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I wonder if he didn't like you because you didn't look like a hipster.... I'm totally serious: I really wonder how many of these baffling interview experiences
by Grishnakh 11y ago
I wonder if he didn't like you because you didn't look like a hipster....
I'm totally serious: I really wonder how many of these baffling interview experiences where seemingly highly-qualified candidates get turned down is really about non-technical and non-work-related factors, but no one wants to actually admit it. How much of it is due to personal biases by the interviewers, who may discriminate against people for various reasons? A lot of people want to surround themselves with people just like themselves, so if you have a company full of hipsters wearing fedoras and someone comes in for an interview and they don't look like that, they could easily be passed over because they're "not a fit for our company culture".
I don't think I'm half as competent as the guy who wrote this article, but I've had a much easier time getting jobs in general. My background isn't even CS, it's EE, so I totally suck at all the algorithm questions. But OTOH I generally apply for embedded programming positions where knowledge of algorithms isn't that important anyway. I even interviewed at Google (one of their recruiters contacted me) and had pretty much the same experience as him; I won't waste my time with that company again. A bunch of recruiters have tried to get me to interview at Bloomberg LP, but I would never work in that crappy open-plan environment that they're infamous for. But I frequently wonder how much of my success is just from being tall and in-shape, not having any obvious personality quirks, and "fitting in" with the look and the company culture (I interview with more stodgy places, not places with hipsters with arm-sleeve tattoos), rather than due to my technical proficiency.
- jjn2009 11y agoNetflix has a very strong focus on culture so you are likely correct, although it doesn't sound like he got to the part where they actually quiz you on their Netflix culture slide deck they likely did not continue for this reason. There is some merit to trying to maintain culture if they have some formula for what works there and they want to maintain it but an engineer could pretty easily think something along the lines of "he's not hipster enough" and then make a case that they don't fit the culture but really not care about netflix's corporate ideas about culture.
- johnward 11y agoThose bloomberg recruiters must contact everyone. I'm like "yeah I play around with Rails on side projects". Then they want to interview me. I've never gone through with it because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be successful in that position.