4 ms·

I interviewed with a company a couple of months ago and it was the first time in my career that I'd had one of those technical interviews that folks here on HN

I interviewed with a company a couple of months ago and it was the first time in my career that I'd had one of those technical interviews that folks here on HN seem to run into a lot. Was shown a handful of problems in a Google doc and told the code doesn't need to compile, it just needs to be conceptually sound. Got asked how to check if a word's a palindrome, how to check if delimiters are balanced, some basic data shaping with JSON, and a pretty basic SQL question with a left join. I left the interview feeling totally confident I'd rocked it, since there were no "inverse binary tree" curveballs or anything like that, and figured that the company just wanted to make sure I knew what a stack was and what some properties of arrays are. Got rejected, asked for feedback and was told none would be given, so I rinsed the bad taste out of my mouth and went with another company instead.

bitwize 5y ago
Never expect feedback for why you were rejected. It is in the company's best interest not to explain to you why; any feedback could potentially expose them to legal liability.
- eropple 5y ago
  It may be in the company's best interest to leave you in the dark, though frankly I question that wisdom and have never had it effectively defended by a knowledgeable party. And even if it is in their best interest? That doesn't mean you shouldn't expect professional courtesy out of an organization that disrupted your day and decided not to hire you after it. Being decent to people is important and you are important enough that you can expect to be treated with decency.
- Jemaclus 5y ago
  This may be true, but in practice, it doesn't seem to happen. Aline Lerner (@leeny) wrote this blog post about this a while back: https://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/ https://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-com...
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  I think it isn't about legality, its mostly that most people take rejection badly and get angry, and it isn't worth a recruiters time to deal with that nonsense.
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    That's an occupational hazard, one they accepted willingly when they started working as a recruiter. It's not my fault that they have to deal with bad apples. In the meantime, a lot of us want to improve and be told what we did wrong. It's the least you can do if you used several days of the candidate's life, don't you think?
    - strikelaserclaw 5y ago
      yea i agree with you, its a crappy thing to do, I'm not justifying it, just saying what their thought process is.

bitwize 5y ago

Never expect feedback for why you were rejected. It is in the company's best interest not to explain to you why; any feedback could potentially expose them to legal liability.

eropple 5y ago
It may be in the company's best interest to leave you in the dark, though frankly I question that wisdom and have never had it effectively defended by a knowledgeable party. And even if it is in their best interest? That doesn't mean you shouldn't expect professional courtesy out of an organization that disrupted your day and decided not to hire you after it. Being decent to people is important and you are important enough that you can expect to be treated with decency.
Jemaclus 5y ago
This may be true, but in practice, it doesn't seem to happen. Aline Lerner (@leeny) wrote this blog post about this a while back: https://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/ https://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-com...
strikelaserclaw 5y ago
I think it isn't about legality, its mostly that most people take rejection badly and get angry, and it isn't worth a recruiters time to deal with that nonsense.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  That's an occupational hazard, one they accepted willingly when they started working as a recruiter. It's not my fault that they have to deal with bad apples. In the meantime, a lot of us want to improve and be told what we did wrong. It's the least you can do if you used several days of the candidate's life, don't you think?
  - strikelaserclaw 5y ago
    yea i agree with you, its a crappy thing to do, I'm not justifying it, just saying what their thought process is.