[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encounter...
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Ask HN: What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a
hiring process?
I'll start. A few years back, I was interviewing at a then "hot"
startup. At the end of the process, the CTO calls and says they'd
like to extend an offer. I was expecting him to walk me through the
offer details, when he goes "well, are you going to take it?" I
asked about getting some specifics (cash comp, equity, etc.) and he
explains that they ask candidates to commit before sharing any
details. I told him that didn't seem like such a great idea, and
he assured me that comp wouldn't be an issue, and that they do this
to avoid hiring mercenaries. I passed and never looked back.
Author : ctc24
Score : 66 points
Date : 2023-08-21 15:08 UTC (7 hours ago)
| [deleted]
| jakedata wrote:
| I was summoned to a nondescript industrial building, found my way
| upstairs and wound up in a grubby room posing as a lobby. I was
| seated on a low futon and had several discussions with my knees
| nearly level with my ears. The conversations were overly casual
| but with some oddly specific IT security questions. I seriously
| contemplated walking out of what was clearly an amateurish,
| shoestring operation.
|
| Nope... I have worked there 20 years so far.
|
| My first job was to evict the former sysadmin, and within the
| first 90 days I was relocating the whole company, building out
| the new IT infrastructure.
|
| So in the spirit of the recent post about Charlie Munger killing
| a lot of pilots I would suggest not judging the company solely by
| its lobby. Make a list of real deal-breakers and consider
| overlooking the rest.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| > So in the spirit of the recent post about Charlie Munger
| killing a lot of pilots
|
| Mind linking this? The search box isn't giving me any recent
| results that look right.
| xprn wrote:
| Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37209309
| joegahona wrote:
| Is the futon still there? If not, work it into the story
| somehow, near the end.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| If you ever contemplate a career change, even if never, please
| consider writing.
| jakedata wrote:
| Thanks! I consider writing well to be a differentiating
| skill, especially in IT.
| b20000 wrote:
| as a CS undergrad i interviewed at PwC or a similar firm one day.
| The lady hands me one of their 2 page publications on IT and asks
| me to write a summary. She gets back and I explain that the
| publication makes no sense and is full of inaccurate bullshit.
| Needless to say I didn't go work there.
| joezydeco wrote:
| The CEO had pictures of his racing Porsches all over his office,
| but the bathrooms looked like they hadn't been painted in 20
| years. Told me all I needed to know about where the priorities
| were, so I bailed.
| ilaksh wrote:
| This isn't quite what they asked about, but much of my work has
| been freelance contracts from the internet. One of the biggest
| red flags for a project description is when they mention that the
| project is "very simple" or "easy for someone who knows what they
| are doing". That just means they are dirt cheap and looking to
| rationalize the way they squeeze contractors.
|
| Another red flag is that it's a freelancing site.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Not a specific story here but as you read these....
|
| I have NEVER ever ever ever seen a red flag (in an employer or
| employee or any other relationship) that was not real.
|
| Not every red flag needs to be a deal killer, but it never is
| just your imagination or just goes away.
| ezedv wrote:
| Once, I had an interview where the hiring manager seemed
| uninterested in my questions about team dynamics and growth
| opportunities. It made me wonder if they valued open
| communication.
|
| I believe interviews are a two-way street, and if a company isn't
| willing to engage in meaningful dialogue, it might signal
| potential issues down the road.
|
| For those interested, we have open positions!
| https://www.ratherlabs.com/open-positions
| frfl wrote:
| Why are you linking job postings, for your current
| employer/company(?), in this thread? Seems like a very strange
| thing to do.
| Two4 wrote:
| Many jobseekers will be in this thread, looking for tips.
| Seems like a smart place to pick up candidates.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| They said they liked to start their engineers on the assembly
| line for a few months so they "know what's going on". Um, no, not
| for me. Found out later that "no" was definitely the right call.
| What they really liked was having engineers working on their
| assembly line.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I'd do it if they were gonna pay me the engineer salary while
| on the assembly line.
|
| I doubt this was the case, though.
| mikewarot wrote:
| "You're not allowed to work on your own projects when you're not
| at work"
|
| The biggest red flag ever
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I can understand having this policy in place for projects that
| directly compete with a company. Working on a search engine at
| home when you're working on search at Google, or working on a
| banking product for farmers when you do the same thing at work
| could be a direct conflict of interest and incentivize
| unethical or possibly even criminal behavior. I think setting
| some guidelines in place for that kind of thing is reasonable.
|
| But some companies take this to an extreme.
|
| I was working on a niche clothing brand at home in my spare
| time for example when I wanted to work for a gaming startup.
| They were giving me such a repulsively hard time about my side
| project even though the clothing had literally nothing
| conceivably close to the company's business model.
|
| It's so stupid because companies should try and hire people
| that have diverse experiences and are working hard to achieve
| something.
| icedchai wrote:
| If it had nothing to do with their business, why did you even
| tell them about your side project? I would've just kept my
| mouth shut.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| You can do this and I know of people who have done this. In
| virtually all cases, it's never going to come up.
|
| But, for companies that are batshit anal about side-
| projects, they're going to make you sign some onerous
| contract and have management that are assholes about this
| kind of thing.
|
| What happens in the event that you "hit the lottery" and
| some side-project becomes a big deal worth a lot of money?
| Somebody from your company is eventually going to find out
| about it: maybe from a public interview or from public
| records. If they put 2 + 2 together about when you built
| this and figure out that they can file some legal claim to
| it, you're in a mess of a legal situation that you don't
| need to be in.
|
| Safer to put your cards on the table and make sure there's
| nothing in an employment agreement that puts something you
| really care about at risk.
|
| The percentage of companies that are very anal about side-
| projects isn't substantial. They need you more than you
| need them and it's safer to be honest and look elsewhere
| for employment.
| [deleted]
| jrflowers wrote:
| I was once asked "why do you want to work here?" while
| interviewing at a Hardee's as a teenager.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| "You are offering currency in exchange for labor. I can provide
| labor, and desire currency."
| ecshafer wrote:
| I figure that at the level of fast food, the "why do you want
| to work here" and similar questions are really just to filter
| out someone that cares so little they can't even make up an
| answer. It doesn't have to be a good answer, even a "I like
| cooking food" is usually fine enough. But a decent amount of
| people will just shrug.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Ha! I remember having to "draw my thoughts" when applying for
| Whole Foods circa ~2004.
| mywittyname wrote:
| That's a legit question for a throw-away fast food job. Since
| most of these jobs are fungible, it can be useful to know why
| someone picked your greasy burger joint over the one down the
| road.
|
| "It's close to where I live / I can walk here" = You probably
| don't have to worry about their "car breaking down" or general
| issues getting to work.
|
| "My friends work here" = You're going to have a bunch of
| teenagers dicking off if you're not running a tight ship.
|
| And there are a whole bunch of neutral responses too. "I need a
| job and you all are hiring" is a perfectly acceptable, accurate
| answer to this question that literally every applicant can
| provide.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| > general issues getting to work
|
| When I was applying for jobs like this as a teen,
| applications specifically asked about my transportation
| situation.
|
| > You're going to have a bunch of teenagers dicking off if
| you're not running a tight ship
|
| Just run a tight ship, then. People who didn't know each
| other beforehand will also dick around. I've made plenty of
| friends out of work colleagues.
|
| > "I need a job and you all are hiring" is a perfectly
| acceptable, accurate answer to this question that literally
| every applicant can provide
|
| Then I'd argue it's the opposite of legit: it's completely
| superfluous.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Standard question.
|
| If that's a red flag, the whole world is red.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Is there any way to "correctly" answer that question that
| isn't just made up bullshit, especially for a fast food
| restaurant?
|
| I think it's hilarious being asked this question when I'm in
| early discussions with a company that reached out to me.
| paulddraper wrote:
| The team, the environment, the flexible hours, the pay.
|
| Even for fast-food service jobs, there is always some
| differentiator.
|
| Note: People who can't answer this question are more likely
| to turn over. That's why it is asked.
| jrflowers wrote:
| Yes. After establishing work history, skills, availability
| and references one would be derelict in their duties to not
| establish the Philosophical Why before handing a kid the
| Sacred Mop.
| blarnopre wrote:
| Remember that every company, like every interviewer, is trying to
| put their best foot forward during the interview process.
|
| You can never expect them to be on any better behavior, so expect
| this as your top bar for your relationship and you'll not have
| many surprises.
|
| As a corollary, that means anything that looks like a red flag is
| probably an iceberg.
| distract8901 wrote:
| Once I applied to a slightly sketchy indeed posting. The company
| was named something incredibly generic like WorldProgrammers or
| GlobalDevs. Within 60 seconds of posting my application, I got a
| phone call from a very pushy guy with a thick Indian accent,
| requesting that I fill out a separate application over email.
| When I didn't immediately respond (because I was at work), I got
| a series of calls from the 'manager' over and over until I
| blocked the number.
|
| The listing was on the edge of too good to be true, and the
| _immediate_ and desperate attempts to reel me in were a huge red
| flag.
|
| I withdrew my application, did everything I could to block them,
| and reported the listing to indeed.
|
| I have no idea what the scam was, but I'm absolutely convinced it
| was a scam. It was honestly pretty scary, and I'm sure that a
| slightly less vigilant person would get pulled in.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| The scam is that these bottom-of-the-barrel recruiters'
| contracts pay out based on providing a certain number of
| "qualified resumes", not for actually filling the position.
| They're basically doing lead generation, not real recruiting.
|
| After a while you can tell which positions these are by how
| they are worded and how the recruiters associated with them
| talk and behave during the call.
| cvhashim04 wrote:
| Nothing crazy but I interviewed at a startup a few years ago -- I
| use the term startup loosely as the company was around for 10
| years already but still calling themselves a startup (eye roll).
| Anyway the VP said every morning the entire company attends stand
| up. Mind you that was almost 50 people in the meeting discussing
| their updates. Yup I bolted. They tried to follow up with me
| after for additional interviews but I ignored it and moved on
| with my life.
| klyrs wrote:
| Canonical. Their desktop experience had already lost its shine
| (and, effing snaps), but I made the mistake of believing that
| they might be cool anyway, without doing my research.
|
| Intelligence test? Story about high school? Reflex test? The
| actual red flag for me was their final admission that they
| require an unpaid internship in the form of "community
| participation."
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/tkc348/my_interview_...
| OnionBlender wrote:
| I had the same experience and lost respect for Canonical. Kind
| of makes me want to avoid using Ubuntu as well.
| jimmychoozyx wrote:
| I was invited into an in-person interview in downtown San
| Francisco for a role on a digital marketing team at Adobe. I was
| interviewed one by one, by three potential colleagues (all
| women).
|
| One of them condescendingly asked me if I voted for Trump, simply
| because I am originally from a non-blue state.
|
| It was very strange, anti-toxic/toxic, and came out of nowhere.
| It made me consider secretly filming & voice recording
| interviews, especially in the SF Bay Area where people are a bit
| more influenced by political trends.
| apercu wrote:
| Well, did you? lol.
| Tomte wrote:
| "You need to send us a handwritten page that we'll send to a
| graphologer in Switzerland. Nobody is hired without a
| graphological report."
|
| I did that, got hired, and wouldn't comply again. First job after
| university.
|
| Nothing bad happened. Years later I could read the report, and it
| was nothing remarkable.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| I had never heard of a"graphological report" so I looked it up.
| It's so much worse than I would have guessed! Any of those
| personality tests are such a major red flag.
|
| "Graphology is the analysis of handwriting with attempt to
| determine someone's personality traits."
| silisili wrote:
| The glassdoor salaries were the red flag I ignored at least
| twice. They were about half of what I was asking. In both cases I
| gave my asking price, and they said something like 'well, it's
| not out of the question'.
|
| Did all the coding tests and such for both, both claim I 'aced'
| them. One made me an offer about half of what I was asking, in
| line with the Glassdoor salaries. The other didn't provide an
| offer after basically trying to ask how little I'd take.
| romanhn wrote:
| Years ago I was interviewing for a software engineering role. At
| the end of one of the interviews I asked how they liked working
| there. And the interviewer caught me off-guard with "it kind of
| sucks". She went on to explain that the company recently promoted
| a bunch of youngsters into VP roles through a combination of
| nepotism and early start dates, and they didn't know what they
| were doing. I thanked her and politely bowed out of the process
| when the hiring manager reached out to me with the next steps.
|
| This was Nvidia in 2006 and their stock is up about 200x since
| then.
| paxys wrote:
| If "promotes people to upper management who don't deserve it"
| was a disqualifier then you would be left with exactly zero
| companies to work for. Ultimately you have to be able to tell
| whether it's a systemic problem or just one disgruntled
| employee.
| romanhn wrote:
| You're right of course. However, interviewing is a game of
| limited information and I consider all signal I get from the
| company (after all, they're doing the same with me). I think
| a few things had to be broken in order for an employee to
| feel strongly this way, end up in the interviewing panel, and
| feel comfortable to share their views.
|
| Nowadays it may be easier somewhat to get some insight into
| inner workings, but in 2006 there was no Blind, Glassdoor,
| etc. Sometimes the positive signals outweigh the negative. In
| my case they did not.
| aprdm wrote:
| Nvidia, like many other tech companies, has many
| people/teams/departments/division. Is very hard to get a clear
| view of the world from a single point.
|
| Who knows, maybe if you joined you would have hated it too, or
| loved it ! The story you shared is likely shared by many other
| companies that went through hyper-growth
|
| TLDR: Stuff is hard!
| throwaway19423 wrote:
| NVidia was truly a spectacular opportunity. So was Microsoft,
| Databricks, etc. I picked a dud, and didn't realize it until
| it was too late (just now). Question is .. what are the
| obvious winners today, and for the next 10 years?
|
| Some opportunities I missed but they didn't go anywhere:
| Docker, Qualcomm.
|
| Consumer Devices is a general dud I think. Software and data
| is where it is at. I dunno?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| I remember losing a candidate to databricks around
| 2012/2013. I thought he was making a bad decision. Hoo-boy
| was I wrong.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| Right, now he's got really valuable Paper money that they
| offer to buy back at a very steep discount. Anyhow
| wouldn't feel bad about missing that one!
| cvhashim04 wrote:
| BioTech :P
| kapilkaisare wrote:
| Really? Tell me more, please.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Robotics
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| Circa 2000, I was invited for a lunch interview.
|
| I walk into a completely dark and empty cubicle space, one lit
| office in the back.
|
| Lunch meant the interviewer ate a Hot Pocket off a paper plate as
| we talked.
|
| Didn't even offer me any.
|
| First interview I walked out of.
| paxys wrote:
| Ha I've had more than one of these (nothing this bad, but
| still). Turns out for a lot of recruiters "lunch interview"
| means interview that is scheduled during lunch, not interview
| in which lunch is provided.
| lagniappe wrote:
| >Didn't even offer me any.
|
| I hope that middle bite was frozen.
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| I should have spotted it but didn't: They took me out skiing one
| day between interviews (they were courting me pretty hard, and
| good snow was a selling point for the region) and I met the CEO
| for the first time on the slopes.
|
| He wore a full motorcycle-style helmet with a mirrored face visor
| which he refused to open; it was like talking to a member of Daft
| Punk. It had fake hologram bullet-holes on it.
|
| More importantly, he skied like an asshole: cutting people off,
| sudden stops or changes in direction without checking if anyone
| else was coming, cutting ahead in the lift line, stopping to
| readjust his gloves or whatever directly in the lift exit ramp,
| shouting at people who he felt were in his way -- just totally
| self-absorbed and borderline dangerous.
|
| It turned out to match his management style 1000%.
| nameless912 wrote:
| My last CEO (healthcare startup) told me during my interview
| with them "but you don't look autistic!" and that should have
| been the end of the conversation there. When people show you
| who they are, believe them and all that.
| paulddraper wrote:
| ....what was the lead up to that statement?
|
| "I'm autistic"
|
| "Oh, you don't seem autistic"
| boringalterego wrote:
| "Hi autistic, I'm dad. "
|
| I've had that answer before... That was a fun but volatile
| place to work for a summer internship.
| natsucks wrote:
| hilarious.
| Huggernaut wrote:
| I had an interview for a large well-known bank software
| internship maybe 15 years ago. One interview was a role-play in
| which I was attending a meeting in lieu of my boss with someone
| from another division of the bank to discuss a behind-schedule
| project.
|
| Role-play starts and this guy storms in, slams the door and
| starts shouting about how the software department are useless and
| how are we going to proceed. At one point he yelled that without
| his department we wouldn't have money to keep the lights on.
|
| In retrospect, I'm sure this was a lot of fun for him and it
| might have been a good filter but I also am more than happy that
| I did not proceed to the next round if this is what they wanted
| to show me about their culture.
| hw-guy wrote:
| When I was 19 and naive, I was interviewed for a desperately-
| needed summer job selling dictionaries door-to-door. The head
| interviewer wore a three-piece suit, gold watch, and an expensive
| haircut. He told me that as a demonstration of my independence
| and maturity, he wanted a commitment from me right then and there
| that I would accept the job and sign all the paperwork if he made
| an offer. If I wanted to go home and think about it or discuss it
| with my parents, that meant I was "immature" and didn't have the
| right stuff for the job.
|
| Fortunately I had the presense of mind to see through that and
| walked out. When I got back to school, I found out that a friend
| of mine had worked for the same company selling Bibles in rural
| Tennessee; he hated it so much that he quit after a couple of
| weeks. He didn't make any money because the contract he had
| signed required that he stay for the entire summer before seeing
| a penny.
| whycome wrote:
| Made me think of this sketch:
| https://archive.org/details/w-bob-david-the-salesman
| kypro wrote:
| I also don't signs of bureaucracy, lack of flexibility or
| emotional manipulation generally.
|
| If a company cannot negotiate salary because of some corporate
| rules, I'm not interested. If a company will not give me any
| flexibility in working hours I'm not interested. If a company
| tries to make me feel bad about not immediately accepting their
| offer I'm very likely to not accept their offer at all.
|
| Rigid companies which have no regard for your emotional wellbeing
| are not pleasant places to work and I struggle to give my best
| when I feel I'm not respected.
| 82123throwaway wrote:
| Admitting the company is involved in drug trafficking.
|
| EDIT: _illegal_ drug trafficking
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| You can't lead with that and not tell the full story!
| hondo77 wrote:
| In retrospect: hiring managers having Ayn Rand books at work.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| She cited herself as a reference and her last three employers
| were all clearly made up. Another coworker hired her anyways,
| because of her appearance. It didn't end well.
| throwaway1995v2 wrote:
| Very long take-home assignments, I was interviewing with a
| startup for a backend position. they gave me 5 days to build a
| Cinema Ticket Reservation API, this by itself was long since it
| required managing 5 to 6 tables with it corresponding crud and
| business logic of each one (and also tests) but apart from that
| they wanted to see complex data structures, design patterns,
| caches strategies, be able to "scale", a design diagram, and as a
| bonus if I wanted add a CI/CD pipeline.
|
| I did only the core app, but none of the others stuffs beacase
| that looked like way to much unpaid work just to "prove" my
| ablities.
|
| I should have known better becase they rejected me because the
| project was to simple, wasn't going to "scale", and did'n used
| any complex design patterns, a day an a half of work wasted.
| nameless912 wrote:
| Oh here's another one - I was interviewing at Google and got an
| offer, and I decided to ask for a meeting with the HM because the
| other job I was considering at the time gave me an interview with
| the HM that was really enlightening and made me feel good about
| taking the other job over Google. I figured it would be a good
| way to directly compare the two jobs since the comp, etc. were
| similar.
|
| The moment I met the HM I wanted to leave. He was brusque, felt
| like our entire meeting was a waste of time, and was, quote,
| surprised that they had finally filled his job req. I tried to
| brush this off as him having a bad day, and sat down for coffee
| with him. We started having a stilted conversation in which I
| mentioned that I had just adopted a dog, and his first response
| was, "oh god, I _hate_ dogs, please never bring it to work."
|
| That was kind of the end of that. Sure, maybe it's petty, but I
| was getting bucketfuls of bad vibes from this guy.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I went to a university where the NSA was heavily recruiting. I
| had a bad feeling about it and not only stayed clear but also
| asked some fellow students about the ethics of going to work for
| the spooks. At least one told me, something like "someone else
| takes care of ethics, I will just get to work on amazing stuff!"
|
| Never looked back, never got a security clearance. Now I'm a dual
| citizen, so basically neither of my countries probably trusts me.
| :)
| cmpalmer52 wrote:
| Interviewed with a defense contractor. I had three "ins" at the
| company and was basically interviewing to check them out because
| I was about 90% sure I'd get an offer.
|
| I was about to burn out at my current job at the time. Too much
| stress, too many hours, too much crazy. At this interview, every
| one I talked to talked about how "exciting" and "cutting edge"
| everything they were doing was. "We barely finish a prototype
| before they've changed the design and we have to start over
| without testing the last one." "It's very fast paced, stuff is
| changing all the time." "We work over some. Last week, I put in
| 72 hours, but that's not typical." "A dozen companies have tried
| to solve this problem, but we think we've finally figured it
| out." And so on. And it was a weapon technology, which I had
| ethical qualms about.
|
| I called them back and withdrew my application. The HR guy said
| he was preparing my offer. I told him I didn't want to see it. My
| biggest fear was that it would be enough money to tempt me to
| take the job and I would have been miserable.
|
| Six months later, half of everyone there was laid off. They never
| got the big problem solved. They lost several contracts. Dodged
| that bullet (pun intended).
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| After a 1-hour presentation, "come back tomorrow and we'll tell
| you the details of the job."
|
| Nope.
| nameless912 wrote:
| I once was interviewing for an internship at a quant firm in
| Chicago (I was in my Sophomore year I think at UIUC) and my
| interview went pretty well up to the point of my second-last
| interview of the day.
|
| Then, I sat down with the VP of engineering, and he opened the
| interview with "so, what do you think it is we do here?" And I
| naturally stuttered through a canned answer about how they use
| arbitrage opportunities in the market to profit off of mis-priced
| securities, etc. Then he asked me, "but what benefit do we
| provide? Why is working here good for society?"
|
| I blanked, and didn't answer for about 15 seconds. Then, I tried
| to start piecing together an answer until he stopped me, told me
| he had found my Facebook, and wasn't appreciative of my politics
| (I was moderately lefty in high school, significantly more so
| now; maybe this conversation is part of why). He had _printouts_
| of some posts I had made criticizing George W. Bush, talking
| about why I thought we should be raising taxes on higher earners,
| supporting Obamacare, etc. He told me that he didn't think I had
| the "cojones to stomach the job" (direct quote), and told the
| recruiter not to bother with the last interview and that I had
| failed.
|
| I _sobbed_ on the train home; I think it was the worst I had ever
| felt about an interview in my entire life, and yet looking back
| at it, I think this was the best possible outcome. Imagine if I
| had worked for this asshole.
|
| I've worked for companies I don't personally agree with in the
| past; it's part of living in a society(TM). I am able to hold my
| nose to a certain extent to make an income for my family (heck, I
| am currently having to cross picket lines to come to work, which
| makes me feel icky). But I can't fathom what hell I would have
| been living under had I gotten and taken that job.
| eachro wrote:
| Which firm was this?
| nameless912 wrote:
| I don't remember at this point to be honest, this was
| like...10 years ago? But this moment is seared in my mind.
| hw-guy wrote:
| I have a friend in a similar business who was honest enough to
| admit that his impact on society was "likely negative, at best
| neutral," but it was a comfortable living.
| allo37 wrote:
| I'm curious what the answer was. I've read plenty about how the
| boutique finance sector is basically a parasite that only
| benefits a small cohort of already wealthy individuals, would
| like to hear what the other side has to say.
| jerkstate wrote:
| The answer I get from people working at market makers I've
| talked to is that they provide liquidity (so you can buy or
| sell a security immediately rather than waiting minutes or
| hours?) and decrease volatility.
|
| An example is onions futures; see
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act and check
| the onions price history:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU01130216/ compared to a
| commodity where futures trading in common, like corn:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PMAIZMTUSDM where there
| are price swings but the volatility and frequency of the
| swings is lower.
|
| I'm a layperson, not involved in finance, but this is the
| value add I most commonly hear about.
| scubbo wrote:
| Likewise, this is the answer I generally hear from those
| folks. IME it's still begging the question - the increased
| liquidity is still overwhelmingly only meaningful to those
| already-ultra-rich, unless you subscribe to trickle-down
| Economics.
| mihaaly wrote:
| This does not sound as value for the society but advantage
| for the tradesman.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| One set of markers of a "good" industry or organization is
| whether they pay for all the harm they create in society
| and whether their profits are equal to or below the value
| they create for society.
|
| For instance, the oil/car industry pays for basically none
| of the large negative externalities they create. In this
| case, I hazard that futures industry captures more value
| than they create. And that value is extracted from other
| players in the vertical chain, particularly farmers.
| Turskarama wrote:
| That's the benefit they give to their _customer_, which is
| not the same as a benefit to _society_.
| nameless912 wrote:
| Right? Like, I tried really hard to prepare a very neutral
| answer focusing on taking advantage of arbitrage and fixing
| over- or under-priced securities, which I think is the
| closest thing to a benefit you could come up with. And that
| apparently wasn't good enough for this guy.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| Should have been honest and said "You contribute nothing to
| society"
| jacknews wrote:
| I'm sure they already know that, indeed that they actually
| contribute negatively, which is why you need to be able to
| 'stomach the job'.
| abjr wrote:
| "You're just taking up space."
| ipaddr wrote:
| In the case above you agree and let them share details than say
| thanks I'll let you know.
| b20000 wrote:
| coding interviews
| jebarker wrote:
| For coding jobs?
| postalrat wrote:
| Probably read about it somewhere.
| icepat wrote:
| Funny enough, my curent position did not give me a coding
| interview. Rather they asked difficult technical questions
| about the technologies I used, and asked me to justify my
| use of them. I found this was a far better test, because
| coding out an algorithm is something you can just memorise.
|
| Example: "You've used k8s, how and in what context?" "Ok,
| great, so you've AWS EC2 instances, how did you manage cost
| and performance there?" "You're listing Clojure here, what
| were your thoughts on X feature/limitation"? It was a
| rather fluid discussion about the ins and outs of
| technologies, stacks by engineers.
|
| Sometimes actually interrogating someone's knowledge of a
| system works just as well. I code a lot of things slowly,
| and need to think through my designs with a pad of paper. I
| really can't do it when someone is hovering over my
| shoulder.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Back in 2014, I was an intern at a major tech company doing
| software testing for $13.25/hr. I was about to finish my CS
| degree and my internship was ending, so I was applying for
| software engineering jobs.
|
| During a phone screen at one company, they asked my salary
| expectations, and I said $60K. They asked what I was currently
| making, and I (naively) answered the $13.25/hr. They said they
| could do $16/hr, and that I should consider that generous, as I
| shouldn't expect to get more than 15% more when getting a new
| job. Also, they would expect 50-55 hrs/week of work.
|
| I noped out. Yeah, I needed work, but I wasn't desperate.
|
| After looking at Glassdoor, I got the impression that this
| company was preying on desperate new college grads, underpaying
| the shit out of them while expecting the world so they don't have
| time to apply for better jobs. One guy, in his review, said that
| when asked about work-life balance, the manager said "We believe
| in work-life _integration_. " He noped out just as quick.
| [deleted]
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Interviewed with a company that implemented their own healthcare
| insurance. That is, if you have a medical issue, you tell _them_
| what it is, they OK a doctor visit, then you pay for it, bring
| the receipt and they will reimburse you as per their policies.
|
| Also their compensation comprised a fixed salary and a
| "guaranteed" bonus of about 20%, which together added up to the
| market rate. However the bonus wasn't mentioned in the written
| contract.
|
| It was a high-tech hardware company of several dozen people with
| their own clean-room manufacturing facilities. Interesting tech,
| good product, but the CFO felt like a grifter and the CEO looked
| like a retired gangster, with mannerisms to match, who spent
| _all_ interview telling how much business prowess he had.
|
| That was really bizarre.
| alimw wrote:
| "So what might have caused this strange new syndrome in our
| trading platform?" "Perhaps one of the market participants was
| doing something different?" "Nope."
|
| Then literally two hours of me stumbling through possible
| technical issues to do with the internals of a system I had never
| seen. Even though I had thought I was being considered for my
| maths rather than my computer skills.
|
| "Well just so you know, it turned out that one of the guys
| trading on the platform was doing something different." Laughing
| politely, "but you told me...". "Oh well no that's not what I
| would consider a market participant."
|
| I call my laughter polite but I suspect it had an edge to it.
| Anyway he immediately walked me out saying, "we'll send you
| feedback." The feedback was that I had asked for too much money.
| (I hadn't asked for anything.)
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