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Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

218 points by Sandeepg33k 6y ago

ziddoap 6y ago
Interesting read but I (and I think many others) would be more interested in reading about how one manages to land 60 interviews, at all, in the current job market. You must have either a stellar resume, incredible experience, access to a huge network, or a combination of the above.
- kache_ 6y ago
  Are we in the same job market? It might be geographically related. I get bothered non stop by recruiters (And I'm not special, just a humble software dev)
  - fortzi 6y ago
    There’s quite some way to go from being approached by a recruiter and actually passing the whole process and being hired
- jtsiskin 6y ago
  “The current job market” - tech stocks and revenue is exploding, is the job market difficult currently?
  - mooxie 6y ago
    My understanding from younger colleagues is that entry-level positions are much more competitive than they were when I was leaving college and entering the tech market 10 or 12 years ago. At that time, my experience was that if you knew Linux (at all) or Windows/Mac administration - and were otherwise a good interviewee - you essentially had your choice of jobs. People entering the market now talk about it like it's a complete wasteland. Apparently entry-level 'learn-on-the-job' tech work is extremely competitive and difficult to access for new graduates these days. If you're already 'in' and have a network and experience it's still largely like the glory days, but getting to that level is supposedly much more difficult now. (To be fair to any younger people reading this, my entry-level tech job was at $28k/yr and I worked restaurants and bars until I was able to move on, so it's not like I got a degree and someone threw $150k at me to intern. It took a lot of work, even in the glory days)
    - kylecordes 6y ago
      There are many people entering the industry that can already demonstrate their skills well, and interview in a way that shows that even if they are technically entry-level, they likely won't stay there for very long. This probably contributes to a very competitive situation for traditional entry-level "actually I need to learn this job once I get there" candidates.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    I've anecdotally heard from former colleagues that it's gotten tougher to find entry-level or mid-level positions, not sure how broadly that applies, though.
    - electrondood 6y ago
      This is sort of evergreen though. It's like "last year at Burning Man was the last good year."
    - Tallain 6y ago
      I will add my anecdote to the pile. It seems like there are a good number of positions out there, but it also seems like most of them are asking for senior level folks. Then, the ones I interview stall out because I either have too much experience, or not enough experience - I'm square in the middle ground where it seems nothing is quite right for me.
      - waiseristy 6y ago
        Same experience. Low level warm-body work is plentiful, but pays poorly and doesn't give good experience. Senior level work is in extremely high demand, but employers aren't willing to bring on engineers who only have experience with the latter. I've started shopping around for (and have had limited success with) 100-500 headcount companies who are willing to hire seniors on the greener side.
      - potta_coffee 6y ago
        I identify with this. I'm ready to move on to the next step but there doesn't seem to be a position that fits my experience level. "Senior" seems like a relative distinction based on the company. I'm ready to land at a place that takes engineering practices more seriously but those companies don't think I have enough experience with those practices - for instance, I've never worked at a company that even cares about unit testing, now I need to be very experienced at it. I know how to do unit testing of course but it's not my sharpest skill for obvious reasons. I'm focusing on these weaker skills but it's definitely a challenge.
    - 6y ago
  - ziddoap 6y ago
    I suppose my comment lacked a bit of nuance, as I understand the author may be in a different sector and certainly different geographic location. Where I live (and the areas I am able/willing to transfer to), the job market has proven quite difficult. But, it could also be that my resume isn't to par, or a lack of effective networking, or both. That's why I'd be interested in seeing the perspective from someone who is obviously having success landing interviews.
  - nullserver 6y ago
    I got an offer from a place (hot startup)that I wasn’t really interested in. Had a call to talk about it, see if I might be into. Oh can you talk to so and so, hey can we do a coding exercises really quick, hey can you chat with founder really quick. 3 days from hearing about company, I had an offer. Then was being pestered about background check. Wait, how did I get to this point? I wasn’t even really interested. Few days later offer was withdrawn since I hadn’t completed paperwork. Overall I’m glad I didn’t accept, they clearly had a very inflated opinion of themselves and how eager everyone would be to join.
    - kylecordes 6y ago
      In a tepid defense of the anonymous company… I would probably also interpret someone in the situation doing a coding exercise as a sign they are interested in a position.
      - nullserver 6y ago
        Fair point. I liken it to going to the bar and waking up in Vegas with a ring on your finger and a stranger in your bed. It’s probably your fault, but it’s still a huge WTF just happened moment
    - yourapostasy 6y ago
      > Few days later offer was withdrawn since I hadn’t completed paperwork. Saw the not-filling paperwork/red tape in a timely manner used as a signal first-hand to screen out a perfectly-acceptable (technical-wise) candidate. Combined with a perceived lack of enthusiasm in personality for the role (which I could easily put down to a manager who has a specific idea in mind of "enthusiasm", and doesn't mesh well with a wider variance of personality types), it was a one-two punch the candidate could not recover from, and lost out to a slightly more junior tech.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    From say, December 1995(An arbitrary date) to now, in every single month,you could find posts/emails/comments all over the internet claiming that in that month/year: - The economy was in a slump and was going to get worse - The job market was in its way situation ever - All the good ideas had been taken, no hanging fruits anymore - It was a bad time to study CS/law/medicine/engineering/math/physics - The good times were over - More and more people were "leaving the field"
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ipnon 6y ago
  Apply the Lindy rule[0]: To get a job at a startup, have an app portfolio. To get a job at a Big N, go to an elite university, another Big N, or grind Leetcode for months. To get a job at a corporation, grind Leetcode and have recruiters spam your resume. Different jobs require different applicants. A balanced, general approach, would be to do 1 Leetcode problem and send 1 application per day. It'd be hard to still be underemployed after doing that for any while. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    How are any of those recommendations related to the Lindy Effect?
    - ipnon 6y ago
      Show an ability to survive in the different constraints unique to each type of software engineering job
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        How is that related to the Lindy Effect? Just throwing in the word "survive" doesn't automatically mean the Lindy Effect is in play...
        ipnon 6y ago
        I would like to respond in equal manner: Show an ability to survive in the different constraints unique to each type of software engineering job
  - wcarss 6y ago
    I'd never heard of the Lindy effect before and it seems very interesting. As I understand it, it suggests "the longer a non-perishable thing is present, the longer it likely will be present." Not trying to razz you here, but I don't quite follow how this is an application of it. Could you elaborate a bit? (edit: rats, I took too long to try to word this request tactfully)
- ajcp 6y ago
  He never says how many actual positions he interviewed for, or at how many companies for that matter. From the article it sounds like he was counting initial phone-screens as well. If he had applied to 20 separate job postings they could have included a technical phone-screen, a "take-home" test, and a technical interview. Still a banana's amount of engagement for someone to receive in just 30-days though. That being said and looking at the writer's LinkedIn profile he does appear to have a stellar resume, solid experience, and a large network.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I have 1 year of experience (not at a FAANG) and I get 3 recruiters a week through LinkedIn. And beyond a casual resume screening, they are direct to interview. Where are you? The market is roaring here in Canada.
- potta_coffee 6y ago
  I had about 15 interviews all within a span of two weeks; I applied for those jobs the week before and I was fairly selective based on what I'm interested in doing and the kind of company I'm looking for. I don't have an incredible resume and I've never worked for any important company that you've heard of, I live in flyover country.
Damogran6 6y ago
#4 reflected my experience in Healthcare interviewing to a T. Biggest Healthcare concern in XX states? Hiring the _13th_ person to the security team?
rsj_hn 6y ago
This is at least the third time this thing has been posted to hacker news. Previous dupes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24017555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24017555
- eric-hu 6y ago
  The second link is a different article on the same blog.
- leikmi 6y ago
  Funny how doing an Internet search engine search for the topic or any of the red flags yields many articles from different domains which are all basically the same article. I bet we will see this same post again in the future.
- peruvian 6y ago
  HN never gets tired of the interview debate. I've seen the exact same set of comments for years now.
dbish 6y ago
My biggest annoyance is late interviewers who then try to rush you through a question. I’ve had multiple interviews in the past where they are around 10 min late when you’ve taken time from your day and they barely acknowledge it, then clearly rush for time. I guarantee they also write down in many cases that they didn’t get enough data points, not noting that a big part of that is their own time management problem (not to mention many of these places won’t get back to you for a month+, but that’s a different issue)
- mcqueenjordan 6y ago
  I've been in hiring committee debriefs where "I was missing a few data points on X, but this is offset by the fact that the interview started Y minutes late, so we had less time than anticipated" explicitly called out in the written feedback.
  - dbish 6y ago
    I've seen it occasionally as well, but I've also seen many cases where I had to probe folks interviewing (when i was the hiring manager) if they gave the candidate time to answer the question and gather data when it looked like they didn't. The issue too is that even when called out, the candidate doesn't get a plus for that area, instead it may be omitted where it could have been a strength to help balance areas where they were lacking.
- kylecordes 6y ago
  This is tricky. On one hand, as an interviewer you want to leave room for interviewees to express themselves as fully as possible. On the other hand, the purpose of the interview is for both parties to gain as much information as possible about whether both want to work together - and this is often not optimized by having each question point go its full length, but rather by getting just a bit of information on each topic and then moving to the next.
  - dbish 6y ago
    I agree, however if the interviewer is late to the interview, they have started on the wrong foot for planning and getting the data they need
Zenst 6y ago
Good to see an article like this as so many people think an interview is a one-way process, it's two-way and you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. SO many let the potential employer dominate the whole process, with the token - do you have any questions at the end. If you have an interview like that, it wasn't a good interview and you will either find out by not getting the job, or later on, doing the job and regretting it down the line.
NickNaraghi 6y ago
> In both interviews, even though the interviewers shared some details about the company, there was a lot of vagueness and about the company’s direction and where the company was headed. In addition to asking about company direction, I've found this list[0] extremely helpful in both as a hiring manager and as an interviewee. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/35mjw8/what_i_ask_founders_before_joining_an_earlystage/ https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/35mjw8/what_i_ask...
setgree 6y ago
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. I went to the next interview but when I got a weird feeling about it, I withdrew from the process. You can learn a lot about an org if you just watch how they treat you and each other. That’s the lesson I took from this article as well.
- bob33212 6y ago
  I had a second round with the CEO of a small startup on zoom. 5 times in a 45 minute interview he said "Sorry hold that thought, just responding to a customer email real quick" It was tempting to tell him that we should just wrap this up if he had more important things to do.
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    if he was personally trying to guarantee quick response times to customers, then that sounds like his priorities are right. Especially at a "small startup", this is a good sign. Makes me think there was more work than employees which is why the CEO was interviewing and doing customer support.
    - jowdones 6y ago
      Meh, it's disrespectful and rude. I had a friend, haven't seen him in a while then met for a coffee and a chat. 10 times in 20 minutes he would pick up a call in the middle of the conversation and "hold that thought". Made a huge effort not to tell him to go f himself at the end but that concluded our "friendship".
      - mleonhard 6y ago
        If you had told him that you needed him to stop answering his phone, you might still be friends.
LaserToy 6y ago
Had similar marathon 8 years ago and it is draining. Now, being on the other side (hiring folks for a startup), I would argue that some of flags are a bit misleading. Examples: “Undue pressure to accept an offer letter” - interviews are not free, companies are investing eng time into evaluating each candidate and once they find great one, they really want them to join. They also do not want to be part of a bidding war, so it is natural to impose limits (some folks do go overboard). Recency bias also tells us that if you sit on the offer for a long time and continue interviewing, chances of you accepting the first one are going down. And something I learned only recently - offer stage is also part of the interview, it shows how 2 sides will be working together in the future. “ Not enough clarity about your role” - normal for growing startups. I tell the candidates - here is what we do, pick something you like and run with it. Of course it is biased towards entrepreneurial types who thrive in uncertainty, but that is the state of many startups. Mostly agree with other examples. One fun thought, they had 60 interviews. Assume some were 1 hour phone screens and some 1 + 5 hours virtual on sites. If we do 50:50, the industry spent 30 + 30 * 6 = 210 hours of eng time + debriefs, outreaches, negotiations, ... I think statistically, it is not in the interests of companies to participate in such marathons as ROI will be low.
- jcims 6y ago
  >Not enough clarity about your role This is true at large organizations as well, it's not like there is some jigsaw puzzle waiting for the candidate that's a perfect fit.
  - vishnugupta 6y ago
    To add to that, role clarity is inversely proportional to the seniority.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I got hired on for a position once where the job description was retroactively written for me after I came in for an interview. I suppose in retrospect that means it was written in a way that it probably wasn't a good fit for most people.
vmception 6y ago
>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not-big-tech companies literally just have people that googled "how to do a programming interview for ________ language" and skimmed a youtube video, lifted some questions from some articles, and made you solve it in codepen. Extrapolating that to the actual culture is totally a miss.
- sethhochberg 6y ago
  From the hiring side, a (reasonable) expiration on the offer helps be fair to the other people who are interviewing, too. If I have a single position open and multiple people interviewing, as a hiring manager I really need to know whether my top choice is serious once we're having a discussion about signing a contract - because if they aren't, or are still trying to land better offers from other places because they have concerns about my offer and aren't raising them, I have other candidates just hanging out and waiting. Its not fair to the other candidates to say "you're not my top choice from this round, please hang on just in case we need you", or to just stall while we see how things play out - nobody feels good about that. Granted, if you're getting very short exploding offers from big companies who are almost certainly hiring for a role continuously or in bulk, that would leave a bad taste in my mouth too. But if you're interviewing at the kind of company that may have budget for just a single new hire, and multiple people are interviewing, a reasonable expiration makes sure we're both mutually serious about eachother. I want to hire you enough that we've put together a (hopefully) compelling offer, you want to work on the team enough that you (hopefully) either feel good accepting the offer quickly or raising your concerns so we can discuss. If the offer isn't right for you, sitting on it as a backup in hopes that you can find something better is detrimental everyone involved.
  - tmpz22 6y ago
    From a candidate perspective its very hard to evaluate what your compensation should be without first pooling multiple offers. Its also very hard to schedule many interviews in a short period such that the offer letters can be compared side by side. For this reason I generally indicate a 1-2 week response time to an offer letter. I almost always come in before that, maybe around 2-3 days, but I find it absolutely essential to accepting a job to have that breathing room. Even if I lose out of some offers, its still a better investment to be patient. For context I've been in the industry 6 years with 2 jobs and maybe 12 interviews to date. Currently going through interviews for $job-3.
austinl 6y ago
There's definitely a mindset thing to this that I need to work on, but my last experience going through the interview process was so draining that I didn't recover for several months. It was my first time interviewing for "senior" roles — I did 5 on-sites (maybe 8 screens, starting from 15 phone calls?) while working full-time. I'm naturally pretty high-stress before interviews, and I felt like I needed to constantly be preparing, so it seemed like 3 months of a nightmarish grind. Any advice from experienced interviewers for the next time around?
- castlecrasher2 6y ago
  >Any advice from experienced interviewers for the next time around? I'm not an expert, but during the interviews of my last couple roles I hammered home better how I thought my skills would be useful to the company, and used phrases at the end of conversations such as "if you hire me, you won't regret it." I've also stripped down my LinkedIn profile to simple words describing what I do rather than a book-style narrative I had before. Previously, I guess I'd assumed my resume and talents spoke for themselves when I'm more comfortable with my strengths, like simplicity. With this comes the confidence to not give a damn if I don't get a role, which usually helps my anxiety.
TrackerFF 6y ago
I remember being in an interview, with a very respected figure/researcher in the local ML/AI scene - had seen some guest lectures/seminars he held at the local Uni., which were excellent. He was glued to his phone for about 95% of the interview, completely focused on something else. It was quite the letdown. But I understand that a lot of people really, really loathe doing interviews. Probably stipulated in their work contract that they need to attend to stuff like that.
- jandrese 6y ago
  Sometimes a person had someone they want to hire but due to institutional policy they have to open the position up to the public. So they have to sit through interviews with people they have no intention of hiring just so their colleague can get the job.
- ssully 6y ago
  I had an interview like that last year. It was the third interview that looped in the team lead. The team lead was answering slack messages the whole time and asked me to repeat my answer to questions a handful of times. He apologized and everything, but the bigger issue is you aren't going to remember a candidate for a job when you aren't paying attention so its clearly a waste of time for everyone.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ModernMech 6y ago
> Not enough clarity about your role I experienced this one to the extreme. Not only would the recruiter not tell me what the scope of the job was, neither would the interviewing engineers nor the hiring manager. I went to the on-site interview with the promise that I would be working on "world-changing technology". The location of the interview was a nondescript building in the Bay area with an off-limits engineering pen I wasn't allowed to see. They kept me in a 10x10 cubicle with a white board and small table for 6+ hours during which a parade of engineers came through to ask me puzzle questions. None of the interviewers could answer simple questions like "What do you do?" or "What am I going to do?" Seriously, how does anyone accept a job without knowing what the job is? I guess if you're a big enough corporation you can get away with that kind of thing.
- BossingAround 6y ago
  > Seriously, how does anyone accept a job without knowing what the job is? Well... I have had the opposite experience with the same effect too. The recruiters and team members had told me exactly what I will do, only to come in and discover they had exactly 0 idea what I will do, and that it's all different. That was extremely disappointing (and moderately damaging).
- walshemj 6y ago
  You didn't ask if this as a TS Clearance Job ?
- BallCramp 6y ago
  > They kept me in a 10x10 cubicle with a white board and small table for 6+ hours during which a parade of engineers came through to ask me puzzle questions. Do you ever wonder whether it was all some kind of psychological experiment? That there really was no job. And the test was to see how long you'd sit there doing puzzles? > None of the interviewers could answer simple questions like "What do you do?" or "What am I going to do?" Only the control group was given that information. :P
- nancy99 6y ago
  That is very common in the world of government contracts. The just want breathing bodies.
rsj_hn 6y ago
This is a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482119
cecja 6y ago
The redflag for me is 60 interviews in 30 days. smh
neilv 6y ago
If someone is doing 60 technical interviews in 30 days: 1. When I'm hiring, I wish the resume sites have an indicator when a person is interviewing excessively or indiscriminately, so that my company doesn't waste our time. 2. In the rare situation that I've been interested in working at a particular company, I wish I knew better ways for my interest to stand out from the "shotgun approach" applicants. I did see one interesting approach by a company that tackles both scenarios: they have a unique and hefty job-application packet requirement, before you even know whether they're interested at all, nor what positions are available. The packet looked like it would take multiple days of interpretation, focused effort, and soul-baring to put together. I suspect, when the company skims the packet from someone who took the hit to put it together and submit it -- besides what value they get from qualitative interpretation of the content of the application -- they can also pretty easily detect many half-hearted efforts by people doing things like the article author's "109+" applications (if those people apply at all). A downside of this particular proof-of-work approach is that the required upfront effort on a cold application for a nebulous opportunity probably is filtering out some people the company would otherwise like to work with.
- irishloop 6y ago
  Yeah I think your last sentence nails the reverse issue here: The expectation from companies to put in excessive amounts of work which from all candidates when most all of them will get no return on that effort (other than Experience™). My hope is that most of us are somewhere in the middle: Neither excessively applying to 60+ companies, nor being asked to do several days' worth of labor for a limited opportunity.
- jahewson 6y ago
  As an interviewee I wish the resume sites had an indicator when a company is interviewing excessively or indiscriminately so I don’t waste my time.
- neilv 6y ago
  I'm not complaining about being downvoted to negative after an initial jump up, but I'm curious why, and the comments don't say. Was it the criticism of doing 60 interviews in 30 days, because some people think that's a good idea, or want to do that? Was it because the wish for an indicator when a person is "interviewing excessively or indiscriminately" would be a privacy invasion, or more shift of the balance of power towards employers?
havkom 6y ago
Example 1 was interesting. Who was it that was inflexible and may be difficult to work with? The interviewer that wanted to ask about another specific solution or the person who was interviewed who was not interested in another solution?
trilinearnz 6y ago
Have had good and bad interviews. The good ones are where the team is friendly and polite, and ask reasonable questions (if you don't get them right, then it's objectively on you due to lack of preparation or knowledge, no harm done). I had one bad one where the CTO was a straight-up ass. Very critical attitude, and didn't hesitate to disparage the architectural techniques that I professed aptitude in. To his partial credit, he warmed to me as the interview went on, but it was quite unprofessional and gave off a sense of superiority.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > gave off a sense of superiority. The primary roles of CTO and VP. Eng. are to be politicians, so you'll see a lot of that. Most also tell me, "You know, I'am an architect." or "You know, I have a Master's Degree." because they're insecure about not doing engineering any more.
ram_rar 6y ago
I have never found interview process to be reflective of the company. > Lack of a clear direction on where the company is headed Unless you're joining as an exec or a high level architect position, you are just a mere rank and file pleb in the company. At that point, its important to know if your manager has enough social capital to get you the right opportunities to grow, rather than looking for companies "vision" and all the buzz words they throw at you.
anon4984 6y ago
I wonder - if you got an unfair[1] exploding offer, why not just accept it and keep shopping quietly? [1] A small company may have only one spot open and another candidate lined up, so that's fair enough. But larger companies likely have more than one position open so they are just bossing you around. Nothing fair about that, and you don't have to make it easy for them.
- underwater 6y ago
  Because then you can't negotiate. Imagine you like Company A, and they've given you an exploding offer of $x, but suspect you will receive an alternative of $x+10 in a few days from Company B. If you accept the offer from A then you've limited your options. You either accept less than you're worth or lose your opportunity to work for them.
  - hiq 6y ago
    > Because then you can't negotiate. Why not? Maybe your position is not as strong as having another actual offer, but that doesn't mean you cannot negotiate at all. In any case it's hard to have all your offers all at the same time, but you could still have an offer from Company C before Company A (if you knew you'd be interested in A even before the application, you probably want to practice with another company), giving you some reference.
riffic 6y ago
> Undue pressure to accept an offer letter These are called "exploding offers". It's horrendously shady. edit: I once got one with a limit of one hour before expiration. I was completely naive and took the position anyways. What a complete nightmare.
- Mc91 6y ago
  One piece of advice I saw recently - if you are interviewing, FAANG companies supposedly have a longer offer acceptance window. Smaller startups often have a smaller window. Also FAANG companies and larger companies and organization usually have a longer interview process. So the advice was to interview at the larger companies first, and then at the smaller startups who can turn on a dime quickly. It makes a lot of sense, but I never thought about it until recently.
  - dilyevsky 6y ago
    That window is normally complete bs and I’ve always been able to extend it by a few weeks. No need to be a dick about it, just ask and if they are actually serious they’ll wait
aerovistae 6y ago
I'm a little unclear how you could possibly get that many interviews in such a short time unless you're a famous "rockstar" coder. I'm not familiar with the blog author, is he a very well known person?
- dangoor 6y ago
  I have no idea what this person's resume looks like, but I believe there are a lot of jobs out there for people with certain skillsets right now, _especially_ given the massive shift to remote work. It's likely impossible to find & attend 60 interviews in a month _locally_, but when they're all remote it seems challenging but not impossible.
- mkl95 6y ago
  My experience is similar to the author's, and I live in a not so well off area of Europe. I'd expect to receive dozens of offers per month if I lived in the US. Most recruiters are just chasing quantitative metrics and don't really care about candidates being a good fit. If you have certain keywords in your resume, you are going to get bombarded with offers. One of the few negative aspects of the rise of remote working is that it has exacerbated this.
  - diehunde 6y ago
    You mean dozens of recruiter invites to chat right? Getting offers takes much more than just adding keywords to your CV
    - mkl95 6y ago
      Offers as in contract and project details after one or two interviews, with no take home tests or phone screen interviews required. You basically have to agree and sign a couple of documents at that point. Lately, tech recruiters come across as desperate more often than not.
- peruvian 6y ago
  Once you pass 3-4 years of experience, it is not difficult to get at least a recruiter interview and phone screen in the US for a standard software engineer role. And that's with YOU applying — people get messaged by recruiters on LinkedIn all the time.
Dystopian 6y ago
> 1. Your interviewer is only open to solving the problem ONE way This may have also been the interviewer wanting to guage how the candidate would react to being asked to do a task in another method which was dictated vs. their preferred method. A lot of development is a team sport, and quite a bit of it is subjective and opinionated - you're not always going to get to do it your way all the time. I don't actually see this one as a red-flag right awya.
- ProZsolt 6y ago
  If you say it upfront, that's fine. If you say it once I solved the problem it's not.
marecile 6y ago
In the last interviews I had, I saw at least one of these red flags in each interview with some big companies. The article gives a good insight into what is probably going on behind the scenes. We should pay more attention to this since our work and workplace are essential parts of our lives and waking hours. It is wise to use this advice to understand how the company is like for its workers before committing. Thanks for posting.
corytheboyd 6y ago
> Consistent lack of interest or low morale from interviewers This one in particular pisses me off, especially if it’s late in the interviewing cycle. I interviewed with a certain YC startup recently and it was a long form programming exercise with two observers watching me work without really interacting much, where one of them was not even paying attention at all for their time (I know because they told me they were “rushing to get code out right now haha”). Come on, seriously? They rejected me because I didn’t do a good enough job I guess, or was deemed a poor culture fit idk, hope they found the “rockstar” they were after!
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  You should have pulled your phone out part way through the interview exercise and pretended to remote in to your Single Dev Start-up Environment and pretended to hot fix a bug or deploy more resources...
  - corytheboyd 6y ago
    I really should have just left the call and moved on, saving the remaining two hours of my life.
nednar 6y ago
Hope, I won't miss when you make a blog article about the great experiences and green flags.
throwawayacc2 6y ago
So, this is cynical but I actually look for some of these red flags specifically. For me they are not red flags. For me they are green flags. Not enough clarity about your role - Consistent lack of interest or low morale from interviewers - Perfect , the less enthusiasm the better. Your interviewers aren’t prepared for the interview - Oh yeah, love those ones. Lack of a clear direction on where the company is headed - One of the best flags for me. The reason I go for these companies is because I get to slack off and no one does anything about it. Especially now with wfh being the norm. This strategy worked for me for close to 4 years. The last job I put actual effort in was around 2017. There are weeks on end where I just go to the morning standup, say I am working on it and for the rest of the day I play computer games or watch shows or go out dates. Sometimes, I just move jira tickets through the columns without even looking at them. No one checks, no one measures, no one seems to care. If you want to grow in terms of skills, yeah, those are red flags to avoid. If you want to chill and bill, go for those sorts of companies. Big corporate, preferably non tech, preferably somewhere with a big churn rate so you can have the excuse of the original author no being there anymore.
- dmos62 6y ago
  Haha. I'll upvote you, because I want to see others' responses.
pmarreck 6y ago
These are all excellent

218 points by Sandeepg33k 6y ago

Interesting read but I (and I think many others) would be more interested in reading about how one manages to land 60 interviews, at all, in the current job market. You must have either a stellar resume, incredible experience, access to a huge network, or a combination of the above.

kache_ 6y ago
Are we in the same job market? It might be geographically related. I get bothered non stop by recruiters (And I'm not special, just a humble software dev)
- fortzi 6y ago
  There’s quite some way to go from being approached by a recruiter and actually passing the whole process and being hired
jtsiskin 6y ago
“The current job market” - tech stocks and revenue is exploding, is the job market difficult currently?
- mooxie 6y ago
  My understanding from younger colleagues is that entry-level positions are much more competitive than they were when I was leaving college and entering the tech market 10 or 12 years ago. At that time, my experience was that if you knew Linux (at all) or Windows/Mac administration - and were otherwise a good interviewee - you essentially had your choice of jobs. People entering the market now talk about it like it's a complete wasteland. Apparently entry-level 'learn-on-the-job' tech work is extremely competitive and difficult to access for new graduates these days. If you're already 'in' and have a network and experience it's still largely like the glory days, but getting to that level is supposedly much more difficult now. (To be fair to any younger people reading this, my entry-level tech job was at $28k/yr and I worked restaurants and bars until I was able to move on, so it's not like I got a degree and someone threw $150k at me to intern. It took a lot of work, even in the glory days)
  - kylecordes 6y ago
    There are many people entering the industry that can already demonstrate their skills well, and interview in a way that shows that even if they are technically entry-level, they likely won't stay there for very long. This probably contributes to a very competitive situation for traditional entry-level "actually I need to learn this job once I get there" candidates.
- majormajor 6y ago
  I've anecdotally heard from former colleagues that it's gotten tougher to find entry-level or mid-level positions, not sure how broadly that applies, though.
  - electrondood 6y ago
    This is sort of evergreen though. It's like "last year at Burning Man was the last good year."
  - Tallain 6y ago
    I will add my anecdote to the pile. It seems like there are a good number of positions out there, but it also seems like most of them are asking for senior level folks. Then, the ones I interview stall out because I either have too much experience, or not enough experience - I'm square in the middle ground where it seems nothing is quite right for me.
    - waiseristy 6y ago
      Same experience. Low level warm-body work is plentiful, but pays poorly and doesn't give good experience. Senior level work is in extremely high demand, but employers aren't willing to bring on engineers who only have experience with the latter. I've started shopping around for (and have had limited success with) 100-500 headcount companies who are willing to hire seniors on the greener side.
    - potta_coffee 6y ago
      I identify with this. I'm ready to move on to the next step but there doesn't seem to be a position that fits my experience level. "Senior" seems like a relative distinction based on the company. I'm ready to land at a place that takes engineering practices more seriously but those companies don't think I have enough experience with those practices - for instance, I've never worked at a company that even cares about unit testing, now I need to be very experienced at it. I know how to do unit testing of course but it's not my sharpest skill for obvious reasons. I'm focusing on these weaker skills but it's definitely a challenge.
  - 6y ago
- ziddoap 6y ago
  I suppose my comment lacked a bit of nuance, as I understand the author may be in a different sector and certainly different geographic location. Where I live (and the areas I am able/willing to transfer to), the job market has proven quite difficult. But, it could also be that my resume isn't to par, or a lack of effective networking, or both. That's why I'd be interested in seeing the perspective from someone who is obviously having success landing interviews.
- nullserver 6y ago
  I got an offer from a place (hot startup)that I wasn’t really interested in. Had a call to talk about it, see if I might be into. Oh can you talk to so and so, hey can we do a coding exercises really quick, hey can you chat with founder really quick. 3 days from hearing about company, I had an offer. Then was being pestered about background check. Wait, how did I get to this point? I wasn’t even really interested. Few days later offer was withdrawn since I hadn’t completed paperwork. Overall I’m glad I didn’t accept, they clearly had a very inflated opinion of themselves and how eager everyone would be to join.
  - kylecordes 6y ago
    In a tepid defense of the anonymous company… I would probably also interpret someone in the situation doing a coding exercise as a sign they are interested in a position.
    - nullserver 6y ago
      Fair point. I liken it to going to the bar and waking up in Vegas with a ring on your finger and a stranger in your bed. It’s probably your fault, but it’s still a huge WTF just happened moment
  - yourapostasy 6y ago
    > Few days later offer was withdrawn since I hadn’t completed paperwork. Saw the not-filling paperwork/red tape in a timely manner used as a signal first-hand to screen out a perfectly-acceptable (technical-wise) candidate. Combined with a perceived lack of enthusiasm in personality for the role (which I could easily put down to a manager who has a specific idea in mind of "enthusiasm", and doesn't mesh well with a wider variance of personality types), it was a one-two punch the candidate could not recover from, and lost out to a slightly more junior tech.
- cambalache 6y ago
  From say, December 1995(An arbitrary date) to now, in every single month,you could find posts/emails/comments all over the internet claiming that in that month/year: - The economy was in a slump and was going to get worse - The job market was in its way situation ever - All the good ideas had been taken, no hanging fruits anymore - It was a bad time to study CS/law/medicine/engineering/math/physics - The good times were over - More and more people were "leaving the field"
deleted 6y ago
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ipnon 6y ago
Apply the Lindy rule[0]: To get a job at a startup, have an app portfolio. To get a job at a Big N, go to an elite university, another Big N, or grind Leetcode for months. To get a job at a corporation, grind Leetcode and have recruiters spam your resume. Different jobs require different applicants. A balanced, general approach, would be to do 1 Leetcode problem and send 1 application per day. It'd be hard to still be underemployed after doing that for any while. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  How are any of those recommendations related to the Lindy Effect?
  - ipnon 6y ago
    Show an ability to survive in the different constraints unique to each type of software engineering job
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      How is that related to the Lindy Effect? Just throwing in the word "survive" doesn't automatically mean the Lindy Effect is in play...
      - ipnon 6y ago
        I would like to respond in equal manner: Show an ability to survive in the different constraints unique to each type of software engineering job
- wcarss 6y ago
  I'd never heard of the Lindy effect before and it seems very interesting. As I understand it, it suggests "the longer a non-perishable thing is present, the longer it likely will be present." Not trying to razz you here, but I don't quite follow how this is an application of it. Could you elaborate a bit? (edit: rats, I took too long to try to word this request tactfully)
ajcp 6y ago
He never says how many actual positions he interviewed for, or at how many companies for that matter. From the article it sounds like he was counting initial phone-screens as well. If he had applied to 20 separate job postings they could have included a technical phone-screen, a "take-home" test, and a technical interview. Still a banana's amount of engagement for someone to receive in just 30-days though. That being said and looking at the writer's LinkedIn profile he does appear to have a stellar resume, solid experience, and a large network.
MattGaiser 6y ago
I have 1 year of experience (not at a FAANG) and I get 3 recruiters a week through LinkedIn. And beyond a casual resume screening, they are direct to interview. Where are you? The market is roaring here in Canada.
potta_coffee 6y ago
I had about 15 interviews all within a span of two weeks; I applied for those jobs the week before and I was fairly selective based on what I'm interested in doing and the kind of company I'm looking for. I don't have an incredible resume and I've never worked for any important company that you've heard of, I live in flyover country.

Damogran6 6y ago

#4 reflected my experience in Healthcare interviewing to a T. Biggest Healthcare concern in XX states? Hiring the _13th_ person to the security team?

rsj_hn 6y ago

This is at least the third time this thing has been posted to hacker news. Previous dupes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24017555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24017555

eric-hu 6y ago
The second link is a different article on the same blog.
leikmi 6y ago
Funny how doing an Internet search engine search for the topic or any of the red flags yields many articles from different domains which are all basically the same article. I bet we will see this same post again in the future.
peruvian 6y ago
HN never gets tired of the interview debate. I've seen the exact same set of comments for years now.

dbish 6y ago

My biggest annoyance is late interviewers who then try to rush you through a question. I’ve had multiple interviews in the past where they are around 10 min late when you’ve taken time from your day and they barely acknowledge it, then clearly rush for time. I guarantee they also write down in many cases that they didn’t get enough data points, not noting that a big part of that is their own time management problem (not to mention many of these places won’t get back to you for a month+, but that’s a different issue)

mcqueenjordan 6y ago
I've been in hiring committee debriefs where "I was missing a few data points on X, but this is offset by the fact that the interview started Y minutes late, so we had less time than anticipated" explicitly called out in the written feedback.
- dbish 6y ago
  I've seen it occasionally as well, but I've also seen many cases where I had to probe folks interviewing (when i was the hiring manager) if they gave the candidate time to answer the question and gather data when it looked like they didn't. The issue too is that even when called out, the candidate doesn't get a plus for that area, instead it may be omitted where it could have been a strength to help balance areas where they were lacking.
kylecordes 6y ago
This is tricky. On one hand, as an interviewer you want to leave room for interviewees to express themselves as fully as possible. On the other hand, the purpose of the interview is for both parties to gain as much information as possible about whether both want to work together - and this is often not optimized by having each question point go its full length, but rather by getting just a bit of information on each topic and then moving to the next.
- dbish 6y ago
  I agree, however if the interviewer is late to the interview, they have started on the wrong foot for planning and getting the data they need

Zenst 6y ago

Good to see an article like this as so many people think an interview is a one-way process, it's two-way and you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. SO many let the potential employer dominate the whole process, with the token - do you have any questions at the end. If you have an interview like that, it wasn't a good interview and you will either find out by not getting the job, or later on, doing the job and regretting it down the line.

NickNaraghi 6y ago

> In both interviews, even though the interviewers shared some details about the company, there was a lot of vagueness and about the company’s direction and where the company was headed. In addition to asking about company direction, I've found this list[0] extremely helpful in both as a hiring manager and as an interviewee. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/35mjw8/what_i_ask_founders_before_joining_an_earlystage/ https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/35mjw8/what_i_ask...

setgree 6y ago

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. I went to the next interview but when I got a weird feeling about it, I withdrew from the process. You can learn a lot about an org if you just watch how they treat you and each other. That’s the lesson I took from this article as well.

bob33212 6y ago
I had a second round with the CEO of a small startup on zoom. 5 times in a 45 minute interview he said "Sorry hold that thought, just responding to a customer email real quick" It was tempting to tell him that we should just wrap this up if he had more important things to do.
- devmunchies 6y ago
  if he was personally trying to guarantee quick response times to customers, then that sounds like his priorities are right. Especially at a "small startup", this is a good sign. Makes me think there was more work than employees which is why the CEO was interviewing and doing customer support.
  - jowdones 6y ago
    Meh, it's disrespectful and rude. I had a friend, haven't seen him in a while then met for a coffee and a chat. 10 times in 20 minutes he would pick up a call in the middle of the conversation and "hold that thought". Made a huge effort not to tell him to go f himself at the end but that concluded our "friendship".
    - mleonhard 6y ago
      If you had told him that you needed him to stop answering his phone, you might still be friends.

LaserToy 6y ago

Had similar marathon 8 years ago and it is draining. Now, being on the other side (hiring folks for a startup), I would argue that some of flags are a bit misleading. Examples: “Undue pressure to accept an offer letter” - interviews are not free, companies are investing eng time into evaluating each candidate and once they find great one, they really want them to join. They also do not want to be part of a bidding war, so it is natural to impose limits (some folks do go overboard). Recency bias also tells us that if you sit on the offer for a long time and continue interviewing, chances of you accepting the first one are going down. And something I learned only recently - offer stage is also part of the interview, it shows how 2 sides will be working together in the future. “ Not enough clarity about your role” - normal for growing startups. I tell the candidates - here is what we do, pick something you like and run with it. Of course it is biased towards entrepreneurial types who thrive in uncertainty, but that is the state of many startups. Mostly agree with other examples. One fun thought, they had 60 interviews. Assume some were 1 hour phone screens and some 1 + 5 hours virtual on sites. If we do 50:50, the industry spent 30 + 30 * 6 = 210 hours of eng time + debriefs, outreaches, negotiations, ... I think statistically, it is not in the interests of companies to participate in such marathons as ROI will be low.

jcims 6y ago
>Not enough clarity about your role This is true at large organizations as well, it's not like there is some jigsaw puzzle waiting for the candidate that's a perfect fit.
- vishnugupta 6y ago
  To add to that, role clarity is inversely proportional to the seniority.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I got hired on for a position once where the job description was retroactively written for me after I came in for an interview. I suppose in retrospect that means it was written in a way that it probably wasn't a good fit for most people.

vmception 6y ago

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not-big-tech companies literally just have people that googled "how to do a programming interview for ________ language" and skimmed a youtube video, lifted some questions from some articles, and made you solve it in codepen. Extrapolating that to the actual culture is totally a miss.

sethhochberg 6y ago
From the hiring side, a (reasonable) expiration on the offer helps be fair to the other people who are interviewing, too. If I have a single position open and multiple people interviewing, as a hiring manager I really need to know whether my top choice is serious once we're having a discussion about signing a contract - because if they aren't, or are still trying to land better offers from other places because they have concerns about my offer and aren't raising them, I have other candidates just hanging out and waiting. Its not fair to the other candidates to say "you're not my top choice from this round, please hang on just in case we need you", or to just stall while we see how things play out - nobody feels good about that. Granted, if you're getting very short exploding offers from big companies who are almost certainly hiring for a role continuously or in bulk, that would leave a bad taste in my mouth too. But if you're interviewing at the kind of company that may have budget for just a single new hire, and multiple people are interviewing, a reasonable expiration makes sure we're both mutually serious about eachother. I want to hire you enough that we've put together a (hopefully) compelling offer, you want to work on the team enough that you (hopefully) either feel good accepting the offer quickly or raising your concerns so we can discuss. If the offer isn't right for you, sitting on it as a backup in hopes that you can find something better is detrimental everyone involved.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  From a candidate perspective its very hard to evaluate what your compensation should be without first pooling multiple offers. Its also very hard to schedule many interviews in a short period such that the offer letters can be compared side by side. For this reason I generally indicate a 1-2 week response time to an offer letter. I almost always come in before that, maybe around 2-3 days, but I find it absolutely essential to accepting a job to have that breathing room. Even if I lose out of some offers, its still a better investment to be patient. For context I've been in the industry 6 years with 2 jobs and maybe 12 interviews to date. Currently going through interviews for $job-3.

austinl 6y ago

There's definitely a mindset thing to this that I need to work on, but my last experience going through the interview process was so draining that I didn't recover for several months. It was my first time interviewing for "senior" roles — I did 5 on-sites (maybe 8 screens, starting from 15 phone calls?) while working full-time. I'm naturally pretty high-stress before interviews, and I felt like I needed to constantly be preparing, so it seemed like 3 months of a nightmarish grind. Any advice from experienced interviewers for the next time around?

castlecrasher2 6y ago
>Any advice from experienced interviewers for the next time around? I'm not an expert, but during the interviews of my last couple roles I hammered home better how I thought my skills would be useful to the company, and used phrases at the end of conversations such as "if you hire me, you won't regret it." I've also stripped down my LinkedIn profile to simple words describing what I do rather than a book-style narrative I had before. Previously, I guess I'd assumed my resume and talents spoke for themselves when I'm more comfortable with my strengths, like simplicity. With this comes the confidence to not give a damn if I don't get a role, which usually helps my anxiety.

TrackerFF 6y ago

I remember being in an interview, with a very respected figure/researcher in the local ML/AI scene - had seen some guest lectures/seminars he held at the local Uni., which were excellent. He was glued to his phone for about 95% of the interview, completely focused on something else. It was quite the letdown. But I understand that a lot of people really, really loathe doing interviews. Probably stipulated in their work contract that they need to attend to stuff like that.

jandrese 6y ago
Sometimes a person had someone they want to hire but due to institutional policy they have to open the position up to the public. So they have to sit through interviews with people they have no intention of hiring just so their colleague can get the job.
ssully 6y ago
I had an interview like that last year. It was the third interview that looped in the team lead. The team lead was answering slack messages the whole time and asked me to repeat my answer to questions a handful of times. He apologized and everything, but the bigger issue is you aren't going to remember a candidate for a job when you aren't paying attention so its clearly a waste of time for everyone.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ModernMech 6y ago

> Not enough clarity about your role I experienced this one to the extreme. Not only would the recruiter not tell me what the scope of the job was, neither would the interviewing engineers nor the hiring manager. I went to the on-site interview with the promise that I would be working on "world-changing technology". The location of the interview was a nondescript building in the Bay area with an off-limits engineering pen I wasn't allowed to see. They kept me in a 10x10 cubicle with a white board and small table for 6+ hours during which a parade of engineers came through to ask me puzzle questions. None of the interviewers could answer simple questions like "What do you do?" or "What am I going to do?" Seriously, how does anyone accept a job without knowing what the job is? I guess if you're a big enough corporation you can get away with that kind of thing.

BossingAround 6y ago
> Seriously, how does anyone accept a job without knowing what the job is? Well... I have had the opposite experience with the same effect too. The recruiters and team members had told me exactly what I will do, only to come in and discover they had exactly 0 idea what I will do, and that it's all different. That was extremely disappointing (and moderately damaging).
walshemj 6y ago
You didn't ask if this as a TS Clearance Job ?
BallCramp 6y ago
> They kept me in a 10x10 cubicle with a white board and small table for 6+ hours during which a parade of engineers came through to ask me puzzle questions. Do you ever wonder whether it was all some kind of psychological experiment? That there really was no job. And the test was to see how long you'd sit there doing puzzles? > None of the interviewers could answer simple questions like "What do you do?" or "What am I going to do?" Only the control group was given that information. :P
nancy99 6y ago
That is very common in the world of government contracts. The just want breathing bodies.

rsj_hn 6y ago

This is a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482119

cecja 6y ago

The redflag for me is 60 interviews in 30 days. smh

neilv 6y ago

If someone is doing 60 technical interviews in 30 days: 1. When I'm hiring, I wish the resume sites have an indicator when a person is interviewing excessively or indiscriminately, so that my company doesn't waste our time. 2. In the rare situation that I've been interested in working at a particular company, I wish I knew better ways for my interest to stand out from the "shotgun approach" applicants. I did see one interesting approach by a company that tackles both scenarios: they have a unique and hefty job-application packet requirement, before you even know whether they're interested at all, nor what positions are available. The packet looked like it would take multiple days of interpretation, focused effort, and soul-baring to put together. I suspect, when the company skims the packet from someone who took the hit to put it together and submit it -- besides what value they get from qualitative interpretation of the content of the application -- they can also pretty easily detect many half-hearted efforts by people doing things like the article author's "109+" applications (if those people apply at all). A downside of this particular proof-of-work approach is that the required upfront effort on a cold application for a nebulous opportunity probably is filtering out some people the company would otherwise like to work with.

irishloop 6y ago
Yeah I think your last sentence nails the reverse issue here: The expectation from companies to put in excessive amounts of work which from all candidates when most all of them will get no return on that effort (other than Experience™). My hope is that most of us are somewhere in the middle: Neither excessively applying to 60+ companies, nor being asked to do several days' worth of labor for a limited opportunity.
jahewson 6y ago
As an interviewee I wish the resume sites had an indicator when a company is interviewing excessively or indiscriminately so I don’t waste my time.
neilv 6y ago
I'm not complaining about being downvoted to negative after an initial jump up, but I'm curious why, and the comments don't say. Was it the criticism of doing 60 interviews in 30 days, because some people think that's a good idea, or want to do that? Was it because the wish for an indicator when a person is "interviewing excessively or indiscriminately" would be a privacy invasion, or more shift of the balance of power towards employers?

havkom 6y ago

Example 1 was interesting. Who was it that was inflexible and may be difficult to work with? The interviewer that wanted to ask about another specific solution or the person who was interviewed who was not interested in another solution?

trilinearnz 6y ago

Have had good and bad interviews. The good ones are where the team is friendly and polite, and ask reasonable questions (if you don't get them right, then it's objectively on you due to lack of preparation or knowledge, no harm done). I had one bad one where the CTO was a straight-up ass. Very critical attitude, and didn't hesitate to disparage the architectural techniques that I professed aptitude in. To his partial credit, he warmed to me as the interview went on, but it was quite unprofessional and gave off a sense of superiority.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> gave off a sense of superiority. The primary roles of CTO and VP. Eng. are to be politicians, so you'll see a lot of that. Most also tell me, "You know, I'am an architect." or "You know, I have a Master's Degree." because they're insecure about not doing engineering any more.

ram_rar 6y ago

I have never found interview process to be reflective of the company. > Lack of a clear direction on where the company is headed Unless you're joining as an exec or a high level architect position, you are just a mere rank and file pleb in the company. At that point, its important to know if your manager has enough social capital to get you the right opportunities to grow, rather than looking for companies "vision" and all the buzz words they throw at you.

anon4984 6y ago

I wonder - if you got an unfair[1] exploding offer, why not just accept it and keep shopping quietly? [1] A small company may have only one spot open and another candidate lined up, so that's fair enough. But larger companies likely have more than one position open so they are just bossing you around. Nothing fair about that, and you don't have to make it easy for them.

underwater 6y ago
Because then you can't negotiate. Imagine you like Company A, and they've given you an exploding offer of $x, but suspect you will receive an alternative of $x+10 in a few days from Company B. If you accept the offer from A then you've limited your options. You either accept less than you're worth or lose your opportunity to work for them.
- hiq 6y ago
  > Because then you can't negotiate. Why not? Maybe your position is not as strong as having another actual offer, but that doesn't mean you cannot negotiate at all. In any case it's hard to have all your offers all at the same time, but you could still have an offer from Company C before Company A (if you knew you'd be interested in A even before the application, you probably want to practice with another company), giving you some reference.

riffic 6y ago

> Undue pressure to accept an offer letter These are called "exploding offers". It's horrendously shady. edit: I once got one with a limit of one hour before expiration. I was completely naive and took the position anyways. What a complete nightmare.

Mc91 6y ago
One piece of advice I saw recently - if you are interviewing, FAANG companies supposedly have a longer offer acceptance window. Smaller startups often have a smaller window. Also FAANG companies and larger companies and organization usually have a longer interview process. So the advice was to interview at the larger companies first, and then at the smaller startups who can turn on a dime quickly. It makes a lot of sense, but I never thought about it until recently.
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  That window is normally complete bs and I’ve always been able to extend it by a few weeks. No need to be a dick about it, just ask and if they are actually serious they’ll wait

aerovistae 6y ago

I'm a little unclear how you could possibly get that many interviews in such a short time unless you're a famous "rockstar" coder. I'm not familiar with the blog author, is he a very well known person?

dangoor 6y ago
I have no idea what this person's resume looks like, but I believe there are a lot of jobs out there for people with certain skillsets right now, _especially_ given the massive shift to remote work. It's likely impossible to find & attend 60 interviews in a month _locally_, but when they're all remote it seems challenging but not impossible.
mkl95 6y ago
My experience is similar to the author's, and I live in a not so well off area of Europe. I'd expect to receive dozens of offers per month if I lived in the US. Most recruiters are just chasing quantitative metrics and don't really care about candidates being a good fit. If you have certain keywords in your resume, you are going to get bombarded with offers. One of the few negative aspects of the rise of remote working is that it has exacerbated this.
- diehunde 6y ago
  You mean dozens of recruiter invites to chat right? Getting offers takes much more than just adding keywords to your CV
  - mkl95 6y ago
    Offers as in contract and project details after one or two interviews, with no take home tests or phone screen interviews required. You basically have to agree and sign a couple of documents at that point. Lately, tech recruiters come across as desperate more often than not.
peruvian 6y ago
Once you pass 3-4 years of experience, it is not difficult to get at least a recruiter interview and phone screen in the US for a standard software engineer role. And that's with YOU applying — people get messaged by recruiters on LinkedIn all the time.

Dystopian 6y ago

> 1. Your interviewer is only open to solving the problem ONE way This may have also been the interviewer wanting to guage how the candidate would react to being asked to do a task in another method which was dictated vs. their preferred method. A lot of development is a team sport, and quite a bit of it is subjective and opinionated - you're not always going to get to do it your way all the time. I don't actually see this one as a red-flag right awya.

ProZsolt 6y ago
If you say it upfront, that's fine. If you say it once I solved the problem it's not.

marecile 6y ago

In the last interviews I had, I saw at least one of these red flags in each interview with some big companies. The article gives a good insight into what is probably going on behind the scenes. We should pay more attention to this since our work and workplace are essential parts of our lives and waking hours. It is wise to use this advice to understand how the company is like for its workers before committing. Thanks for posting.

corytheboyd 6y ago

> Consistent lack of interest or low morale from interviewers This one in particular pisses me off, especially if it’s late in the interviewing cycle. I interviewed with a certain YC startup recently and it was a long form programming exercise with two observers watching me work without really interacting much, where one of them was not even paying attention at all for their time (I know because they told me they were “rushing to get code out right now haha”). Come on, seriously? They rejected me because I didn’t do a good enough job I guess, or was deemed a poor culture fit idk, hope they found the “rockstar” they were after!

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
You should have pulled your phone out part way through the interview exercise and pretended to remote in to your Single Dev Start-up Environment and pretended to hot fix a bug or deploy more resources...
- corytheboyd 6y ago
  I really should have just left the call and moved on, saving the remaining two hours of my life.

nednar 6y ago

Hope, I won't miss when you make a blog article about the great experiences and green flags.

throwawayacc2 6y ago

So, this is cynical but I actually look for some of these red flags specifically. For me they are not red flags. For me they are green flags. Not enough clarity about your role - Consistent lack of interest or low morale from interviewers - Perfect , the less enthusiasm the better. Your interviewers aren’t prepared for the interview - Oh yeah, love those ones. Lack of a clear direction on where the company is headed - One of the best flags for me. The reason I go for these companies is because I get to slack off and no one does anything about it. Especially now with wfh being the norm. This strategy worked for me for close to 4 years. The last job I put actual effort in was around 2017. There are weeks on end where I just go to the morning standup, say I am working on it and for the rest of the day I play computer games or watch shows or go out dates. Sometimes, I just move jira tickets through the columns without even looking at them. No one checks, no one measures, no one seems to care. If you want to grow in terms of skills, yeah, those are red flags to avoid. If you want to chill and bill, go for those sorts of companies. Big corporate, preferably non tech, preferably somewhere with a big churn rate so you can have the excuse of the original author no being there anymore.

dmos62 6y ago
Haha. I'll upvote you, because I want to see others' responses.

pmarreck 6y ago

These are all excellent