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Some of my hall of shame interviewers: - Everyone I interviewed on my would-be team felt like they were attending a funeral, never met a more depressed unenthu

Some of my hall of shame interviewers: - Everyone I interviewed on my would-be team felt like they were attending a funeral, never met a more depressed unenthusiastic bunch. - One of the interviewers wondering why I wanted this job as it was terrible, he stated he was looking to leave and warned me about the company. - Meeting room of interview room(conference room) reeked of sweat(when no one was there), it was disgusting, this from a company that was heavily funded(going public this year!) also trash on the floor and interviewers unprepared as well. - Interviewer saying there was not much work here, the company mainly collects royalties from IP and the position would see alot of downtime/doing nothing(manager saying this!).

jacquesm 6y ago
These are all very good reasons why you want to talk to your future team mates, rather than to HR and some manager. The team mates are the ones that you will be working with every day, the manager you will likely see once or twice a year and HR you will only see when there is a problem (or when they perceive you are a problem). The lower on the totem pole you go, the better the information about what it is to actually work for a particular company. The people at that level are more honest , more plain spoken and generally simply nicer and will look at you as a partner rather than as a resource.
starfallg 6y ago
Why hall of shame? 2 and 4 are top mates.
- JimTheMan 6y ago
  I once had a manager try to hire me back from another position: 'Look you will be overworked and underpaid, but you will get to do really cool hands on things here.." I appreciated the honesty.
Balgair 6y ago
Had one where they did a bunch of interviews with me in the same conference room. The job was in Foster City , so a pretty high CoL area. Whiteboarding, bit of code, etc. My manager-to-be then left me in the room for a phone call with HR about salary. The guy on the other end said that the salary was $50k, no negotiating. I turned then down, of course, but then was left alone in the conference room. I wandered about until security came and found me when I got stuck in an elevator with no RFID pass to let me out. The other bad one was a smaller firm that decided they were going to do a 'super hard' Google c. 2005 interview, in 2018. But they didn't know the answers to the questions either. Lots of 'how many piano tuners...' style questions they were looking for exact numbers with. Tried to have me debug code they had printed out. Turns out I should have known that their Python 2.7 functions wouldn't run on the 3.2 version they compile with. Yes, from a code print-out. Half way through a few just bail to go surf reddit, with me in full view of their monitors. The remaining people just start answering emails and aren't listening to me anymore, but still are asking questions. The snide remarks were the cherry on top.
ryandrake 6y ago
Hah! I have witnessed both #1 and #2 at a very electrifying company that gets a lot of mileage on HN. Big shout-out and thank-you to my interviewers who saved me from a potentially big mistake!

jacquesm 6y ago

These are all very good reasons why you want to talk to your future team mates, rather than to HR and some manager. The team mates are the ones that you will be working with every day, the manager you will likely see once or twice a year and HR you will only see when there is a problem (or when they perceive you are a problem). The lower on the totem pole you go, the better the information about what it is to actually work for a particular company. The people at that level are more honest , more plain spoken and generally simply nicer and will look at you as a partner rather than as a resource.

starfallg 6y ago

Why hall of shame? 2 and 4 are top mates.

JimTheMan 6y ago
I once had a manager try to hire me back from another position: 'Look you will be overworked and underpaid, but you will get to do really cool hands on things here.." I appreciated the honesty.

Balgair 6y ago

Had one where they did a bunch of interviews with me in the same conference room. The job was in Foster City , so a pretty high CoL area. Whiteboarding, bit of code, etc. My manager-to-be then left me in the room for a phone call with HR about salary. The guy on the other end said that the salary was $50k, no negotiating. I turned then down, of course, but then was left alone in the conference room. I wandered about until security came and found me when I got stuck in an elevator with no RFID pass to let me out. The other bad one was a smaller firm that decided they were going to do a 'super hard' Google c. 2005 interview, in 2018. But they didn't know the answers to the questions either. Lots of 'how many piano tuners...' style questions they were looking for exact numbers with. Tried to have me debug code they had printed out. Turns out I should have known that their Python 2.7 functions wouldn't run on the 3.2 version they compile with. Yes, from a code print-out. Half way through a few just bail to go surf reddit, with me in full view of their monitors. The remaining people just start answering emails and aren't listening to me anymore, but still are asking questions. The snide remarks were the cherry on top.

ryandrake 6y ago

Hah! I have witnessed both #1 and #2 at a very electrifying company that gets a lot of mileage on HN. Big shout-out and thank-you to my interviewers who saved me from a potentially big mistake!