a blunt way to understand if someone will be
| pushed around. I don't know if this was his purpose, but you
| don't want to invest in someone who will get pushed around and
| taken advantage of.
| walrus01 wrote:
| you also don't want to take investment money from the sort of
| VC egotist who thinks running a "shit test" is a standard
| operating procedure. treat people with respect or just don't
| schedule the meeting at all in the first place.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Hehe, that's such a macho way of thinking.
|
| I have a little tingling sensation that we could use more
| women in positions of power in tech.
|
| We might benefit from slightly different ways of thinking
| about working with fellow human beings.
|
| (In case that wasn't clear, I agree with your point. I'm just
| a bit sad about the language and mindset you're describing!)
| daenz wrote:
| >Hehe, that's such a macho way of thinking. I have a little
| tingling sensation that we could use more women in
| positions of power in tech.
|
| If you look up the origin of the phrase "shit test", you
| will find a lot of irony in this statement :)
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Yes, I knew about it when I wrote the comment. I guess
| men are just better at this!
| bGl2YW5j wrote:
| The majority of references I could find were on Urban
| Dictionary and other 'how to not be a beta' type sites.
| Hardly reputable sources or places that stand up for
| women.
| GeorgeWBasic wrote:
| You think women _don 't_ do shit tests?
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| i've found alot of people do this and it's accepted in alot of
| places but others find it really rude.
|
| When i worked at Tesla everyone was on their laptops answering
| emails/ working in meetings. I don't think it takes your full
| attention to listen to someone, but i guess it's a bit
| different if you were just pitching him and not a room full of
| people.
| Flankk wrote:
| "Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is
| obvious you aren't adding value. It is not rude to leave, it
| is rude to make someone stay and waste their time."
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| yeah, but sometimes i do need to be vaguely aware of whats
| being discussed.
|
| Rapidly changing from topic to topic but having everyone in
| a conference room while everyone is working is highly
| effective. People can jump in and give input on the topic
| they were half listening too. How many times someone has
| said "Oh, i have a supplier for that" or "I wrote a script
| for that".
|
| The above example is really off topic from "He was on his
| phone while we were pitching" but i think it applies to the
| fact that smart people are actually really good at multi-
| tasking, bad a social ques and norms but you shouldn't take
| it as a sign of disrespect.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Walk out of a meeting is one thing. start doing other work
| in the meeting is different
| rpastuszak wrote:
| What worked in some of my previous orgs:
|
| - During a retro decide to have a quota of meetings left
| early/skipped as a team action/working agreement. - Keep
| inviting people as you are, but mark everyone as optional.
| - No phones, no laptops (unless they're for taking notes)
| [deleted]
| Oddskar wrote:
| > I don't think it takes your full attention to listen to
| someone
|
| I disagree to this with every fiber of my being. If you're
| multitasking doing something that requires anything beyond
| mechanical tasks then you're not really listening.
|
| I challenge you to actually try and listen to a person with a
| completely silenced mind. It's surprisingly hard.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" If you're multitasking doing something that requires
| anything beyond mechanical tasks then you're not really
| listening."_
|
| I often listen to podcasts and videos on 2x or even 3x
| speed because the speaker talks so slow.
|
| When they talk slow and the amount of information they're
| relaying is relatively low or mostly familiar, my mind
| tends to drift and I can actually multitask relatively
| well.
|
| It's when I speed up the rate at which they're speaking
| that it becomes more difficult to multitask, until at last
| I really need to concentrate in order to follow what
| they're saying and then my focus remains glued to the
| speaker.
|
| That said, I do think it's rude to focus on anything else
| when one is interviewing someone. They should have your
| full attention, or you shouldn't be there.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| I had something similar where the staff member at a Vc firm
| welcomed us with "there's just been another meeting called in
| the office next to me, you guys go ahead with your pitch and
| I'll just keep and ear out for what's going on over there"
|
| We could've pitched to ourselves on a blank zoom call and come
| out more confidente. The worst part, we spent a bit of time on
| that presentation and really tried to make it less boring.
|
| Fuck you Icehouse ventures.
| daenz wrote:
| Should have just walked out. If you take the role of someone
| who will be humiliated like that, then you will be treated
| that way. You made the most of it by using it as practice,
| but you also painted yourselves as people who were desperate
| for scraps. Remember, you are the prize, not them (to an
| extent). Don't lower your value in their eyes.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| To be honesty, it meant a lot to us to be there and in the
| moment I just wasn't able to process what was actually
| happening.
|
| The NZ startup funding scene is bare and so the guys with
| money now think they're gods.
|
| But very true, ultimate beta move.
| daenz wrote:
| Don't be too hard on yourself. As long as you learn from
| it and use it for the next encounters, it is a net gain.
| What happened with your startup btw?
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| A little while ago I had an interview in which the owner of the
| company (Fintech-ish) started reading my palm and telling me
| things about me he would have extrapolated from what I'd already
| told him about myself.
|
| That's not a euphemism: he genuinely believed he was reading the
| lines on my palm, and that that makes sense to do in an
| interview.
| oxff wrote:
| Remembering that one time an interviewer asked to fill a spec and
| then asked why I didn't <description of something clearly outside
| the spec>.
| danabrams wrote:
| I think "what kind of an organization would let someone like that
| represent them?" and thank the gods for learning early to avoid
| that place.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I had a similar experience when being interviewed by a director
| at Uber. (I really wish I remembered his name. He worked for
| Microsoft for about 10 years before coming to Uber.)
|
| I know how I wish I handled it, but I just sat there because I
| was honestly confused by him.
|
| When asked if I had questions, I should have asked the shadower
| if he thought Uber encouraged a culture of mutual respect. Then
| as a follow up, if that culture was demonstrated here. When he'd
| inevitably say, "Yes?", I would have simply said, "I don't."
| nullc wrote:
| Be mindful of fundamental attribution error.
|
| For all you know their spouse died last week and they were having
| a terrible time.
|
| They shouldn't have acted that way, but we should be wary about
| generalizing a person from a single mistake or a company from a
| single mistake.
|
| You can always turn down a job offer if one is extended if the
| company rubbed you the wrong way, I can't see how you'd be better
| off terminating an interview rather than completing it. ...
| unless they started talking about something illegal or something
| like that.
| muh_gradle wrote:
| Accept that the interview is over, end the interview, provide
| your feedback as emotionlessly as possible to your recruiter or
| HR, and then move on. Some might deride it as "tattling" but if
| someone is behaving in an unprofessional manner, then other
| people should know about it. Chances are, there is a recurring
| pattern with unprofessional people in this industry and your
| experiences aren't random.
|
| I've had all sorts of bad interview experiences where
| interviewers have taken advantage of my naivete and kindness from
| all ends of the interview pipeline, especially early on in my
| career. Unfortunately, rude and unprofessional people are
| everywhere. Even if times might be tough, no job is ever worth
| sacrificing your self-respect.
| ahoka wrote:
| Maybe they were a Lisp-1 person?
|
| I think asking to stop the interview could be a proper way to
| handle this in the situation. Maybe you can also try talking to
| the recruiter / hiring manager about your experience.
| hintymad wrote:
| Yeah, I think you can politely point out that such behavior is
| out of line and terminate the interview. On the other hand, no
| need to get angry. People may insult you for no good reason, but
| it does mean you need to get back every time (I forgot the exact
| quote from Do Vito Corleone).
|
| BTW, it's actually great that you got a strong signal about the
| company. The interviewer apparently lacks of intellectual
| curiosity and the company culture is dubious. A much worse
| outcome would be that you find out the culture _after_ you join
| the company.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| If they walked out, I would have ended the interview right there.
|
| Respect yourself first and others will follow suit.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| In that specific situation, you could mention it to the remaining
| interviewers.
|
| Some version of "Is he always like that?" perhaps.
| jes wrote:
| Back when I was hiring people, I would have probably hired you on
| the spot, if you said Scheme was your favorite programming
| language. But that's just me.
|
| More to your point, it would have been fine to collect your
| things, get up from the table, and say something like "Thank you
| for this opportunity to talk. I wish you well." or something like
| that.
|
| Not nasty, not sarcastic, just relaxed and confident.
|
| Cultivating an ability to be genuinely more or less indifferent
| to what arises in my life (to be non-reactive) has been working
| very well for me.
|
| I wish you the best.
| diseasedyak wrote:
| I've been in the IT job market since 1995-ish, and have worked
| for a lot of companies, both big and large. In all my experience
| with interviews, I've only had one that was a rude disaster.
|
| It was for a DBA position with a small team at a major insurance
| company. It was a team of 2 that wanted a 3rd experienced Oracle
| DBA to help them expand. Sounded good. Interview starts with
| those 2 guys, and immediately it was readily apparent that one of
| them had no real intention to hire someone, at least not me.
| Within 5 minutes, the shithead one had laughed out loud when I
| said I didn't have much experience with a certain part of Oracle.
| Any Oracle DBA out there knows that the product is f'ing PACKED
| with stuff, lots of it you won't use because you are in a certain
| segment (i.e. - in a data warehouse environment, you use certain
| tools but not others, etc).
|
| I just sat there, staring at him. The other guy at least had the
| courtesy to turn red-faced. I know a lot of posts here say to
| just thank them and walk out, but I was so shocked I just sat
| there. The rude asshole never asked another question, and finally
| the nice guy escorted me out. He left me at the door with a
| "We'll be in touch." and I just chuckled and thanked him.
| abawany wrote:
| It sounds like it was one person doing this? Unless this person
| is in a pivotal or supervising role, I would not worry a lot -
| they may be on their way out already. I personally would have
| continued the interview as you chose to do and then reported the
| experience to the relevant hr/recruiter person. Remember, the one
| jerk in the room hopefully does not reflect upon the other
| professionals that continued the interview and were probably
| thankful the rudy left. Edit: also remember that you will likely
| encounter the others left in the room in other places and they
| will likely remember your professionalism in the face of this
| uncalled-for imposition, which should hopefully serve you well.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| it's also indicative of company culture if people with this
| type of disrespectful approach to interviews are allowed to
| continue without reproach. Remember that this person wouldn't
| just be joining a company where there's an asshole, they'd be
| joining a company that tolerates open assholishness.
|
| Of course, this is predicated on the assumption that OP's
| perception of events was reflective of reality. Sometimes high-
| pressure situations can also make people over-sensitive (I know
| it can for me, at the very least).
| swat535 wrote:
| If at any point in time, you decide that the company is not a
| good fit for you, you can end the interview by saying: "Thank you
| for the opportunity, I don't think I'm a good fit for this
| position"
|
| No need for any further explanation, no need for excuses, just
| simply pack your stuff calmly and leave.
|
| Other unrelated career advice (after 15+ years of experience):
|
| 1. Don't participate in any abusive/toxic behavior (even if all
| employees are doing it)
|
| 2. Document abusive behavior (emails, texts, etc) with
| screenshots whenever possible (especially if it involves you)
|
| 3. Try to quit professionally whenever possible (provide no
| feedback or very little ad give a notice), in cases where you
| _know_ you absolutely can't mentally/physically take it anymore,
| then leave immediately (i.e NEVER put your health in danger, all
| the legalities, logistics, etc can be dealt with later; even in
| extreme situations)
|
| 4. Never overwork yourself, your compensation has nothing to do
| with your effort.
|
| 5. Don't constantly criticize the code base, especially if you
| are new, you don't know the history yet and many people have
| emotional attachment to their code.
|
| 6. If you want to play the office politics (for whatever reason,
| e.g raises, extra vacation time, etc), find out who are the
| _bigger_ decision makers and make sure they are aware of YOUR
| contributions. Don't burn the midnight oil, thinking they will
| care, that's not how it works; they need to constantly hear your
| name and ideas.
|
| 7. Office romance is NOT worth it _most_ of the time; however if
| you are going to take this route, make arrangements to be able to
| leave the company if necessary.
|
| 8. Don't talk behind other people's backs, don't partake in
| excessive drinking or become _too_ attached/close to your
| coworkers (especially with their family lives). Always maintain a
| healthy boundary, even if you genuinely think some of your
| coworkers could become your life-long friends.
|
| 9. Use spaces instead of tabs.
| worik wrote:
| All very good advice. I would add:
|
| 10. Your workmates are not your friends. Your friends are your
| friends.
|
| and
|
| 11. The way a company shows it appreciates you is mainly, not
| only, through money. (Related to 10) Having fun "team building"
| activities in otherwise non working time is not them showing
| appreciation.
| gojomo wrote:
| While that's really weird, I think you handled it properly in-
| the-moment.
|
| Sometimes there are difficult people, sometimes you're catching
| people at their very-worst due to hidden reasons.
|
| Unless there's an imminent worry about someone's health or
| safety, one reasonably professional way to handle such situations
| is to continue with the planned, important tasks, then
| discuss/take-action on the exceptional behavior with a little
| distance, in another forum better-suited to that.
|
| And, since there were other interviewers there who were the
| flouncers' coworkers, and you seem to have been in their
| premises, if they didn't make a big deal about the situation in
| the moment, you didn't really have any more obligation than
| perhaps a shocked-look, or brief "that was weird" comment at
| most, before following their cue to get-back-to-business.
|
| That doesn't mean the concern ends there, though.
|
| On a subsequent day, and certainly before scheduling any separate
| set-of-interviews or considering any offer, it'd have been
| appropriate to ask the other interviewers, or whatever
| manager/HR-person/recruiter who's your main point-of-contact,
| about the incident. It'd be appropriate to ask if the person who
| stormed-out is often like that, if you'd be working with them,
| and so forth.
|
| You'd want to sound-out whether they're some burn-out/malcontent
| on-the-way-out, or a difficult-but-essential person who others
| tiptoe-around & try to keep productive-but-contained, or
| something else.
|
| And even if you progressed no further with the potential
| employer, perhaps even because the tantrum-person nixed you, it'd
| be appropriate to offer some feedback that you found their
| behavior off-putting.
|
| But also more generally: while both sides of an interview should
| work to hold-back snap judgements until all relevant info is
| available, given the value of skilled professionals' time, at any
| point where there's certainty that one side or the other doesn't
| want to proceed, it's OK to cut things short.
|
| If you're the candidate & become sure these aren't people you'd
| want to work with, you can absolutely say you've decided you're
| not interested & go. And if the 1st or 2nd interviewer in a
| series of many interviews achieves certainty that a candidate
| falls irredeemably short of what you thought when you brought
| them in for, or the projects' needs, it is a gift to both the
| candidate & the later interviewers not to spend another 4-12
| person-hours going-through-the-motions.
| d1str0 wrote:
| Personal anecdote regarding interviewing with AWS:
|
| Pre covid, I had two in person interviews with different AWS
| teams. One in San Francisco and on in Seattle. Both technical
| interviews were tough and the interviewers were very polite,
| helpful, and gracious, even when I would struggle. They were also
| very interested in my answers to the sorts of questions about
| "what's your favorite language?" Or "what sorts of hobbies do you
| have?"
|
| Even though i did not go through with either position, my
| experience interviewing for AWS was a very pleasant one.
| revlolz wrote:
| Unacceptable behavior for an interviewer. Ironically, that person
| did you a solid by showing you this wasn't the company you want
| to work at without already starting there and investing even more
| time with them. Imagine finding this out after you quit a current
| job, and low and behold, this guy is your new boss.
|
| You are the candidate and hold equal power. In the thought
| process you had "I think I should terminate this interview." If
| it ever gets to a point you are uncomfortable due to rudeness,
| leave. Sure, in a big faang world you may never have interaction
| with that person, but them being on the panel has a chance they
| would be your boss, peer, or in your org some way.
|
| Toxic people can ruin what would otherwise be good careers.
| Alternatively, this can also be a huge indicator a company
| tolerates and promotes this behavior. To me, while it's possible,
| that this was a once and rare thing that only this person has
| done... Screw betting my career on the least likely possibility.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > You are the candidate and hold equal power.
|
| I frequently see comments like this on HN and I don't really
| buy it.
|
| When every job opening has several qualified candidates, and it
| can take several applications to land a new job, I still think
| the employer has more power.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It really depends on your reputation and specialized skills.
|
| It's easy to name a bunch of names that everyone on HN has
| heard of, and you can bet anything that in job negotiations
| they are the ones who have the power. Companies have to come
| courting them, not the other way around.
| weatherlite wrote:
| That is quite rare though
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> When every job opening has several qualified candidates,
| and it can take several applications to land a new job, I
| still think the employer has more power.
|
| Depends on what role you're interviewing for. C# dev?
| Probably. What about full-stack Javascript dev? Totally
| lopsided in favor of the developers. I have, on average, a
| dozen emails from recruiters looking for full-stack JS devs.
| I barely do JS work any more, but the everything is so
| scarce, if companies can just find someone who's mildly
| fluent in JS, they'll hire and train you - its that bad in
| the Midwest where I live. The entry level roles are pretty
| competitive, but anything mid to senior level there aren't
| enough people to go around right now.
|
| You just have to know your market and when you have leverage.
| When you have leverage, you can really take advantage. Don't
| like the people interviewing you? Wait a day or so. You like
| a company? Use your leverage to get more vacation, higher
| salary, play companies against each other to get more for
| yourself.
|
| Knowledge is power, simple as that.
| weatherlite wrote:
| What? JS is a rare skill?
| projectazorian wrote:
| Not rare at all. The missing link is that FE roles are
| frequently lower paid and kind of boring, so there's a
| lot of turnover.
| hatware wrote:
| The employer has more _risk_.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| How so?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Think about how much a bad hire costs a company.
|
| Not only does 6-figures of cash get burned, but you're
| back at square one needing to find a new hire, not to
| mention your project now being behind schedule because
| you expected work from someone, and now the existing team
| has to go through another interviewing spree.
| projectazorian wrote:
| Any hiring decision is a major risk for both parties. In
| many cases it's the employee who takes on the most risk,
| unless it's a very senior role or an early stage startup
| where every hire is business critical.
|
| The employee may have left a job where they were
| relatively secure - maybe they even relocated for the
| role. Now they're back on the job market and their
| employability has taken a major hit. Not to mention that
| being fired is often a very traumatic experience with all
| the health consequences that entails. Seems a lot more
| serious than a project being pushed back a couple months.
|
| (btw, "bad" according to which criteria? a lot of the
| time when I hear this phrase thrown around it's a
| smokescreen for unrealistic expectations or an
| exclusionary team culture)
| ipaddr wrote:
| 6 figures is not spent if you hire someone who doesn't
| work out.
|
| If that were true companies would give out huge raises to
| keep employees. They don't.. they prefer that people
| leave and new people get hired by them.
|
| No one wants a bad hire because it taints their brand at
| the org. Having someone else recommend someone means
| someone else takes the blame. Referrals get hired
| quickly.
| b20000 wrote:
| think about the 6 figures it costs you when recruiters
| damage your brand due to them alienating qualified
| candidates with stupid coding interviews and treating
| them like idiots who will work hard for shitty
| compensation.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| And if you used an agent, you might be on the hook for
| several months' salary too.
| kadoban wrote:
| > When every job opening has several qualified candidates
|
| Every applicant also has several qualified companies they can
| work for.
|
| It's not totally equal, but if your mindset is not peers
| meeting to see if there's a good fit, your interviewing
| experience is going to be worse than it could be.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I still think the employer has more power._
|
| This is the mentality that gets you bullied. There are more
| openings than qualified people, and businesses can't make
| money without employees. No one is doing you a favour by
| giving you a job, they are literally making off your back.
| dreagletalon wrote:
| I do _see_ where they are coming from. It feels like they
| have all the power, even if they don 't. In that situation
| where I am going and looking for a job, they do have _all_
| the power or a lot of it in that moment that I am looking
| for a new job there. That in itself can make it feel like
| they have more power than they do. When we put ourselves in
| a place where we are trying to "Impress" or Prove that you
| are the "Better" candidate, we are already in a place of
| them judging us from a place of power.
|
| Usually I feel like interviews are staged in a way to put
| Interviewees in a tense, or underdog sort of way. From the
| moment you walk in you feel like you are in their hands. I
| am always somewhat nervous and tense in a interview, but
| that could be more my mentality than anything, but I can
| see where they are coming from.
|
| In an ideal world we feel equal and have the opportunity to
| walk out but when you really need a job or have had
| troubles finding one it can feel pretty powerless.
|
| Sorry to ramble a bit.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| What happens if the interview goes poorly? The interviewer
| gets paid, goes home with a shrug.
|
| The interviewee loses a day of PTO, or continues to be
| unemployed (and usually in a financially precarious
| situation).
|
| Imbalanced outcomes means imbalanced power.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You can always put yourself in a weak position. That
| doesn't mean the natural balance of power is that you are
| weak.
|
| At the end of the day, the company wants to hire you and
| you probably want to be hired. I generally urge people to
| think of this as a cooperation exercise and not a power
| struggle.
|
| Interviewers should treat interviewees with dignity and
| kindness, even when the interviewee is doing poorly.
| Interviewees should be gracious to the interviewer, even
| when they have decided to work elsewhere. The first side
| to stop being cooperative loses.
|
| The above does not however apply to salary negotiation.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > At the end of the day, the company wants to hire you
| and you probably want to be hired
|
| No, at the end of the day, the company wants to hire
| SOMEBODY. That somebody is not necessarily you, hence the
| interview. You're being compared to all the other
| candidates.
|
| Maybe this is different late in your career when you've
| got 10+ years experience under your belt, but there are a
| LOT of candidates in that "3-5 year" experience point.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| > I generally urge people to think of this as a
| cooperation exercise and not a power struggle.
|
| Any "adversarial interview" techniques are a big red
| flag, imo. They also make it easy to quickly recognise
| places with a toxic culture, so there's not need to beat
| yourself up if you fail. You dodged a bullet, plus now
| have an excuse to rant with your friends over a pint!
|
| Hence, my favourite interviews (regardless of the side I
| was on) were the one when we had a chance to spend a day
| working with the candidate.
| kadoban wrote:
| > What happens if the interview goes poorly? The
| interviewer gets paid, goes home with a shrug.
|
| Yeah, and the company continues being understaffed for
| what they want to do, and often the interviewer is one of
| the people on that team who needs more people.
|
| (no it's not exactly the same)
| ProZsolt wrote:
| This completely changed due to WFH and online interviews.
| I can take a little longer lunch break, do the interview
| from my home office, then continue with my current job.
| The only thing is lost is my midday walk and I have to
| eat something quick(eg.: sandwich) instead a proper meal.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > There are more openings than qualified people
|
| I don't believe this.
|
| The only way this is true is if there are a lot of openings
| at companies that are going to pay significantly under
| market and can't figure out why nobody is accepting their
| offers, even when candidates tell them.
|
| Based on another comment [0], maybe this is actually the
| case.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31341966
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I don't know if you've looked at the "Who is Hiring" and
| "Who wants to be Hired" threads in the last 4 months, but
| the "Who Is Hiring" comment count has been ~3X the number
| of "Who Wants to Be Hired" over that period
|
| Layoffs and hiring freezes at big tech might change
| things in the next few months though
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Is that 3x the number of top-level comments, or total
| comments?
|
| This answer could change your conclusion.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I don't know if you've looked at the "Who is Hiring"
| and "Who wants to be Hired" threads in the last 4 months,
| but the "Who Is Hiring" comment count has been ~3X the
| number of "Who Wants to Be Hired" over that period
|
| That's very easy to explain within a framework of there
| being lots of available workers and few available
| positions.
|
| Employers post hiring ads, get responses, and conclude
| that posting ads works and they should keep doing it.
|
| Job seekers post hire-me ads, get no responses, and
| conclude that posting ads doesn't work and there's no
| reason to do it.
| yboris wrote:
| My team at my company has been interviewing people this last
| half year: we've extended offers to a few and so far each has
| chosen to work elsewhere because they found better pay.
|
| At the very least for the last half year, I think developers
| may have an "upper hand".
| bradlys wrote:
| I see this as a bad market though too. Many companies
| paying bad comps and making people jump through a lot of
| hoops to get a decent offer.
|
| I had to get no less than 6 offers before I got one that
| was reasonable in my last search. 6. I had done about a
| dozen onsites and dozens of phone screens at that point.
| This was just a year ago. I expect the same this year - if
| not worse because of the market doing so poorly.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > they found better pay.
|
| ...
|
| Then...up your pay? It doesn't take an Einstein-level IQ to
| figure that one out.
|
| Developers might have an upper hand at salary negotiation,
| but actually landing an offer? Nah. Employers still have
| the power.
| bjourne wrote:
| But how many have you interviewed and _not_ extended offers
| to? If that number is larger than the number you have
| extended offers to then that would indicate that developers
| does not have the upper hand.
| adra wrote:
| Supply and demand, in net terms it depends on
| externalities, but when you're sitting down in an interview
| with a candidate, you're setting the tone/pace for them to
| bow to. If it becomes super acceptable for candidates to
| walk out whenever they don't "feel" like it in the
| interview, if you can ask the employer intrusive questions
| about their professional lives to dig into the culture of
| the company, if the candidate has the resumes of their
| interviewers, maybe then there's more of a tit for tat in
| the interview.
| uoaei wrote:
| The advantage is not with the developer but with those
| (capable of) making the better offer.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > each has chosen to work elsewhere because they found
| better pay
|
| The candidates don't control the comp you offer. Claiming
| that those darned candidates have the upper hand because
| everyone else pays better is a bad faith argument. Not that
| you can tell your boss that, I'm sure.
| tetsuhamu wrote:
| Hiring cycles are more like a clearinghouse than a company
| choosing the best candidate for a position.
|
| N number of candidates enter that month's job market,
| companies are able to offer N number of positions.
|
| At the end of the hiring cycle, they make the N-to-N matches
| and execute the cycle.
|
| A candidate can (and must) have several offers from different
| companies, just as companies have several candidates for each
| position.
| ddingus wrote:
| They do hold more power, but in terms of the basic interview
| session, it's equal in that either party can end it for their
| reasons.
|
| Overall, people seeking work have less overall power and a
| generally poor position, unless they have saved or earned
| enough to not require the work.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Yes, I have politely ended a couple of interviews and the
| interviewer is always shocked, because I think most people
| think the interviewer is in the power position.
|
| They may be a gatekeeper for the job, but you are the
| gatekeeper for your time. Hiring a person is a mutual
| decision. Since job descriptions are usually quite vague on
| some important details about the team and company, applying
| for the job is simply expressing interest in the job, not a
| confirmation that you would take it if offered.
| ddingus wrote:
| My experiences are similar. And I always end nicely
| regardless of what transpired. I like to find and
| maintain high ground in these kinds of interactions.
|
| You just never know who you may find on the other side of
| the table!
| roamerz wrote:
| This is my favorite answer in reading the comments. I might add
| that person that laughed and walked out may have been a plant
| to incite a reaction from the interviewee. If that would have
| been me (and the rest of the interview was going well) I
| probably would have just laughed and said something after he
| left to the affect of 'made someone laugh today - check'.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I once interviewed for Qualia, and surprise surprise both the
| founding CEO and Product person both were quite rude to me.
| Unsurprised due to their very young age at the time*. Yeah,
| someone may not be up to your standards, but that's no reason
| to mock them in a high pressure/vulnerability scenario. It's
| particularly odd because they were using MeteorJS quite early
| and I was one of a very few people in the _world_ having
| creating, deploying, and running a meteorJS app at that time.
| If you can believe it that was about 6 years ago and I still
| can recall their faces to this day. Not that it bothers me
| anymore, but that the impression sunk deep.
|
| Their recruiters continue to reach out to me to this day, not a
| snowball's chance in hell.
|
| Contrast this with a scenario at Dropbox where I was
| underprepared for a datastructures question (BitSet). While the
| interviewer was mildly taunting me, he at least was gracious
| enough to give hints and talk me through the solution as it
| ended. I knew I wasnt getting the role, but at least I learned
| something that day.
|
| * not that rudeness in youth is acceptable or expected but a
| lack of life experience can lead to a lack of perspective or
| realization that life is much longer and you only get one
| reputation
| explaingarlic wrote:
| I know I'm not qualified to speak on your decisions or life,
| and you probably know more about the situation _but_ - why
| "not a snowball's chance in hell"?
|
| People change, they get given second chances. I wouldn't mind
| giving a company a second chance, especially after they
| probably had a real kick-in-the-nuts because of their
| approach to your interview, since it most likely wasn't that
| easy to find another qualified MeteorJS dev.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They probably didn't want a qualified MeteorJS dev they
| wanted someone they could abuse.
|
| I wouldn't even interview there after hearing the story.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I find the Dropbox story completely stupid too. You should
| never be failed in an interview for not knowing things you
| can trivially Google, in my opinion.
| laluser wrote:
| Isn't this the case for most interviews? You could simply
| Google in almost all scenarios. Also, you can fail a single
| interview and still pass assuming all other interviews go
| well.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Using Google is the expected real world situation no? I
| think being able to figure something out you don't know
| is better than demonstrating something you know
| perfectly. You'll find out much more about someone if
| they can do this rather than asking them mundane syntax
| questions or if they pre-learned how to reverse a binary
| tree.
| 100721 wrote:
| I disagree. Consider: You're hiring for a data science
| role, and the candidate doesn't know what an array is.
|
| Consider: You're hiring for a senior systems software
| development role, and the candidate doesn't know what an
| instruction is.
|
| etc.
| [deleted]
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It comes down to what one considers "fundamental
| knowledge" that one needs to do the job. If you claim to
| be a programmer, but don't know what an array is, you're
| probably not actually a programmer. But not knowing
| esoteric data structure that one may encounter once in
| their career is not really indicative of anything.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Would you agree that what an instruction is depends on
| context?
| [deleted]
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I don't think knowing what an array is would be something
| you can trivially Google. Sure you can look up the set of
| words that make up the definition, but that's not knowing
| what it is.
|
| Something trivially google-able is like not knowing the
| syntax for generating permutations of a sequence in
| Python. But not knowing the idea of permutations would
| not be trivially google-able.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Complete side note, I really wish Meteor took off more than
| it did I really enjoyed working with that framework went to
| the conference back in like 2014-2015 at the UN building in
| New York and felt really productive with it. I know it's
| still viable and I might use it for a personal project but
| wonder how businesses that use it are holding up.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| The whole concept of "why the heck is everyone writing
| models twice in two different languages to build an app"
| has really stuck with me even though I've never used Meteor
| for something that wound up in production. I've seen some
| super wack things in prod like objects being modeled
| entirely differently front vs back-end and just a lot of
| reinventing of wheels. Great idea, I hope it catches on
| more broadly.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| if you don't mind trying languages other than js, might I
| suggest phoenix's liveview? Its past what meteor could ever
| accomplish
|
| here's the basic operating model.
|
| you have a controller but unlike a typical web controller,
| you are rally controlling the lifecycle for a long lived
| server process thats specific to the user in a session. you
| get callbacks for the startup where you can load data
| structures into the session. You also have functions that
| let you write frontend components from the backend similar
| to server side react.
|
| Here's where it gets interesting. The frontend maintains a
| long lived websocket connection. if you change a piece of
| data on the backend, the frontend will automatically update
| to reflect the changes. additionally, you can set event
| triggers in your html that trigger server side callbacks
| from which you can update that server side data.
|
| so you might be asking yourself, "big deal, meteor does
| that"
|
| The big deal of course is that you're using elixir, a
| mostly functional language with immutable data structures
| and concurrency abstractions that make node look amateur
| hour. Spawning thousands of one off short lived persistent
| sessions, one for each user, that each have a websocket
| connection is a trivial task for the beam virtual machine
| that phoenix runs on. Scaling the backend for this is
| trivial compared to ding it in node which is what meteor is
| doing. The underlying platform is just a better fit for
| what meteor is trying to solve. Every thread has its own
| heap of memory and is isolated from others. You have no
| such guarantee in meteor unless you dedicate an entire OS
| process for each user, a task that will be expensive and
| nontrivial)
|
| of course, its a backend process. so phoenix liveviews can
| also do a few other interesting things. need to upload an
| image or perform a background task? have your callback send
| its process id to the background worker and the background
| worker can send a message back to your session enabling you
| to update your session data. the frontend will
| automatically reflect the change. by comparison, tailing
| mongodb's oplog is child's play. If you can have your data
| source emit events on changes, you can plug it into
| elixir's pubsub system and accomplish the same reactivity
| in a live view.
|
| Oh yea, and fly.io already works with both meteor and live
| view's limitation of needing the physical machine to be
| close to the users for keeping the latency down.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Preaching to the choir, Elixir is my favorite language
| and I do in fact use phoenix, and depending on the
| project, live view for my projects!
| mtoddsmith wrote:
| How many simultaneous connections / users can a single
| server support?
| lojack wrote:
| Interviewers tend to have one of two different mentalities...
|
| Some are trying to see you fail. They're looking for a reason
| to say "no". They tend to not be of any help on a problem,
| will often try to find ways to trick you. They also tend to
| have an ego problem -- you need to prove to them that you're
| worthy of joining the team.
|
| The other class of interviewers are those that want you to
| succeed. They will answer questions, and help clarify things.
| Even if you are unqualified for the role, and they know it,
| they still want to help you along so they can see your best
| work. People that shut down when they get nervous tend to
| open up to these interviewers. They also tend to be the
| people that are more pleasant to work with.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > The other class of interviewers are those that want you
| to succeed. They will answer questions, and help clarify
| things. Even if you are unqualified for the role, and they
| know it, they still want to help you along so they can see
| your best work.
|
| That's how I go about it. Even unprepared candidates can
| return someday with more experience/knowledge, or apply to
| a different position where they can succeed - or letting
| their friends/acquaintances know about the role.
|
| Also, as we can see in this post, a bad interview
| experience can really taint a company's image, which can to
| some degree prevent people from applying
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Some are trying to see you fail.
|
| I have no respect for such people. Not because of their
| lack of "niceness", but because that kind of behaviour
| betrays a lack of technical confidence.
|
| That remark isn't just about interviewers; it applies to
| all colleagues. More generally, I tend to respect people
| who are smart enough to know what they don't know, and
| honest enough to admit it.
| version_five wrote:
| > behaviour betrays a lack of technical confidence.
|
| Yes agreed. I've seen this in interviewing and in
| teaching. People who are insecure make it about how smart
| they are, people who are confident make it about helping
| others.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| >Even if you are unqualified for the role, and they know
| it, they still want to help you along so they can see your
| best work
|
| So ~14 years ago - after about a year at Microsoft, I was
| encouraged to assist with interviewing new candidates. At
| that time, there was no official guide/rulebook for
| interviewing, but I was told unofficially;
|
| "We hire people with a solid technical base, who may not
| know EVERY thing at the time of interview, because we
| really want to hire on their future potential".
|
| "If a candidate is doing poorly, don't be rude - if they
| asked where they failed, tell them - because, they may very
| well interview again in 6-months, and if they show a
| significant improvement, they may well get hired then."
|
| "Any technology they list on their resume is 'fair game' -
| they had better know it, and if you have direct experience
| in a niche technology that they list, grill them to see if
| they are being 'honest'"
|
| And - we were often paired with other technical
| interviewers, and everyone kept detailed notes. A single
| veto by any interviewer during any of the multiple phone
| sessions (and/or eventual in-person interviews) would end
| that stage of the process for that candidate.
|
| It worked well - I interviewed more than one person who
| didn't make the cut in the first round of tech screen
| calls, but 8-months later - they did - and ended-up being
| very valuable members of our group.
|
| However - there were definately other interviewers that
| were basically trying to trick the candidate at every step
| of the process - they were not some of our better team
| members and honestly, should not have been involved in
| interviewing.
| ebrewste wrote:
| "Any technology they list on their resume is 'fair game'
| - they had better know it, and if you have direct
| experience in a niche technology that they list, grill
| them to see if they are being 'honest'"
|
| Such a strange stance for MS to take (IMHO). I've got 20+
| years experience in lots of different languages and
| different technologies. I've been looking for a new job
| and have been brushing up on skills for interviewing. I
| just don't think it's possible for me to be ready to be
| grilled by a current expert on 15+ languages that I've
| shipped high quality, production code. The flip side is
| to only list the three I can take a grilling on today on
| my resume? It seems like a pretty short sighted approach.
| Maybe they have moved on in this stance?
| lscharen wrote:
| Having done plenty of interviews, it's surprising how
| many candidates list _every_ technology they may have
| touched for the briefest of moments. For me, "grilling"
| someone on something like a programming language is about
| determining if they've _really_ used it or not.
|
| If a candidate lists multiple languages on their resume,
| I'll often ask them to do a compare and contrast -- what
| do they think are the strengths and weaknesses of the
| languages? What did you use language X for? Do you think
| language Y would have been better/worse/same to attack
| the same problem?
|
| I'm not looking to trip them up, just find out if their
| resume is an accurate reflection of their experience.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| I just had an interview with MS, they seem to have a far
| better approach these days.
|
| I was surprised that they approached me because the team
| works primarily in C# and Go, and I've been doing JVM
| languages mainly, and only a small amount of Go, but the
| interviewer emphasised that they want people who can
| learn and enjoy learning.
|
| They then asked me to choose a language I know well and
| describe a strength and weakness of it.
|
| It was a really good interview experience tbh.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Grilling may not be the best word there, but if you say
| you worked with language X, I think it makes sense to
| give you some questions about it to gauge how good you
| are with it. Some people stuff the resume by mentioning
| every language that they did for a toy project once in
| college, and then we don't want them to be put in charge
| of the project which requires deep knowledge of the same
| language. Better to find it out in advance. That doesn't
| necessary means that candidate will fail and not be hired
| - just maybe not for the project that requires the
| knowledge they don't have.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Interviews exist in this weird space disconnected from
| the reality of the work and being judged by those closest
| to the work. Not many real on-the-job situations would
| require someone, for example, to be able to recall the
| protocol number for a given protocol without looking it
| up, yet that's one of the questions that a particular
| very famous tech company has their recruiters ask, and
| you get auto-rejected for not knowing. It's unfortunate
| when a place becomes so large and so desirable that
| they'd rather force people to try multiple times to get
| through an arbitrary obstacle course and succeed on some
| combination of chance and skill vs attempting to more
| honestly assess if a given candidate could actually
| succeed in the role they're hiring for.
| Clubber wrote:
| I once had a guy in an interview panel pour out a packet of
| salt and chop it into lines with a credit card at an interview
| with a _major_ tech company you 've heard of. It was like a
| nervous habit or something. This was back in the late 1990s. I
| was like WTF.
|
| Ya, you really have to pay attention to red flags, you'll be
| working (stuck) with them for at least a year, possibly more,
| and you will depend on them for your livelihood and family's
| survival.
| smugma wrote:
| That's weird, but like you say, it seemed like a sort of
| nervous habit.
|
| Not during interviews, but sometimes I close my eyes when I
| want to focus intently on what the speaker is saying. I used
| to twirl my pencil.
|
| I try and give both interviewers and interviewees the benefit
| of the doubt.
|
| Walking out without saying anything seems pretty rude, but I
| don't know all the circumstances. Laughing in your face seems
| much worse. It's a two way interview. If it doesn't feel
| right, hopefully you've got other options and don't need to
| proceed. Or get an offer (if it isn't going to take 5 more
| rounds of interviewing, you've already committed time to the
| interview, consider whether it's worth taking it to
| completion) and then raise concerns and listen to how your
| concerns are addressed.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| In case you didn't realize, but cutting-salt-into-lines is
| usually a behavior more associated with cocaine usage than
| nervous habit
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I assumed the OP was using "salt" euphemistically. I've
| never heard of coke-heads chopping-up sodium chloride!
| smugma wrote:
| I've never done cocaine but have cut sugar into lines for
| fun (but not at work, and definitely not in an interview)
| sharadov wrote:
| Are you sure it was salt? Cocaine sounds more like it. He was
|
| 1. Either trying to kick a cocaine habit, and was still going
| through the motions with something that looked like cocaine
|
| 2. He was going to offer the coke to OP and see if he was a
| culture fit.
| cyberei wrote:
| > you'll be working (stuck) with them for at least a year,
| possibly more
|
| Why is that? Do you mean it looks bad in the CV if you leave
| too soon?
| Clubber wrote:
| >Why is that? Do you mean it looks bad in the CV if you
| leave too soon?
|
| That's one thing, also life happens where it's more
| beneficial to stay someplace to keep the income coming in
| than it is to spend hours off the clock finding and
| preparing a different job. Say a medical problem, or you
| need to pay to fix damage to your house, or a spouse lost a
| job, etc.
| tyingq wrote:
| Agree generally, though that the other people in the room
| didn't try to acknowledge what happened, apologize, etc, is the
| biggest problem to me.
|
| Any company might have a random asshole pop up into a chance
| encounter. What that random asshole does is less telling than
| what everyone else around them does to address it.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Exactly. I was in an interview with a data engineering
| consultancy, and the CEO goes on a weird rant about "there's
| givers and takers in a company, which are you?" and then
| proudly told me about firing a couple of people that week.
|
| Was a very useful interview for me, and I've told a few old
| colleagues who were approached by the company also about it, so
| it saved them time too.
| ochrist wrote:
| You are not alone. Here is some inspiration:
| https://thedailywtf.com/series/tales-from-the-interview
| spcebar wrote:
| I'm sorry you had such a terrible experience! As others are
| saying, an interview is as much about them deciding if you are a
| good fit for them, as you deciding if they are a good fit for
| you. Interviews (even bad ones) are an opportunity to hone your
| skills, but if it's soul crushing sitting there, it's not like
| it's your job to stay!
|
| As for the rudeness of the interviewer, I will add that sometimes
| great developers have terrible people skills, and sometimes those
| people get put on interview committees. One obnoxious person
| doesn't necessarily dictate the culture of an entire company. Go
| with your gut. If the position seems otherwise exceptional and
| it's just one rude person, consider giving them another shot, and
| if not, walk--either figuratively, or literally out of the
| interview.
| mychael wrote:
| - End the interview early and call them out on being rude.
|
| - Drag their company they work for on Blind and Glassdoor.
|
| This is the best thing you can do not just for yourself, but for
| other engineers as well.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| If they were rude enough, I'd be tempted to leave a bad
| Google/Yelp review.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| At my first job, I was young, maybe 21 we had a guy come in for
| an interview. I was not even on the interview panel but the guy
| had a funny mustache and the person running the interview started
| bringing random people in to ask him questions but also to low
| key laugh at his mustache. The company itself was a clown show
| and management treated employees like garbage so I guess it was
| the sort of culture that was encouraged. I did not really think
| about it at the time as I was young and oblivious but now that I
| am older I occasionally think back to that and feel bad for the
| interviewee and really regret allowing myself to be involved in
| that.
| chernevik wrote:
| Tell the recruiter/HR contact, or your next interview, about it
| and see what they do. There is the possibility that this person
| is an outlier, or even a known problem.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Interviewing is a skill you need to exercise and such interviews
| are where you are challenged to stay positive and continue the
| interview for further experience. Even when an interview has gone
| absolutely terrible and there's literally nothing they could do
| to convince you to work there. You work doubly hard to convince
| them to want to hire you. Ask them what they need you to do for
| them, explain how you can do it. Ask about their mission, what
| the business is ultimately trying to achieve. etc.
|
| >I've had an interviewer laugh in my face when I told them my
| favorite language was Scheme.
|
| Snirk, I mean, I have started to grow grey hairs. What do you
| think is the best solution for grey hairs?
|
| >Then they just walked in the middle of the interview without
| saying a word when it wasn't going well, leaving the other
| interviewers to continue without them.
|
| You may have not noticed they got told to gtfo.
|
| >In retrospect, I think I should have politely terminated the
| interview myself, as I don't want to work with rude,
| unprofessional snobs, but I'm wondering what people here would
| have done, and how you've faced rudeness during interviews
| yourself?
|
| Nah, waste their time. Work doubly hard to convince them to hire
| you. Then if they do offer you the job, you can be polite again
| and explain that the business sounds awesome with X mission.
| Lather on how awesome they all are and then say unfortunately you
| decline have to decline. You felt the interview didn't go well
| and plan to work extra hard to do better next time.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I think you're right. My initial response was to say that I'd
| just get up and leave, but you're right.
|
| You're already there, you've spent the time to prepare and get
| there on time, etc. Might as well get as much benefit from it
| as you can. So use the time to hone your interviewing skills
| and deal with the hostility, while knowing full well that you
| are not going to take the job. But you'll work on making
| yourself as appealing as possible. And you never know if one of
| those interviewers will admire how you handled the situation
| and recommend you to someone else, or you'll come across them
| in another interview years later.
|
| So yeah, make the best of the situation and use it to your
| advantage.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >I think you're right.
|
| Interestingly I was pretty positively voted up on this post.
| I was nearly +10 at one point, but now I'm in the negatives.
|
| Guess people don't agree?
|
| Curious what they dislike about my post.
|
| edit/ My imaginary points are going downward. Lots of my
| posts suddenly at 0 points. Guess it's time for a break.
| ddingus wrote:
| I've only faced this a time or two, and I ended the session. I
| did that with respect and candor, being frank about it
| potentially being a poor fit, wishing them luck and all those
| basic human things.
|
| No regrets.
|
| In my view, these things are self-correcting. If the interview is
| so poor that I feel it doesn't make sense, it's extremely likely
| more will be a rough scenario.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Instead of reflecting on what the interviewer did, reflect on
| that culture for a second. Is that somewhere you WANT to work?
| Would they respect your opinions? Sounds like that's a no.
|
| I've ended interviews within the first 5 minutes. I have a knack
| for seeing through this kind of stuff. I also have no shame on
| calling someone out on it.
|
| Toxic people usually don't know they are toxic because they have
| been enabled to do so. It's also well within your right to
| confront someone like this and say "Excuse me, sir (or ma'am), I
| was under the impression this was a top place to work. Your
| display just convinced me that it is not. I respect your decision
| to leave as I hope you respect mine." and walk out. Not saying
| that's what you should say verbatim but your time is just as
| valuable and your opinions should be just as weighted. Whether
| you work there yet or not.
|
| Companies with a great culture would have asked you to dive
| deeper. To understand your point of view. Maybe a healthy debate.
| Teach us something that we don't know, kind of thing.
|
| I think when you're early in your career you just want to get the
| job and will do whatever it takes. After 5 years you should be
| given the same respect as that person gives their colleagues.
| After all, you are interviewing to be their colleague. They are
| interviewing to be yours.
|
| Never, ever, let an interview be single sided. You will have no
| negotiating power.
| exdsq wrote:
| I had a four stage interview process with a startup where I also
| built a pretty solid plan for how to build their project once I
| started and when it got to negotiations I asked for $140k, they
| countered $90k, I said no way I'd do less than $120k, and they
| ghosted me ever since. Thankfully found something else and sent a
| final follow up saying I was withdrawing my application but the
| absolute worst interview process I've experienced that late in
| the process.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If anyone remembers Miss Manners (whose kids are now helping
| write her columns):
|
| I actually wrote to her about one of those situations
| (interviewer staring down at my resume, interrupting my answers
| to ask about something else on the resume, etc.) and _she printed
| it_.
|
| Her response was, basically: if you expect to stay in the
| profession, just be polite and don't tell them they have the
| manners of a baboon.
| dlsa wrote:
| Bad and rude interviewers imply even worse colleagues,
| supervisors and managers. Its a measure of the overall company
| culture and not simply just their professionalism.
|
| Its ok to continue the interview but its also ok to finish, leave
| and never return. They're as much under investigation for fit as
| you are. Hold them to your standards.
|
| You got a glimpse of what working with them would be like in
| future. I'd say you found them lacking. Can you imagine a code
| review with that person?
| roflyear wrote:
| One of my regrets interviewing is not walking out on a all day
| 10+ hour in-person interview.
|
| I was asked to show up at 8am, but I was not told I would not
| be leaving the office until 6pm.
|
| Also, I was told it was a direct hire - when I got the offer
| for something like $35/hr in a major city as a mid level
| programmer, I sorta lost it on the recruiter. No vacation,
| purely contract work through the recruiter.
|
| More or less lied to during the entire process. I guess some
| candidates are happy to get a job and just put up with it? It
| has to work sometimes...
| devnulll wrote:
| I open discussions with recruiters - typically Exec
| Recruiters who are normally cold/warm-calling on LinkedIn -
| and the conversation goes like this:
|
| * "We have this amazing CTO / CIO / VP Role."
|
| * "What's the pay range for this role?"
|
| * "We pay market rates"
|
| * "I'm currently making $X at my fancy FAANG role. Can you
| beat that?".
|
| * "Oh. Nevermind".
|
| It's helped, but there are still false promises made.
| jrockway wrote:
| I think this really comes down to the equity grant and
| whether or not you think that you can personally move the
| needle. If you're a junior engineer getting your second
| job, it's a little bit of a scam to be sold on equity. You
| probably aren't so good at programming that you'll carry
| the entire company to success; you're being hired because
| you're a warm body for cheap. But if you're the CTO or VP
| of Engineering and you're good at that kind of role, then
| you certainly have the opportunity to build a team that can
| do better than the average startup, and thus your equity
| could really be worth something.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I guess some candidates are happy to get a job and just put
| up with it? "
|
| Sadly yes and they don't have a choice, but anyone accepting
| that shit who do have a choice are lowering the standard for
| everyone else.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I'm always drawn between leaving on the spot or staying and
| dropping out of the process later. In practice, I prefer to
| stay. Waste their time, try to do as well as you can, practice
| interviewing, gain experience. And _then_ professionally and
| politely drop out of the interview process. Just because the
| interviewers are unprofessional and unpolite doesn 't mean you
| have to be.
|
| All that assumes that the interviewers' behavior was "just"
| rude, if the cross line like sexism, racism and similar thing
| the solution is standing up and leaving. Their is only so much
| you can learn from abusive people.
| sumthinprofound wrote:
| Anytime I have brought colleagues in to interview a
| candidate, during the introduction, I'll note that "Bob from
| devops will be joining us, but he may get called away" based
| on the circumstances however I would not appreciate a
| coworker stepping out without an explanation for the
| candidate as that would reflect horribly on the organization
| in my opinion.
| b3morales wrote:
| We'd also expect Bob to say something like "Oh crap excuse
| me, sorry, the server's on fire" as he leaves.
| sumthinprofound wrote:
| Absolutely!
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Waste their time"
|
| You would waste your own time, too, with this approach.
| Hasu wrote:
| Sure, but if there are n interviewers, I get to waste n
| minutes of the company's time for each minute of my own
| wasted. For some panel interviews I've been in, this can be
| a significant multiplier that makes it worth it even if
| spite didn't already.
| worik wrote:
| Often when interviewing for a job the interviewee has the
| time...
| bitexploder wrote:
| Asking "Hey, where did bob just go?" is not rude. Leaving an
| interview where you have been purposefully insulted and
| treated poorly is also not rude right? Why burn your time
| when you know you won't accept any offers. Just seems like
| there are better ways to spend time.
| retrac wrote:
| Playing dumb, if you can with a straight face, isn't rude
| in response to rudeness, IMO. And it can be quite
| effective. It's one thing to insult someone; it's quite
| another to have to explain how and why you were insulting
| them. "Huh? Whaddaya mean? I'm not sure I get it..." works
| well on overly offensive jokes too. Usually. Some real
| jerks will double down though and happily explain in
| excruciating detail.
| mirntyfirty wrote:
| Agreed although I've had interviews that taught me quite a
| bit about the company and the interviewer. This then became
| useful career information for industry practices and useful
| skills to develop.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| If they play dumb you can say, "this seems like a good time
| to ask, what is the company culture like when people have
| technical disagreements?"
| twiddling wrote:
| That is a great questions for candidates to ask and I
| wished more of them did. Another one I like is "How does
| your organization change course when they realize they
| are on the wrong one?".
| mrozbarry wrote:
| Leaving doesn't have to be rude. If there's no reason to work
| on your interview skills, you can simply say "I appreciate
| your time, but I don't think I'm a good fit for _company name
| here_." You don't have to give any further reason. You are
| the boss of your time and effort, so don't waste it if you
| don't have to.
| irvingprime wrote:
| +100
| zdragnar wrote:
| Invert that phrase. "__company__ isn't a good fit for me".
| Be clear that you are leaving on your terms.
|
| The interviewer may still tell people that you gave up
| halfway through, but if anyone else is listening or the
| interviewer is accidentally honest, it is more likely to
| trigger change by emphasizing that the company is _losing
| you_ rather than _you are losing the company_.
| mrozbarry wrote:
| I think that's a valid approach, too. It might just
| depend on the interviewee which is better. The inverted
| phrase is a bit more direct and dominant (which I don't
| think is bad), so I don't think it fits everyone's
| personality. That said, my recommendation is simply to be
| polite and leave, and do it on your own terms.
| Clubber wrote:
| >"I appreciate your time, but I don't think I'm a good fit
| for _company name here_."
|
| I would also suggest this; it signals to the other
| interviewers that they just lost a potential candidate
| because of John Doe's behavior. They might take action, but
| they need to understand the consequence of having that guy
| on the team, or at least in the interview room.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Would "I don't think your company is a good fit for me"
| be better wording (to show it's not your skills but their
| culture), or would that be too aggressive?
| irvingprime wrote:
| Too narcissistic.
| laserlight wrote:
| Not at all. It is what it is.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And perfectly fitting in such a situation. Being polite
| and professiobal avout breaking an interview of doesn't
| mean you cannot be "arrogant" doing it.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I had a weird case where the team absolutely loved me, and had
| even extended verbal offer, but a surprise final interview with
| a low-level executive cost me the job.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Similar story: I once went through all the rounds with a
| company, it was obviously going great, then the recruiter
| mentioned all candidates need to get the thumbs up from some
| VP big shot so I needed to talk to him. Well, they scheduled
| the interview while he was driving, obviously in a
| convertible. Neither of us could hear each other, and there
| could clearly be no information exchange. I figured we'd just
| re-schedule, but the recruiter got back to me to let me know
| it didn't work out, and they wouldn't be moving forward.
| Crazy times!
|
| I would have had to move across the country and they recently
| laid off 1000 (50%) of their staff, so in retrospect I figure
| I dodged a bullet, but wow!
| irvingprime wrote:
| I've found that the more rounds of interviews there are or
| the more people involved, the greater the chances of one
| person causing the whole deal to go south. I have been in
| similar situations. Six straight interviewers said to hire
| me. The seventh one said no and that was that.
| throw03172019 wrote:
| Oh wow. Sorry to hear your experience. However, I think they
| Failed your interview of them. Would you want to work with people
| like that?
| sowei wrote:
| A lot of us software engineers aren't exactly known for being
| social butterflies. Arrogance and crass behavior are more common
| than they should be, sadly.
|
| "Before we wrap up, can I ask a few questions?"
|
| (No interviewer, rude or otherwise, has turned this down on me)
|
| "I just want to say this is as much as an interview for you to
| evaluate me, as it is for me to evaluate you. What do you think
| could have been improved in our interview for the future?" - if
| you feel they were especially rude/arrogant: "Do you feel you
| have conducted this interview professionally?"
| deepsun wrote:
| I'd continue interview just for the practice of being
| interviewed, since I'm already there. Unless I have more
| important things to do.
| bedast wrote:
| The first thing you need to understand is the interview process
| goes both ways. They're not just trying to figure out if you have
| the skills to do the job and figure out if you're a good fit for
| the team, you should also be figuring out if the company is a
| good fit. Usually you have to pick out context clues to figure
| out if the company culture is going to be a fit, and if you
| don't, you ask those questions and gauge their answers.
|
| When they directly insult you during the interview, that should
| be the end. If you're willing to tolerate abuse during the
| interview process, you should expect the culture to persist and
| you advertise that you're okay with it.
|
| Respect of my time and the time of those around me is important
| to me. I had a recruiter that didn't understand this concept. He
| was representing a major media company that seemed like it'd be
| interesting to work for. But since the recruiter advertised to me
| that he couldn't care less about my time, I took that as an
| ongoing issue at the company and I ended the process.
|
| It's just not worth it, especially when you have other potential
| opportunities that may still be interesting. Respect is important
| and if they can't respect you at the interview, they will not
| respect you in the job.
| tuan wrote:
| It's unfortunate that most interviewers do not think that the
| process is two way. The normal interview setup is also very one
| sided. For a 1 hour session, the interviewer has like 55 min to
| ask the candidate questions, and leaves only 5 minutes at the
| end for the candidate to ask them questions.
| bedast wrote:
| As a technical interviewer and team lead, I liked to spend
| the first half of the interview on technical questions and
| answers, and maybe some discussion on that, then the second
| half just having a conversation. I've rejected candidates who
| were technically sound, but would not be a good fit for the
| team (they would likely fit in somewhere, and I'd be willing
| to admit it was a mistake if I just read things wrong or they
| had a bad day). I also spend some time on who I am, what I
| expect, etc. This interview style doesn't seem super common,
| but I feel I've been pretty successful in my recommendations
| to the hiring manager following this, and the hiring mistakes
| have been pretty minimal.
|
| I think the worst interview process I've been through is when
| I did 8 interviews at a company, 6 of which were technical,
| and then was not hired (overqualified apparently...I'm old
| enough to start encountering ageism and all that). Such a
| monumental waste of time.
| ddingus wrote:
| I will simply ask.
|
| If time comes up, I let them know I have the time needed and
| would not have asked if I didn't.
|
| Do they have the time needed? If not, why?
|
| Answers to that can make sense and can bias the session
| toward a more productive exchange.
| Sindisil wrote:
| There should be no need to wait for permission to ask
| pertinent questions.
|
| The interview process should be a conversation, not an
| interrogation.
|
| If it isn't, I probably don't want to work there.
| robbiejs wrote:
| You are exactly right. When I was younger, all I could think
| was: I need to impress them! Now I think, this company needs to
| impress me. If their culture is abusive or even uninspired, I
| am not joining them. It's hard to find a decent club though
| sometimes.
| appleiigs wrote:
| To add some personal context, I'm the same where as I get
| older the company needs to impress me with a good work
| environment. But not because my resume is better or that I'm
| financially better off. It's because I've learnt from
| personal experience that a crappy work environment is not
| worth tolerating. (Same goes for personal relationships).
| bbarnett wrote:
| And the above is why ageism exists.
| ddingus wrote:
| Nope. That's simple experience.
|
| One can arrive at that place earlier in life, and will
| given mentors and a robust set of early experiences.
| bedast wrote:
| I was the same way. Interviews were very intimidating.
| Imposter syndrome didn't help. It took time for me to figure
| out the power dynamic in this process, and to learn that, as
| a candidate, I have more power than I previously assumed.
|
| And the crazy thing is, knowing that power dynamic means you
| can, likely, command more compensation.
| data_spy wrote:
| For whatever reason, companies do not think this way. I usually
| get the rude comments with the 'we passed on you' email or
| voicemail.
| omar12 wrote:
| I agree 100% with your statement. I see a job interviews as
| dating. It has to work both ways, you will be spending most of
| your day with them, you need to determine what you expect from
| them and what negative behaviors you are willing to compromise
| based on your needs.
| forinti wrote:
| I'd see your appreciation of Scheme as quite positive!
|
| I once had an interview (in Portuguese) where some HR person
| asked me if I spoke English and seemed to get very upset when I
| replied that I did. This person started berating me with an angry
| face: "how would you know??". That was very strange. I can't
| imagine what was going on in this person's head.
| brudgers wrote:
| *I don't want to work with rude, unprofessional snobs*
|
| Then, whether planned or not, the rudeness was an effective and
| important part of the interview process...there was no cultural
| fit.
|
| I mean maybe the rudeness was performative. Particularly given
| how utterly useless the question is and how there's no answer
| where someone couldn't plausibly respond rudely...PHP is obvious,
| but "Rust? Oh you're one of those people?"
|
| How people respond to rudeness can be an effective gauge of
| personality.
|
| Some people will laugh it off. Some assume the source was having
| a bad day. Some will actually say the "what the fuck?" they're
| thinking.
|
| And some people will go ballistic.
|
| Not reacting as part of your professional self-image says a
| something about your personality. Terminating the interview on
| the spot wouldn't be part of that...because it would be
| unprofessional.
|
| Which is particularly true for people who work directly with
| clients where the way to deal with rudeness is rates that make
| experiencing rudeness worthwhile.
|
| By which I mean not accepting rudeness is a privilege. The
| McDonald's cashier and the hotel maid don't get that option.
|
| Good luck.
| ericfrazier wrote:
| hereforphone wrote:
| I'm in my 40s. I've had several really bad interviews, and a few
| good ones. My advice to you is to stand up and walk out when the
| interviewers become mocking, overly pedantic, or arrogant.
| Consider it a reflection of office culture.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| >I think I should have politely terminated the interview myself
|
| I probably wouldn't have had the guys to do this myself either,
| but I think this would have been the right thing to do. Like
| others have said, they gave you important information about how
| the company (does not) deal with assholes.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| Pretend to be friendly until the interview's over.
|
| Never burn your bridges. Even rude asshole bridges. You don't
| know if maybe that guy just got a call that his kid has cancer
| after working an 80 hour week. You don't know if maybe that guy
| will be hired at your next job. You don't know if he might bad-
| mouth you to other employers for fun. And you don't know if maybe
| they're waiting for one more reason to fire his ass. There is no
| benefit to walking out early, so just wait it out, and then
| politely inform them you don't think the position is a good fit
| for you.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| If you have the wit to needle them back without coming off as
| deranged, then do that.
|
| If not, then calmly state that you feel the company is not a good
| fit and that ending the interview early is in both of your
| interests, go outside and enjoy the rest of your day.
| thorin wrote:
| I think you learned an important lesson there.
|
| Not a lot you can do about it now.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| As a candidate you should always approach from a position of
| strength. Assuming that is the case, you can always call them
| out, politely, and explain that behaviour makes you feel like
| they are not a good fit for you and see their reaction. You are
| interviewing them too after all.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Kind of might depend on the context, e.g. if it's was an embedded
| dev position that required a mix of C and assembly, and Scheme
| was not just your favorite language, but also the only one. But
| then it's not clear why they'd invite you to the interview...
| unless your resume was misleading... and so on, and so forth. The
| context is important.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| > At the time I didn't say anything, and just continued the
| interview as if nothing happened, but in retrospect, I think I
| should have politely terminated the interview myself, as I don't
| want to work with rude, unprofessional snobs, but I'm wondering
| what people here would have done, and how you've faced rudeness
| during interviews yourself?
|
| Finish the interview politely. You don't want to leave the other
| interviewers in the lurch.
|
| Then immediately after the interview, contact your rep and say
| "with respect, due to the extremely inappropriate behavior of
| person X, I will not be moving forwards. Here was my experience:"
| mathattack wrote:
| Remember that every candidate can be a future supplier or
| customer. That's why rude behavior is so damaging.
|
| I wouldn't terminate the interview, or even give negative
| feedback. Just politely decline if they ask you to continue the
| process. That way you have the ability to go back if the
| situation changes. (If the jerk leaves)
| _raoulcousins wrote:
| I really don't like these "favorite x" questions. Aren't
| interviewers just asking something like "tell me about a language
| you use and why it's relevant to this interview"? Why not ask
| questions more directly?
|
| I saw on reddit recently (some database related subreddit)
| someone say "tell me your favorite type of join" as their
| favorite interview question.
| krnlpnc wrote:
| Report their behavior by name to the person who initially
| screened you.
| inetsee wrote:
| I have never had interviews this bad, but I have had interviews
| which required travel to get to the interview. Travel which was
| paid for by the company I was interviewing with. In one case I
| had an interview with paid travel, and I added an interview with
| another company on the same trip. I actually accepted the offer
| from the second company. I think in a situation like the one I
| described, you should go through the process as far as the
| interviewers want to, while at the same time politely making it
| clear that you don't think it's a good fit, and that they could
| save everyone time by concluding the process.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Politely end the interview immediately. Really.
|
| I had an in person interview with multiple people at a company
| and the CTO came in for his part and immediately started telling
| me how he wasn't supposed to be there he was supposed to be on
| vacation and he had a flight to catch so let's get this over
| with. I immediately said "Thanks for your time, please let
| everyone else know I appreciate talking with them and enjoyed our
| conversations. I'm not comfortable working at a place that treats
| candidates this way." and I stood up and left.
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