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Ha, I had a phone interview with MDB for a (contract!) technical writing gig, and they told me the next steps include (1) a one-hour critical thinking test, wha

Ha, I had a phone interview with MDB for a (contract!) technical writing gig, and they told me the next steps include (1) a one-hour critical thinking test, whatever that means, and (2) a one-hour writing interview. Not a take-home writing assignment, which would be pretty standard, but a live writing interview via Zoom screen share. Very unusual, but I don't have too many other things on the horizon right now, so I'll see where it goes...

smcin 3y ago
Doing the writing assignment live and on-screen is simply to verify you didn't cheat/impersonate/get help/use AI/plagiarize.
- testless 3y ago
  Contract implies they hire a service, thus should not care how it was created, right?
  - smcin 3y ago
    a) Outright cheating in the interview is probably a bad sign about the candidate (whereas the interviewers might be ok with, say, using GenAI, which is increasingly common in many sectors). But impersonating a candidate, or having a friend sit in with you, would always be a bad sign. b) Not necessarily, some companies would care if their contract writer stole/copied/repurposed/reused content from a competitor/regurgitated copyrighted material. Think also GenAI hallucinations, fabricated citations, etc. But sure, most cost-conscious companies won't give a hoot, so they could probably get by with cutting corners.
klardotsh 3y ago
I interviewed for a Sr Software Engineer gig there in 2022 and had a laughably negative live-leetcode experience where the interviewer was visibly zoned out almost the entire time and mostly just awkwardly stared at the camera while I found a solution - whether or not the most optimal, I guess - to whatever pointless never-going-to-actually-write-stuff-like-this-on-the-job thing they'd asked me. I asked for feedback on the blurb or ways to improve it and got told, basically, "well you took so long" (~30 minutes?) "to implement this that we don't really have time for that", or something to that rough effect. I got a relatively generic rejection email shortly thereafter, and frankly, only minded because I was unemployed at the time. I have no idea what whoever designed their hiring process thinks they're getting out of being overcomplex and generally cold, but I can't imagine it's anything good.
- pcollins123 3y ago
  Seems like it worked for them.
  - klardotsh 3y ago
    Yep, attracting a reputation as a shop with a joke of an interview process seems like a good achievement to strive for...

smcin 3y ago

Doing the writing assignment live and on-screen is simply to verify you didn't cheat/impersonate/get help/use AI/plagiarize.

testless 3y ago
Contract implies they hire a service, thus should not care how it was created, right?
- smcin 3y ago
  a) Outright cheating in the interview is probably a bad sign about the candidate (whereas the interviewers might be ok with, say, using GenAI, which is increasingly common in many sectors). But impersonating a candidate, or having a friend sit in with you, would always be a bad sign. b) Not necessarily, some companies would care if their contract writer stole/copied/repurposed/reused content from a competitor/regurgitated copyrighted material. Think also GenAI hallucinations, fabricated citations, etc. But sure, most cost-conscious companies won't give a hoot, so they could probably get by with cutting corners.

klardotsh 3y ago

I interviewed for a Sr Software Engineer gig there in 2022 and had a laughably negative live-leetcode experience where the interviewer was visibly zoned out almost the entire time and mostly just awkwardly stared at the camera while I found a solution - whether or not the most optimal, I guess - to whatever pointless never-going-to-actually-write-stuff-like-this-on-the-job thing they'd asked me. I asked for feedback on the blurb or ways to improve it and got told, basically, "well you took so long" (~30 minutes?) "to implement this that we don't really have time for that", or something to that rough effect. I got a relatively generic rejection email shortly thereafter, and frankly, only minded because I was unemployed at the time. I have no idea what whoever designed their hiring process thinks they're getting out of being overcomplex and generally cold, but I can't imagine it's anything good.

pcollins123 3y ago
Seems like it worked for them.
- klardotsh 3y ago
  Yep, attracting a reputation as a shop with a joke of an interview process seems like a good achievement to strive for...