14 ms·

Walking out of an interview

265 points by DanielShir 14y ago

onedev 14y ago
I'm guessing Facebook
- rdl 14y ago
  Facebook has plenty of people >30, which was one of his criticisms of the job. It's probably mainly late-20s early-30s at this point, unless you're in a non-technical group like user operations.
snowwrestler 14y ago
I think a situation like this is better handled one on one--wait for a natural break, pull the interview lead aside and explain politely that you appreciate the time and consideration but think it is just not a good fit culturally. Then the lead can explain it to everyone else and excuse them from the rest of the interview process. Announcing any kind of surprise or unwelcome news can be problematic in a group situation. When people have an emotional response, they want to express it, and in a group situation the mutual reinforcement can quickly scale up the emotion. This is why it's generally not a good idea to quit by standing up in a staff meeting and announcing it to everyone at once (unless you're trying to make a scene :-)). It's much smoother to tell your boss first, so that they can help manage the emotion of the team.
- wccrawford 14y ago
  From what I can tell of the story, he was never left alone with 1 person at any time. He was ushered from room to room, meeting groups of people the whole time. Personally, I think the culture sounds great. But if he didn't, there's no point in wasting his whole day there. He was polite in telling them that he didn't think he'd fit and there was no need to waste anyone's time. Had this been a 2-hour interview, instead of a whole day, I'd say stick it out and be friendly. But not a whole day.
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    There's usually a lead for an interviewing process like this, and I don't think it would be that hard to say something like "hey can I have a word for a minute" as you're transitioning between groups.
    - billswift 14y ago
      Even if there is, that doesn't mean he'll know who the lead is. I have been in interview where I have gone from person to person with no one in two consecutive sections. As far as I could tell there was no one person to discuss sensitive issues with.
      - snowwrestler 14y ago
        Wow, interesting, thanks. What did you think of that process--did you end up hiring on there?
  - pbreit 14y ago
    Never left alone with 1 person? I find that hard to believe. And who's doing the ushering? How hard would it be to ask to speak with the hiring lead or really anyone?
spaghetti 14y ago
It's 100% fine to end the interview early as the OP did. The interviewers/hr will end the interview early the moment they're sure it won't work out. The fact that the interviewers acted rudely is a great sign that it's an awful place to work. Would be nice if the company were named so others can avoid interviewing there.
aroberge 14y ago
Professionalism cuts both ways. Any company employee that reacts negatively in ways similar to what is described here (when the interviewee announced he was leaving) would display what I consider to be extremely unprofessional behaviour. The fact that this reaction seemed to have been shared by a number of employees is perhaps a symptom of groupthink. The best feedback ever I got when we were in the process of hiring was from one of my very laid back employee, who is often dismissed as "unimportant" and has a way to put people at ease, and who got some unique insight into what a prospective employee would be like. I see this type of interview a typical "alpha male hehaviour competition" where existing employees are trying to assert in advance their worth to a potential future colleague (to put it nicely).
ams6110 14y ago
You'd only need to do this in the scenario of an all day (or longer) interview, which in itself is something you should not enter into without some pretty good feelings developed from the preliminary/phone interview. In this case it sounds like a fairly conventional "business" type guy didn't like the idea of working in a open environment with a bunch of kids wearing jeans. But that kind of basic "what's your work environment like" information should have been known or ascertained by him before accepting an invite for an all-day on-site interview. In rare cases you may realize during the final screening that there's some fundamental incompatibilty, but if you do your due diligence in the preliminaries this really shouldn't happen. Having to walk out of a final interview means that both sides executed the initial screening poorly. Edit: typos
- Retric 14y ago
  I am a programmer with 10+ years exp who wares a tie every day to work. Reading though that though I see a lot of red flags that have nothing to do with the dress code. Honestly, using a custom ORM solution is a sign of incompetence. Frameworks seem easy and fun to people that don't understand them, but after a few years I think about such things a series of trade-offs not an interesting problem. A few moths ago a coworker with ~5 years exp wanted to write their own simple graphing library to get around a few problems, everyone in the office said have fun do it on your own time, but don't add it to the code base. He had fun and it was a great learning experience, but the idea of working where most people where at that point has little appeal. PS: 15 years ago there where a lot of great reasons to write your own framework, now days not so much.
- VLM 14y ago
  "executed the initial screening poorly." My worst interviewing experiences have all involved HR initial screening. "The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping." My best interviewing experiences have all had no HR involvement at all (ex-coworkers introduce my soon to be future boss to me at lunch, met my future boss at a industry get together, etc)
racbart 14y ago
The fact that you leave early is not rude, but the way you do it might be. He should find the lead developer (or whoever was in the lead of interviewing him) and tell him that he feels he won't fit into the culture, thank him for the interview and then leave. Leaving without a word is in fact rude (“I'm done, show me the elevator” doesn't count, especially if lead developer had to jump the elevator to ask what's wrong and why he's leaving).
deerparkwater 14y ago
Well his friend sounds like a bit of an idiot who does not output a lot of code. What's wrong with writing your own MVC framework? An mvc framework is like 2000 lines. A lot of mvc frameworks lack a lot of utility functions and reflective functionality. A lot of entity frameworks (Unity, Ash) are trash and have 0 reflective functionality. I wrote my own and it's better and I'm not opensourcing it because it's a competitive advantage. Backbone isn't rockscience or a lot of code/extensive, especially for anyone in game development. I'm sorry but if you cringe at having a custom orm that likely does things with more magic/convenience, you're an idiot because the actual program is 10x as much code as your orm and it's obvious you're not one to dive into looking at source and then writing a lot of code.
heliodor 14y ago
What I find interesting here is the contrast in expected behavior for a company and for an interviewee. Most companies won't tell you why they're rejecting you if you interview with them. Most of them won't even send you a rejection email! Yet most people commenting on SE point out that you should explain why you're cutting the interview short and leaving.
- racbart 14y ago
  If you want to compare, then imagine that you're in the middle of the interview and the interviewer suddenly tells you “get lost, here's the elevator”. Saying “thanks but no, thanks” after the interview without telling the reason if perfectly fine for both a company and an interviewee.
  - eropple 14y ago
    If you want to compare, then imagine that you're in the middle of the interview and the interviewer suddenly tells you “get lost, here's the elevator”. This happens. The reverse isn't unreasonable either.
    - rdl 14y ago
      A lot of companies schedule interviews with a natural break in the process partway through -- basically you do phone screens, with people not progressing beyond those, and the in-person interview can be split to morning, lunch, after-lunch; senior people (or larger groups, or people with more constrained schedules, ...) meet with candidates after lunch, and if someone is a no-hire based on the morning, the candidate doesn't know about the afternoon phase and is told he can go home before or after lunch. Personally I think it's important to sell no-hire candidates on the company, since even no-hires might be hires in the future (for different roles, or if they add skills), or might be referrers of other, better candidates, or might end up working for a vendor or customer, or just might make negative social media postings about you which dissuade other candidates. So doing morning interviews, lunch (which turns into "selling the company's mission to the candidate", ideally by a senior person who isn't overly busy, not a random HR drone), etc. for the no-hires.
jlintz 14y ago
I debated doing this once. I was still in college interviewing for an entry level position where the company found my resume on some job site and invited me for an interview. I arrived at the place and was told to go into a large conference room. In the room were about 30 other people all staring at each other wondering what just happened. We were all given a coding test in Java (Java was no where on my resume and I had zero experience with it). After answering what I could with C we were broken up into teams and started a Jeopardy style game on Java and XML. I can't imagine they gained any insight into any candidate with this game since so many different people were answering questions. Once the game was finished we were then kept in our teams and given engineering problems to work out as a group and then had to present the solutions to the "judges". Every team was pretty much told their answers sucked, I can only compare the feedback to something out of the TV show "Apprentice." I left the interview completely dumbfounded as to what just happened. People had flown in from out of state to be there for the interview and were blind sided by this horrendous group interview that felt like it took place solely to stroke the ego of the guy leading the whole charade. I also remember the head guy preaching to us that Java was the future and if we didn't learn it we'd be left behind.
- ams6110 14y ago
  This is an extreme case but in the realm of "fresh out of school kid interviews in mega-corp IT department." Just know that when you have no work experience and are interviewing basically to be a person at a desk you will be subjected to some level of impersonal group weeding.
- Spooky23 14y ago
  I had something like this happen to me, except it was a bait and switch -- they lured you in with some interesting job, but it turned out they were interviewing 75 people for 8 jobs. At the end, they offered everyone (as in "ok, everyone, you're all a good fit for position EY535353-1") for some horrific job debugging JCL or something to everyone for like $18/hr (this was in 1999), and didn't hire anyone for the good gigs. By that time, the whole crowd was getting unruly, and we basically stormed out.
  - 14y ago
mootothemax 14y ago
I remember being sent to an interview for a PHP developer, only for it to transpire that the company was actually after a Perl developer. The recruitment agent had sent me along anyway, having helpfully added a couple of lines to my CV. The strange thing was that after I explained what had happened (after 15 or so minutes of initial interview fun) and said something like "Thanks for taking the time to see me, and sorry it couldn't be more productive," the interviewers were suddenly really keen on me; I was standing halfway through the door, answering questions for a good few minutes until I worked out how to leave, much to the interviewers' reluctance. Had I more sense at the time (I was 18 or 19 then), I would've sat down the extra ten minutes and tried to work out if we could've done business together one way or another. So whilst there are definitely times to leave early, nowadays I wouldn't be too hasty in doing so.
- wildmXranat 14y ago
  Same exact story. I actually got to the third interview simply because the lead dev liked my general knowledge and the HR liked my character. Once I talked to the CTO, his first question was "So you're not a Perl programmer, why do you want this job?" I was quick to answer that I fully know now that the job wasn't for me, but if there was anything that he had in place for me, that would be great. He didn't, but we talked for about 45 minutes. It was pretty much the only time I left impressed and happy, knowing that I will never return to the place of current interview.
- yxhuvud 14y ago
  Why limit yourself to PHP? Be upfront with what you don't know, and if they are still interested, see if they seem nice to work for. Good developers have an easier time producing good things in a language they don't know than bad people in a language they do know.
  - bmelton 14y ago
    I can't speak for the parent, but having been in that same boat, I'll answer for myself. Why limit yourself to <language_x>? It isn't about limiting myself to the language as it is being able to hit the ground running with it. I was mistakenly given an interview where they were looking for a Ruby developer, and had been referred to them. Only problem was that I didn't know Ruby as intimately as I do other languages. The position was fairly high paying, and one assumes an expectation of proficiency that I wouldn't be able to deliver on. Could I have learned the language? Sure, almost certainly -- but the question is really whether or not I can learn the language faster than they can realize how inefficient I'm being and (rightly) fire me? Even if I'm upfront about it (which I was), I'm still not willing to gamble unemployment on whether or not I'll get up to speed within their expectations when I could easily justify my salary somewhere in a language I'm more familiar with. Edit: I should also add that since that time, I have spent more time with Ruby and figured out that I don't really like it. Not going to get into a language debate or anything, it's a fine language, but it didn't fit the way I naturally think so, had I taken that job and learned quickly and all that, I'd have found myself programming in a language that I didn't really love, which could have lead to less job satisfaction as well.
stephengillie 14y ago
Other discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448409 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448409
m0nty 14y ago
> He could feel sudden hostility from everybody in the room at the time. Sounds like he made a good call here. With a professional interviewer, the worst you might get is "perhaps you could help us by explaining why you feel that way?" Who would seriously want to bully someone into staying to be interviewed for a job they didn't feel they could do? Personally I would thank him for his honesty.
- Jabbles 14y ago
  Is it usual to have a team of people interview someone, rather than a lot of one-on-one or two-on-one sessions? This reduces the number of developer-hours used in interviewing. I don't think that adding a 3rd or more interviewer will add anything, and it can be intimidating for candidates, adding noise to your search for a suitable one.
  - dripton 14y ago
    In a couple of decades of occasional job interviews, I've done mostly 1:1 and a handful of 2:1. I've only done one 4:1, which was actually lunch in between all-day 1:1 interviews, and which didn't feature any technical questions just random social conversation. It was definitely still part of the interview, though.
droithomme 14y ago
Assuming the accounting is correct, I think the guy was OK to end the interview politely (without throwing a fit or making grand statements) and leave. It was also not surprising they were shocked and upset, but that in itself doesn't mean he should have refrained from ending the interview, or that he was unprofessional. I have thought of walking out myself, I think most have. For example one interview the manager presented a long monologue about how stupid he felt people from a certain well known outsourcing country were. It wasn't even so much that he was racist, it was that that his stories showed he was closed minded, judgmental and reactionary. I doubt these personality factors were limited to his opinions about national origin. I continued the interview and declined the subsequent offer, citing another better offer. The other offer was for less money but was a project I wanted to work on more, the diatribe wasn't really relevant and only would have been if the offers were similar or his was for more interesting work. I chose not to give him feedback about his rants because I wanted him to keep doing it so other candidates would have the same warning. Him not saying what he really thinks certainly isn't going to change his actual personality. In other cases I see the interview to the end out of curiosity and to have a good story to tell, but also because you never really know what is going to happen without seeing it all the way through. I may find out more about their business, I may make some contacts talking to people there. Or maybe it is a wash out, but having flown across the country I am going to make it to the end of the day's interviews.
don_draper 14y ago
If I spend more than 50% of the time in an interview solving puzzles I'm not working for you. I may suck as a programmer, but if that's what you do in an interview, you suck at interviewing people.
- danielweber 14y ago
  If I don't spend enough time in an interview doing puzzles, I'm not working for you.
  - sabat 14y ago
    Puzzles in interviews are worthless unless the potential job involves doing those same kind of puzzles. If you want to see how someone's mind works, you could, say, talk through solving a real-world problem as if you were pair-programming. But don't use puzzles are brain-teasers. They don't tell you anything practical.
    - danielweber 14y ago
      If the puzzles are "why are manhole covers round?" I agree. If the puzzles are "given a list of N integers, positive and negative, find the consecutive subset with the most negative sum" then I want to see how they come up with an answer.
patio11 14y ago
My answer on this depends on whether we want to be an emotionally supportive group for people who make a badge of honor out of being socially and professionally inept, or whether we want to give advice which will actually move careers forward. A company which is not a cultural good fit for you, and the employees thereof, can still be very valuable allies. I would not act to antagonize them absent substantial provocation. Not being like you is not a substantial provocation. Most people in the world will, after all, not be like you, and you'll end up not working for approximately all companies in the industry. That's OK. You've already got the day blocked off in your calendar. Smile. Firm handshakes. Thank them for taking the time to interview you. Heck, they're giving you free live-fire practice for your next interview, make the most out of it. You should never say a word of criticism about the company to anyone but your primary point of contact and you should be darn circumspect with how you word it to him. (I like something along the general lines of "Thanks for your time and allowing me to get to know $FOO_CORP better. We're really in the same boat: I only want to work at employers where I'd do my best work, and you only want to hire people who'd do great things at $FOO_CORP. Having had the opportunity to hear you guys out a bit more, I don't think we're a great mutual fit. I will keep my ears open for you in case any of my friends would be a good fit for your position.")
- doktrin 14y ago
  This is spot on. I can't even fathom why somebody would needlessly burn bridges like this. The fact that we live in boom times and enjoy near-unprecedented demand for our skills is no excuse for this type of myopic behavior. What really surprised me was that the OP's candidate was a referral. It's one thing to risk burning your own bridges, but it's completely inconsiderate to possibly tarnish the reputation of someone who spoke up on your behalf. Speaking for myself, unless this was a close personal friend, I would be very reluctant to ever subsequently recommend this individual again. Without delving into anecdotes, I've witnessed a scenario quite similar to this one. A candidate who was referred (as a "rockstar") struggled with the technical interview, and subsequently walked out. It goes without saying how he, and to a lesser extent the individual who referred him, were viewed in the aftermath. TLDR; Please don't do this. It's completely unnecessary and possibly inconsiderate.
Kliment 14y ago
This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448409
nicholassmith 14y ago
I think I'd have done the same, he sounds like he did it pretty politely rather than just getting up and doing a runner. An all day interview where you've decided half way in it just won't work is not just a waste of your time, but a waste of a companies. However, the way the room reacted doesn't surprise me. Companies like to create loyalty which can occasionally turn a bit wolf-pack. Still, a shake of the hand and a 'thanks for coming, sorry it didn't work' is always classy and always a good idea.
rwhitman 14y ago
I once declined an offer over email and promptly got a conference call back from them where the CEO was incredibly hostile, the purpose of the call seemed like the CEO just wanted to publicly berate me and tell me that I was making a bad move. Afterwards I realized that its entirely a subconscious alpha dominance thing. There's this unsaid very primal, tribal power trip that goes along with the interviewee vs employer relationship. As the interviewer you want to be holding the power card - you sit in a position of power and have other people dance around and do what you say in order for you to be able to judge them and make them prove their worth to you in order to join your tribe. Its really one of the few times we get to break down our democratic social structure and revert back to this primitive social order in adulthood, so its a pretty important ritual for alpha-types. When someone comes in and disrupts that natural boundary it becomes offensive as they've unconsciously told you "I don't respect you as a leader" in front of your staff and team. The interviewer then needs to re-affirm their ego and dominance over the tribal unit in a public display. If you look at all these articles floating around about judging candidates and "top grading" and you look at it from this tribal alpha-dominance perspective it really breaks down some of what we assume is necessary in hiring. I think the whole system is based around some silly ancient ritual that we haven't been able to shake from our culture.
- 001sky 14y ago
  This is a very interesing note. It is undubitably a real phenomenon. A counterfactual case, however, might exist. Consider a similar non-hierarchical situation. For example, the relationship between a host and guest (at a private party). Where you were the guest of honor. As the guest of honour, you are not at the dis-advantage of power. In fact, just the opposite. But, the same question can be asked..."If you were the guest of honor at a party and the party sucks, is it OK to leave early?" If so, how would you handle it?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - rwhitman 14y ago
    That is very interesting, I definitely think you're right about it in the context of the article's scenario. By abruptly leaving the party early the guest of honor is essentially telling the host "I don't respect you". It may be more a simple social etiquette thing than a hierarchy thing, but the fact that the host has leadership representing their group here probably infuses it with some level of asserting dominance in response to public disrespect. Basically walking out on an interview is a great way to disrespect the interviewer, and you probably shouldn't do it if you don't want a fight ;)
zobzu 14y ago
I left an interview early too, with Google in fact. I told them I obviously did not fit in their culture at least for that very position (SRE) , as we had divergent views, and that I wanted to abort the interview process. No need for them or I to lose time if I was going to refuse anyway. The guy (technical person) was shocked, as if this was impossible. He also insisted more than 5 times to continue with the process, which, I refused. Later on, they contacted me, telling me that they marked me as "failed interview process" (ie: do not hire in the future). That told only one thing, that indeed, I wasn't a fit for that culture - probably at any position then.
- Evbn 14y ago
  It seems weird that HR would go out of their way to tell you you are permanently blackballed, when they have enough trouble responding to people who they are open to hiring in the future, and since it is such an obvious embarrassment and legal risk to have a policy of telling candidates they are blackballed.
  - goatforce5 14y ago
    It might have been easier for the interviewer to fill out his evaluation form with "Did not answer the provided questions" (or similar) rather than "Not interested in working for us". HR might not have got the full story. Still weird that they'd make a point of saying he wasn't welcome to come back and try again.
- incision 14y ago
  I'd really like to hear more of this story as the incredibly vague description of an SRE I was recently contacted about sounds like something I could potentially be very interested in.
  - ovi256 14y ago
    I'd like to know more too. Steve Yegge gave a data point about SREs in his recent liberal/conservative software rant: he said SREs are extremely conservative, and that he finds it normal given their duties. So it follows it's not a good position for a liberal dev.
dedward 14y ago
It's always okay to politey and professionaly not waste people's time. Don't come across as judgemental, angry, or anything similar or you risk burning bridges you may not even realize you have. From the brief description, it sounds like the guy was showing a bit too much emotion in leaving. Also - just because an interview process seems harsh doesn't mean the company is harsh - the interview is one thing, the job is often quite another - results tend to speak for themselves regardless of culture (and as long as you aren't a snob or jerk to your co-workers) If a seasoned, experienced professional doesn't get that, maybe they aren't a good fit...
dsolomon 14y ago
Walking out isn't rude. It's a reality check for the HR and management that something isn't kosher. I've walked out of interviews after finding the usual bait-n-switch techniques regarding position description, expectations, travel requirements, compensation, work conditions, .. just to name a few. Do I expect HR/management to get a clue - not really, it's not my job to further their problem solving ability.
alecco 14y ago
Tech companies should learn to respect people. It's not OK to take that kind of interviewing behavior as a rite of passage.
damoncali 14y ago
It's not the cultural norm, so if you ditch an interview, you had best go out of your way to be extremely polite about it. You might be better off just slogging it out to avoid burning bridges.
brown9-2 14y ago
Gracefully leaving earlier saves time for the interviewee and the interviewers. What exactly is the upside of staying longer in this case?
deleted 14y ago
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- fredoliveira 14y ago
  I think you should read the guidelines. This is certainly not the kind of venue where throw-away comments such as yours are welcome.
lawdawg 14y ago
People seem to think its fine to walk out of an interview early ... but how do they feel if the interviewer ends the interview early, or your "full day" of interviews is cut to just 1 or 2 hours because they just didn't think it was a good fit? I'm guessing some of you would be pissed because you took the whole day off for the interview only to be kicked out early. On the other hand, if I was on an interview loop, and the person left before it was my turn, I'd be grateful ... now I have extra time to do meaningful work.
- mellery451 14y ago
  I've had this very thing happen to me. I was surprised when it happened as it was a first for me. That said, I think it's becoming more commonplace, particular in small to medium size companies who are very sensitive to wasting their own developers' time. If it's becoming accepted practice for companies to dismiss interviewees early, then I see no reason that interviewees should not be able to do the same (politely and professionally, of course)
- colmvp 14y ago
  I wouldn't be pissed at all. I can take the rest of the day to gather my thoughts and not feel like they wasted any of my time with other interviews that weren't going to lead anywhere. I'd actually appreciate the fact that they were upfront instead of stringing me along.
- king_jester 14y ago
  > People seem to think its fine to walk out of an interview early ... but how do they feel if the interviewer ends the interview early, or your "full day" of interviews is cut to just 1 or 2 hours because they just didn't think it was a good fit? Uh this happens a lot. In fact, when I was looking for my first entry level job in a new city this was semi-common. Many interviewers or hiring managers will get hostile at you for the smallest things, like failing to get the catch in a puzzle question or because they dislike something about your resume. As soon as that one person would leave the room, it was usually followed by someone from HR coming back and politely telling me the interview was over. As a worker you owe a potential employer nothing and have the right to leave at any time you wish, regardless of how intimidating some people will be when you say you want out.
incision 14y ago
A a good friend of mine interviewed with one of the current powerhouses of technology when they weren't quite so big. After successfully navigating a few rounds of technical interviewing they gave him one of those famous brain teaser type questions. He responded by asking the interviewer to explain how the question would be relevant to his work with the company. The interviewer immediately explained that he clearly "wasn't a good fit" and ended the interview. I tend to feel they were both "right".
motoford 14y ago
I think I would have raised all of my concerns during the interview, instead of on my way out. Nothing wrong with not fitting in, but maybe the interview drill was just that, a drill. The fact that someone followed him to ask questions tells me company seemed interested in him despite his opinion of how the interview was going.
VLM 14y ago
I walked out of an interview, furious, probably two decades ago at "major cellphone company". HR advertised for an RF engineer position, which I had the education and experience for. I can totally sympathize with being rude because I'm normally very calm and I was Barely, just barely able to keep under control. So I burned 10% of my annual vacation days to come here, and drove half way across the state for hours to be bait and switched into a 1st level high school dropout call center support job at about a fifth my current pay? I'm thinking are you F-ing kidding me? I just barely kept it civil and made sure they understood perfectly why I was walking out of the interview. I saw in the bathroom mirror on the way out that I was blazing red in the face so I must have been quite the sight. The HR woman who screwed up the job req and ad and phone interview was more embarrassed than I was, and I actually got along excellently with the technician dept team lead, because we were basically at the same level at different companies (I wasn't mad at the individuals, solely at the situation). What HR meant by RF engineer was by RF they wanted a call center guy to handle dropped call issues and by engineer they wanted to never pay overtime. Um, sorry HR lady, thats not really what I went to school for, nor is it anything like what I was doing at that time for about five times the annual salary, admittedly with a very similar job title.
- rada 14y ago
  Technical jobs present a unique opportunity for HR to screw up. Once, HR sent us a candidate for a data warehousing job because the guy used to work at a warehouse.
scotty79 14y ago
Just look at your phone. Tell them you have personal emergency and you'll have to reschedule the rest of interview. Say goodbye, leave, never call. If they call tell them you accepted another position. That's what interviewers do and that's what they consider polite.
ForrestN 14y ago
This might be overly simple, but it seems like the root of the problem on both sides is just the scheduling of a day-long interview at a place that's so obviously a bad fit for the candidate. It would be better for all involved to have a more casual meet-and-greet, tour of the office, initial conversation beforehand.
gavinlynch 14y ago
> "He was criticized as being wrong for not following very dogmatic principles to the letter of the law." What does this even mean?? He didn't respond correctly with their secret handshake? He didn't drink his cup of coffee with exactly 2 creams? Is this a social thing, or a programmer thing? Did he use an unconventional coding style? This line really sticks in my craw, confuses and somehow bothers me... I would love an extrapolation.
VikingCoder 14y ago
There are companies who do the same: schedule a whole-day interview, and then escort you from the building part-way through, with no explanation. Is it rude? Yes.
psykotic 14y ago
Companies with all-day interview affairs have no qualms about cutting the process short at lunch time. Why should an interviewee not be able to do the same? It must be handled delicately and gracefully, but that hopefully goes without saying.
johngalt 14y ago
I've been on the other side of this. An interviewee had a killer competing offer that I couldn't match. He was so apologetic, as if he was worried he'd insulted me. I had to assure him that I took no offense and wished him well. Don't know why anyone would take something like this personally.
- beersigns 14y ago
  I've been that interviewee before and I was much the same. For me I realized it has to do with viewing the time spent in the interview as some kind of unspoken contract. You both felt good about the interview but you aren't accepting. Feels like you're letting them down.
lwhi 14y ago
1) When a natural break occurs, ask to speak to one of the members of the interview team privately. 2) Explain your concerns and be prepared to listen. 3) If you still want to leave, thank them, and leave.
- mturmon 14y ago
  Good answer. One thing overlooked in this discussion is that, if things went this far bad (scene in conference room and embarrassing elevator conversation) then something went wrong. This implies there's room for improvement in the way the interviewee handled the situation.
petdance 14y ago
I suggest that one's time isn't so valuable that you can't spend half an hour of unnecessary discussion. (In the case of the OP, I see that we're talking about more time than that.) You never know who you will meet again in your future, or who your interviewer knows that you will meet in your future. It's a small world. You want to be well-remembered. Walking out goes against that goal. Anything short of direct hostility, I suggest sucking it up and going through it to the end.
mkhalil 14y ago
For some reason, I imagine Walter White leaving this so called interview. No clue why. lol
geebee 14y ago
I'm sympathetic to the guy who walked out of the inteview, though I'm not sure it was a good idea. A lot of this probably has to do with your experience. I once had an interview for a position that was right up my alley. I have an MS in Industrial Engineering and I've worked at large manufacturing companies as a developer, as well as smaller startups that create optimization software for manufacturing, shipping, and production systems. I went to an interview for a company almost precisely in this business area. They asked me to code a singleton, traverse a binary tree, then do it without recursion, add a leaf to a binary tree, prove that the dual of the primal is the primal of the dual, prove various long term outcomes from markov chains, swap two integers without creating a third integer, write various outer joins, convert a sql table to a binary set of indicators (is this a common thing?), and print all possible permutation of string using recursion. At no point did anyone ask about, or even show the vaguest interest, in my background or experience. It wasn't super well coordinated, they pretty much just kept moving me from one developer to the other - so of course I was much more exhausted and drained than perhaps my interviewer of the hour realized. My interviewers were younger, and generally looked fresh out of their CS degrees, so I'd guess that they were quite a bit sharper where it came to markov chains, hessian matrices, and b-trees. I didn't look like I was clueless, but I came off as rusty, and I did stumble with things that I would have done much more easily with an hour hitting my old text books. It was eye-opening, and frustrating. I was polite and stuck with it, and I kept trying, because I actually wanted the job, and I thought that they could use someone like me, because while they were very talented, my few questions to them suggested that there were areas where I could bring some experience that they didn't have in house. I didn't get an offer, but I am glad I stuck through it. The one thing I wish I'd done is politely explain to the hiring manager what I just wrote here - that I think their hiring process might be filtering out an area of talent that could be valuable to the company. Actually, that's probably the advice I'd give the dude who terminated the interview. Rather than ending it abruptly, ask the hiring manager if he'd be willing to confer for 15 minutes or so. Explain why you think it's going badly, and what your concerns are. If you disagree, that's fine - then you can end it on better terms without appearing to leave in a huff. And while this is off topic, I would like to point out one more thing - this is the sort of experience that often comes to my mind when I hear about companies complaining about a lack of available talent, and it's one of the reasons I'm skeptical (though this interview was years ago, when hiring wasn't on fire the way it is now).
azat_co 14y ago
Could you point what was his expectation culture wise and the company's situation? What exactly he didn't like except the wrong questions? I wish I left some interviews early :) In the end it's important to leave on a good impression for future connections but probably those people (in your friends company) were arrogant immature kids in the first place and they don't care about good future connections anyways. In this case don't waste your time. Same for the interviewers - please let the people know early on and save their time instead of being "polite" and dragging them into meetings multiple people (usually with the same dumb questions) or even stretching interview process into multiple days!
hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
A day long interview is a good signal the company is full of bull already. What's wrong with meeting the guy, talking to him and then inviting to work one day at the company? Just give him some tasks, see how he manages it. If it doesn't work out, you got 8 man-hours for free. They wanna judge people based on how they dress, what they do on their free time, etc. Not everyone is on their 20's, or wanna be a geek all day. Some software companies act like model agencies thinking they are the coolest the place in the world. It's embarrassing.
- uptown 14y ago
  "If it doesn't work out, you had 8 man-hours for free." Setting aside the legal, ethical, and tax implications of such a proposal, why should a talented developer be expected to donate a day of unpaid labor?
  - hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
    They were going to waste his whole day with corporate ego trip already. Why not make some productive use of his time then? At least if it doesn't work out, the candidate got some experience, learned how they work on the company, etc.
- desireco42 14y ago
  "A day long interview is a good signal the company is full of bull already." Totally agree.
- mamoswined 14y ago
  I remember I had an all-day interview once that was very similar to the one described in the original question. It was at an IT Department at a big university. It was brutal and I almost left. They asked me all these ridiculous brain-teaser PHP questions I was expected to answer off the top of my head. I never got lunch. I thought I had just wasted a day, but they hired me anyway. Later I found out that kind of interview was required by the evil bureaucratic HR department and everyone hated having to do them.
desireco42 14y ago
I see a lot of comments about how you shouldn't burn bridges. I agree, I still think this was right thing to do. I would excuse myself politely and walk out as well. Maybe person should ask to talk to lead dev or whoever, explain him that he doesn't believe he would fit, thank him for opportunity and leave. In other words say, it's not you, it's me ;) and still leave and enjoy rest of the day. I generally don't believe in daylong interviews, I don't see the point in multiple rounds, everyone on the team talking to you endlessly. It is a waste of everyone's time and energy, to me personally it shows how people are uncertain in their decisions and need support. One more thing, this is opportunity for company to leave a good impression on you as well as you to them, them being disorganized (often the case) doesn't really help much.
ToesByNoon 14y ago
They don't like being rejected. How dare HE tell THEM he wasn't interested? He should be falling all over them to work there. It's just arrogance by that company.
thinker 14y ago
There seems to be a double standard in the comments here. Companies regularly cut short interviews (speaking from personal experience). They've all been polite about it and explain why, usually saying "it's not the right fit". There are some companies that ask between multiple interviews if the candidate is still interested in talking to the next person. A candidate should be allowed the same ability to "walk out". From the OPs story I got that he cut his interview not during a round but before the next one was to begin (the reason for moving him into another room). Thats the perfect time to do it. The reason the candidate gave is sufficient, he doesn't wish to waste anyone's time. The response of the company in this case is actually arrogant and unprofessional.
- Mvandenbergh 14y ago
  That is not a double standard, most people here are just making pragmatic judgements rather than moral ones. Should the power relationship between employee and employer or between VC and portfolio company be perfectly symmetrical? Maybe. Is it? Usually not, though of course that depends on current market conditions.
mdesq 14y ago
Interviews are complex, but I view part of the process as negotiation. One of the principles of being an effective negotiator is knowing what you desire to be the future relationship between the parties. Typically in the technology space, I don't like burning any bridges. Thus, I start the interview process out by saying that I value and appreciate directness and honesty in all of my dealings. In keeping with that, if at any time I feel I have enough information to know that this will not be a good fit, that I will be honest about that and we can part on good terms and not waste each other's time. I also ask in return that they be up-front and honest with me (don't bring me in for interview after interview just as a charade when they know they're giving the job to Fred anyway). I've used this tactic a handful of times and it has never failed to get a positive response. On a negotiation level, it may also give me a slight edge because I broached the topic first and raised the possibility of not seeing the process through to the end, something many interviewers forget is a possibility.
andrew_wc_brown 14y ago
I have walked out on meetings, presentations, interviews and etc. I'm even audacious enough to tell the referral up front that if its a waste of time I'm walking out so be sure that its not. Half the time, the reaction is that I've lost 'face'. The other half of the time, I'm praised for my efficiency or speaking up. You broadcast what you what want. If you want to work with no-nonsense cuts through the bull and tackles real problems directly people, than keep doing what your doing.
evanprodromou 14y ago
The problem here isn't the interviewee; it's the interviewer. This is exactly why we do phone screenings and brief initial interviews. If something like location, development technique, interior design or dress code isn't going to work out for someone, you should be able to flush some of that out in a 15-minute phone screen, and the rest in a 30-60 minute initial interview. By the time you're bringing someone in for a full day, the interviewer should be at well over 75% sure the person is a do-hire. Don't waste your team's time or effort on someone you're not going to go with (unless you're stress-testing your interview process...). As far as walking out: there's so much data here. For the company, they've either got a dysfunctional interview process or some seriously difficult fellow developers. Both those problems need to be addressed. For the interviewee, there's the information on how the team responds. If there's a problem, and they want to solve it, they need to be more pro-active about it. "Can we break now and continue later?" Also, "Can we get a post-mortem from you?" At the very least, it's a good time to break for coffee or beers around the corner.
jakejake 14y ago
This is the kind of thing that gives programmers a bad name of being anti-social buffoons. In a programmer's mind they're simply being logical or efficient. Just because it's logical doesn't make it sensible. This could be handled much better by somebody with even a shred of social skills. If he didn't think it was a good fit he could have requested to talk to the lead or hiring manager and expressed his concerns. They may mutually agree to end the interview. Perhaps if the company really wanted this guy they would start figuring out ways to possibly make it work. Or they may have ended with a handshake and parted ways on good terms. Just declaring "I'm done" like this brainiac and asking for the door shows that, though he may be a smart programmer, he has zero social skills.
richardz_work 14y ago
If one side can end interview half way, the other side can too. Don't see any problem of that.
therandomguy 14y ago
During a break go to the font desk and tell the receptionist, "I'm here today for an interview today, can I please ask to see someone from HR". Wait for the HR rep. "Hey, I spoke with the first couple interviewers and it seems like it won't be a good fit. I would hate to take the next interviewer's time". They will understand and everyone will be happy at the end.
arasmussen 14y ago
Think about it from both sides of the coin. An interviewer will never say out loud "You just failed that question, we're no longer interested in interviewing", even though failing one question could definitely break you. I think interviewers purposefully don't tell you how you've done in your interviews because it avoids any bad feelings/burnt bridges, and having to explain why they've done poorly. IMO this goes both ways, if you walk out of an interview, you better be okay with burning that bridge and explaining to a heated person on the spot why you're walking out.
- sabat 14y ago
  An interviewer may not say you've failed, but it's common practice to cut an interview short when an interviewer believes the candidate is not up to snuff. I've been at more than one company where any interviewer is allowed to "cut him loose" when a candidate is obviously unqualified. Why would it be different the other way around? The key is, of course, being polite and graceful about it. But I don't buy the argument that this is burning a bridge. There are plenty of fish in the sea, and it's unlikely that cutting an interview short is actually going to cause you problems in the future.
slewis 14y ago
This question is totally loaded. Whether they like you or you like them (which is what the first half of the description discusses) is irrelevant. The question could be evaluated more objectively if it were just left to the headline: "Is it rude to leave an interview early if you have already made your decision?". The answer is no, of course not, as long as you're don't do it rudely.
lugia 14y ago
It's very rude if you just leave without fully explaining to people why you want to walk out. Even if you guys are indeed unfit to each other, the interviewers will still feel bad wondering what they did wrong. We are all human, we all want to improve ourselves, so make sure you both have an understanding instead of not giving them any chance like that.
yason 14y ago
Everybody's talking about burning bridges but it's a bad analogy. Bridges like these won't always catch fire even if torched and then again some burst into flames even if you didn't even touch your matches. The guy in the question seems to have just walked on the bridge. Sounds like the guy just spoke directly. Some people can't take that; I don't know how much more neutrally you can give the message "I'm done with the interview" than saying pretty much just that. If you want to sugarcoat it then doing so still won't change the message: it just makes it a slightly more difficult for others to express how badly they take it. I don't know the exact words used in the situation but he seemed polite yet firm. I would expect such language from anyone who's used to not waste people's time, including his own. While he doesn't want to be rude, he also can't control what can be considered rude by others. There's no question whether such behaviour is allowed: of course the guy can just go and decide to abort the day. Nobody lost anything there: no money, no time. If he has seen life at all, he must have already learned that no matter what you do you will piss off somebody anyway so it's best to not anticipate too much what others will think of you.
- forensic 14y ago
  The take away here is that you should always lie or people will get pissed. The truth is "fuck you guys" but the best answer is, "excuse me" followed by "something came up I have to leave" followed by later saying "thanks for theopportunity, but I'm no longer available" ^ now that is smooth. No burnt bridges, still let's you eject.
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jamiemill 14y ago
I think it's a rather silly question. When you receive an invitation to dinner, is it polite to save your host money by leaving before dessert? No. By default it will be rude and it would be up to you to find a nice way to do so. Likewise I feel if an interview is scheduled for all day and you accept the invitation, then it's up to you to apologise if you want to leave early. So long as you explain that you don't want to waste their time, then no one should be narkey about it. But if you make it sound like you don't want to waste your time, then I think they have a right to be a little miffed at you.
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Create 14y ago
There are cases, when I can imagine walking out: when the candidate is already decided upon, but there is a need for legal-theatre, and you wind up being a decoy candidate in a mock candidate selection process. It happens quite often actually. The moment you understand your situation, it is fair game to treat them in equal manner.
richardjordan 14y ago
An interview shouldn't be a position of superiors grilling an inferior. If you find yourself in that kind of interview you're unlikely to be finding a great working environment. From that I'd suggest an interview should be a meeting of equals - they want the right person, you want the right company, both sides have an interest in figuring this out. Companies have no hesitation cutting short a day long interview process if by mid-morning the feedback to HR is that this is going to be a no-hire. Nor should candidates feel bad about cutting short an interview if it's clear early it'll be a no-accept to any prospective offer. Honesty helps all parties. Analogy by anecdote: I have always felt that an interview is a fair dialogue. Back in 1997 (yes I am THAT old) I was interviewed for a tech support position near London, for a massive multinational which had a completely failing tech service desk catering to tens of thousands of desktops. At the end of the interview the interviewer - who'd be my prospective boss - asked the question "does that sound like something that appeals to you" after describing the job. My answer was honest: "no not really, but I wish you all the best in the search." "Why not?" "Well, I might have interest in leading a team like that because it sounds like there's a real problem to be solved in servicing your internal customers, but it doesn't sound like it's a process I'd enjoy working in, as it is". This being London in the late 90s where there was a massive IT shortage (a bit like Silicon Valley and engineers today) I got a call back from my agent (fancy name for recruiter) who asked what I'd done. Apparently they'd called him back and offered me the job of running the Service Desk and fixing the problems that made me not interested in working on it. I ended up with a much higher paying job offer, my first management experience (eventually building the team to over 40 people from the 6 I started with) and they ended up with someone who finally solved their problems, turning first line fix around from 17% to 70% in about six months. Interviews aren't there for you to say yessir nosir. They're a back and forth between equals trying to find the best for both parties. This guy is absolutely right to call it a day early, if he feels it's not the right fit.
jesskah 14y ago
Time is valuable. Why waste everyone's time if you know it's not going to work? I think the key is to do it respectfully and explain why. It's actually helpful for the company to hear the reasons.
bromley 14y ago
It sounds like he may have made his exit in front of the other candidates. I can see the company being frustrated by that as it would naturally be likely to make the other candidates view their potential new employer less favorably. If he was certain that leaving early was the right thing to do, it would have been better to choose a moment when he could tell one of the interviewers quietly, and exit without causing a noticeable scene.

265 points by DanielShir 14y ago

onedev 14y ago

I'm guessing Facebook

rdl 14y ago
Facebook has plenty of people >30, which was one of his criticisms of the job. It's probably mainly late-20s early-30s at this point, unless you're in a non-technical group like user operations.

snowwrestler 14y ago

I think a situation like this is better handled one on one--wait for a natural break, pull the interview lead aside and explain politely that you appreciate the time and consideration but think it is just not a good fit culturally. Then the lead can explain it to everyone else and excuse them from the rest of the interview process. Announcing any kind of surprise or unwelcome news can be problematic in a group situation. When people have an emotional response, they want to express it, and in a group situation the mutual reinforcement can quickly scale up the emotion. This is why it's generally not a good idea to quit by standing up in a staff meeting and announcing it to everyone at once (unless you're trying to make a scene :-)). It's much smoother to tell your boss first, so that they can help manage the emotion of the team.

wccrawford 14y ago
From what I can tell of the story, he was never left alone with 1 person at any time. He was ushered from room to room, meeting groups of people the whole time. Personally, I think the culture sounds great. But if he didn't, there's no point in wasting his whole day there. He was polite in telling them that he didn't think he'd fit and there was no need to waste anyone's time. Had this been a 2-hour interview, instead of a whole day, I'd say stick it out and be friendly. But not a whole day.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  There's usually a lead for an interviewing process like this, and I don't think it would be that hard to say something like "hey can I have a word for a minute" as you're transitioning between groups.
  - billswift 14y ago
    Even if there is, that doesn't mean he'll know who the lead is. I have been in interview where I have gone from person to person with no one in two consecutive sections. As far as I could tell there was no one person to discuss sensitive issues with.
    - snowwrestler 14y ago
      Wow, interesting, thanks. What did you think of that process--did you end up hiring on there?
- pbreit 14y ago
  Never left alone with 1 person? I find that hard to believe. And who's doing the ushering? How hard would it be to ask to speak with the hiring lead or really anyone?

spaghetti 14y ago

It's 100% fine to end the interview early as the OP did. The interviewers/hr will end the interview early the moment they're sure it won't work out. The fact that the interviewers acted rudely is a great sign that it's an awful place to work. Would be nice if the company were named so others can avoid interviewing there.

aroberge 14y ago

Professionalism cuts both ways. Any company employee that reacts negatively in ways similar to what is described here (when the interviewee announced he was leaving) would display what I consider to be extremely unprofessional behaviour. The fact that this reaction seemed to have been shared by a number of employees is perhaps a symptom of groupthink. The best feedback ever I got when we were in the process of hiring was from one of my very laid back employee, who is often dismissed as "unimportant" and has a way to put people at ease, and who got some unique insight into what a prospective employee would be like. I see this type of interview a typical "alpha male hehaviour competition" where existing employees are trying to assert in advance their worth to a potential future colleague (to put it nicely).

ams6110 14y ago

You'd only need to do this in the scenario of an all day (or longer) interview, which in itself is something you should not enter into without some pretty good feelings developed from the preliminary/phone interview. In this case it sounds like a fairly conventional "business" type guy didn't like the idea of working in a open environment with a bunch of kids wearing jeans. But that kind of basic "what's your work environment like" information should have been known or ascertained by him before accepting an invite for an all-day on-site interview. In rare cases you may realize during the final screening that there's some fundamental incompatibilty, but if you do your due diligence in the preliminaries this really shouldn't happen. Having to walk out of a final interview means that both sides executed the initial screening poorly. Edit: typos

Retric 14y ago
I am a programmer with 10+ years exp who wares a tie every day to work. Reading though that though I see a lot of red flags that have nothing to do with the dress code. Honestly, using a custom ORM solution is a sign of incompetence. Frameworks seem easy and fun to people that don't understand them, but after a few years I think about such things a series of trade-offs not an interesting problem. A few moths ago a coworker with ~5 years exp wanted to write their own simple graphing library to get around a few problems, everyone in the office said have fun do it on your own time, but don't add it to the code base. He had fun and it was a great learning experience, but the idea of working where most people where at that point has little appeal. PS: 15 years ago there where a lot of great reasons to write your own framework, now days not so much.
VLM 14y ago
"executed the initial screening poorly." My worst interviewing experiences have all involved HR initial screening. "The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping." My best interviewing experiences have all had no HR involvement at all (ex-coworkers introduce my soon to be future boss to me at lunch, met my future boss at a industry get together, etc)

racbart 14y ago

The fact that you leave early is not rude, but the way you do it might be. He should find the lead developer (or whoever was in the lead of interviewing him) and tell him that he feels he won't fit into the culture, thank him for the interview and then leave. Leaving without a word is in fact rude (“I'm done, show me the elevator” doesn't count, especially if lead developer had to jump the elevator to ask what's wrong and why he's leaving).

deerparkwater 14y ago

Well his friend sounds like a bit of an idiot who does not output a lot of code. What's wrong with writing your own MVC framework? An mvc framework is like 2000 lines. A lot of mvc frameworks lack a lot of utility functions and reflective functionality. A lot of entity frameworks (Unity, Ash) are trash and have 0 reflective functionality. I wrote my own and it's better and I'm not opensourcing it because it's a competitive advantage. Backbone isn't rockscience or a lot of code/extensive, especially for anyone in game development. I'm sorry but if you cringe at having a custom orm that likely does things with more magic/convenience, you're an idiot because the actual program is 10x as much code as your orm and it's obvious you're not one to dive into looking at source and then writing a lot of code.

heliodor 14y ago

What I find interesting here is the contrast in expected behavior for a company and for an interviewee. Most companies won't tell you why they're rejecting you if you interview with them. Most of them won't even send you a rejection email! Yet most people commenting on SE point out that you should explain why you're cutting the interview short and leaving.

racbart 14y ago
If you want to compare, then imagine that you're in the middle of the interview and the interviewer suddenly tells you “get lost, here's the elevator”. Saying “thanks but no, thanks” after the interview without telling the reason if perfectly fine for both a company and an interviewee.
- eropple 14y ago
  If you want to compare, then imagine that you're in the middle of the interview and the interviewer suddenly tells you “get lost, here's the elevator”. This happens. The reverse isn't unreasonable either.
  - rdl 14y ago
    A lot of companies schedule interviews with a natural break in the process partway through -- basically you do phone screens, with people not progressing beyond those, and the in-person interview can be split to morning, lunch, after-lunch; senior people (or larger groups, or people with more constrained schedules, ...) meet with candidates after lunch, and if someone is a no-hire based on the morning, the candidate doesn't know about the afternoon phase and is told he can go home before or after lunch. Personally I think it's important to sell no-hire candidates on the company, since even no-hires might be hires in the future (for different roles, or if they add skills), or might be referrers of other, better candidates, or might end up working for a vendor or customer, or just might make negative social media postings about you which dissuade other candidates. So doing morning interviews, lunch (which turns into "selling the company's mission to the candidate", ideally by a senior person who isn't overly busy, not a random HR drone), etc. for the no-hires.

jlintz 14y ago

I debated doing this once. I was still in college interviewing for an entry level position where the company found my resume on some job site and invited me for an interview. I arrived at the place and was told to go into a large conference room. In the room were about 30 other people all staring at each other wondering what just happened. We were all given a coding test in Java (Java was no where on my resume and I had zero experience with it). After answering what I could with C we were broken up into teams and started a Jeopardy style game on Java and XML. I can't imagine they gained any insight into any candidate with this game since so many different people were answering questions. Once the game was finished we were then kept in our teams and given engineering problems to work out as a group and then had to present the solutions to the "judges". Every team was pretty much told their answers sucked, I can only compare the feedback to something out of the TV show "Apprentice." I left the interview completely dumbfounded as to what just happened. People had flown in from out of state to be there for the interview and were blind sided by this horrendous group interview that felt like it took place solely to stroke the ego of the guy leading the whole charade. I also remember the head guy preaching to us that Java was the future and if we didn't learn it we'd be left behind.

ams6110 14y ago
This is an extreme case but in the realm of "fresh out of school kid interviews in mega-corp IT department." Just know that when you have no work experience and are interviewing basically to be a person at a desk you will be subjected to some level of impersonal group weeding.
Spooky23 14y ago
I had something like this happen to me, except it was a bait and switch -- they lured you in with some interesting job, but it turned out they were interviewing 75 people for 8 jobs. At the end, they offered everyone (as in "ok, everyone, you're all a good fit for position EY535353-1") for some horrific job debugging JCL or something to everyone for like $18/hr (this was in 1999), and didn't hire anyone for the good gigs. By that time, the whole crowd was getting unruly, and we basically stormed out.
- 14y ago

mootothemax 14y ago

I remember being sent to an interview for a PHP developer, only for it to transpire that the company was actually after a Perl developer. The recruitment agent had sent me along anyway, having helpfully added a couple of lines to my CV. The strange thing was that after I explained what had happened (after 15 or so minutes of initial interview fun) and said something like "Thanks for taking the time to see me, and sorry it couldn't be more productive," the interviewers were suddenly really keen on me; I was standing halfway through the door, answering questions for a good few minutes until I worked out how to leave, much to the interviewers' reluctance. Had I more sense at the time (I was 18 or 19 then), I would've sat down the extra ten minutes and tried to work out if we could've done business together one way or another. So whilst there are definitely times to leave early, nowadays I wouldn't be too hasty in doing so.

wildmXranat 14y ago
Same exact story. I actually got to the third interview simply because the lead dev liked my general knowledge and the HR liked my character. Once I talked to the CTO, his first question was "So you're not a Perl programmer, why do you want this job?" I was quick to answer that I fully know now that the job wasn't for me, but if there was anything that he had in place for me, that would be great. He didn't, but we talked for about 45 minutes. It was pretty much the only time I left impressed and happy, knowing that I will never return to the place of current interview.
yxhuvud 14y ago
Why limit yourself to PHP? Be upfront with what you don't know, and if they are still interested, see if they seem nice to work for. Good developers have an easier time producing good things in a language they don't know than bad people in a language they do know.
- bmelton 14y ago
  I can't speak for the parent, but having been in that same boat, I'll answer for myself. Why limit yourself to <language_x>? It isn't about limiting myself to the language as it is being able to hit the ground running with it. I was mistakenly given an interview where they were looking for a Ruby developer, and had been referred to them. Only problem was that I didn't know Ruby as intimately as I do other languages. The position was fairly high paying, and one assumes an expectation of proficiency that I wouldn't be able to deliver on. Could I have learned the language? Sure, almost certainly -- but the question is really whether or not I can learn the language faster than they can realize how inefficient I'm being and (rightly) fire me? Even if I'm upfront about it (which I was), I'm still not willing to gamble unemployment on whether or not I'll get up to speed within their expectations when I could easily justify my salary somewhere in a language I'm more familiar with. Edit: I should also add that since that time, I have spent more time with Ruby and figured out that I don't really like it. Not going to get into a language debate or anything, it's a fine language, but it didn't fit the way I naturally think so, had I taken that job and learned quickly and all that, I'd have found myself programming in a language that I didn't really love, which could have lead to less job satisfaction as well.

stephengillie 14y ago

Other discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448409 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448409

m0nty 14y ago

> He could feel sudden hostility from everybody in the room at the time. Sounds like he made a good call here. With a professional interviewer, the worst you might get is "perhaps you could help us by explaining why you feel that way?" Who would seriously want to bully someone into staying to be interviewed for a job they didn't feel they could do? Personally I would thank him for his honesty.

Jabbles 14y ago
Is it usual to have a team of people interview someone, rather than a lot of one-on-one or two-on-one sessions? This reduces the number of developer-hours used in interviewing. I don't think that adding a 3rd or more interviewer will add anything, and it can be intimidating for candidates, adding noise to your search for a suitable one.
- dripton 14y ago
  In a couple of decades of occasional job interviews, I've done mostly 1:1 and a handful of 2:1. I've only done one 4:1, which was actually lunch in between all-day 1:1 interviews, and which didn't feature any technical questions just random social conversation. It was definitely still part of the interview, though.

droithomme 14y ago

Assuming the accounting is correct, I think the guy was OK to end the interview politely (without throwing a fit or making grand statements) and leave. It was also not surprising they were shocked and upset, but that in itself doesn't mean he should have refrained from ending the interview, or that he was unprofessional. I have thought of walking out myself, I think most have. For example one interview the manager presented a long monologue about how stupid he felt people from a certain well known outsourcing country were. It wasn't even so much that he was racist, it was that that his stories showed he was closed minded, judgmental and reactionary. I doubt these personality factors were limited to his opinions about national origin. I continued the interview and declined the subsequent offer, citing another better offer. The other offer was for less money but was a project I wanted to work on more, the diatribe wasn't really relevant and only would have been if the offers were similar or his was for more interesting work. I chose not to give him feedback about his rants because I wanted him to keep doing it so other candidates would have the same warning. Him not saying what he really thinks certainly isn't going to change his actual personality. In other cases I see the interview to the end out of curiosity and to have a good story to tell, but also because you never really know what is going to happen without seeing it all the way through. I may find out more about their business, I may make some contacts talking to people there. Or maybe it is a wash out, but having flown across the country I am going to make it to the end of the day's interviews.

don_draper 14y ago

If I spend more than 50% of the time in an interview solving puzzles I'm not working for you. I may suck as a programmer, but if that's what you do in an interview, you suck at interviewing people.

danielweber 14y ago
If I don't spend enough time in an interview doing puzzles, I'm not working for you.
- sabat 14y ago
  Puzzles in interviews are worthless unless the potential job involves doing those same kind of puzzles. If you want to see how someone's mind works, you could, say, talk through solving a real-world problem as if you were pair-programming. But don't use puzzles are brain-teasers. They don't tell you anything practical.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    If the puzzles are "why are manhole covers round?" I agree. If the puzzles are "given a list of N integers, positive and negative, find the consecutive subset with the most negative sum" then I want to see how they come up with an answer.

patio11 14y ago

My answer on this depends on whether we want to be an emotionally supportive group for people who make a badge of honor out of being socially and professionally inept, or whether we want to give advice which will actually move careers forward. A company which is not a cultural good fit for you, and the employees thereof, can still be very valuable allies. I would not act to antagonize them absent substantial provocation. Not being like you is not a substantial provocation. Most people in the world will, after all, not be like you, and you'll end up not working for approximately all companies in the industry. That's OK. You've already got the day blocked off in your calendar. Smile. Firm handshakes. Thank them for taking the time to interview you. Heck, they're giving you free live-fire practice for your next interview, make the most out of it. You should never say a word of criticism about the company to anyone but your primary point of contact and you should be darn circumspect with how you word it to him. (I like something along the general lines of "Thanks for your time and allowing me to get to know $FOO_CORP better. We're really in the same boat: I only want to work at employers where I'd do my best work, and you only want to hire people who'd do great things at $FOO_CORP. Having had the opportunity to hear you guys out a bit more, I don't think we're a great mutual fit. I will keep my ears open for you in case any of my friends would be a good fit for your position.")

doktrin 14y ago
This is spot on. I can't even fathom why somebody would needlessly burn bridges like this. The fact that we live in boom times and enjoy near-unprecedented demand for our skills is no excuse for this type of myopic behavior. What really surprised me was that the OP's candidate was a referral. It's one thing to risk burning your own bridges, but it's completely inconsiderate to possibly tarnish the reputation of someone who spoke up on your behalf. Speaking for myself, unless this was a close personal friend, I would be very reluctant to ever subsequently recommend this individual again. Without delving into anecdotes, I've witnessed a scenario quite similar to this one. A candidate who was referred (as a "rockstar") struggled with the technical interview, and subsequently walked out. It goes without saying how he, and to a lesser extent the individual who referred him, were viewed in the aftermath. TLDR; Please don't do this. It's completely unnecessary and possibly inconsiderate.

Kliment 14y ago

This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448409

nicholassmith 14y ago

I think I'd have done the same, he sounds like he did it pretty politely rather than just getting up and doing a runner. An all day interview where you've decided half way in it just won't work is not just a waste of your time, but a waste of a companies. However, the way the room reacted doesn't surprise me. Companies like to create loyalty which can occasionally turn a bit wolf-pack. Still, a shake of the hand and a 'thanks for coming, sorry it didn't work' is always classy and always a good idea.

rwhitman 14y ago

I once declined an offer over email and promptly got a conference call back from them where the CEO was incredibly hostile, the purpose of the call seemed like the CEO just wanted to publicly berate me and tell me that I was making a bad move. Afterwards I realized that its entirely a subconscious alpha dominance thing. There's this unsaid very primal, tribal power trip that goes along with the interviewee vs employer relationship. As the interviewer you want to be holding the power card - you sit in a position of power and have other people dance around and do what you say in order for you to be able to judge them and make them prove their worth to you in order to join your tribe. Its really one of the few times we get to break down our democratic social structure and revert back to this primitive social order in adulthood, so its a pretty important ritual for alpha-types. When someone comes in and disrupts that natural boundary it becomes offensive as they've unconsciously told you "I don't respect you as a leader" in front of your staff and team. The interviewer then needs to re-affirm their ego and dominance over the tribal unit in a public display. If you look at all these articles floating around about judging candidates and "top grading" and you look at it from this tribal alpha-dominance perspective it really breaks down some of what we assume is necessary in hiring. I think the whole system is based around some silly ancient ritual that we haven't been able to shake from our culture.

001sky 14y ago
This is a very interesing note. It is undubitably a real phenomenon. A counterfactual case, however, might exist. Consider a similar non-hierarchical situation. For example, the relationship between a host and guest (at a private party). Where you were the guest of honor. As the guest of honour, you are not at the dis-advantage of power. In fact, just the opposite. But, the same question can be asked..."If you were the guest of honor at a party and the party sucks, is it OK to leave early?" If so, how would you handle it?
- deleted 14y ago
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- rwhitman 14y ago
  That is very interesting, I definitely think you're right about it in the context of the article's scenario. By abruptly leaving the party early the guest of honor is essentially telling the host "I don't respect you". It may be more a simple social etiquette thing than a hierarchy thing, but the fact that the host has leadership representing their group here probably infuses it with some level of asserting dominance in response to public disrespect. Basically walking out on an interview is a great way to disrespect the interviewer, and you probably shouldn't do it if you don't want a fight ;)

zobzu 14y ago

I left an interview early too, with Google in fact. I told them I obviously did not fit in their culture at least for that very position (SRE) , as we had divergent views, and that I wanted to abort the interview process. No need for them or I to lose time if I was going to refuse anyway. The guy (technical person) was shocked, as if this was impossible. He also insisted more than 5 times to continue with the process, which, I refused. Later on, they contacted me, telling me that they marked me as "failed interview process" (ie: do not hire in the future). That told only one thing, that indeed, I wasn't a fit for that culture - probably at any position then.

Evbn 14y ago
It seems weird that HR would go out of their way to tell you you are permanently blackballed, when they have enough trouble responding to people who they are open to hiring in the future, and since it is such an obvious embarrassment and legal risk to have a policy of telling candidates they are blackballed.
- goatforce5 14y ago
  It might have been easier for the interviewer to fill out his evaluation form with "Did not answer the provided questions" (or similar) rather than "Not interested in working for us". HR might not have got the full story. Still weird that they'd make a point of saying he wasn't welcome to come back and try again.
incision 14y ago
I'd really like to hear more of this story as the incredibly vague description of an SRE I was recently contacted about sounds like something I could potentially be very interested in.
- ovi256 14y ago
  I'd like to know more too. Steve Yegge gave a data point about SREs in his recent liberal/conservative software rant: he said SREs are extremely conservative, and that he finds it normal given their duties. So it follows it's not a good position for a liberal dev.

dedward 14y ago

It's always okay to politey and professionaly not waste people's time. Don't come across as judgemental, angry, or anything similar or you risk burning bridges you may not even realize you have. From the brief description, it sounds like the guy was showing a bit too much emotion in leaving. Also - just because an interview process seems harsh doesn't mean the company is harsh - the interview is one thing, the job is often quite another - results tend to speak for themselves regardless of culture (and as long as you aren't a snob or jerk to your co-workers) If a seasoned, experienced professional doesn't get that, maybe they aren't a good fit...

dsolomon 14y ago

Walking out isn't rude. It's a reality check for the HR and management that something isn't kosher. I've walked out of interviews after finding the usual bait-n-switch techniques regarding position description, expectations, travel requirements, compensation, work conditions, .. just to name a few. Do I expect HR/management to get a clue - not really, it's not my job to further their problem solving ability.

alecco 14y ago

Tech companies should learn to respect people. It's not OK to take that kind of interviewing behavior as a rite of passage.

damoncali 14y ago

It's not the cultural norm, so if you ditch an interview, you had best go out of your way to be extremely polite about it. You might be better off just slogging it out to avoid burning bridges.

brown9-2 14y ago

Gracefully leaving earlier saves time for the interviewee and the interviewers. What exactly is the upside of staying longer in this case?

deleted 14y ago

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fredoliveira 14y ago
I think you should read the guidelines. This is certainly not the kind of venue where throw-away comments such as yours are welcome.

lawdawg 14y ago

People seem to think its fine to walk out of an interview early ... but how do they feel if the interviewer ends the interview early, or your "full day" of interviews is cut to just 1 or 2 hours because they just didn't think it was a good fit? I'm guessing some of you would be pissed because you took the whole day off for the interview only to be kicked out early. On the other hand, if I was on an interview loop, and the person left before it was my turn, I'd be grateful ... now I have extra time to do meaningful work.

mellery451 14y ago
I've had this very thing happen to me. I was surprised when it happened as it was a first for me. That said, I think it's becoming more commonplace, particular in small to medium size companies who are very sensitive to wasting their own developers' time. If it's becoming accepted practice for companies to dismiss interviewees early, then I see no reason that interviewees should not be able to do the same (politely and professionally, of course)
colmvp 14y ago
I wouldn't be pissed at all. I can take the rest of the day to gather my thoughts and not feel like they wasted any of my time with other interviews that weren't going to lead anywhere. I'd actually appreciate the fact that they were upfront instead of stringing me along.
king_jester 14y ago
> People seem to think its fine to walk out of an interview early ... but how do they feel if the interviewer ends the interview early, or your "full day" of interviews is cut to just 1 or 2 hours because they just didn't think it was a good fit? Uh this happens a lot. In fact, when I was looking for my first entry level job in a new city this was semi-common. Many interviewers or hiring managers will get hostile at you for the smallest things, like failing to get the catch in a puzzle question or because they dislike something about your resume. As soon as that one person would leave the room, it was usually followed by someone from HR coming back and politely telling me the interview was over. As a worker you owe a potential employer nothing and have the right to leave at any time you wish, regardless of how intimidating some people will be when you say you want out.

incision 14y ago

A a good friend of mine interviewed with one of the current powerhouses of technology when they weren't quite so big. After successfully navigating a few rounds of technical interviewing they gave him one of those famous brain teaser type questions. He responded by asking the interviewer to explain how the question would be relevant to his work with the company. The interviewer immediately explained that he clearly "wasn't a good fit" and ended the interview. I tend to feel they were both "right".

motoford 14y ago

I think I would have raised all of my concerns during the interview, instead of on my way out. Nothing wrong with not fitting in, but maybe the interview drill was just that, a drill. The fact that someone followed him to ask questions tells me company seemed interested in him despite his opinion of how the interview was going.

VLM 14y ago

I walked out of an interview, furious, probably two decades ago at "major cellphone company". HR advertised for an RF engineer position, which I had the education and experience for. I can totally sympathize with being rude because I'm normally very calm and I was Barely, just barely able to keep under control. So I burned 10% of my annual vacation days to come here, and drove half way across the state for hours to be bait and switched into a 1st level high school dropout call center support job at about a fifth my current pay? I'm thinking are you F-ing kidding me? I just barely kept it civil and made sure they understood perfectly why I was walking out of the interview. I saw in the bathroom mirror on the way out that I was blazing red in the face so I must have been quite the sight. The HR woman who screwed up the job req and ad and phone interview was more embarrassed than I was, and I actually got along excellently with the technician dept team lead, because we were basically at the same level at different companies (I wasn't mad at the individuals, solely at the situation). What HR meant by RF engineer was by RF they wanted a call center guy to handle dropped call issues and by engineer they wanted to never pay overtime. Um, sorry HR lady, thats not really what I went to school for, nor is it anything like what I was doing at that time for about five times the annual salary, admittedly with a very similar job title.

rada 14y ago
Technical jobs present a unique opportunity for HR to screw up. Once, HR sent us a candidate for a data warehousing job because the guy used to work at a warehouse.

scotty79 14y ago

Just look at your phone. Tell them you have personal emergency and you'll have to reschedule the rest of interview. Say goodbye, leave, never call. If they call tell them you accepted another position. That's what interviewers do and that's what they consider polite.

ForrestN 14y ago

This might be overly simple, but it seems like the root of the problem on both sides is just the scheduling of a day-long interview at a place that's so obviously a bad fit for the candidate. It would be better for all involved to have a more casual meet-and-greet, tour of the office, initial conversation beforehand.

gavinlynch 14y ago

> "He was criticized as being wrong for not following very dogmatic principles to the letter of the law." What does this even mean?? He didn't respond correctly with their secret handshake? He didn't drink his cup of coffee with exactly 2 creams? Is this a social thing, or a programmer thing? Did he use an unconventional coding style? This line really sticks in my craw, confuses and somehow bothers me... I would love an extrapolation.

VikingCoder 14y ago

There are companies who do the same: schedule a whole-day interview, and then escort you from the building part-way through, with no explanation. Is it rude? Yes.

psykotic 14y ago

Companies with all-day interview affairs have no qualms about cutting the process short at lunch time. Why should an interviewee not be able to do the same? It must be handled delicately and gracefully, but that hopefully goes without saying.

johngalt 14y ago

I've been on the other side of this. An interviewee had a killer competing offer that I couldn't match. He was so apologetic, as if he was worried he'd insulted me. I had to assure him that I took no offense and wished him well. Don't know why anyone would take something like this personally.

beersigns 14y ago
I've been that interviewee before and I was much the same. For me I realized it has to do with viewing the time spent in the interview as some kind of unspoken contract. You both felt good about the interview but you aren't accepting. Feels like you're letting them down.

lwhi 14y ago

1) When a natural break occurs, ask to speak to one of the members of the interview team privately. 2) Explain your concerns and be prepared to listen. 3) If you still want to leave, thank them, and leave.

mturmon 14y ago
Good answer. One thing overlooked in this discussion is that, if things went this far bad (scene in conference room and embarrassing elevator conversation) then something went wrong. This implies there's room for improvement in the way the interviewee handled the situation.

petdance 14y ago

I suggest that one's time isn't so valuable that you can't spend half an hour of unnecessary discussion. (In the case of the OP, I see that we're talking about more time than that.) You never know who you will meet again in your future, or who your interviewer knows that you will meet in your future. It's a small world. You want to be well-remembered. Walking out goes against that goal. Anything short of direct hostility, I suggest sucking it up and going through it to the end.

mkhalil 14y ago

For some reason, I imagine Walter White leaving this so called interview. No clue why. lol

geebee 14y ago

I'm sympathetic to the guy who walked out of the inteview, though I'm not sure it was a good idea. A lot of this probably has to do with your experience. I once had an interview for a position that was right up my alley. I have an MS in Industrial Engineering and I've worked at large manufacturing companies as a developer, as well as smaller startups that create optimization software for manufacturing, shipping, and production systems. I went to an interview for a company almost precisely in this business area. They asked me to code a singleton, traverse a binary tree, then do it without recursion, add a leaf to a binary tree, prove that the dual of the primal is the primal of the dual, prove various long term outcomes from markov chains, swap two integers without creating a third integer, write various outer joins, convert a sql table to a binary set of indicators (is this a common thing?), and print all possible permutation of string using recursion. At no point did anyone ask about, or even show the vaguest interest, in my background or experience. It wasn't super well coordinated, they pretty much just kept moving me from one developer to the other - so of course I was much more exhausted and drained than perhaps my interviewer of the hour realized. My interviewers were younger, and generally looked fresh out of their CS degrees, so I'd guess that they were quite a bit sharper where it came to markov chains, hessian matrices, and b-trees. I didn't look like I was clueless, but I came off as rusty, and I did stumble with things that I would have done much more easily with an hour hitting my old text books. It was eye-opening, and frustrating. I was polite and stuck with it, and I kept trying, because I actually wanted the job, and I thought that they could use someone like me, because while they were very talented, my few questions to them suggested that there were areas where I could bring some experience that they didn't have in house. I didn't get an offer, but I am glad I stuck through it. The one thing I wish I'd done is politely explain to the hiring manager what I just wrote here - that I think their hiring process might be filtering out an area of talent that could be valuable to the company. Actually, that's probably the advice I'd give the dude who terminated the interview. Rather than ending it abruptly, ask the hiring manager if he'd be willing to confer for 15 minutes or so. Explain why you think it's going badly, and what your concerns are. If you disagree, that's fine - then you can end it on better terms without appearing to leave in a huff. And while this is off topic, I would like to point out one more thing - this is the sort of experience that often comes to my mind when I hear about companies complaining about a lack of available talent, and it's one of the reasons I'm skeptical (though this interview was years ago, when hiring wasn't on fire the way it is now).

azat_co 14y ago

Could you point what was his expectation culture wise and the company's situation? What exactly he didn't like except the wrong questions? I wish I left some interviews early :) In the end it's important to leave on a good impression for future connections but probably those people (in your friends company) were arrogant immature kids in the first place and they don't care about good future connections anyways. In this case don't waste your time. Same for the interviewers - please let the people know early on and save their time instead of being "polite" and dragging them into meetings multiple people (usually with the same dumb questions) or even stretching interview process into multiple days!

hcarvalhoalves 14y ago

A day long interview is a good signal the company is full of bull already. What's wrong with meeting the guy, talking to him and then inviting to work one day at the company? Just give him some tasks, see how he manages it. If it doesn't work out, you got 8 man-hours for free. They wanna judge people based on how they dress, what they do on their free time, etc. Not everyone is on their 20's, or wanna be a geek all day. Some software companies act like model agencies thinking they are the coolest the place in the world. It's embarrassing.

uptown 14y ago
"If it doesn't work out, you had 8 man-hours for free." Setting aside the legal, ethical, and tax implications of such a proposal, why should a talented developer be expected to donate a day of unpaid labor?
- hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
  They were going to waste his whole day with corporate ego trip already. Why not make some productive use of his time then? At least if it doesn't work out, the candidate got some experience, learned how they work on the company, etc.
desireco42 14y ago
"A day long interview is a good signal the company is full of bull already." Totally agree.
mamoswined 14y ago
I remember I had an all-day interview once that was very similar to the one described in the original question. It was at an IT Department at a big university. It was brutal and I almost left. They asked me all these ridiculous brain-teaser PHP questions I was expected to answer off the top of my head. I never got lunch. I thought I had just wasted a day, but they hired me anyway. Later I found out that kind of interview was required by the evil bureaucratic HR department and everyone hated having to do them.

desireco42 14y ago

I see a lot of comments about how you shouldn't burn bridges. I agree, I still think this was right thing to do. I would excuse myself politely and walk out as well. Maybe person should ask to talk to lead dev or whoever, explain him that he doesn't believe he would fit, thank him for opportunity and leave. In other words say, it's not you, it's me ;) and still leave and enjoy rest of the day. I generally don't believe in daylong interviews, I don't see the point in multiple rounds, everyone on the team talking to you endlessly. It is a waste of everyone's time and energy, to me personally it shows how people are uncertain in their decisions and need support. One more thing, this is opportunity for company to leave a good impression on you as well as you to them, them being disorganized (often the case) doesn't really help much.

ToesByNoon 14y ago

They don't like being rejected. How dare HE tell THEM he wasn't interested? He should be falling all over them to work there. It's just arrogance by that company.

thinker 14y ago

There seems to be a double standard in the comments here. Companies regularly cut short interviews (speaking from personal experience). They've all been polite about it and explain why, usually saying "it's not the right fit". There are some companies that ask between multiple interviews if the candidate is still interested in talking to the next person. A candidate should be allowed the same ability to "walk out". From the OPs story I got that he cut his interview not during a round but before the next one was to begin (the reason for moving him into another room). Thats the perfect time to do it. The reason the candidate gave is sufficient, he doesn't wish to waste anyone's time. The response of the company in this case is actually arrogant and unprofessional.

Mvandenbergh 14y ago
That is not a double standard, most people here are just making pragmatic judgements rather than moral ones. Should the power relationship between employee and employer or between VC and portfolio company be perfectly symmetrical? Maybe. Is it? Usually not, though of course that depends on current market conditions.

mdesq 14y ago

Interviews are complex, but I view part of the process as negotiation. One of the principles of being an effective negotiator is knowing what you desire to be the future relationship between the parties. Typically in the technology space, I don't like burning any bridges. Thus, I start the interview process out by saying that I value and appreciate directness and honesty in all of my dealings. In keeping with that, if at any time I feel I have enough information to know that this will not be a good fit, that I will be honest about that and we can part on good terms and not waste each other's time. I also ask in return that they be up-front and honest with me (don't bring me in for interview after interview just as a charade when they know they're giving the job to Fred anyway). I've used this tactic a handful of times and it has never failed to get a positive response. On a negotiation level, it may also give me a slight edge because I broached the topic first and raised the possibility of not seeing the process through to the end, something many interviewers forget is a possibility.

andrew_wc_brown 14y ago

I have walked out on meetings, presentations, interviews and etc. I'm even audacious enough to tell the referral up front that if its a waste of time I'm walking out so be sure that its not. Half the time, the reaction is that I've lost 'face'. The other half of the time, I'm praised for my efficiency or speaking up. You broadcast what you what want. If you want to work with no-nonsense cuts through the bull and tackles real problems directly people, than keep doing what your doing.

evanprodromou 14y ago

The problem here isn't the interviewee; it's the interviewer. This is exactly why we do phone screenings and brief initial interviews. If something like location, development technique, interior design or dress code isn't going to work out for someone, you should be able to flush some of that out in a 15-minute phone screen, and the rest in a 30-60 minute initial interview. By the time you're bringing someone in for a full day, the interviewer should be at well over 75% sure the person is a do-hire. Don't waste your team's time or effort on someone you're not going to go with (unless you're stress-testing your interview process...). As far as walking out: there's so much data here. For the company, they've either got a dysfunctional interview process or some seriously difficult fellow developers. Both those problems need to be addressed. For the interviewee, there's the information on how the team responds. If there's a problem, and they want to solve it, they need to be more pro-active about it. "Can we break now and continue later?" Also, "Can we get a post-mortem from you?" At the very least, it's a good time to break for coffee or beers around the corner.

jakejake 14y ago

This is the kind of thing that gives programmers a bad name of being anti-social buffoons. In a programmer's mind they're simply being logical or efficient. Just because it's logical doesn't make it sensible. This could be handled much better by somebody with even a shred of social skills. If he didn't think it was a good fit he could have requested to talk to the lead or hiring manager and expressed his concerns. They may mutually agree to end the interview. Perhaps if the company really wanted this guy they would start figuring out ways to possibly make it work. Or they may have ended with a handshake and parted ways on good terms. Just declaring "I'm done" like this brainiac and asking for the door shows that, though he may be a smart programmer, he has zero social skills.

richardz_work 14y ago

If one side can end interview half way, the other side can too. Don't see any problem of that.

therandomguy 14y ago

During a break go to the font desk and tell the receptionist, "I'm here today for an interview today, can I please ask to see someone from HR". Wait for the HR rep. "Hey, I spoke with the first couple interviewers and it seems like it won't be a good fit. I would hate to take the next interviewer's time". They will understand and everyone will be happy at the end.

arasmussen 14y ago

Think about it from both sides of the coin. An interviewer will never say out loud "You just failed that question, we're no longer interested in interviewing", even though failing one question could definitely break you. I think interviewers purposefully don't tell you how you've done in your interviews because it avoids any bad feelings/burnt bridges, and having to explain why they've done poorly. IMO this goes both ways, if you walk out of an interview, you better be okay with burning that bridge and explaining to a heated person on the spot why you're walking out.

sabat 14y ago
An interviewer may not say you've failed, but it's common practice to cut an interview short when an interviewer believes the candidate is not up to snuff. I've been at more than one company where any interviewer is allowed to "cut him loose" when a candidate is obviously unqualified. Why would it be different the other way around? The key is, of course, being polite and graceful about it. But I don't buy the argument that this is burning a bridge. There are plenty of fish in the sea, and it's unlikely that cutting an interview short is actually going to cause you problems in the future.

slewis 14y ago

This question is totally loaded. Whether they like you or you like them (which is what the first half of the description discusses) is irrelevant. The question could be evaluated more objectively if it were just left to the headline: "Is it rude to leave an interview early if you have already made your decision?". The answer is no, of course not, as long as you're don't do it rudely.

lugia 14y ago

It's very rude if you just leave without fully explaining to people why you want to walk out. Even if you guys are indeed unfit to each other, the interviewers will still feel bad wondering what they did wrong. We are all human, we all want to improve ourselves, so make sure you both have an understanding instead of not giving them any chance like that.

yason 14y ago

Everybody's talking about burning bridges but it's a bad analogy. Bridges like these won't always catch fire even if torched and then again some burst into flames even if you didn't even touch your matches. The guy in the question seems to have just walked on the bridge. Sounds like the guy just spoke directly. Some people can't take that; I don't know how much more neutrally you can give the message "I'm done with the interview" than saying pretty much just that. If you want to sugarcoat it then doing so still won't change the message: it just makes it a slightly more difficult for others to express how badly they take it. I don't know the exact words used in the situation but he seemed polite yet firm. I would expect such language from anyone who's used to not waste people's time, including his own. While he doesn't want to be rude, he also can't control what can be considered rude by others. There's no question whether such behaviour is allowed: of course the guy can just go and decide to abort the day. Nobody lost anything there: no money, no time. If he has seen life at all, he must have already learned that no matter what you do you will piss off somebody anyway so it's best to not anticipate too much what others will think of you.

forensic 14y ago
The take away here is that you should always lie or people will get pissed. The truth is "fuck you guys" but the best answer is, "excuse me" followed by "something came up I have to leave" followed by later saying "thanks for theopportunity, but I'm no longer available" ^ now that is smooth. No burnt bridges, still let's you eject.

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jamiemill 14y ago

I think it's a rather silly question. When you receive an invitation to dinner, is it polite to save your host money by leaving before dessert? No. By default it will be rude and it would be up to you to find a nice way to do so. Likewise I feel if an interview is scheduled for all day and you accept the invitation, then it's up to you to apologise if you want to leave early. So long as you explain that you don't want to waste their time, then no one should be narkey about it. But if you make it sound like you don't want to waste your time, then I think they have a right to be a little miffed at you.

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Create 14y ago

There are cases, when I can imagine walking out: when the candidate is already decided upon, but there is a need for legal-theatre, and you wind up being a decoy candidate in a mock candidate selection process. It happens quite often actually. The moment you understand your situation, it is fair game to treat them in equal manner.

richardjordan 14y ago

An interview shouldn't be a position of superiors grilling an inferior. If you find yourself in that kind of interview you're unlikely to be finding a great working environment. From that I'd suggest an interview should be a meeting of equals - they want the right person, you want the right company, both sides have an interest in figuring this out. Companies have no hesitation cutting short a day long interview process if by mid-morning the feedback to HR is that this is going to be a no-hire. Nor should candidates feel bad about cutting short an interview if it's clear early it'll be a no-accept to any prospective offer. Honesty helps all parties. Analogy by anecdote: I have always felt that an interview is a fair dialogue. Back in 1997 (yes I am THAT old) I was interviewed for a tech support position near London, for a massive multinational which had a completely failing tech service desk catering to tens of thousands of desktops. At the end of the interview the interviewer - who'd be my prospective boss - asked the question "does that sound like something that appeals to you" after describing the job. My answer was honest: "no not really, but I wish you all the best in the search." "Why not?" "Well, I might have interest in leading a team like that because it sounds like there's a real problem to be solved in servicing your internal customers, but it doesn't sound like it's a process I'd enjoy working in, as it is". This being London in the late 90s where there was a massive IT shortage (a bit like Silicon Valley and engineers today) I got a call back from my agent (fancy name for recruiter) who asked what I'd done. Apparently they'd called him back and offered me the job of running the Service Desk and fixing the problems that made me not interested in working on it. I ended up with a much higher paying job offer, my first management experience (eventually building the team to over 40 people from the 6 I started with) and they ended up with someone who finally solved their problems, turning first line fix around from 17% to 70% in about six months. Interviews aren't there for you to say yessir nosir. They're a back and forth between equals trying to find the best for both parties. This guy is absolutely right to call it a day early, if he feels it's not the right fit.

jesskah 14y ago

Time is valuable. Why waste everyone's time if you know it's not going to work? I think the key is to do it respectfully and explain why. It's actually helpful for the company to hear the reasons.

bromley 14y ago

It sounds like he may have made his exit in front of the other candidates. I can see the company being frustrated by that as it would naturally be likely to make the other candidates view their potential new employer less favorably. If he was certain that leaving early was the right thing to do, it would have been better to choose a moment when he could tell one of the interviewers quietly, and exit without causing a noticeable scene.