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Unacceptable behavior for an interviewer. Ironically, that person did you a solid by showing you this wasn't the company you want to work at without already sta

Unacceptable behavior for an interviewer. Ironically, that person did you a solid by showing you this wasn't the company you want to work at without already starting there and investing even more time with them. Imagine finding this out after you quit a current job, and low and behold, this guy is your new boss. You are the candidate and hold equal power. In the thought process you had "I think I should terminate this interview." If it ever gets to a point you are uncomfortable due to rudeness, leave. Sure, in a big faang world you may never have interaction with that person, but them being on the panel has a chance they would be your boss, peer, or in your org some way. Toxic people can ruin what would otherwise be good careers. Alternatively, this can also be a huge indicator a company tolerates and promotes this behavior. To me, while it's possible, that this was a once and rare thing that only this person has done... Screw betting my career on the least likely possibility.

Clubber 4y ago
I once had a guy in an interview panel pour out a packet of salt and chop it into lines with a credit card at an interview with a major tech company you've heard of. It was like a nervous habit or something. This was back in the late 1990s. I was like WTF. Ya, you really have to pay attention to red flags, you'll be working (stuck) with them for at least a year, possibly more, and you will depend on them for your livelihood and family's survival.
- smugma 4y ago
  That’s weird, but like you say, it seemed like a sort of nervous habit. Not during interviews, but sometimes I close my eyes when I want to focus intently on what the speaker is saying. I used to twirl my pencil. I try and give both interviewers and interviewees the benefit of the doubt. Walking out without saying anything seems pretty rude, but I don’t know all the circumstances. Laughing in your face seems much worse. It’s a two way interview. If it doesn’t feel right, hopefully you’ve got other options and don’t need to proceed. Or get an offer (if it isn’t going to take 5 more rounds of interviewing, you’ve already committed time to the interview, consider whether it’s worth taking it to completion) and then raise concerns and listen to how your concerns are addressed.
  - LgWoodenBadger 4y ago
    In case you didn't realize, but cutting-salt-into-lines is usually a behavior more associated with cocaine usage than nervous habit
    - smugma 4y ago
      I've never done cocaine but have cut sugar into lines for fun (but not at work, and definitely not in an interview)
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      I assumed the OP was using "salt" euphemistically. I've never heard of coke-heads chopping-up sodium chloride!
- cyberei 4y ago
  > you'll be working (stuck) with them for at least a year, possibly more Why is that? Do you mean it looks bad in the CV if you leave too soon?
  - Clubber 4y ago
    >Why is that? Do you mean it looks bad in the CV if you leave too soon? That's one thing, also life happens where it's more beneficial to stay someplace to keep the income coming in than it is to spend hours off the clock finding and preparing a different job. Say a medical problem, or you need to pay to fix damage to your house, or a spouse lost a job, etc.
- sharadov 4y ago
  Are you sure it was salt? Cocaine sounds more like it. He was 1. Either trying to kick a cocaine habit, and was still going through the motions with something that looked like cocaine 2. He was going to offer the coke to OP and see if he was a culture fit.
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> You are the candidate and hold equal power. I frequently see comments like this on HN and I don't really buy it. When every job opening has several qualified candidates, and it can take several applications to land a new job, I still think the employer has more power.
- yboris 4y ago
  My team at my company has been interviewing people this last half year: we've extended offers to a few and so far each has chosen to work elsewhere because they found better pay. At the very least for the last half year, I think developers may have an "upper hand".
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    > each has chosen to work elsewhere because they found better pay The candidates don't control the comp you offer. Claiming that those darned candidates have the upper hand because everyone else pays better is a bad faith argument. Not that you can tell your boss that, I'm sure.
  - bradlys 4y ago
    I see this as a bad market though too. Many companies paying bad comps and making people jump through a lot of hoops to get a decent offer. I had to get no less than 6 offers before I got one that was reasonable in my last search. 6. I had done about a dozen onsites and dozens of phone screens at that point. This was just a year ago. I expect the same this year - if not worse because of the market doing so poorly.
  - adra 4y ago
    Supply and demand, in net terms it depends on externalities, but when you're sitting down in an interview with a candidate, you're setting the tone/pace for them to bow to. If it becomes super acceptable for candidates to walk out whenever they don't "feel" like it in the interview, if you can ask the employer intrusive questions about their professional lives to dig into the culture of the company, if the candidate has the resumes of their interviewers, maybe then there's more of a tit for tat in the interview.
maerF0x0 4y ago
I once interviewed for Qualia, and surprise surprise both the founding CEO and Product person both were quite rude to me. Unsurprised due to their very young age at the time*. Yeah, someone may not be up to your standards, but that's no reason to mock them in a high pressure/vulnerability scenario. It's particularly odd because they were using MeteorJS quite early and I was one of a very few people in the world having creating, deploying, and running a meteorJS app at that time. If you can believe it that was about 6 years ago and I still can recall their faces to this day. Not that it bothers me anymore, but that the impression sunk deep. Their recruiters continue to reach out to me to this day, not a snowball's chance in hell. Contrast this with a scenario at Dropbox where I was underprepared for a datastructures question (BitSet). While the interviewer was mildly taunting me, he at least was gracious enough to give hints and talk me through the solution as it ended. I knew I wasnt getting the role, but at least I learned something that day. * not that rudeness in youth is acceptable or expected but a lack of life experience can lead to a lack of perspective or realization that life is much longer and you only get one reputation
- andy_ppp 4y ago
  I find the Dropbox story completely stupid too. You should never be failed in an interview for not knowing things you can trivially Google, in my opinion.
  - 100721 4y ago
    I disagree. Consider: You're hiring for a data science role, and the candidate doesn't know what an array is. Consider: You're hiring for a senior systems software development role, and the candidate doesn't know what an instruction is. etc.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      Would you agree that what an instruction is depends on context?
      - 4y ago
roamerz 4y ago
This is my favorite answer in reading the comments. I might add that person that laughed and walked out may have been a plant to incite a reaction from the interviewee. If that would have been me (and the rest of the interview was going well) I probably would have just laughed and said something after he left to the affect of ‘made someone laugh today - check’.
tyingq 4y ago
Agree generally, though that the other people in the room didn't try to acknowledge what happened, apologize, etc, is the biggest problem to me. Any company might have a random asshole pop up into a chance encounter. What that random asshole does is less telling than what everyone else around them does to address it.
EdwardDiego 4y ago
Exactly. I was in an interview with a data engineering consultancy, and the CEO goes on a weird rant about "there's givers and takers in a company, which are you?" and then proudly told me about firing a couple of people that week. Was a very useful interview for me, and I've told a few old colleagues who were approached by the company also about it, so it saved them time too.

Clubber 4y ago

I once had a guy in an interview panel pour out a packet of salt and chop it into lines with a credit card at an interview with a major tech company you've heard of. It was like a nervous habit or something. This was back in the late 1990s. I was like WTF. Ya, you really have to pay attention to red flags, you'll be working (stuck) with them for at least a year, possibly more, and you will depend on them for your livelihood and family's survival.

smugma 4y ago
That’s weird, but like you say, it seemed like a sort of nervous habit. Not during interviews, but sometimes I close my eyes when I want to focus intently on what the speaker is saying. I used to twirl my pencil. I try and give both interviewers and interviewees the benefit of the doubt. Walking out without saying anything seems pretty rude, but I don’t know all the circumstances. Laughing in your face seems much worse. It’s a two way interview. If it doesn’t feel right, hopefully you’ve got other options and don’t need to proceed. Or get an offer (if it isn’t going to take 5 more rounds of interviewing, you’ve already committed time to the interview, consider whether it’s worth taking it to completion) and then raise concerns and listen to how your concerns are addressed.
- LgWoodenBadger 4y ago
  In case you didn't realize, but cutting-salt-into-lines is usually a behavior more associated with cocaine usage than nervous habit
  - smugma 4y ago
    I've never done cocaine but have cut sugar into lines for fun (but not at work, and definitely not in an interview)
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    I assumed the OP was using "salt" euphemistically. I've never heard of coke-heads chopping-up sodium chloride!
cyberei 4y ago
> you'll be working (stuck) with them for at least a year, possibly more Why is that? Do you mean it looks bad in the CV if you leave too soon?
- Clubber 4y ago
  >Why is that? Do you mean it looks bad in the CV if you leave too soon? That's one thing, also life happens where it's more beneficial to stay someplace to keep the income coming in than it is to spend hours off the clock finding and preparing a different job. Say a medical problem, or you need to pay to fix damage to your house, or a spouse lost a job, etc.
sharadov 4y ago
Are you sure it was salt? Cocaine sounds more like it. He was 1. Either trying to kick a cocaine habit, and was still going through the motions with something that looked like cocaine 2. He was going to offer the coke to OP and see if he was a culture fit.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago

> You are the candidate and hold equal power. I frequently see comments like this on HN and I don't really buy it. When every job opening has several qualified candidates, and it can take several applications to land a new job, I still think the employer has more power.

yboris 4y ago
My team at my company has been interviewing people this last half year: we've extended offers to a few and so far each has chosen to work elsewhere because they found better pay. At the very least for the last half year, I think developers may have an "upper hand".
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > each has chosen to work elsewhere because they found better pay The candidates don't control the comp you offer. Claiming that those darned candidates have the upper hand because everyone else pays better is a bad faith argument. Not that you can tell your boss that, I'm sure.
- bradlys 4y ago
  I see this as a bad market though too. Many companies paying bad comps and making people jump through a lot of hoops to get a decent offer. I had to get no less than 6 offers before I got one that was reasonable in my last search. 6. I had done about a dozen onsites and dozens of phone screens at that point. This was just a year ago. I expect the same this year - if not worse because of the market doing so poorly.
- adra 4y ago
  Supply and demand, in net terms it depends on externalities, but when you're sitting down in an interview with a candidate, you're setting the tone/pace for them to bow to. If it becomes super acceptable for candidates to walk out whenever they don't "feel" like it in the interview, if you can ask the employer intrusive questions about their professional lives to dig into the culture of the company, if the candidate has the resumes of their interviewers, maybe then there's more of a tit for tat in the interview.

maerF0x0 4y ago

I once interviewed for Qualia, and surprise surprise both the founding CEO and Product person both were quite rude to me. Unsurprised due to their very young age at the time*. Yeah, someone may not be up to your standards, but that's no reason to mock them in a high pressure/vulnerability scenario. It's particularly odd because they were using MeteorJS quite early and I was one of a very few people in the world having creating, deploying, and running a meteorJS app at that time. If you can believe it that was about 6 years ago and I still can recall their faces to this day. Not that it bothers me anymore, but that the impression sunk deep. Their recruiters continue to reach out to me to this day, not a snowball's chance in hell. Contrast this with a scenario at Dropbox where I was underprepared for a datastructures question (BitSet). While the interviewer was mildly taunting me, he at least was gracious enough to give hints and talk me through the solution as it ended. I knew I wasnt getting the role, but at least I learned something that day. * not that rudeness in youth is acceptable or expected but a lack of life experience can lead to a lack of perspective or realization that life is much longer and you only get one reputation

andy_ppp 4y ago
I find the Dropbox story completely stupid too. You should never be failed in an interview for not knowing things you can trivially Google, in my opinion.
- 100721 4y ago
  I disagree. Consider: You're hiring for a data science role, and the candidate doesn't know what an array is. Consider: You're hiring for a senior systems software development role, and the candidate doesn't know what an instruction is. etc.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    Would you agree that what an instruction is depends on context?
    - 4y ago

roamerz 4y ago

This is my favorite answer in reading the comments. I might add that person that laughed and walked out may have been a plant to incite a reaction from the interviewee. If that would have been me (and the rest of the interview was going well) I probably would have just laughed and said something after he left to the affect of ‘made someone laugh today - check’.

tyingq 4y ago

Agree generally, though that the other people in the room didn't try to acknowledge what happened, apologize, etc, is the biggest problem to me. Any company might have a random asshole pop up into a chance encounter. What that random asshole does is less telling than what everyone else around them does to address it.

EdwardDiego 4y ago

Exactly. I was in an interview with a data engineering consultancy, and the CEO goes on a weird rant about "there's givers and takers in a company, which are you?" and then proudly told me about firing a couple of people that week. Was a very useful interview for me, and I've told a few old colleagues who were approached by the company also about it, so it saved them time too.