4 ms·

I worked at Sutherland Global a few years ago. They would literally just pull any random manager to do interviews, with no instructions or qualifications for th

I worked at Sutherland Global a few years ago. They would literally just pull any random manager to do interviews, with no instructions or qualifications for the task whatsoever. I found out that one of the managers who was in charge of interviews for about 6 months drunkenly revealed to some colleagues that he invited people back based on whether they looked cool or not. I recently had an interview at a company named Fluz. The CTO cancelled last minute and had an engineer fill in. Presumably, this engineer had no bias training, interviewing training or management training, not to mention the lack of preparation time. It seemed like he made the questions up as we went. This was not a technical interview whatsoever. They then ghosted me. I interviewed at Dwolla and they did a panel interview as the last step. Again, several dozen questions completely irrelevant to the role I applied for. Why is a person on the marketing team interviewing me, a full-stack engineer? I did a technical screening for givemomentum.com. I applied to a Node/React job. The interviewer used Java. Thanks for the lack of heads up on that curve ball. Ghosted. The whole process is a joke.

bigbillheck 5y ago
> Why is a person on the marketing team interviewing me, a full-stack engineer? To make sure that you're not a jerk and can work with people other than engineers?
- nefitty 5y ago
  That's not a very charitable interpretation of my rhetorical question. More to the point, why would a person presumably not specialized in hiring be tasked to make a decision about a role they have no expertise in, based on a 40 minute video conversation? What signal could they have possibly picked up on in that timeframe that should override the judgement of HR and engineers in the preceding multiple screenings and technical assessments? "Don't hire. Brown guy didn't smile enough. Total jerk."
  - bigbillheck 5y ago
    I wasn't trying to imply anything about you personally being a jerk or otherwise. Of course they're not assessing you on engineering ability! They're assessing your soft skills, like how you are at talking with people in other departments. It's kind of like if you go on a date with someone and you're rude to the wait staff, that's a big red flag, right? You're not going to ask the server if you should plan on a second date, but their presence in the interaction gives you information.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > Why is (non-technical person) interviewing me, a full-stack engineer? > "Don't hire. Brown guy didn't smile enough. Total jerk." It's possible to do the soft skills, personality and culture fit section of the interview really really badly, as in the racial bias example that you gave above. That's not the same thing as asking why it exists at all though. You could say exactly the same about the technical section, e.g. "don't hire, Brown guy misplaced a semicolon on the whiteboard". And yet a technical interview still needs to exist, has value when done with some fluency. Hiring well is hard. At least two people doing each stage of the interview is supposed to mitigate this bias. How well it works is other matter.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Do the engineers also have input into the marketing hires?
  - monocasa 5y ago
    At my last job it was bidirectional.
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      Fair enough, I've seen situations where tech was a lower caste and this could be a sign of that if it wasn't bidirectional.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    I was interviewed by some engineers as well.
- derefr 5y ago
  Usually that would be the job of an HR person. Design for the worst case: if a candidate is bad at working with others, you don't want to expose your staff in other departments to them unnecessarily. (This is why, in most orgs, the "HR pass" is usually the first pass, before any technical qualification — you don't want some random asshole engineer verbally abusing / sexually harassing / etc. your engineers during an interview. HR people are trained to deal with random assholes — they have the verbal judo to calm them down, and the trained-in wherewithal to shut down interviews early rather than trying to trudge forward. People without HR experience, don't.)
  - bigbillheck 5y ago
    You have multiple assessors for personality fits in the same way you have multiple assessors for technical ability. I mean, I've certainly interviewed candidates where I thought they did great and should be hired, while coworkers--who talked to the very same person barely an hour apart--thought they were idiots who shouldn't even have gotten in the door. (Or vice versa). Personality fits work the same way. (For example, maybe I was the only one to whom the candidate complained at length about their previous employers, or, being a dude, the only one to whom the candidate's sexism wasn't apparent).
notreallyserio 5y ago
Thank you for naming the organizations. Keeping them anonymous just allows this sort of behavior to go unchecked (and unverifiable).
- nefitty 5y ago
  I've resolved to share my experiences candidly here, on Reddit, on Glassdoor, etc. I urge everyone to do so. A lot of us are going through it, as exemplified by r/antiwork's huge spike in popularity, the "great resignations", and so on. Abusive practices thrive in the shadows.

bigbillheck 5y ago

> Why is a person on the marketing team interviewing me, a full-stack engineer? To make sure that you're not a jerk and can work with people other than engineers?

nefitty 5y ago
That's not a very charitable interpretation of my rhetorical question. More to the point, why would a person presumably not specialized in hiring be tasked to make a decision about a role they have no expertise in, based on a 40 minute video conversation? What signal could they have possibly picked up on in that timeframe that should override the judgement of HR and engineers in the preceding multiple screenings and technical assessments? "Don't hire. Brown guy didn't smile enough. Total jerk."
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  I wasn't trying to imply anything about you personally being a jerk or otherwise. Of course they're not assessing you on engineering ability! They're assessing your soft skills, like how you are at talking with people in other departments. It's kind of like if you go on a date with someone and you're rude to the wait staff, that's a big red flag, right? You're not going to ask the server if you should plan on a second date, but their presence in the interaction gives you information.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  > Why is (non-technical person) interviewing me, a full-stack engineer? > "Don't hire. Brown guy didn't smile enough. Total jerk." It's possible to do the soft skills, personality and culture fit section of the interview really really badly, as in the racial bias example that you gave above. That's not the same thing as asking why it exists at all though. You could say exactly the same about the technical section, e.g. "don't hire, Brown guy misplaced a semicolon on the whiteboard". And yet a technical interview still needs to exist, has value when done with some fluency. Hiring well is hard. At least two people doing each stage of the interview is supposed to mitigate this bias. How well it works is other matter.
willcipriano 5y ago
Do the engineers also have input into the marketing hires?
- monocasa 5y ago
  At my last job it was bidirectional.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    Fair enough, I've seen situations where tech was a lower caste and this could be a sign of that if it wasn't bidirectional.
- nefitty 5y ago
  I was interviewed by some engineers as well.
derefr 5y ago
Usually that would be the job of an HR person. Design for the worst case: if a candidate is bad at working with others, you don't want to expose your staff in other departments to them unnecessarily. (This is why, in most orgs, the "HR pass" is usually the first pass, before any technical qualification — you don't want some random asshole engineer verbally abusing / sexually harassing / etc. your engineers during an interview. HR people are trained to deal with random assholes — they have the verbal judo to calm them down, and the trained-in wherewithal to shut down interviews early rather than trying to trudge forward. People without HR experience, don't.)
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  You have multiple assessors for personality fits in the same way you have multiple assessors for technical ability. I mean, I've certainly interviewed candidates where I thought they did great and should be hired, while coworkers--who talked to the very same person barely an hour apart--thought they were idiots who shouldn't even have gotten in the door. (Or vice versa). Personality fits work the same way. (For example, maybe I was the only one to whom the candidate complained at length about their previous employers, or, being a dude, the only one to whom the candidate's sexism wasn't apparent).

notreallyserio 5y ago

Thank you for naming the organizations. Keeping them anonymous just allows this sort of behavior to go unchecked (and unverifiable).

nefitty 5y ago
I've resolved to share my experiences candidly here, on Reddit, on Glassdoor, etc. I urge everyone to do so. A lot of us are going through it, as exemplified by r/antiwork's huge spike in popularity, the "great resignations", and so on. Abusive practices thrive in the shadows.