17 ms·

The worst job interview I ever had

• ctdinjeu5 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• ChrisMarshallNY 4mo ago
  I have a lot of interaction with mental health professionals, due to an organization in which I participate. Have, for the last 45 years. Many, many of them are "Doctor, heal thyself" type folks. Definitely non-boring people. I am quite sure of this, for reasons that I won't go into, here. Sorry it didn't work out, but you dodged a bullet. Take it from me.
• hyperhello 4mo ago
  Are you quite sure it was a real business and not just some weirdo pretending to be a business for fun?
  • robertclaus 4mo ago
    I think the post said early stage startups... So maybe both?
• goodroot 4mo ago
  Yikes. Good thing you didn't wind up there. The furthest I've gone in these jazz style culture interviews is asking people what they do outside of work for fun. This was for fully remote async positions. And it was important to know you had other stuff going on because the mental/personal health risk in failing at remote work is massive and life altering. If, through wherever that discussion went, I wasn't 100% sure that you could stand on your own feet and wouldn't sink into the abyss, it was impossible to move forward. It was a tough line to walk sometimes because you don't want to pry personally. But that doesn't appear to be a universal opinion, it turns out.
  • nicbou 4mo ago
    That question would not be received well in many places. What candidates do in their private time is none of your business.
    • nomel 4mo ago
      Not sure why this is downvoted. Even if I wanted to, these questions aren't allowed in the company I work for, along with feedback related to "team fit". This is dictated by execs, dictated by legal, because it has nothing to do with proving competence, and opens up for employment discrimination lawsuits since you're persuading them (you have to understand the power dynamic) to reveal potentially protected info. For example, if a man say "Oh, I go hiking with my boyfriend!", he could also say "They didn't hire me because I told them I was gay!". Or, even "I spend time with my kids." since familial status is a legally protected class where I am. As a person who does interviews, I have exactly zero interest in what people do for fun. I just want competent people that are nice to work with (in a productivity sense), and I only have 45 minutes to prove that, knowing that nearly everyone fucking lies. I see it serving no purpose other than helping enforce some monoculture within the group, because, genuinely, why else would you ask about free time activities during an interview? Related, the only time I've asked this was early on when I didn't know how to interview. The only time I've been asked this, and answered, was with people who had just started interviewing (small startups and new hiring managers).
      • ryandrake 4mo ago
        Great comment. It's really shocking how close to the legal line Silicon Valley tech companies get, and the extent to which many of them actually cross way over the line. A huge number of interviewers I've encountered are in extreme need of training so they don't so casually put their companies at legal risk. If I was Lawful Evil, I could probably make a career out of just suing companies for discriminatory hiring practices, due to the various landmines poorly trained interviewers routinely step into. BigTech seems to be the best at it. They tend to have rigorous training, and often have a "safe question bank" that interviewers pull questions from, which are all vetted by lawyers and are known not to put the company at legal risk.
• icedchai 4mo ago
  I would've ended the interview. "I don't want to waste any more of your time. It's clear to me I won't be a good fit here. Thank you for the consideration." <end call>
• badc0ffee 4mo ago
  > Even if you hire a cracked engineer, it’s probably not gonna be a good experience all-around if you can’t make a human connection. "Cracked engineer" is throwing me, but maybe I've just never seen the word cracked used this way before. Should it be "crack", like "crack team"?
  • Avicebron 4mo ago
    It's a fairly common english phrase that originated out of the gaming culture of the US in the mid 2000-2010s. "He's so good (plays aggressively) he must be on crack" sort of became "he's cracked", etc. Now that the people who were killing CoD lobbies are writing code full time or running companies, its seeped out. Actually I think "it's cooked" came from this as well.
    • stuxnet79 4mo ago
      I have heard this term and used it myself but wasn't aware of the etymology. Funny enough, I've only ever heard 'crack team' used in a professional context. If 'cooked' diffuses to corporate at the same rate then I'm very much looking forward to 'cooking the ops' during standup in 2035 :P
      • kbelder 4mo ago
        "Crack team" long predates video games and even crack cocaine. I think it is related to the phrase "get cracking", i.e., "get working", but I wasn't able to find a clear etymological line. One possibility is it refers to gunfire, but I wonder if it refers to harvesting, cracking corn, etc.
        • defrost 4mo ago
          What if it's actually Craic team though ? IMHE everybody wants to be on the craic team - they play hard, work hard and go hard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craic
        • mrguyorama 4mo ago
• mbf1 4mo ago
  Sounds like a behavioral interview that silicon valley sometimes uses - the questions are designed to ascertain how you deal with difficulty, stress, and certain situations which they absolutely can't legally ask about directly - they are looking for you to discuss challenging times where you succeeded by working harder, doing more than peers, etc. It's not about shaming you, and understanding what they are looking for and why is key - they want people who stick with them through difficult times that they anticipate having. For interview questions like these, they can only tease about what they are really after - finding employees who "go the extra mile" or "stay late" or "don't give up in the face of adversity". They are looking for you to find evidence of these patterns to corroborate your story. If they drove you to the answer they were after, it wouldn't be a passing score in their interview summary write-up.
  • bcyn 4mo ago
    Agreed. Reading the rest of these comments are makes me feel crazy / like I’m missing something. It doesn’t sound like the interviewer was making the candidate divulge traumatic information - but rather assessing how they deal with adversity.
• deleted 4mo ago
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  • wetpaws 4mo ago
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• talkingtab 4mo ago
  There is, and should be, a red flag for these situations. No make that RED flag. If you go into an interview that leaves you feeling the least bit helpless or at someone's mercy then run screaming. Not politely, not quietly. Just say to calmly to the person that you find the situation abusive. It is. As you go out, if you see anyone or have a chance to talk to anyone, just tell them you found that your interviewer to be personally abusive. That you will not be willing to take the position if it is offered, that you will share you perception with others around you and expect an apology. Then fall down and appreciate that you did not end up in that situation. And tell everyone you know not to apply or work there.
  • robocat 4mo ago
    Are you being glib or unrealistic? You're going to find many red flags for any job, perhaps severe flags. But you need a job. Or you have to roll the dice because you have deep knowledge of the red flags for your current job. Who finds 10/10 perfect jobs via an application process? Note: I probably shouldn't be commenting since I don't need to apply for jobs and conditions here are likely different from yours.
    • jvanderbot 4mo ago
      I disagree that you'll find "many red flags for any job" I've interviewed at dozens of companies, received and accepted or rejected at least 20 job offers in my life, and rarely encountered true red flags. This is very different than saying it's a perfect 10/10, all life is about tradeoffs. What GP is saying is that "there are things that are not worth any tradeoff, and you'll know them by ... ", which is good advice, esp for young people, who might be willing to make uncomfortable personal sacrifices to obtain a job. We may be there someday, but we're not there yet.
      • genewitch 4mo ago
        i agree with you, i've interviewed at a lot of companies, too, and seen only 1 red flag in retrospect. the flag was "we need to hire for budgetary reasons"
• padolsey 4mo ago
  >covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions. And this was for a mental health startup!? Please name-and-shame them. Awful.
• booleandilemma 4mo ago
  I was asked what my hobbies are during an interview once and it made me believe they were just looking for a personality hire or a pretty face.
  • bobanrocky 4mo ago
    Umm .. pretty standard & generally lame line of questioning at many companies/countries. Sounds like you were offended or surprised by it?
  • freehorse 4mo ago
    The mirror side of this is when almost all the intern applications/cover letters we used to receive contained a paragraph about the hobbies of the applicant (all domain-irrelevant). I find that weird but I guess it is sort of common nowadays?
    • toast0 4mo ago
      I was involved with picking a candidate for an internship in 1999, we had three candidates and they all mentioned basketball on their resumes. I think it's just something to help the resume fill one page. And help provide a direction for a 'validate the resume' interview. Sometimes, if the hobby shows leadership etc, it might be relevant even if the domain isn't.
    • ryukoposting 4mo ago
      I have a one-liner in my resumé that lists "interests." basketball, baseball, photography, music, the outdoors, privacy and digital human rights. With the heading, it takes up half an inch of paper on the second page, which I only provide in a PDF. If anything in there is a disqualifier, I don't want to work for you anyway. If you need any more info than that, ditto.
  • nephihaha 4mo ago
    This is quite common. Hobbies may suggest to them an attention to detail, working well in a team (sport) or leadership abilities.
• deleted 4mo ago
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• cbdevidal 4mo ago
  Beats my worst interview. For some reason I mentioned that I like reading. The guy then demanded to list the last ten books I read. I just named ten random books that I had read at some point in my life, even in childhood. Pretty bizarre. Glad I didn’t get that job.
  • TurdF3rguson 4mo ago
    I mean, what's the cutoff for something like that. The last book you read seems innocent enough. The last 3? No red flag yet... 10 though is kind of a lot.
    • cbdevidal 4mo ago
      I couldn’t even tell you the last ten I’d read recently, and I thoroughly enjoy reading.
      • stavros 4mo ago
        I'm not sure I could name ten books, period.
    • sdenton4 4mo ago
      "Actually, I just pulled up your goodreads profile, and it looks like your eighth-most recent book was 50 shades of grey. In addition to having a faulty memory, you're reading work-inappropriate material. Finally, you read that in 2021, so clearly you don't care about reading /that/ much. Dismissed!"
      • dylan604 4mo ago
        I just said I enjoy it, not that I do it often.
    • thinkharderdev 4mo ago
      Honestly asking for any specific number is a deeply weird and off-putting question to ask.
• analogpixel 4mo ago
  Would be funny if the interviewer wrote the exact same blog post; "I had the worst candidate interview today, I asked him a simple ice-breaker question before getting into more technical stuff, and he just went off about his family and relationships for an hour; weirdest interview I ever gave."
  • tibbar 4mo ago
    The description of the interview seems like it was explicitly non-technical, though.
  • genewitch 4mo ago
    you think that's what it was? The people with 100% of the power in this situation did everything 100% correct and you're not victim-blaming at all?
    • atoav 4mo ago
      It was a textbook example of the double contingency of communication¹. In communications it doesn't only matter what each side is objectively saying. It matters what the other side expects them to hear. And that goes both ways. In this case the interviewer asked these questions to get to know the candidate in a professional setting, so they expected a diplomatic or professional answer. The candidate however misjudged the interviewer intention behind the questions, took them literally and answered them truthfully. Neither of these people is technically sporting a wrong position, yet the communication broke down. That being said, the idea that you can choose not to talk about certain things is pretty basal when it comes to communications. If you have a trauma nobody can force you to talk about it and you should also not talk to everybody and their dog about it (and I know people who constantly do this and have a tendency to regret it afterwards). It costs you nothing to say that you can't think of any specific day, or talk about a day where a old boss at a shitty student job abused you, to frame it in work terms. To talk strategically or diplomatically is a skill that is needed in many positions. And that candidate displayed a total lack of that ability. That being said I am not particularly fond of that type of question myself. Both as an the person carrying out an interview and the person going to one. I am more interested to see how a person tackles certain situations than to have them tell me stories about it. ¹: see https://www.orientation-philosophy.com/glossary/double-contingency-of-communication/ https://www.orientation-philosophy.com/glossary/double-conti...
• lokar 4mo ago
  I had one job, where at the very end of the process there was a multi-hour evaluation by a psychologist / consultant they used. Went over my full life history, school, jobs, etc. It was all disclosed up front, so no surprises. Not really that bad.
• sdenton4 4mo ago
  I fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics, but they were, in fact, non-technical — covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions. Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way... These kinds of questions are part and parcel of non-tech interview processes. You can redirect with some subtlety "Well, my hardest ever day at work was..." to avoid talking about dead babies or whatever. Your interviewer doesn't get to look over your whole life history and determine whether your /truthfully/ chose the actual hardest ever day. So really it's a chance for you to say "Here's a [big] challenge I once faced, and here's how I survived/overcame it."
  • nsvd2 4mo ago
    In fact, being able to "play the game" so to speak is probably part of what the interviewer is looking for.
    • throwaway89864 4mo ago
      It is also possible that they were trying to see, if the person had traumas that would interfere with their ability to work with toxic content, do red-teaming / etc tasks.
  • rsoto 4mo ago
    Yeah, OP just unwinded himself, no filter. You can be truthful and open with friends and family, close people to you. You absolutely shouldn't when talking with strangers.
    • morkalork 4mo ago
      Then strangers shouldn't fucking ask questions that could have answers that make them uncomfortable. Just a thought.
      • anyfoo 4mo ago
        We weren't there, and the article is light on details, so we can only speculate. I see two options here: a) The potential employer vastly overstepped commonly accepted boundaries. b) It was totally implied that the questions were to be answered in the context of work. "What was the hardest challenge you had to overcome?" in that context relates to e.g. debugging a hard concurrency problem, not your divorce. What stood out to me is that whatever interpretation is the correct one, the candidate was willing to give (apparently) deeply personal answers. That's just something to adjust for in upcoming interviews, we live and learn.
• mcv 4mo ago
  > covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions. > talking about failed relationships, family struggles, and interpersonal challenges in previous work environments. I think that's an interpretation that wasn't necessary (though I agree they're terrible and risky interview questions). I'd stick to hard challenges is my professional life, hard problems I had to solve, etc. My personal life is none of their business. And I think there's the possibility you may have been rejected for sharing too much. But I agree that kind of question does invite sharing too much.
  • tombert 4mo ago
    Not the OP, but having been in many similar interviews, I feel like it's an easy trap to fall into, especially if you've not developed a good bit of curmudgeonly cynicism. At least when I've done these interviews, they will be extremely friendly, and they will at least act interested in everything you have to say. It's very easy to overshare when you think the audience is actually interested in what you have to say.
    • mcv 4mo ago
      I'm an oversharer, so I'm absolutely vulnerable to that trap. It's important to remind ourselves not to fall for it.
• rigonkulous 4mo ago
  I was excited, it was a game company, and I'd wanted to get back into games - or more specifically, game engines - for a few years. The tech of this particular company was interesting, an in-house engine developed by wunderkind, of course, and they'd invited me for an interview because I had done a fair bit of low-level work, which would be handy for their rough edges. Apparently. Half way through the interview, I had an epiphany. I really didn't want to work there. It was cultural, it just wasn't going to fit. I didn't waste any more time. Half-way through a white-board challenge, I put down the marker and said, plainly, "okay, I've seen enough, I don't want to work here - thanks and let me not waste any more of your time", picked up my coat and left. It wasn't a bad interview. It wasn't a terrible one. Nor was it because of the whiteboard question, or anything like that. I just didn't like the guys. That's all it was. And I couldn't stand the idea of working for them - just the way the interview proceeded. I don't need to give details. It was really the only time I ever got up mid-interview and left.
  • jval43 4mo ago
    Always trust your gut. Especially when it comes to people. Don't overthink, never rationalize it. Accept your feeling, it's valid. If I learned anything from all my past mistakes in life, it's this.
    • AussieWog93 4mo ago
      I had to check your profile after reading that first line. Fortunately 2016 join date, "No AI used in my comments". But holy cow that was uncanny after months of Claude
      • Chris2048 4mo ago
        Maybe this is the guy they trained the LLMs on?
    • MiscIdeaMaker99 4mo ago
      Same. I left a really good job for a year, to go work for a company CEO'd by a buddy of mine. I had a bad, sinking feeling in my gut from the very beginning when In interviewed with my new boss (not my buddy). Sure enough, I fucking hated working for him, and quit after a year. When I was leaving my old job, I remember rationalizing it to myself that I would regret not doing it if I didn't try. I have mixed feelings about that job -- not necessarily regret for taking it, but definitely some regrets for how things went down at the end. With that being said, if I had turned down that job, I don't know if I would regret it now or not. Who's to say? Anyway, I got my old job back, and lasted there for several more years. It's still the best place I ever worked.
• tombert 4mo ago
  I have a two way tie for the worst interviews I've ever had, for very different reasons. First, in 2023 I interviewed for a startup as a lead architect. They had me do some virtual whiteboard stuff, and so I was drawing rectangles and cylinders and mentioning things like "database" and "message queues" as generically as I could. They would interrupt me and say stuff like "Which message queue? Where do you download that?". The interview went on for a long time, with many bizarrely-specific questions for a whiteboard interview, but I figured that it was just their way to make sure that candidates didn't bullshit them by handwaving away important details. They did make me an offer a few days later, but not for as much as I wanted. That's fine, no hard feelings over that. But then a week later the CEO emails me asking for technical help on a question. I was on the train when I got it. I don't remember the exact question but it was something to do with RabbitMQ and Redis, and it was pretty easy, so I just typed out a quick answer to my phone and replied without even really thinking about it. Then another half-hour later he responds back to my reply asking for more detail on everything. After his last reply I sent a response like "I am happy enough to continue this conversation but I'm afraid I will need to start billing the time it takes for me to reply. Give me a call and we can discuss the rate. He didn't reply. And then I realized something: this company was using interviews as unpaid consulting. That's why they were asking for bizarrely-specific stuff during the interview, and that's why the CEO was still trying to get free consulting out of me even afterward. Really pissed me off, and I am very glad I didn't accept their offer. I am generally a person who is happy to help answer technical questions for free [1], but I felt like my trusting nature was kind of weaponized. --------- Second was last year at a big bank. I was really excited for this job, so I showed up to the interview in my best (and only) suit, made sure everything looked nice, and had studied for many of the technical questions I thought they were likely to ask the previous night. Off to a bad start, it was one of the hottest days in NYC of the year, and I sweat a lot by nature, so in combination with the full suit, by the time I got to the building I was already kind of drenched in sweat. Once I get in, they start giving me some conceptual algorithm questions on the whiteboard. I don't remember the exact question, but I remember they asked the runtime complexity of my solution and I said "Looks like O(n + log m) where n is the length of list A and m is the length of list B". One of the interviewers very confidently corrects me an says "You got your n and m backward". I look at the board, go through my solution, and, no, I actually hadn't gotten the variables backward. I have no idea what you're supposed to do in a situation where you're right and the interviewer is wrong [2], so I just do a trace through my solution and explain that, no, my variables were appropriately assigned. He still confidently "corrected" me again. At this point I really don't know what I'm supposed to do, because I'm not going to just lie and say "oh you're right", but if I'm wrong, then I do want to know why so I don't repeat the mistake in the future. So I ask him "Ok, let's trace through this again because I really don't think my understanding is wrong here". It was this bizarre gaslighting experience, because he would agree with every premise of why I thought the answer was O(n + log m), and every reasoning step along the way, but then still insisted I got the answer wrong. I do really know my Big O complexity, I have been doing this for a very long time, so eventually I just said something like "I guess we need to agree to disagree" because my time for that interview was almost up. Then there was another interview immediately afterward. The interviewer started asking me very specific questions about Java Spring MVC (like about which annotations to use and whatnot) Now, I don't have Java Spring on my resume, I haven't touched Java Spring in more than a decade, and Java Spring was not in the job listing. I didn't even consider studying Spring MVC because the listing didn't even mention that this would be web-based. So I tell the guy something like "umm, I don't really know Spring. I know how a web request works so I'm happy to answer conceptual questions on the whiteboard, but I'm afraid I would have to learn the specific syntax". And he responded "Well this is not a junior role. You shouldn't have to learn." So of course I get the specific Spring questions wrong, and fine, if they wanted a person who knew Spring, that's ok, even if they should have put that in the job posting. But then he asked me to, on the whiteboard, design a basic web request where there was a global counter [3]. I use an AtomicLong, which to my understanding is what pretty much every human who writes Java uses for counters. He asked me why I used an AtomicLong, and I said "because it's what everyone uses, and because it doesn't block and because compare and swap for a small surface area like that is pretty cheap". The guy then, corrected me, and told me to use a mutex. I said "I don't think a mutex is necessary here, if it's just a counter I think an atomic is fine." He was very insistent, and told me to rewrite it with a mutex, and at this point I am starting to question my own competence, so I yield and just rewrite it with a ReentrantLock, which he again "corrected" me saying that I should use `synchronized`, and at that I push back and say "no, ReentrantLock is fine". I left the interview feeling like a moron; I was so sure about this stuff before, but maybe I didn't have the understanding I thought I did. I'm friends with a few graybeard C and C++ programmers on Discord, so when I got home I told them the questions and asked them how they'd solve them, and they solved the problems in the same way I would have. Then I realized that this interviewer, who was principal level, didn't know what an atomic was, and I think he also had no idea how to use ReentrantLock, and so when I used them he just assumed I was wrong. Moron. [1] And that's still true; feel free to email me if you want to geek out about software :) [2] And it seems like the answer I get for that varies between each person. I'm not sure anyone knows. [3] With, to be clear, no further arithmetic or anything being applied to it, before someone asks.
• gabolaev 4mo ago
  It’s kinda ironic that after interviewing with a mental health startup, you ended up so emotionally disturbed that you might now need some actual mental health support to tackle the thoughts it brought up. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
• siliconc0w 4mo ago
  These are essentially sociopath screens where they expect you to memorize some STAR stories and regurgitate them on demand. And I don't mean screen out.
• kxrm 4mo ago
  Let me preface this by saying, I know this might be a privileged take. However, I've had some bad interview experiences but one thing I have never had happen and I never will do is cross the "just business"/"personal" line with anyone I may or am working with. > hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions. I would take these types of questions as "from a professional standpoint". If the interviewer corrected and wanted personal answers, the interview would be over.
  • WatchDog 4mo ago
    > ...I never will do is cross the "just business"/"personal" line with anyone I may or am working with. Just in an interview situation, or you will just never be open to a personal friendship with anyone you ever work with?
    • kxrm 4mo ago
      > you will just never be open to a personal friendship with anyone you ever work with? Building relationships with colleagues is possible but I have tried to be careful. I have made some friends over time that were once co-workers. However, they were only able to move to full friend once they moved on to other teams or companies. I don't see someone I work with day-to-day as a personal friend. I compartmentalize them, keep the relationship professional and cordial. Moving someone to a personal friend has risks, especially if there is a chance you may work for or with them again. Some personal friendships may be able to outlast work drama, but so far I haven't had that happen for me. I've lost a few along the way due to negative conditions at work. Have you had a personal friend that stayed around after leaving a bad situation at work? Any pointers?
      • genewitch 4mo ago
        My best friend is someone i worked with, and we hit it off immediately. He also was one of the people who interviewed me before hire, too. I left the company because of medication induced issues with co-workers (long boring story... careful with SSRIs kids!) and we still ... actually he just called so i gotta cut this short we talk 5 hours a week on the phone plus we run a PBX and chat server and stuff so we're constantly in contact.
• psadauskas 4mo ago
  I had an interview many years ago, that wasn't nearly as traumatic, but the interviewer asked me about my failures like 4 different ways. - Tell me about a time you made a professional mistake. - Tell me about your biggest failure. - Tell me when you last shipped a bug. - Tell me when you took down production. Never asked me about my accomplishments, or the positives. I'm prepared for being asked about making mistakes, and have a few examples ready to give depending on the job I'm interviewing for, but to get asked so many times in a row was just deflating. I'm glad I didn't get that job.
  • throwaway271818 4mo ago
    I think a lot of technical people interpret interview questions literally. Like yes of course the prompt starts with a negative - but you don't actually have to answer the question fully and literally, this isn't a college exam. You could for example start talking about how you thought something was a colossal failure only to realize looking back that it was an incredible learning experience and how sometimes the only way to learn big lessons like that is by trying the experiment. And how it's only a failure if you stop. But you kept going so it wasn't really a failure. Honestly we should probably take a page out of politicians' or media trained people's playbooks and not even answer the question as asked but relentlessly steer towards what you really want to talk about.
    • strken 4mo ago
      I too am capable of waffling to an interviewer. My favourite "took down production" story is a segue into why, when your interns ask you to look over the command they're about to run against the prod environment because they're not 100% comfortable, you should do it, and a broader chat about infrastructure-as-code and review processes. I don't think it's good practice for the interviewer to require the ability to dissemble from software engineers, though.
    • pacman128 4mo ago
      Is it too much to ask for interviewers not to ask questions where the "right" answer is to give a BS answer?
• livealife 4mo ago
  Name and shame company: Canonical They make us write essays and life stories and reject in 24hrs. Felt the exact same frustration.
  • nailer 4mo ago
    Sad to hear - putting these things on Glassdoor can help more people avoid these situations.
    • loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
      Canonical spends a lot of money and effort to “scrub” negative reviews from glassdoor. At a minimum they reply to, and dismiss, concerns raised there but I recall mentions of ways to outright have some bad reviews deleted. Source: I worked there.
  • parados 4mo ago
    Second this. Canonical is currently winning the race to the bottom for tech interviews (I'm speaking with a couple of decades of experience on both sides of the table). They use lots of AI on their side (of course, none allowed on your side). A strange focus on your school years. Dark patterns in technical questions with no opportunity to get clarity. Ghosting afterwards. Interviews always involve some asymmetry but Canonical exploits that to the maximum.
    • duskwuff 4mo ago
      Don't forget the exceptionally long interview cycles. I've heard some stories of candidates getting strung along for 6+ months to eventually get rejected.
• eximius 4mo ago
  Earlier this year I was told I failed an interview because when asked why I wanted to join a company, my answer "could apply to other companies in the same stage of life." They apparently required me to be _uniquely_ interested in their company. There were other oddities about their interview process. Some interviewers just want to feel special.
  • elzbardico 4mo ago
    Assume that every singlemotherfucking breathing human you find in your life wants or at least likes to feel special, and that any company that asks you that question wants you to massage their ego a little bit. Don't think much about it, just believe what I am telling you. It is going to save you a lot of grief.
    • toast0 4mo ago
      That question may be a little bit praise seeking (especially in other contexts), but it's also a way to ask if you did any research on the company, or do you just spray and pray. If you took time to do a little research and validate that you fit more than 'i need a pay check and you have paychecks' that's valuable for the company. Your judgement may be poor, but you self screened, so that's an extra screening.
      • eximius 4mo ago
        1) They reached out to me. 2) My answer was applicable and accurate, but insufficiently _unique_ for them.
    • genewitch 4mo ago
      Dale Carnegie floating around this thread a lot. Remembering (and using!) someone's name is a magic spell, too.
      • simoncion 4mo ago
        > Remembering (and using!) someone's name is a magic spell, too. When it's done to me, it's the magic spell of "I Distrust You". A time or two is fine, as is its usage if one is -say- in a group conversation where it can be difficult to understand to whom one is speaking, or -say- one needs to get my attention when I'm focusing on something else. In my many years of personal experience, I've found that people who behave as if speaking my name to me is a magic spell absolutely do not have my best interests at heart. At best, they want to manipulate me into doing something that I don't wish to do. I recognize that my opinion is not universal, but I am absolutely not the only person on earth who's like this.
• pureagave 4mo ago
  I came here expecting it was a yet another story about Canonical.
• garrickvanburen 4mo ago
  My worst job interview ever - in-house creative team at telecom company in downtown Chicago. I walk into a darkened cubicle farm, down to the only lit corner office for a 'lunch interview'. Interviewer is sitting at their desk eating a hot pocket on a paper plate. Didn't even offer me any. First interview I walked out of. Not the last.
• huflungdung 4mo ago
  [dead]
• mawadev 4mo ago
  I think the author was reading too much into these questions. I bet these people came up with random questions they thought were deep, especially coming from a mental health lens, but struck a nerve in the author. They essentially weren't prepared for the raw human experience that was shared here. I think regardless of whatever you face during an interview, true mastery is to let your humanity at the door and pull up a facade. If you cannot do it in that context, you dodged a bullet imho.. you wouldn't be able to recognize yourself a few years down the line working there with them daily.
  • awesomeusername 4mo ago
    I know many people like you. Don't project your mentality onto someone else. People who can "pull up a facade" are a subset of the population
  • esperent 4mo ago
    > true mastery is to let your humanity at the door and pull up a facade Or say "screw that" and go find work that lets you be a human, not a repressed shell. I'm in my 40s now and have followed that my whole life to great benefit. Barring about two months in a open-plan hell hole in my mid twenties which I still look back on and shudder, mostly out of empathy for people who spend their whole working lives that way.
• lz400 4mo ago
  Truth is, most people who interview people have no idea how to do it. I know because I've done hundreds and nobody ever trained me or explained to me how to do it properly. Over the years I've seen so many people on both sides of the table that I developed a method and I got semi-functional at it but so many people doing interviews shouldn't that bad experiences should be almost expected by now.
  • ryukoposting 4mo ago
    I've done at least a few for every company I've worked for. Ironically, the smallest and worst-managed one is also the one that put the most effort into training me on how to do interviews. I'm not sure what to make of that.
• donatj 4mo ago
  I've been working as a dev for over twenty years now and have had my fair share of interviews. The very worst I ever had was about six months ago. I'd had a fantastic initial interview, it seemed like a perfect fit and interesting tech. Overlapped a lot with some work I'd been doing recently. They made it sound like my experience was a great match and they were exited for me to move forward. I was the most excited I've ever been after a job interview. The second interview a couple days later was a one-on-one with the CTO. After about five minutes of pretty friendly get-to-know-you chitchat he asks if I have any questions about the position. I ask about what my day to day would look like and he replies "I don't know, and that's the problem. I don't like to lead people on, I'll be honest I don't see a position for you here." It was such a sudden slap in the face that my brain just completely shut off. I kind of just stammered out an "Oh... Um... Thank you for your time" I didn't get to talk about my experience ... at all. Not a single mention of my twenty years of across multiple tech stacks my resume doesn't even begin to scratch. I've never been judged so quickly or so blindly. Later that day, out of sheer frustration I email him back trying to explain that I'd felt like I didn't get a chance to talk about myself and all the ways I'd felt like I was a great fit based on the previous interview and how my experience applied. I never heard anything back.
  • codemog 4mo ago
    Seems like you dodged a bullet. Hard to hear when you’re looking for a job, but not every job is a good opportunity.
    • globular-toast 4mo ago
      Yeah. It's kinda like when someone gets infatuated with someone but they don't reciprocate. Do you want to be with someone who doesn't like you? Of course not. Find someone else.
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • atoav 4mo ago
    Congrats on not working there I guess. Apparently that CTO wasn't worth working with anyways
• deleted 4mo ago
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• ryukoposting 4mo ago
  This is hazing, and OP is right to be upset. They were put into a Catch-22 by the interviewer and I see no reason to believe that was accidental. I see a lot of replies that accuse OP of oversharing, and that's bullshit. In any job interview, the expectation is that you answer questions to the best of your ability. If "I'm not comfortable answering that" is an acceptable answer, that is an exception to the norm and it should be made clear ahead of time.
• tamimio 4mo ago
  Boy oh boy, the shenanigans I saw when it comes to job interviews are enough to write a book, not even joking, it was easier to start a business than getting hired as an employee, because building a business you talk with mature, goal oriented adults, who only care about what value that business will add. In jobs, that’s the last they care about nowadays, from morons in the HR, to power hungry managers, to contracts that I would say borderline exploitation with minimum regulations to protect the employees. One job they got offended to ask for a negotiation, despite it was them who changed the original job posting. Another job took 4 interviews (plus one redundant, as it seems they forgot they had that interview with me) over 4 months only to send a generic “thank you” email. Another job, the interviewer seems was hostile just to have the interview. Another one the questions in the first interview were stupid, supposedly technical but extremely shallow, like tabs or spaces.. yeah, I got asked that! Another one refused to change a word in the contract because it’s a “template”, it felt like applying to a service rather than a job. And many other stories, like a company sent me a ticket for an interview in another country, only to find the team is disconnected from what the recruiter wants, they paid for the trip tho. European companies seem slightly better than North American ones, but for some reasons bringing up the money talk early is a taboo topic? Had few calls and noticed that, they got shocked asking such question, even though it’s great to know so we don’t waste our time. I never negotiated money, funny how that sounds, but it isn’t my no1 priority, all I wanted is a mature workplace and working with goal oriented people where nothing else matters that much than delivering the results, it seems it was impossible.
• MattRogish 4mo ago
  This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer. All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer. This is interviewing 101 and unless this is your first ever interview I would find it odd, and stop you immediately and say “I meant, worst day at work”. They should’ve done that. Unless they explicitly and unambiguously say “tell me about the day your mom and dog died in the same day when you found out you had cancer” they mean “tell me about your worst day _at work_.” And even if they ask about the time your dog died (they won’t), they are not asking you “tell me about the worst day you’ve had in your life”. They are asking “tell me about a time you experienced adversity and overcame it, exhibiting problem solving, resilience, and grit AT WORK. (Or - if you are operating in executive mode or you like to live dangerously - some non-work context that maps obviously and unambiguously to a work context).” You failed the “knows how to interact with people in a professional setting” part of the interview. Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity). Or the “read between the lines” part. Yeah, inartfully asked questions - but also totally flubbed the answers. Sorry, chalk it up to you had a bad interview or day or whatever, and never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work”.
  • alanbernstein 4mo ago
    Do you experience many "life challenges" at work?
  • anyfoo 4mo ago
    And even if, for the sake of argument, they legitimately did ask about your personal life instead of your work life... you normally wouldn't answer any of that. (In fact, it could very well mean the end of the interview, from the interviewee's side.) That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you like to hike? Oh, I did that, too. Might I suggest hiking there and there? I bet you'd like it. Anyway, moving on!" Common ground helps conversations flow. But an employer asking about your personal relationships? Your needs, fears, and desires outside of any technical context? (My needs, fears, and desires from compiler toolchains are totally within scope.) Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory. They have no business of asking.
• Kholin 4mo ago
  I've met the same type interview recently, but not on the phone, it's a online web forms. I just write those not that important and positive memories, because I don't trust them from the start. Also, on the next step of the form, there's a statement shows they will use AI to analyze my personality. I feel uncomfortable and told them I don't like their way of interview and just end it.
• jimt1234 4mo ago
  One thing I've done in the past when interviewing candidates is to create a hypothetical situation where the candidate doesn't know how to proceed, like some difficult technical issue. I'd also tell the candidate that their manager and peers are all unavailable. Then, I'd ask how they'd go about trying to resolve the issue and proceed. Honestly, I was never looking for the correct resolution. Rather, I was just looking that the candidate had some basic process for troubleshooting and figuring stuff out on their own. If someone said, "I'd search Stack Overflow until I found the solution.", that was usually good enough. However, all too often, candidates just couldn't understand what was being asked, like they independent troubleshooting was an unrealistic skillset. I'd say, "Just walk me through how you'd approach solving this issue." Some candidates would fully melt down, saying, "I don't know. I can't proceed."
• efortis 4mo ago
  A hiring manager asked me a question like those. I said: "sorry I'm not prepared, I don't remember from the top of my head." Right before that interview I was a solo founder. He said something like: "ok, so you just focus on the work?" "Yes." I got the job.
• phacker007 4mo ago
  You dodged a bullet my fren.
• bitbasher 4mo ago
  My worst interview was at Uber (their security team). The screening and technical interviews on site were all fine and dandy. At the end of the onsite interviews I spoke with the director in charge of the team. I asked some general questions like, "What's the team's work-life balance like?" He chuckled and said something like they work 60+ hour works. I looked at him and said flatly, "Yeah, I'm not doing that." The HR person called me after the onsites and was completely puzzled. She said she never seen a candidate pass technicals and not get an offer. She suggested sending me to another team (I declined).
  • OutOfHere 4mo ago
    I feel you. I once had a second-level manager interviewer suggest that I work through the lunch hour while on the job. I terminated that interview process the same day.
  • matwood 4mo ago
    > My worst interview was at Uber (their security team). Worst? It sounds like a great interview where you set a boundary before going into a situation you would not have liked. People forget that part of the interview process is also for the candidate to decide if they want to work for the company.
  • GJim 4mo ago
    Ummmmm Interviews are a two-way thing. Don't forget that. Frankly, far from being your worst interview, this was one of your most successful ones.
  • helloplanets 4mo ago
    So... You've never had a bad interview. Congrats!
• dbgrman 4mo ago
  had a similar unsolicited psych evaluation interview back in 2017 in twitter. There was a VP (or maybe director), who started with "go back in history and tell me what your boss at position X would say about you", and this kept happening for an hour.
  • nailer 4mo ago
    The “what would your previous manager say” doesn’t seem like a psych evaluation
• comrade1234 4mo ago
  I've had that kind of interview. I kept avoiding the questions because it's not their business. He kept asking. I didn't get the job but that's fine. I've always worked with people I don't mesh with. We fight with each other. We even yell sometimes. But that's ok. We don't need to be a family and in fact I feel major ick at the thought (weird polyamory shit) - they're gross. But they are competent and consistently bring us more customers.
• sbinnee 4mo ago
  I can share mine. It was a job interview with one of the fastest growing companies. They were expanding sales positions in APEC region, specifically Korea. I am not really into sales, but I thought okay because it was such a big opportunity to work for this company. I got three rounds of interviews including technical ones, then I had an interview with my potential team lead. The first thing he asked was about my MBTI personality test, which I hate and didn't pay much attention to learn mine. It seemed every encounter in Korea began with this MBTI test, but common in a job interview? I honestly answered him that I don't know my MBTI and just described my personalities in general. Then he started describing his MBTI and told me that I may not be the best fit with him because this and that. A few days after, I got an email "... sorry". I don't want to believe that his MBTI question attributed a lot to this decision.
• justomsharma 4mo ago
  After reading your blog : I would say : interview depend totally on candidate on how he/she wants to drive, its never like an QnA, unless you are giving a HR round. its like : you say something : other person asks more about it : you explain more. and this is how an interview is driven. The feeling you expressed is a true feeling of a candidate after the interview : but you are thinking that you did everything best : I would suggest to think from interviewer's shoes as well : how you gave interview : if you are someone taking interview : and candidate gave this responses : would you hire him or not if not then what could he/she do better... Reflect like this...
• steelframe 4mo ago
  I had an eerily similar situation in a behavioral interview I had with a company where I had a very strong internal referral from a very senior person. I didn't have any time at all to prepare for the interview and was super stressed out that week because of a cascade of work and personal problems all hitting me at once. In hindsight I probably should have asked for the interview to be postponed by a couple of weeks. In short, I hadn't prepared at all for the interview loop, so I didn't have any of the standard responses "ready to go" for the behavioral interview. We ended up meandering into a bunch of stuff from my personal life, and I didn't have the presence of mind to course-correct it myself. It didn't help that the interviewer actively encouraged me to keep talking about the personal non-work experiences. I got the impression that the interviewer was self-deluded into thinking that they could do some kind of psychological evaluation of me, even though they clearly (in hindsight) had no formal education or training in doing that sort of thing. Anyway, same story. After a few days, generic rejection letter, and no more communications. I can only imagine my interview loop feedback must have been horrific to overcome what I am certain was a strong internal referral by a very senior and well-respected employee at said company who I had worked with closely for several years (and he'd sung my praises at our previous company many a time when giving perf feedback). I keep replaying the behavioral interview in my mind and realize I must have come across really awkwardly to the hiring manager. In the end I felt much like the author of this blog post did, personally rather than professionally rejected. I'm resolved no longer suffering pseudo-psychological behavioral interviews. If I get any questions that I feel cross the line between professional and personal, I'll firmly respond that I do not feel comfortable discussing non-work-related issues in a job interview.
• pm90 4mo ago
  I believe the authors reading of the situation: its likely the interviewer wasn’t intentionally being cruel; most likely its this startups “unique thing that makes them stand out”; quirky twists that every startup attempts to make them stand out from the rest. Honestly though, I think it ultimately worked out best for all parties. Its clear that the startup didn’t value someone that could be so vulnerable, and hopefully the author ultimately found a place that did. My personal perspective is that for super early/founding engineer type roles you absolutely have to bring a greater part of yourself to work; you will be working over the weekends, working late, celebrating together and such… generally that environment is closer to a college club or fraternity than a corporation.
• offercc 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• gobdovan 4mo ago
  I always wanted to tell the story of my weirdest interview. It's bad in a different way from OP's. This was for a "Machine Learning Engineer" contractor position. - Hi, I'm gobdovan. How are you? says I. The interviewer doesn't bite: - How many prompting techniques do you know? (ok?..) After a couple confused seconds, I respond with 2-3 techniques and ask if I should explain them, but the interview engine is already running at full speed: - What is PEFT? How many PEFT techniques do you know? I say I know LoRA and start to explain it, but the interview had no patience for answers longer than their acronyms. Before I knew it, I heard frantic clicking. - He starts sharing his screen while I am still talking about LoRA in the background. Puts up an empty car from Google Images and commands: "Model the relationships between cars and people positioned inside the cars over time." Uncertain of how to satisfy the inquiry, I start foolishly questioning what the task is supposed to be: vision? simulation? dataset labeling? self-driving cars? But the interviewer doesn't budge. Doesn't give a specific task or context. Simply ignores the questions and stoically refuses to elaborate. The stars speak to me, and I guess he wants a relational mapping of some kind. Turns out I am right. This was supposed to test basic SQL table modeling. At this point, I decide I'd sit through the interview just so I can collect all the questions. I am not disappointed: - How many agentic frameworks do you know? - What is the name of OpenAI's embedding model, and how many dimensions does it have? - Then, the last ordeal lands: interviewer takes out a piece of cardboard that has "context engineering" written on it and asks: "What does this tell you?". His camera is unfocused, I ask if he could read what it says. Instead he repeats: "What does this tell you? What does this tell you? What does this tell you?". I ask if he is the ML team lead. Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role.
  • skrebbel 4mo ago
    Did you get the job?
    • gobdovan 4mo ago
      No, but I gained something just as valuable. After the interview, the recruiter who introduced me to this job said they had another role for me. But first, he wanted links to the other positions I'd applied to, what those positions were paying, and how far along I was with each one. I told him I wouldn't do that and he said that it was ok. Haven't heard from them in a year or so, but I'm sure that other interview is in the bag.
• tsukikage 4mo ago
  Genuinely opening up is a mistake. The incentives for these clearly mean that they actually select for candidates who are capable of glibly blagging their way through an extended conversation without saying anything inconsistent, weird, compromising or of substance. This isn’t usually a required engineering skill. I’m guessing the interview was designed for salespeople and/or middle management.
  • IshKebab 4mo ago
    Yeah, definitely just tell them what they want to hear on the personal question front ("tell me about a time..."). There's zero benefit to being truthful and zero downside to blagging it.
  • eithed 4mo ago
    I'd say it depends - evaluate the vibes. I spent 8y and recently 7y at a company where I genuinely responded with what I thought. But I'd say it's a matter of the audience - some people want to hear certain things and deciding if you can share these thoughts is up to you. It also allowed me to make decisions - if people don't care what I think and want sycophancy is this the company I want to be working at? I understand though it depends on one circumstances = you have to grin and bear it
• p0w3n3d 4mo ago
  I am sorry to hear this. If you were perceiving the space as safe and then you felt abused, I think this is something you should report. Maybe people working in mental health startup are experts in mental health, but there are very strict rules and guidelines that forbid abusing this "power" with other people, especially when unwanted, uncertain etc. During my therapy I've learned that the therapeutist is having monthly update on their actions with their supervisor, so they wouldn't do things that are for example unethical, or direct me in the wrong direction for some reason. As other people mention in comment, this surely have been error of the interviewer, and in my opinion the feedback should be left.
• BugsJustFindMe 4mo ago
  The problem seems to be that you treated a professional job interview like a therapy session and showed yourself to be a person who brings up situationally inappropriate subjects without a filter. > I’m a little ashamed remembering myself talking about failed relationships, family struggles It sucks what happened, but, yeah, you need to establish filters for yourself. No matter what they ask you, it's an absolutely terrible idea to bring up your failed relationships in an interview. Something tells me they did not ask for that private information specifically and you just decided it would be a good idea to volunteer it, otherwise the story would have said so. It does not matter what you think they asked. You are the one in control of the words that come out of your mouth. This was poor judgement all around.
• niraj898 4mo ago
  My first interview was the weirdest one, as i was so panicked that i started lying to the interviewer.
  • nephihaha 4mo ago
    That isn't uncommon.
• sevenseacat 4mo ago
  Heh, I once interviewed at a place that asked me to sit the Oxford Capacity Analysis test as part of the process. (The Scientology personality test, for those unaware.) I politely declined, which seemed to confuse the interviewer, but he moved right along. I still got the job lol
  • cobertos 4mo ago
    What was the job like? That's quite the thing to move past and then still get the job on
    • kjs3 4mo ago
      Quite! I draw a hard line at 'cult recruitment' in an interview. Personal preference.
    • sevenseacat 4mo ago
      A bit culty, if I never hear talk about hatting and going on post again I'll be quite happy. So many practices and stuff that I didn't realize were Scientology-related until I looked them up later
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
• andsoitis 4mo ago
  It is OK to be rejected. Showing vulnerability (in a professional manner) can be a sign of strength and trustworthiness, but one should also be resilient when it isn’t a match and not dwell on it too much. Ego is the enemy.
• JSR_FDED 4mo ago
  This sounds less like an interview and more like they’re gathering data to train their mental health model!
• cess11 4mo ago
  Right, you should never, ever, make yourself emotionally available to a prospective employer. They might seem friendly but they are not.
  • ryukoposting 4mo ago
    s/a prospective/any/g
• TrackerFF 4mo ago
  I'd say I've been fairly luck as far interviews go. The vast, vast majority have been about as straight forward and by the book as they come. Completely predictable ones. But I've had some iffy ones. One was for a small boutique investment firm, for a data scientist type role. I'm not sure if it was part of their "stress testing" routine, but I was given a bash terminal where I had to SSH into some server, find data, and write a program to manipulate said data, and write it to a database. The problem was very straight forward, BUT one of the interviewers was practically hanging over my should for 60 minutes straight, commenting every other minute "No, no, you should...", "This looks wrong", "Have you actually done this before?", "Why don't you know..." I tried my best to just be professional, and walk him through my thought process. In the end my program ended up doing exactly what it was supposed to, with optimal performance - but I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I thought to myself that I'd rather go unemployed than work under that level of passive-aggressive micromanagement. But in the big picture, that's nothing. I have friends that have experience explicit age, sex, and race discrimination. Ranging from "Why should we hire [the caste this person "belongs" to]?" to "You better not get pregnant if we decide to hire you"
  • squigz 4mo ago
    > "Have you actually done this before?" I would have got up and walked out at this one, personally. But at least they let you know how working there would be during the interview :)
• 6510 4mo ago
  One fun trick I learn (or more like two tricks) is to start working with the person during the interview. If you do a lot of interviews you get to see a lot of different ways to do it. Their job is to do interviews but they never get to see how others do it. You can tell them what they are doing right, what interesting approaches others take, what you would do and how they can improve. If I notice they cant talk about improving the way they do things I cant get out of there fast enough. It's one of those places where everything goes wrong but you have to actively pretend it's not.
• lawgimenez 4mo ago
  I also had a remote interview for an Australian agency company. I went to their website and it was all Australian folks, name, photos, etc. Their website also has a video of them working inside the office, having a meeting. When I joined the call it was just a couple of Indian persons, with the video resolution of one fella so low, it was hard to make up his face. The other one was a female which did not turned on her camera for reasons she mentioned something she was sick and don't like turning it on. I had lots of remote interview, but this one is just borderline creepy.
  • daemin 4mo ago
    That sounds quite scammy, like it could have been designed to scam applicants or people that wanted to hire that agency. Then again maybe giving an image of a more normal "white/multicultural" Australian office might make it easier to sell services into the Australian market.
• VimEscapeArtist 4mo ago
  I've only had one terrible interview as the candidate, but there's one I conducted myself that weighs on my conscience. It was my first job in IT, and I was still a student back then with no real experience to speak of. A young guy came in to our company who was clearly very stressed, and I kept asking him hard questions - probably not to actually assess his competence, but to prove that I was the one who knew my stuff. That was 20 years ago and I don't remember the details anymore, I only remember that he was stressed and I just treated him cruelly with those questions. It wasn't anything offensive, I just keep recalling that moment and I regret it. Today, if I were conducting any interviews, I would make a real effort to make the person feel comfortable, even if they don't know everything or are a weak candidate.
  • a-french-anon 4mo ago
    Did the same once and I am still pretty ashamed; I must have been in a bad mood or something. I remember asking this guy who just got out of university to explain what "volatile" means in C.
• syl5x 4mo ago
  I had an interview with a CTO back like 2 years ago, I already passed the 3-4 interviews 2 of which were technical and I am on this cultural fit interview with the CTO. The guy enters the call everything seems normal and he begins with his questions which were absolutely insane. First he asked me how did I improve in my work, since I work in cyber I explained to him that I am following latest trends, and getting security certificates like OffSec and other hands on stuff, even CTFs. He is not satisfied he asked me about specifics and to dive deep, okay.. I've explained to him how OSCP, OSWE and OSEP worked and possibly even shared some of the exam ranges scenarios, again he wasn't satisfied and asked for specifics I am already baffled and I was thinking "Does he want me to share the CTF flags or what". Anyway after back and forth with me saying that I don't understand what he wants me to say, he moves forward with "Now what about outside working hours". I sighed and explained that this is taking at least 90% of my free time as well, but he kept asking that he does not care about work and wants to know what I do outside work. Okay I play table tennis quite often and I train it, HE IS NOT SATISFIED (mind you he asked for specifics as well) and in the end he sighed and just said "so you are not improving outside work". I am on the verge of clicking the end meeting button but I kept going. Next question was, have I done any proactive work during work hours, I explained what I did, what tools I've written for the developers and he again asked for SPECIFICS, I said that at this point I am starting to worry about my NDA, and explained that I won't be sharing what I did specifically. He was frustrated and started explaining me that he does not know my clients or whatever or anything about me so it won't matter, which is absolutely laughable but I refused to share anything. Next thing he said is that I am bombing the interview and he has 0 value from this conversation, and I was like okay sure I didn't know that I should bring value into your company/you without even starting. He was now really frustrated started to use words like "fucking" and so on, explained to me how the interns in the company were having a better answers and how his mom would do a better job at this. I was like "???? lmao". Now telling you this I am not sure why I did not quit the meeting but here we go the next question, which I do not remember exactly but I distinctly remember that he said "that's a perfect answer". And since this is becoming long enough I would spare the rest of questions which were absurd once again. Needless to say that I wasn't chosen nor I would have chose them even if this was somehow a pass.
  • meerita 4mo ago
• LoulouMonkey 4mo ago
  As we're all sharing some bizarre experiences we've had, I feel I have to chip in. I had 2 very weird interviews with the same FAANG company, before actually joining the company in 2021. Anyway, we're in 2011 and my career in tech has just started. I hear back from a recruiter regarding a role I've applied for, and to be considered for this position it is mandatory to be fluent in French. Which shouldn't be a problem as I happen to be French. The recruiter tells me that the person that was initially supposed to interview me first (a native French speaker) is currently off sick, and that his manager will be interviewing me instead. I'm in a room in the lovely old offices of this company, by the Bord Gais theatre for those who live in Dublin. The manager I'm about to spend the next 30 minutes with is American, and majored in French. At least according to the recruiter. She greets me with a "bon matin !" which doesn't sound right in French, but that I immediately realise is the literal translation of "good morning!". She mumbles a few things which I now can't remember, but something along the lines of "la entretien il est aujourd'hui dans le Facebook, pourquoi ?". I just smile at her while trying to process what she just asked me. But I can't, so I ask her to repeat what she just said. V2 of her question is even worse, and we spend the next 5 to 6 minutes trying to understand each other. Eventually she switches to English and goes on to tell me how she moved to Dublin from the US a couple of years ago. A few hours later, the recruiter emails me and tells me that unfortunately, being fluent in French is mandatory for this role and that I obviously am not. Funny thing, I've been in Ireland for 16 years now, and I know a ton of people who also had some very weird interviews with this same company, all roughly between 2010 - 2017: like for instance a hiring manager who had brought her dog to the office (and therefore to the interview room). The dog kept barking / jumping on her, and she very clearly didn't pay any attention to the answers my friend was giving her (he didn't get the role). I could go on with stories like these ones for hours. All at the same FAANG company, all in Dublin, all between 2010 and 2017. Like I said earlier, when I eventually joined in 2021 the interviewing process felt a lot more professional.
  • underdeserver 4mo ago
    Was this a technical role?
    • 4mo ago
• narag 4mo ago
  I had a pretty weird interview with this crazy french guy that after a couple of minutes, started acting like a telepreacher and demanding passion or something. But the most frustrating one was with an attractive smiling girl that praised the founder as a genius, dismissed my experience and refused to talk money. She said the next step was a "group dynamics" with the team. I said no thanks. Cult. In general, I get the job when I reach the technical guy. Except that time that, after being approved by the technical lead, I had a chat with the dept head, that asked some inane what are your hobbies questions and rejected me, really because of too high salary. Later the same company reached me, when he was replaced.
• msftr1 4mo ago
  I had a weird experience interviewing for a company recently. I'm in cyber security and I'm no way a SWE (my CV clearly shows that) and apart from the odd python/shell/powershell script I'm not a developer. Job description matched 95% of my skills, and I thought it'd be a great opportunity to move to a more lean company, in a challenging industry. First interview with HR went awesome. For the second one I had a whiteboard to code a random problem. I never had a whiteboard before as I was never a SWE before. I tried my best but yeah not exacly what I've been doing for the last 15 years. There was a couple of system design questions which I think went well. But anyway, received a rejection email a couple days after. What shocked me most was that I wasn't asked a single security question. Literally nothing about authZ, authN, threat modelling, vulnerabilities, frameworks, intelligence. Nada. All these things were listed in the role description, though. I was upset but yeah, maybe they didn't know what they really wanted.
• meerita 4mo ago
  Cultural fit is important. You don't want to work with people who are not morally aligned with you or the company. A rotten apple can ruin the entire basket, but the problem with these cultural fit interviews is that the people who run them often use the wrong framework for their questions. Who cares if you had trauma when you were 16? Will a past trauma affect your future at the company? Does the interviewer have a psychology degree to conduct such an interview? In any case, do people have the right to a second chance if they did something morally questionable in the past? I've conducted over 2,000 interviews in the past 20 years, and I've learned a lot. The best indicators of a good candidate are not questions like "Tell me your weaknesses" or "Tell me about a mistake you made." The best indicators are whether the person spent time learning about your project, your company, the people who work there, the technologies, the product, the vision, the financial status, and the investors. That shows more interest than answering "Tell me about your hobbies."
• deleted 4mo ago
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• Havoc 4mo ago
  The interviewer certainly didn’t mean tell me about your failed romantic relationships That’s a misread of note
• antran22 4mo ago
  I have had my fair share of terrible interview as well. The key thing I learnt is that the interview is an opportunity for me to understand the culture of the company and judge my fit there as well. I know that the phrase "dodge a bullet" is used to death in those kind of situation, but if the interviewer is behaving unprofessionally you can safely assume the people in the company will be unprofessional in a lot more other area. As an instance, I had an interview with a CEO of a consulting firm. He took the interview while on the metro, so half the time on the call I couldn't hear what he said at all. When the call ended, I send a message to the HR person giving quite a critical feedback and stopping any further process with the company. A few months later I talked with one of my friend who worked there for 3 months. The CEO and the legal department overlooked some certain paperworks with regard to employment insurance, and when the taxman came and gave them a heavy fine, they hide the situation from everybody until the situation became unfixable. The company went bankrupt essentially overnight and most of the employees has a 1-year plus insurance gap with no practical way to sue for it back. Moral of the story: if the interview feels wrong, email them and decline going forward right away. Give yourself the satisfaction of consciously dodging a bullet.
  • cucumber3732842 4mo ago
    I'd rather work at a company where the interviewer smokes a cigarette in the conference room than one where they give off rigidly hierarchical "nobody has any agency" vibes. Sure we might go bankrupt but I'll have to put up with a whole lot less dumb "we don't pay you to think" bullshit and morale will be way higher the whole way there.
    • Halian 4mo ago
      I'd rather neither firm be allowed to exist.
  • TrackerFF 4mo ago
    Indeed. I've had a bunch of jobs, and my experience has been that the job interview sort of reflects the people and structure / organization you'll be working with. To put it this way: The best places I've worked at also had good interview rounds, while some of my least enjoyable employers had less enjoyable interview rounds. The absolute worst interviews have been at places I didn't get an offer, or I didn't pursue afterwards. If the person interviewing me is rude, glued to their phone, uninterested, and in general indifferent to what happens - I'm going to assume that's a reflection of how the company culture is. I can also understand that not all people tasked with interviews will bring their A game every time, and that there may be external factors at play - but those places usually show a pattern. I've yet to interview at a place where the interview was terrible all around, and then find out that the company is gold.
• trolleski 4mo ago
  Psych eval without consent is unethical to say the least. And I disagree, the culture fit is not important at all - the way of working, the products, the attitude towards work all good, but the culture fit is a scam.
• animal531 4mo ago
  Cultural fit is the number one predictor for a successful fit, however a big wall here is with certain personality types (especially surrounding IT). In general we don't open up easily to strangers and hate personal questions. We consider many social questions to be just fluff and will either brush them off or pick something with far too much personal information. These issues especially surface when being interviewed by a non-IT worker.
• estetlinus 4mo ago
  Trauma baiting was a new term for me. Must’ve felt awful. Your story made me think of this old Far Side comic, where the psychotherapist just writes “he’s nuts” in his notebook[1]. [1] https://pin.it/7S4LVwrr6 https://pin.it/7S4LVwrr6
• Bolin-Weng_666 4mo ago
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• jazz9k 4mo ago
  My worst was right out of college. It was for a really small company that needed a web developer. I showed up, and it was two guys that were around my age. They seemed annoyed by the interview, it was completely unprofessional, and I was told I didn't get the job because I didn't like a specific sports team. I found my next job the next week at 3x the pay.
• assanineass 4mo ago
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• telmop 4mo ago
  I've had quite a few too: * The most recent one: I was doing an "AI assisted coding interview". The problem itself was simple. I gathered clear specs, I explained what I planned to do. I was supposed to use AI so I wrote down the main function signatures I expected (the API boundary) and wrote in the prompt what I wanted Claude to do. I wrote no code myself other than editing the output. When I got rejected, I was told it was because "I wrote too much code myself". * Once I was asked a brain teaser. I solved the initial problem, but one of the follow-ups made it significantly more challenging. I wrestled with the problem for a few minutes, and realizing I was going around in circles I stated so and told the interviewer I wasn't sure how to proceed. I was expecting a tip or at least an acknowledgement, but I heard nothing. Blank silence with the interviewer staring at the screen. Since it was a zoom call, I thought my internet was down, but when I asked "hey, can you hear me?", he replied yes, and went back to radio silence. This was a pattern of the interviewer throughout the interview. Later on, after this question I implemented an algorithm and was asked for its time complexity. I mistakenly said O(n) (I forgot the initial sort), and the interviewer literally just stared at the screen and said nothing until after 10 seconds or so when I realized my mistake and corrected it - at which point he acknowledged and moved to the next question. * Another one that happened two times (at different companies) is getting asked a very vague question, like "how do you fix a bug in production" (to which I reply with 'I try to replicate it locally, I go through logs, etc') and then being told by the recruiter the interviewer didn't like that my responses were "too generic".
  • TrackerFF 4mo ago
    Regarding the first you posted, it sounds very much like a "feature" sweatshop. Meaning that they have some product with customers, and will implement absolutely every single request they get from customers - and really just want prompt engineers that will ship out updates as quick as possible. IME, there's been a rise of those for the past 1-2 years. They not only embrace AI/slop coding, it is a core part of their business model.
    • telmop 4mo ago
      Unfortunately I fear this is going to become the standard in our industry. Everyone will be forced to rely on AI to "ship faster", to trade learning for short term speed.
• benjiro3000 4mo ago
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• funny19840218 4mo ago
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• bacchus123 4mo ago
  Two years ago I applied for a position in the Swiss Federal Gov's IT departement. The interview rounds went well, I liked the team and the atmosphere was good. They told me that I was the best fit from the people who have applied for the position. Before the last interview, which was with the HR and the "boss" of the departement, i got an email which described how the onboarding happens. So I went there on the next day and they started grilling me. I didn't put my pre University education in the CV and they thought that I'm hiding something from them. They also thought that i'm like 20 years younger than I am, although I told them multiple times how old I am and my age was as well in the CV. It ended without a contract signed. I had to send them all that stuff, like old school certificates (20 years old!) that weren't relevant for that position at all. After a month or so they told me that they do not want to proceed with my application since they found someone who better fits the position. The dude from the team called me and told me that the HR had vetoed me out. Crazy shit. You better don't throw your elementary school grades away!
  • Hendrikto 4mo ago
    HR is such a joke. The world would be better off without that farce.
  • ambicapter 4mo ago
    Seems like they already knew who they wanted to hire, but HR wasn't in on it.
• arikrahman 4mo ago
  Usually I do my best to answer questions in a business context and prepare different STAR scenarios based off past experience.
• scwoodal 4mo ago
  AI makes it trivial to narrow down who this company might have been despite the anonymized details. Mostly a heads up for future posters who want to truly avoid it.
• thrw123 4mo ago
  Interview at Microsoft Serbia, around 2018-2019, for a general Junior Software Engineer position. My expertise was in Machine Learning (this was way before LLMs and the current AI craze). The first guy knew what ML was, but advised me to round up my knowledge with low level coding, cause ML is too abstract and isn't very useful. 2nd and 3rd guy gave me a mix of stupid brain teasers and high school math, coupled with questions about obscure C++ libraries (despite me clearly saying I've only done C++ back in high school and don't really ever use it). The 4th guy, however, was the actual bizarre part. He was completely introverted or something, kept looking at the desk and eventually whispered to me: HIM: Write an API for a book with chapters. It should be able to flip to the next chapter and flip to the next page. ME: Sure, no problem, that's trivial. By the way, when the user is at the last page of a chapter and calls nextPage, should it give null or skip to the first page of the next chapter? What if it's the last chapter/page and the user is calling nextChapter/nextPage? Give null? Throw error? HIM: Write an API to flip the pages and chapters of a book. ME: Yes, I understand. But if I'm at the last page should it give null? HIM: The book has pages and chapters. Your API should be able to navigate to the next page and next chapter. ME: So you keep repeating the question over and over again, and not answering my question. HIM: I don't know how I can say this any clearer, the book has chapters and pages and your API should navigate to the next chapter and page. ME: You know, I'm just gonna write this with the null thing in it and we'll go over it line by line. After a minute or so, I go through the lines and we get to the null part, I look at him while I'm explaining the line and his face shows no pattern recognition to my question. After I finish going through the code, he just picks up his stuff and says "Thank you for your time". So was this a behavioral interview in disguise or what even happened there?
  • dlivingston 4mo ago
    This reads to me as if he wasn't prepared for the interview and said the first open-ended design question he could think of.
• dzonga 4mo ago
  worst interview you had: but can't name the company. exact reason why software engineering interviews will never improve. candidates due maybe desperation, lack of assertiveness or masochism - keep getting abused but won't take action. name & shame. you get ghosted - or get a rejection email one day later. maybe start cutting interviews short too - if you don't see why you would wanna work at a place.
• pvdebbe 4mo ago
  I remember a moment in an early job interview. My resumé was all proper for this entry level junior position and everything was checking out. We turned to smalltalk to round up the interview. "What sort of music do you like?" (What sorta ques... you don't just throw this in without a warning. ahh I'm blanking out. What was it that I listened to last night??) "Uhhh Mike Oldfield is one..." "Ohh... (pause) ewww. But we won't let this hinder your application heh heh" "hee..." I got the position and rose to senior rather quickly. I didn't have any interactions with this guy since after this one interview. Maybe for the best. He didn't mean bad, he was just a bit out of his element 2nd-seat interviewing for devs.
• taintlord223 4mo ago
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• mettamage 4mo ago
  I had something similar to OP. "What was the worst fight you've ever had in your life?" I asked "you want me to answer that honestly?" "Yes" So I did. It was from when I was seven. They didn't proceed forward with me. But quite frankly, I wouldn't have proceeded forward with them either.
  • ryukoposting 4mo ago
    I'd answer this one honestly. A kid took my Nintendo DS and I tackled him.
• alexcraviotto 4mo ago
  The real question is... what they expect? What would be the perfect fit for this interview? Someone with irreversible trauma?
• the_af 4mo ago
  I hate to victim-blame because it's wrong, uncalled for, and also everyone has these kinds of lapses of reason and trip up. It happens to all of us. That said, these job interviews aren't therapy sessions; they are roleplaying games where everyone must understand the rules and just pretend, so when they ask you "what's your biggest flaw" the only valid answer is "I'm too much of a perfectionist".
• ubermonkey 4mo ago
  Years ago I interviewed at a company that later became infamous owing to a series of posts on TheDailyWTF (https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Virtudyne_0x3a__The_Founding https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Virtudyne_0x3a__The_Foundin...). It was... weird. I had a friend who was working there, and I needed a gig. At the time, in the city I was in, this constituted a pretty big advantage. The role would've been customer facing but technical, which is where I've spent my career. I answered some reasonable panel questions, and then they had me give a preso on any technical topic I liked. I'm good at that, so I aced it. Then we got to other questions: specifically, questions from me. "Are you currently profitable?" They were not. This, in and of itself, isn't a problem, but it leads to the next question. "At your current burn rate, how many months of operating cash do you have on hand?" (murmuring) "Two, but our founder funds us as we need it." "Are there specific milestones that are tied to additional capital infusions, or any formal agreement, or is it all just at his discretion?" "It's discretionary but he's very committed to the company." Having already had negative experiences with one-rich-dude companies, I thanked them for their time and left. I was VERY surprised when they called me a couple weeks later to MAKE A SERIOUSLY LOWBALL OFFER, which I literally laughed at. At least the dude who made the call seemed to understand the company was insane. My friend jumped ship shortly after. He had more tolerance for Weird Startup Shit because of family money, but it got too weird even for a guy who didn't need the income, if that tells you anything.
• porknbeans00 4mo ago
  two stories. fun one first. I once did a coding interview entirely in bash. and the poor software engineer giving the interview did not have that as a skillset. so he was deeply confused when I spent like 70% of the time building a massive sed awk xargs one liner. then proceeded to answer every question in order with it. I thought he was so confused by it that's why I never heard back. Turns out it was much stranger. The recruiter died. Took them months to figure out his backlog. 2nd story. I am the responsible party for some poor persons worst interview. And I still feel awful about it. Like they were panicking cause they really wanted the role, and honestly the interview questions were unnecessarily hard and designed to induce stress ( not my call just company decision. personally I can see some of the logic for it but I question the efficacy ). result is this poor kid was spiraling. So I tried to throw them some confidence builder questions... but they were so far into the spiral they bombed those too. And like... I KNEW they knew the answers from previous parts of the interview. But like, they just lost it mentally. I was told later they spent like 10 minutes in the bathroom recovering before doing the next stage of the interview. I fucking hated that interview. I still think about it. Wish I coulda just sat down with em after and just apologized and told em they didn't do anything wrong. They just had a bad day and that's fine. It happens. They can try again. Like... I hate someone took it that badly. I hate I was unable to get em that confidence boost they needed to show off their skill. Experience sometimes just plain leaves scars for everyone.
  • csswizardry 4mo ago
    > fun one first […] The recruiter died. That took a turn!
  • ryukoposting 4mo ago
    Damn. I'm grateful I've never had that happen in an interview I've run. Then again, I've never had an employer give me a set of questions to ask.
• dataengineer56 4mo ago
  15 years ago a FAANG flew me from England to the US for a grad interview. The HR recruiter met me for a coffee before the tech interviews started and said she'd ask me some gentle questions to ease me into the day. She opened with "do you believe in god?" Not knowing laws or workers' rights in a foreign country then I had to give a very stunted, mumbled response. I complained after I got back home and was told she should not have asked that question.
• simonebrunozzi 4mo ago
  My worst was with Digital Ocean, a dozen years ago. Total shitshow, top to bottom.
• MiscIdeaMaker99 4mo ago
  I remember having this interview with an HR person several years ago (like in the early 2010s) where she asked me all these vague, difficult to answer questions. None of them were technical, and I can't remember a single one of them now, but they reminded me of the vague questions we get from various IT audits. << insert "dodged a bullet" comment here >>
• chapz 4mo ago
  I don't think this was a job interview. I think they needed research for their own project, and they used you as a test subject under the cover of a interview for a job position. They probably tested what type of questions work best to get information from the subject in their project.
• storus 4mo ago
  My worst interview was bringing my interviewer to a state of shock and hyperventilation from pointing out an error in their math formula they confidently showcased after telling me my prior answer was wrong. 10 minutes of intense breathing with a shocked expression on their face appeared, I was worried the person would collapse in front of me and didn't know what to do. In the end the interviewer collected themselves and told me they knew from the start I was right and were just testing me. And I instantly knew I failed that interview loop.
• FinnLobsien 4mo ago
  Something I've learned over the years is how much it matters to feel good about the people you work with, and how much intuition matters in interviews and hiring generally (for both sides!). It doesn't matter how much you enjoy your tasks or how good your comp is (unless it's enough to retire early) if you dread your colleagues and/or work environment. I've declined customers or offers. I think it's important for two reasons: -For career growth and learning new skills (which eventually translate to more money), it's important to be in an environment where you want to crack tricky problems and exchange ideas with colleagues. Not to talk about the fact that good working relationships pay dividends later on for networking and such. -We spend so much of our limited time on Earth working that we should enjoy it as much as possible, which, at least for me, is a function of liking who I work with and how I work.
• mkoryak 4mo ago
  Back when I was younger and interviewing candidates for a startup where I was one of the oldest engineers my favorite "fit" question used to be "tell me your favorite 4 letter word". I never actually based my decision on that one, only the technical questions. This is an example of where I (probably) contributed to making some people feel uncomfortable and I wouldn't do it now.
  • dpark 4mo ago
    > tell me your favorite 4 letter word Stop
    • mkoryak 4mo ago
      If you answered that, my past self would have appreciated your answer and maybe even stopped. I mostly got things like: "code", "cash", "love" and one time a "fart"
      • dpark 4mo ago
        I am glad you stopped asking that question. We all make mistakes and learn from them. An I correct in assuming the “4 letter word” was intended to make the candidate think of curse words? I’m curious what the intent of this question was if it didn’t feed into your hire decision.
      • ryukoposting 4mo ago
        I hope you hired "fart."
        • mkoryak 4mo ago
          I did.
• IAmBroom 4mo ago
  An interview is a date between a company and a new employee. If either one of them acts inappropriately, or gives off strong "bad chemistry", the other party learns it is a red flag. Sometimes these red flags are ignored because one side is desperate (lonely, horny and attracted, needs a job, needs the role filled soon). That's always a bad thing.
• misbau 4mo ago
  They showed you their true colours early and saved you the hustle of joining an organisation like that. I will rename the article "my narrowest escape!!"
• farmdog 4mo ago
  During university, I had an interview for a quant role. I was asked an option pricing question, and then the interviewer immediately picked up the phone, asked something, then spent the next 2 minutes yelling at the person on the other end. I had a question, so I looked at him during this, and he paused, said "Why are you looking at me, you have 3 minutes left?" and went back to his stream of expletives. To this day, I still don't know if it was part of the interview or the interviewer's working style. I learned a few new curse words and insults from the exchange, but mostly the signal to tell me I didn't want to work there.
• shevy-java 4mo ago
  > And I think it’s worth sharing not because I want to shame the company or individuals (I’ve left them anonymous), but rather to suggest some reconsideration for founders and hiring managers in the same boat. Now I want to know the name. Companies that use psycho-tactics should be known to us.
• pavel_lishin 4mo ago
  I still remember an off-site team building event that I (luckily) skipped the first half of, where our tech lead tried to speed-run some intimacy building by going around and asking what everyone's biggest fear was. I had just recently become a parent, and if you're a parent reading this, I'm pretty sure that we both have the exact same biggest fear in our lives - and it was absolutely not one I was willing to fucking share, even with those coworkers that I felt close to.
• sharadov 4mo ago
  Sorry OP you had to go through this - not knowing your circumstances, but golden rule, once the interview starts getting invasive, please cut it short and move on. Recently I had an interview for a contract position. First off, it was a zoom interview where the interviewer did not have his camera on. He promptly asks me to share my screen - which I found odd, since I had no content to share with him. Next - he tells me to go the top right screen of my mac and asks me to disable bluetooth. I said am not going to do it, since I had my airpods connected and within the next second I also told him am not interested in proceeding with this BS interview. There are boundaries of human decency, which you should never let anyone cross.
  • at-fates-hands 4mo ago
    Had something similar happen. I get on the zoom call. Told it would be a general interview and same thing. No camera, then asked me to show my drivers license and social security card to prove my identification. I asked why they needed this in the first interview. He stammered back and forth and then reiterated the interview would not go forward until I confirmed my identity by showing my drivers license and SS card. Yeah, sorry bud, that's not happening and hung up. I kept wondering how many others got taken by this scam.
    • sharadov 4mo ago
      Big red flag - definitely identity theft there!
• FrustratedMonky 4mo ago
  Reading through these comments is pretty sad. I didn't know how bad it had gotten. Haven't had to look for few years.
• asmnzxklopqw 4mo ago
  Wth, are you people crazy? Never, under any circumstances, don’t share personal details during job interviews. Instead have a list prepared with the BS question list like: what is your greatest achievement, what is your biggest failure, how did you deal with some difficult relationship in the team, how did you unblock some item etc etc. Use chatgpt for preparation, what you say there has to be very vague and not pointing to any of your previous employers or colleagues. No way this part of the interview process should be something where you, excuse my French, display your underwear, but instead you should be able to prove that you are capable to deal with some difficult inter human situations.
  • eithed 4mo ago
    Yeah, this - interview is a performance after all
• alphabeta3r56 4mo ago
  My worst interview: The recruiter forgot about me. Then joined 5 mins late, asking me if we had actually scheduled something. I said yes, so assembled 3 people 20 mins to listen to my presentation on my PhD work. No questions at the end of the presentation, sent a mail 2 mins later telling me they are not moving forward.
  • loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
    Sounds like you dodged a bullet my guy.
  • eithed 4mo ago
    Why can't people own to their mistakes and reschedule
• par 4mo ago
  I hope you gave them feedback on this, that's really messed up!
• chaosharmonic 4mo ago
  I've had some rather interesting interviews myself, with several of my most ridiculous stories ironically being from here. One guy -- the reason I started building a tracking tool, after I noticed that his email was autofilling when I went to send him a message -- ghosted me after I wasn't available the first day and time he suggested. Which was also a holiday. Another place, a stealth startup, was a panel interview with their three founders -- two tech leads and the CEO. The tech leads actually had really interesting discourse, and I wish I could remember the name of the guy who told me that "testing means never having to use my brain for the same thing twice." It actually never occurred to me before that an interview could provide you with useful knowledge, let alone that an interviewer could make a point of imparting those things on purpose. However, their CEO asked me to commit 5 years of my life up while also refusing to tell me anything at all about what the company did. Within the past year I also encountered one that expressly asked me for things I didn't like about a previous employer; badgered me when I didn't want to elaborate about a specific, traumatizing, walking HR complaint of a man; and then -- after I described vaguely how organizations and their leadership change over time -- explicitly asked me to rate that individual on a scale. (The other two were a while ago, and Idk that they still exist, but the last company was SerpAPI, who advertises here fairly regularly.)
• onlypassingthru 4mo ago
  I once had two onsite interviews with a 20 minute "break" in between. I was given a surprise crossword puzzle during the break to see (if I had a rich vocabulary?, excelled at puzzles?, could come up with synonyms under pressure?). The puzzle was then evaluated and discussed during the following interview. The job was entirely focused on numbers in spreadsheets.
• subpixel 4mo ago
  My worst interview was decades ago where the building was a walk-up and the office was on the 8th or 9th floor, something absurd. It was winter, I had layers of warm clothing on, and I walked into the interview a sweaty disaster and when my sweat became drippingly apparent panic kicked in and made it even worse. At the end of the ordeal I had to walk down the steps which also sucked.
• nekusar 4mo ago
  Ive had a few stinkers of interviews. One when I was 19 was for a 3rd shift stocker at a "family business". Guy straight up asks "Are you married?". Sure, its illegal to ask. Not like a jobless 19 year old could do anything. Ive had a few jobs claim "pay band was from x to y. And surprise it was x-20000 to y-50000. One interview (an HN company) did the interviews. Got back round 2, seemed interesting. The "third round" was do like 20 hours of github work to prove me. Told them my going rate was $100/hr. Never heard back, surprise surprise. Cant remember the company. Applied to Oxide. They want a whole litany of crap filled out. And what do you get? A form letter 2 months later. Should have slop'ed it. I guess this doent really count, since it wasnt EVEN an interview.
  • bcantrill 4mo ago
    Sorry to hear that you viewed it as a "litany of crap", but if it's of any solace, if you had slopped it, the result would not have been immediately different -- but you would be marked in our system in such a way that subsequent applications would also be disqualified. It sounds like we're not a fit for you either, though, so maybe just as well!
    • nekusar 4mo ago
      Im guessing you dont get that much feedback about the process. Or, you do and you dont care. The process stank, wasted my time, and got HR slop form letter as a result months later. A deny is normal. The way it was done was a big FU.
      • bcantrill 4mo ago
        I'm not sure what else you're looking for; we are already explicit about the fact that we (like YC!) don't give detailed feedback. If you would like to DM me, I will look at the reviews of your materials and tell you what I can tell you -- but I think it's pretty clear that you and Oxide aren't really a fit for one another?
• deferredgrant 4mo ago
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• throwaway2037 4mo ago
  Years ago, I was interviewing a woman with a teammate of mine. He loved to ask the question: "why did you leave your last job". He asked it (as usual). She looked at him and said: "I was being sexually harassed by my manager. I reported it to HR, but they did nothing. I left to protect myself." Brutal. It was like an axe was thrown into this guys heart. Short story: He never asked that question again.
  • ifh-hn 4mo ago
    But did she get the job?
• kevin_thibedeau 4mo ago
  I interviewed at a global leader in industrial cameras for an EE position. The interview slate had a slew of people from various disciplines but no EEs until the very end. Their last EE on staff was an over tasked H1-B who broke down in tears as I asked probing questions about what the job would entail and learned that the whole engineering team responsible for their legacy product line was axed in favor of reselling commodity cameras repackaged in expensive boxes. Everyone else knew nothing about what I was expected to do other than magically reverse engineer without any documentation. Their lobby was filled with expensive midcentury furniture and their promotional materials had this weird cult like worship of their founders who were driving everybody into the ground. "Work hard play hard". I happily dodged that bullet.
• nedt 4mo ago
  Automattic, the company behind Wordpress, is so proud of they way they are working and the clear process for interviews. They invite you to a Slack channel, you get information before hand so you know exactly what they are looking for. When I interviewed with them I've already worked with PHP for 20 years, even working on the Zend Framework, experiences in Javascript, HTML and CSS, leading projects for the longest time. But the interviewer I had seemed not to be interested very much. Shortly after the interview they threw me out of the channel, so I couldn't get to the information they shared yet they told me "Come back in a year when you are more experienced". Experienced in what? Well they never answered. Of all interviews I had during that time they were the worst. Not really human. They saying "Automatticians are curious, driven, compassionate, tenacious, autonomous, friendly, independent, collaborative, communicative, supportive, self-motivated, and amazing with GIFs." I haven't even seen them posting a GIF.
• deleted 4mo ago
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• tristor 4mo ago
  The worst interview of my life was at Meta, and it was bad enough that I have permanently blacklisted them as a place I will /never/ work. I get contacted by Meta recruiters relatively often despite the fact I let them know after the fact that they were horribly unprofessional and I would never work with them after that experience (setting aside any ethical concerns, which I also have). I've had several other bad interviews in my career though, and almost all of them were small companies / startups. It was also obvious, sometimes in the moment, that it was bad because the person interviewing me lacked the maturity, experience, or professionalism to be conducting interviews of anyone. Many times that person was the founder. I consider those all dodged bullets. It's always important to remember that interviews are a two-way street, and the way someone conducts an interview can tell you a lot about them and about the organizational context they operate in. Do you want to work there?
• Balgair 4mo ago
  The worst I ever had was a dream to others, possibly. The way I knew that I was not going to work there is they had a net $72,000 401k matching - the maximum allowed.[0] Suffice to say, if that is what they have to do to keep folks on, it's gotta be some really crazy stuff going on in there. [0] I remember it being 25% at the time, but the IRS says that it's a set dollar amount these days, so I will go with that.
  • ryukoposting 4mo ago
    You turned down a job because they had good benefits?
• dangus 4mo ago
  This is a good life lesson to OP of the freedoms they have in these situations. An interviewer can choose to ask whatever question they want (within legal boundaries). You can also choose to answer however you want. The interviewer asked you to mentally drain yourself recounting trauma. You didn’t have to give them that. “I appreciate your approach in asking about the most challenging day of my life. However, I’ll keep my answers in the scope of the workplace moving forward.”
• kamranamra558 4mo ago
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