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> The general rudeness is ridiculous. I once had an interviewer ask me if I was a wizard with GO, C++, Rust, and C over the phone. Then when I said I had some e

> The general rudeness is ridiculous. I once had an interviewer ask me if I was a wizard with GO, C++, Rust, and C over the phone. Then when I said I had some experience with rust, he immediately cursed at me and hung up. > This experience is fairly common. Is it? I've done a fair bit of interviewing on both sides of the table, and can say with complete honesty I've never heard a curse said in anger in any of them. I've also never heard of it happening from a co-worker or friend.

bee_rider 5y ago
I wonder if it is possible that the recruiter said something like "ah, damn" which would be unprofessional of course, but seems in the general range not-completely-absurd human reactions.
- sen 5y ago
  I just recently had someone ask me not to curse when I said “ah, damn” in relation to some trivial thing (from memory I was just expressing disappointment that a project wasn’t going ahead, or part of a project). It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever met someone (over 10yrs old) who considered “damn” to be cursing but apparently they do exist.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - alanwreath 5y ago
    It is informal speech. Some people choose to use informal speech in work environments. Others believe it to be inappropriate. I'm in the latter camp but I don't push my language preferences on others - just as I don't push my coding style. So now you've met two people, but in reality you probably are familiar with many more who are silent.
    - readonthegoapp 5y ago
      i usually say 'darn' just to be safe, unless/until everyone knows each other, etc. and i'm still surprised when an interviewer drops an S-bomb or F-bomb or whatever. when i moved from north (US of A) to the south, back in the day, some religious folks would cuss by saying things like 'Dah-gommit' and things like that.
threevox 5y ago
My thoughts exactly. What the hell?
imwillofficial 5y ago
Name and shame the recruiter.
ecpottinger 5y ago
Unreasonable demands that I be an expert in a range of things YES. Be curse at because I was not NEVER.
jrsj 5y ago
Yeah this sounds more like a crazy anecdote to me. I once had a new CTO come in at a place I’d been working at for about a year and a half, and he refused to interview any candidates that weren’t Muslim (as existing staff were replaced 1 at a time). While this is extremely fucked up, I would be surprised if I could find another tech company in the state where this happened. Cursing at someone for having experience in Rust sounds…similarly absurd albeit more benign
- MauroIksem 5y ago
  This sounds like a made up anecdote.
  - jrsj 5y ago
    Believe me, it felt made up as it was happening.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    I've seen that before. If you read the Koran, you'll understand why.
- nosefrog 5y ago
  Where was the company located?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrsj 5y ago
    New York
- alephu5 5y ago
  Why didn't you report this? It's open-shut unlawful.
  - jrsj 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
015a 5y ago
I once, 30 minutes into what was supposed to be a 1 or 2 hour phone interview, had an engineer at Google cut me off in the middle of their standard "write code in a Google Doc" with a "oh, I have a meeting I have to run to, good work we'll get back to you." I assume it was not, in fact, good work, as I did not progress to the next interview. I think a phrase like "typical" would be inaccurate; possibly "common" as well. But, I think, most people who have interviewed a decent amount have at least one story like this. Cursing is another step beyond, but its not insane; many of the people on the other end simply get drafted, they don't want to be there, and in some companies even see you as a threat to their career advancement.
- dr_kiszonka 5y ago
  I had a Google research scientist telling me during an interview that they don't like their job and don't recommend it. At a different occasion, Google's VP showed up 15 minutes late, asked one question, and stopped paying attention for the rest of the interview too busy with their laptop. I understand that these are probably outliers but I will not be reapplying soon.
  - devin 5y ago
    Shoulda called them out.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      During an interview?
      - calt 5y ago
        Yes. If you're ever talking to someone one on one and they're not paying attention find a way to address it.
        willhinsa 5y ago
        Absolutely. It can be quite painful in the short term, but the long term benefits (both for you and that particular relationship) can be huge, especially if you're naturally averse to confrontation.
throwkeep 5y ago
It's not common at all. For that and other tells, it shows the narrator to be unreliable. A storyteller.
- zepto 5y ago
  What other tells do you see?
spike021 5y ago
I interviewed at a small company just for an internship several years back. It was an iOS position, but again, internship/jr. level. I said I wasn't an expert but wanted to learn and had spent some time developing some basic iOS apps on my own. Guy proceeds to seriously ask me about low-level memory management, i.e. ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) vs. other methods (this was roughly 2013 or so). I attempted to give an answer from what I knew just reading the docs, as I hadn't written complex-enough code for it to matter. Mentioned I didn't have first-hand experience using it, so that's my frame of reference. He basically laughed and went off to tell the recruiter it wasn't worth having me finish my interview loop. I understand for an experienced iOS engineer at the time, those would've been entirely valid questions and it'd be reasonable to expect enough time spent using them that a quality answer could be given. But I was honest in saying I hadn't gone that far and this was for an internship. Of course that was also when I realized that in the real world, there are small companies who tend to want FTE-level of productivity out of young engineers/interns for that pay level who aren't experienced enough to know it. Edit: Coincidentally that same day I reached out over Twitter to the CEO of a company I admired, also in SF, and asked if I could just tour the office since I was in the area. That CEO spent his lunch hour with me, had a good laugh about the interview story, and worked with one of his teams and recruiters to get me in the schedule to interview. Got an internship there the right way, spent two years interning, went full time for 3.5 years, and that was the beginning of my full-time career.
- devin 5y ago
  I have a feeling this will get me a downvote, but I grew up in a very blue collar town and the idea of paying one's dues is not crazy to me. I see a lot of people entering the tech market as if they don't have anything to prove, like their degree says it all. In any industry, you shovel some shit early on, IMO. I was a good programmer, but I got my start racking servers in a data center. I crawled under raised floor to run cable, replaced batteries, worried about cooling, and generally did a lot of work no one else wanted to do. I was a programmer already, and I think it was a waste of my ambition for $COMPANY to not give me a job writing software, but I don't mind the idea of people paying their dues, and I think I'm better for my experience. Careers aren't supposed to start with you having a big corner office. It is surprising to me how many people feel entitled enough that they truly believe they ought to start at the top.
ALittleLight 5y ago
It reminds me of a recruiter I spoke to who asked me how much experience I had with "winforms". I said "None, I've never heard of that" and she couldn't believe it. She went into this tirade about how five years of experience with winforms was required for this job and how could I not know anything about it, and was I sure I didn't have at least some exposure somehow to winforms somewhere. Very odd experience and the only time I've never had someone get angry in a context like that. I guess if you're a recruiter and recruiting for a job that lists winforms as a requirement you may think that's a super critical thing and not have any conception of the relative importance of knowing things like that. I didn't go forward with the recruiter and I've never bothered to check what winforms are, but I assume it's some kind of library for creating GUIs in Windows and I further assume I could have been productive with it in a day or so.
- namdnay 5y ago
  Sounds more like the recruiter was frustrated and panicked that they still couldn’t find anyone suitable, and was trying to nudge you into inventing some winforms experience in order to get to the next round
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    "Ohhhhh, WINforms! Yeah, I have 6 years of experience with that."
- scruple 5y ago
  Had something similar happen to me but it was WPF instead of WinForms. Told them to never contact me again.
cableshaft 5y ago
I haven't gotten it from interviewers, but I have from tech recruiters. Specifically remember being cursed at for "not bothering to learn Rails yet". I did not put Rails on my resume or LinkedIn and the recruiter reached out to me, apparently without thoroughly reading anything about me. But I have been laughed at on a phone interview before. It was for a game dev job, and I was told by the recruiter ahead of time "They just need anyone with any game dev experience at all," so I didn't spend too much time studying for the interview. I had developed and released several full games, even popular ones, but they were all 2D Flash web games. So I was completely unprepared for 30 minutes of being grilled on 3D graphics math and console development. I answered to the best of my ability, and could have done better if I hadn't been misled by the recruiter, but no, it felt like I was being toyed with by the interviewers (kept hearing laughter multiple times after I answered). I got a different and (equally good) job in the industry and the company that interviewed me ended up closing down about 6 months later, so it worked out for the best anyway.
- nowherebeen 5y ago
  I have had a very similar experience at a tech company. Was told they just wanted to have a chat (I wasn't applying for a job posting), and then suddenly it was a full-fledged interview that I wasn't prepared for. I got humiliated and was angry as hell for being misled. I still remember it to this day.
nowherebeen 5y ago
I've never heard of cursing as well, but bad interviewing experiences are quite common in this industry.
n_ary 5y ago
> [...] had an interviewer ask me if I was a wizard with GO, C++, Rust, and C over the phone. Didn't this interviewer review/read the CV/Resume before calling?
flippinburgers 5y ago
I have heard co-workers curse, myself included.

bee_rider 5y ago

I wonder if it is possible that the recruiter said something like "ah, damn" which would be unprofessional of course, but seems in the general range not-completely-absurd human reactions.

sen 5y ago
I just recently had someone ask me not to curse when I said “ah, damn” in relation to some trivial thing (from memory I was just expressing disappointment that a project wasn’t going ahead, or part of a project). It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever met someone (over 10yrs old) who considered “damn” to be cursing but apparently they do exist.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- alanwreath 5y ago
  It is informal speech. Some people choose to use informal speech in work environments. Others believe it to be inappropriate. I'm in the latter camp but I don't push my language preferences on others - just as I don't push my coding style. So now you've met two people, but in reality you probably are familiar with many more who are silent.
  - readonthegoapp 5y ago
    i usually say 'darn' just to be safe, unless/until everyone knows each other, etc. and i'm still surprised when an interviewer drops an S-bomb or F-bomb or whatever. when i moved from north (US of A) to the south, back in the day, some religious folks would cuss by saying things like 'Dah-gommit' and things like that.

threevox 5y ago

My thoughts exactly. What the hell?

imwillofficial 5y ago

Name and shame the recruiter.

ecpottinger 5y ago

Unreasonable demands that I be an expert in a range of things YES. Be curse at because I was not NEVER.

jrsj 5y ago

Yeah this sounds more like a crazy anecdote to me. I once had a new CTO come in at a place I’d been working at for about a year and a half, and he refused to interview any candidates that weren’t Muslim (as existing staff were replaced 1 at a time). While this is extremely fucked up, I would be surprised if I could find another tech company in the state where this happened. Cursing at someone for having experience in Rust sounds…similarly absurd albeit more benign

MauroIksem 5y ago
This sounds like a made up anecdote.
- jrsj 5y ago
  Believe me, it felt made up as it was happening.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  I've seen that before. If you read the Koran, you'll understand why.
nosefrog 5y ago
Where was the company located?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jrsj 5y ago
  New York
alephu5 5y ago
Why didn't you report this? It's open-shut unlawful.
- jrsj 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

015a 5y ago

I once, 30 minutes into what was supposed to be a 1 or 2 hour phone interview, had an engineer at Google cut me off in the middle of their standard "write code in a Google Doc" with a "oh, I have a meeting I have to run to, good work we'll get back to you." I assume it was not, in fact, good work, as I did not progress to the next interview. I think a phrase like "typical" would be inaccurate; possibly "common" as well. But, I think, most people who have interviewed a decent amount have at least one story like this. Cursing is another step beyond, but its not insane; many of the people on the other end simply get drafted, they don't want to be there, and in some companies even see you as a threat to their career advancement.

dr_kiszonka 5y ago
I had a Google research scientist telling me during an interview that they don't like their job and don't recommend it. At a different occasion, Google's VP showed up 15 minutes late, asked one question, and stopped paying attention for the rest of the interview too busy with their laptop. I understand that these are probably outliers but I will not be reapplying soon.
- devin 5y ago
  Shoulda called them out.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    During an interview?
    - calt 5y ago
      Yes. If you're ever talking to someone one on one and they're not paying attention find a way to address it.
      - willhinsa 5y ago
        Absolutely. It can be quite painful in the short term, but the long term benefits (both for you and that particular relationship) can be huge, especially if you're naturally averse to confrontation.

throwkeep 5y ago

It's not common at all. For that and other tells, it shows the narrator to be unreliable. A storyteller.

zepto 5y ago
What other tells do you see?

spike021 5y ago

I interviewed at a small company just for an internship several years back. It was an iOS position, but again, internship/jr. level. I said I wasn't an expert but wanted to learn and had spent some time developing some basic iOS apps on my own. Guy proceeds to seriously ask me about low-level memory management, i.e. ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) vs. other methods (this was roughly 2013 or so). I attempted to give an answer from what I knew just reading the docs, as I hadn't written complex-enough code for it to matter. Mentioned I didn't have first-hand experience using it, so that's my frame of reference. He basically laughed and went off to tell the recruiter it wasn't worth having me finish my interview loop. I understand for an experienced iOS engineer at the time, those would've been entirely valid questions and it'd be reasonable to expect enough time spent using them that a quality answer could be given. But I was honest in saying I hadn't gone that far and this was for an internship. Of course that was also when I realized that in the real world, there are small companies who tend to want FTE-level of productivity out of young engineers/interns for that pay level who aren't experienced enough to know it. Edit: Coincidentally that same day I reached out over Twitter to the CEO of a company I admired, also in SF, and asked if I could just tour the office since I was in the area. That CEO spent his lunch hour with me, had a good laugh about the interview story, and worked with one of his teams and recruiters to get me in the schedule to interview. Got an internship there the right way, spent two years interning, went full time for 3.5 years, and that was the beginning of my full-time career.

devin 5y ago
I have a feeling this will get me a downvote, but I grew up in a very blue collar town and the idea of paying one's dues is not crazy to me. I see a lot of people entering the tech market as if they don't have anything to prove, like their degree says it all. In any industry, you shovel some shit early on, IMO. I was a good programmer, but I got my start racking servers in a data center. I crawled under raised floor to run cable, replaced batteries, worried about cooling, and generally did a lot of work no one else wanted to do. I was a programmer already, and I think it was a waste of my ambition for $COMPANY to not give me a job writing software, but I don't mind the idea of people paying their dues, and I think I'm better for my experience. Careers aren't supposed to start with you having a big corner office. It is surprising to me how many people feel entitled enough that they truly believe they ought to start at the top.

ALittleLight 5y ago

It reminds me of a recruiter I spoke to who asked me how much experience I had with "winforms". I said "None, I've never heard of that" and she couldn't believe it. She went into this tirade about how five years of experience with winforms was required for this job and how could I not know anything about it, and was I sure I didn't have at least some exposure somehow to winforms somewhere. Very odd experience and the only time I've never had someone get angry in a context like that. I guess if you're a recruiter and recruiting for a job that lists winforms as a requirement you may think that's a super critical thing and not have any conception of the relative importance of knowing things like that. I didn't go forward with the recruiter and I've never bothered to check what winforms are, but I assume it's some kind of library for creating GUIs in Windows and I further assume I could have been productive with it in a day or so.

namdnay 5y ago
Sounds more like the recruiter was frustrated and panicked that they still couldn’t find anyone suitable, and was trying to nudge you into inventing some winforms experience in order to get to the next round
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  "Ohhhhh, WINforms! Yeah, I have 6 years of experience with that."
scruple 5y ago
Had something similar happen to me but it was WPF instead of WinForms. Told them to never contact me again.

cableshaft 5y ago

I haven't gotten it from interviewers, but I have from tech recruiters. Specifically remember being cursed at for "not bothering to learn Rails yet". I did not put Rails on my resume or LinkedIn and the recruiter reached out to me, apparently without thoroughly reading anything about me. But I have been laughed at on a phone interview before. It was for a game dev job, and I was told by the recruiter ahead of time "They just need anyone with any game dev experience at all," so I didn't spend too much time studying for the interview. I had developed and released several full games, even popular ones, but they were all 2D Flash web games. So I was completely unprepared for 30 minutes of being grilled on 3D graphics math and console development. I answered to the best of my ability, and could have done better if I hadn't been misled by the recruiter, but no, it felt like I was being toyed with by the interviewers (kept hearing laughter multiple times after I answered). I got a different and (equally good) job in the industry and the company that interviewed me ended up closing down about 6 months later, so it worked out for the best anyway.

nowherebeen 5y ago
I have had a very similar experience at a tech company. Was told they just wanted to have a chat (I wasn't applying for a job posting), and then suddenly it was a full-fledged interview that I wasn't prepared for. I got humiliated and was angry as hell for being misled. I still remember it to this day.

nowherebeen 5y ago

I've never heard of cursing as well, but bad interviewing experiences are quite common in this industry.

n_ary 5y ago

> [...] had an interviewer ask me if I was a wizard with GO, C++, Rust, and C over the phone. Didn't this interviewer review/read the CV/Resume before calling?

flippinburgers 5y ago

I have heard co-workers curse, myself included.