4 ms·

Why don't more people walk out of interviews? Especially if someone set you up to fail, quite literally: interviewing for the wrong job. It's a waste of my ti

Why don't more people walk out of interviews? Especially if someone set you up to fail, quite literally: interviewing for the wrong job. It's a waste of my time, it's a waste of your time as a company. On top of that, if you're going to throw out dickish comments like the article states (paraphrase: "ask your friend, he'll know the answer"), I wouldn't stick around. Is that the atmosphere at the company? Agree or disagree with the interview style, comments like that would piss me off to no end. Start a game of needling and insults? You know what, I've had enough.

keithpeter 13y ago
I am not a programmer. The OP mentioned that in a number of the scheduled interviews that he had face to face, the interview finished quickly, and the interviewer talked about working at Google. Does this strike anyone else as 'palliative interview'?
- at-fates-hands 13y ago
  Nice catch. I was actually going to bring this up. I have a lot of friends who are interview pros. They say if an interviewer decides earlier on you're not going to get hired, they basically fold up their sheets and ask non-related general questions to pass the rest of the time.
  - keithpeter 13y ago
    Guilty as charged :-) As an interviewee, I have, more than once, thanked my hosts for their tea and cake and left early when I detected that the interview was turning into a chat. Would a collegiate interviewing model not work better for an intellectually driven organisation like Google? Each team interviewing for their own positions, but with some form of 'tenure track' process for the longer term?
    - at-fates-hands 13y ago
      It would certainly make more sense. Sure, have one or two screening calls, but the main interviews should really be done by the team you're going to be on. Not some expert in algorithms who deems your solution to a question not good enough. I mean, how many times have you heard an engineer say, "It's not pretty, but it gets the job done." ?? The 'tenure track' is a great idea. How would you implement it though? Just curious.
      - keithpeter 13y ago
        "The 'tenure track' is a great idea. How would you implement it though? Just curious." As I said a few levels above, I am not a programmer. I'd imagine it might work like academic departments, a series of short contracts (well paid!) leading if successful to a more permanent place with some ability to direct own work. I get the impression people are dealing with firehoses rather than trickles (talk of 'recruitment pipelines' like in a tyre factory) so perhaps the collegiate model just won't work.
    - tomkarlo 13y ago
      Amazon does things this way (the hiring team does the interviewing) but there are some major drawbacks to it as well. If your team is grossly shorthanded (say, 30% of seats open), you have your team doing a ton of interviews rather than covering for the headcount shortage, which means you're even more underwater or behind schedule. (And you might have to screen dozens of candidates to fill a seat.) Also, there's a strong incentive to just "fill the seat" so they can stop interviewing people, which Amazon does try to avoid by having at least one "bar raiser" on the interview circuit who is from another team. At a broader level, the problem with this is that the delays inherent in doing a lot of hiring and relocating people means that you can't have teams doing their own hiring and then waiting for people to arrive and come on-line - there need to be candidates in the pipeline before the exact seats open up. Otherwise you're talking about a 3-6 month delay from when a seat opens to when there's an engineer sitting in it, which sucks.
      - RogerL 13y ago
        Okay, that just makes a ton of sense. I've never worked for a big company like that, and hadn't considered the latency issue that can be worked around by general interviewing. With that said, it doesn't change my opinion of it being a time waste for me. I have a career, I know, more or less, what I want to work on next, and I have no interest in devoting a month (seriously, Google recommended taking that long to come up to speed on interview questions) of study to interview for who knows what position, especially when the whole system is gamed towards rejecting false negatives.
      - r00fus 13y ago
        > Otherwise you're talking about a 3-6 month delay from when a seat opens to when there's an engineer sitting in it, which sucks. Welcome to reality in most of large corporate america. I've seen insane 6-9 month interview processes at places like Cisco and that's not even a successful hire. Likewise at other large SV companies. If you can get it down to 3 months, it's below par and better than the competition.
    - cdjk 13y ago
      I'm really surprised that's not how it works at Google, both from their perspective, from the perspective of the candidate. I would be extremely hesitant to interview or accept a job at Google if didn't know what I'd be working on, and it seems like you only find that out when you show up the first day.
      - throwaway86 13y ago
        You are correct. Your mentor from your new team comes to collect you after orientation, and you find out then. You are also going nowhere for a long, long time.
        jpatokal 13y ago
        This is true only if you are hired for a generic role. Most people are, but for sufficient specific jobs (like mine), you will know exactly what team you are joining. Also, with decent performance you can transfer after a year, occasionally even earlier if another team really wants you.
        throwaway86 13y ago
        "Software Engineer" and "Site Reliability Engineer" are generic roles.
  - jtbigwoo 13y ago
    My experience has been the opposite. I've received offers based on interviews where we talked about: the local radio landscape, the best local lunch spots, the most ridiculous internet-bubble perks we'd seen, or color choice in 1950's suburban housing. I get the feeling that it's the idle chatting at the beginnning and end of the interview that matters most when the interviewer is asking him/herself, "Will this person fit?"
VLM 13y ago
"Why don't more people walk out of interviews?" They freak out. I got blacklisted at a cellphone company for doing that a couple decades ago. I found that out via a friend on the inside. Basically I was looking for, and applied to get a lab bench job (basically a spectrum analyzer / communication analyzer jockey, beneath my ability, but it was an exciting growing company etc) and they wanted me to be a junior roving field tech, basically I'd help the real field techs carry heavy stuff into the building and then (literally) mow the lawn while the real tech worked. And I went to school for X years to run a lawnmower... uh huh... If you think its mortifying for the candidate, imagine how the HR rep looks when you walk out, thus making a fool out of them. Note that I wasn't sarcastic or caustic or anything when I left, after all, I had lots of friends / acquaintances on the inside and telecom is a very small world. Lots of hand shaking and "you have a nice facility here but I'm not interested in the position" and so on. I got word from my inside contacts that the HR girl was fuming with rage and swore after I made a fool of her by walking out, that my resume would never pass her desk again in any capacity, etc. Companies are always doing stupid stuff, just hopefully not too often, and they're at least partially interested in how you'll respond. So imagine you work there and someone in upper management makes the worlds dumbest presentation to the division, they're terrified you're going to laugh at them and walk out. When I was younger and (even more) stupider, stuck at an interview I decided I didn't really want, I started flirting with the attractive HR staffer, which didn't work out, but it was fun at the time. Times were different back then, now a days politely asking a woman out at work would probably get you fired or arrested.
- BillyMaize 13y ago
  Asking someone out to a date the first time is perfectly legal. The moment you ask again when they say no is considered harassment and then you could get fired, but I doubt you would have any real issue the first time you ask.
potatolicious 13y ago
Because then your interviewer does a hatchet-job on you in a feedback form and you get shitlisted from interviewing at Google forever. That's the problem with large companies. There are companies where I would just walk out of an abusive interview, because the brokenness represents their whole company. Then you have massive, mega, ultra-sized companies like Google where even though this particular team is beating you with the interview bat, you may still want to work for other teams. This is probably confirmation bias speaking, but by far I hear the most "primadonna interviewer" stories come out of Google. I'm not sure if that's just my impression or if there's really something going on there.
- JonFish85 13y ago
  That's definitely a fair point, especially about bigger companies. Personally, I value my reputation (real-life, not with whatever HN points says) very, very highly, so I'd imagine doing something like I described would be an excellent way to really leave a stain on your resume.
  - icedchai 13y ago
    I've walked out of interviews before. I told them, politely, that I was not a fit for the organization and I didn't want to waste anyone elses time.
- numbsafari 13y ago
  Funny that there seems to be a consensus that Google can effectively black-list people, and yet it seems they can't even keep track of who they are supposed to actually interview or who they have previously contacted about interviewing.
  - JanezStupar 13y ago
    If you are blacklisted, then someone needs to check the blacklist just once for your process to get terminated. If you are scheduled, many people must refrain from screwing up. It even took them months to figure out that they hired an ex convict, after he personally disclosed the fact multiple times. I had great hopes for Google to innovate in sense of culture. I saw Larry Page and Sergey Brin as intellectuals. Turns out they just went and built a high school elite club, for geeks. Another bloated company ran by a corps of smug geeks that like to claim how they are holier than thou. I am really sad about it.
donretag 13y ago
I almost did once. The interview was at Ebay and the entire process was disastrous from the very first contact. Terrible management during the entire time. During my final interview with some manager, I was ready to just get up and walk out. My frustration was showing and undoubtedly contributed to me not getting an offer. The only thing that kept me from walking was my professional and the fact that they paid for my flight. The organization was so poor, I would not put it past them to cancel my flight if I walked out.
abraham 13y ago
The people interviewing you are real people too and sometimes very interesting people. They don't choose what job you are interviewing for, they just get told to show up at a time/place and get a resume/job spec.

keithpeter 13y ago

I am not a programmer. The OP mentioned that in a number of the scheduled interviews that he had face to face, the interview finished quickly, and the interviewer talked about working at Google. Does this strike anyone else as 'palliative interview'?

at-fates-hands 13y ago
Nice catch. I was actually going to bring this up. I have a lot of friends who are interview pros. They say if an interviewer decides earlier on you're not going to get hired, they basically fold up their sheets and ask non-related general questions to pass the rest of the time.
- keithpeter 13y ago
  Guilty as charged :-) As an interviewee, I have, more than once, thanked my hosts for their tea and cake and left early when I detected that the interview was turning into a chat. Would a collegiate interviewing model not work better for an intellectually driven organisation like Google? Each team interviewing for their own positions, but with some form of 'tenure track' process for the longer term?
  - at-fates-hands 13y ago
    It would certainly make more sense. Sure, have one or two screening calls, but the main interviews should really be done by the team you're going to be on. Not some expert in algorithms who deems your solution to a question not good enough. I mean, how many times have you heard an engineer say, "It's not pretty, but it gets the job done." ?? The 'tenure track' is a great idea. How would you implement it though? Just curious.
    - keithpeter 13y ago
      "The 'tenure track' is a great idea. How would you implement it though? Just curious." As I said a few levels above, I am not a programmer. I'd imagine it might work like academic departments, a series of short contracts (well paid!) leading if successful to a more permanent place with some ability to direct own work. I get the impression people are dealing with firehoses rather than trickles (talk of 'recruitment pipelines' like in a tyre factory) so perhaps the collegiate model just won't work.
  - tomkarlo 13y ago
    Amazon does things this way (the hiring team does the interviewing) but there are some major drawbacks to it as well. If your team is grossly shorthanded (say, 30% of seats open), you have your team doing a ton of interviews rather than covering for the headcount shortage, which means you're even more underwater or behind schedule. (And you might have to screen dozens of candidates to fill a seat.) Also, there's a strong incentive to just "fill the seat" so they can stop interviewing people, which Amazon does try to avoid by having at least one "bar raiser" on the interview circuit who is from another team. At a broader level, the problem with this is that the delays inherent in doing a lot of hiring and relocating people means that you can't have teams doing their own hiring and then waiting for people to arrive and come on-line - there need to be candidates in the pipeline before the exact seats open up. Otherwise you're talking about a 3-6 month delay from when a seat opens to when there's an engineer sitting in it, which sucks.
    - RogerL 13y ago
      Okay, that just makes a ton of sense. I've never worked for a big company like that, and hadn't considered the latency issue that can be worked around by general interviewing. With that said, it doesn't change my opinion of it being a time waste for me. I have a career, I know, more or less, what I want to work on next, and I have no interest in devoting a month (seriously, Google recommended taking that long to come up to speed on interview questions) of study to interview for who knows what position, especially when the whole system is gamed towards rejecting false negatives.
    - r00fus 13y ago
      > Otherwise you're talking about a 3-6 month delay from when a seat opens to when there's an engineer sitting in it, which sucks. Welcome to reality in most of large corporate america. I've seen insane 6-9 month interview processes at places like Cisco and that's not even a successful hire. Likewise at other large SV companies. If you can get it down to 3 months, it's below par and better than the competition.
  - cdjk 13y ago
    I'm really surprised that's not how it works at Google, both from their perspective, from the perspective of the candidate. I would be extremely hesitant to interview or accept a job at Google if didn't know what I'd be working on, and it seems like you only find that out when you show up the first day.
    - throwaway86 13y ago
      You are correct. Your mentor from your new team comes to collect you after orientation, and you find out then. You are also going nowhere for a long, long time.
      - jpatokal 13y ago
        This is true only if you are hired for a generic role. Most people are, but for sufficient specific jobs (like mine), you will know exactly what team you are joining. Also, with decent performance you can transfer after a year, occasionally even earlier if another team really wants you.
        throwaway86 13y ago
        "Software Engineer" and "Site Reliability Engineer" are generic roles.
- jtbigwoo 13y ago
  My experience has been the opposite. I've received offers based on interviews where we talked about: the local radio landscape, the best local lunch spots, the most ridiculous internet-bubble perks we'd seen, or color choice in 1950's suburban housing. I get the feeling that it's the idle chatting at the beginnning and end of the interview that matters most when the interviewer is asking him/herself, "Will this person fit?"

VLM 13y ago

"Why don't more people walk out of interviews?" They freak out. I got blacklisted at a cellphone company for doing that a couple decades ago. I found that out via a friend on the inside. Basically I was looking for, and applied to get a lab bench job (basically a spectrum analyzer / communication analyzer jockey, beneath my ability, but it was an exciting growing company etc) and they wanted me to be a junior roving field tech, basically I'd help the real field techs carry heavy stuff into the building and then (literally) mow the lawn while the real tech worked. And I went to school for X years to run a lawnmower... uh huh... If you think its mortifying for the candidate, imagine how the HR rep looks when you walk out, thus making a fool out of them. Note that I wasn't sarcastic or caustic or anything when I left, after all, I had lots of friends / acquaintances on the inside and telecom is a very small world. Lots of hand shaking and "you have a nice facility here but I'm not interested in the position" and so on. I got word from my inside contacts that the HR girl was fuming with rage and swore after I made a fool of her by walking out, that my resume would never pass her desk again in any capacity, etc. Companies are always doing stupid stuff, just hopefully not too often, and they're at least partially interested in how you'll respond. So imagine you work there and someone in upper management makes the worlds dumbest presentation to the division, they're terrified you're going to laugh at them and walk out. When I was younger and (even more) stupider, stuck at an interview I decided I didn't really want, I started flirting with the attractive HR staffer, which didn't work out, but it was fun at the time. Times were different back then, now a days politely asking a woman out at work would probably get you fired or arrested.

BillyMaize 13y ago
Asking someone out to a date the first time is perfectly legal. The moment you ask again when they say no is considered harassment and then you could get fired, but I doubt you would have any real issue the first time you ask.

potatolicious 13y ago

Because then your interviewer does a hatchet-job on you in a feedback form and you get shitlisted from interviewing at Google forever. That's the problem with large companies. There are companies where I would just walk out of an abusive interview, because the brokenness represents their whole company. Then you have massive, mega, ultra-sized companies like Google where even though this particular team is beating you with the interview bat, you may still want to work for other teams. This is probably confirmation bias speaking, but by far I hear the most "primadonna interviewer" stories come out of Google. I'm not sure if that's just my impression or if there's really something going on there.

JonFish85 13y ago
That's definitely a fair point, especially about bigger companies. Personally, I value my reputation (real-life, not with whatever HN points says) very, very highly, so I'd imagine doing something like I described would be an excellent way to really leave a stain on your resume.
- icedchai 13y ago
  I've walked out of interviews before. I told them, politely, that I was not a fit for the organization and I didn't want to waste anyone elses time.
numbsafari 13y ago
Funny that there seems to be a consensus that Google can effectively black-list people, and yet it seems they can't even keep track of who they are supposed to actually interview or who they have previously contacted about interviewing.
- JanezStupar 13y ago
  If you are blacklisted, then someone needs to check the blacklist just once for your process to get terminated. If you are scheduled, many people must refrain from screwing up. It even took them months to figure out that they hired an ex convict, after he personally disclosed the fact multiple times. I had great hopes for Google to innovate in sense of culture. I saw Larry Page and Sergey Brin as intellectuals. Turns out they just went and built a high school elite club, for geeks. Another bloated company ran by a corps of smug geeks that like to claim how they are holier than thou. I am really sad about it.

donretag 13y ago

I almost did once. The interview was at Ebay and the entire process was disastrous from the very first contact. Terrible management during the entire time. During my final interview with some manager, I was ready to just get up and walk out. My frustration was showing and undoubtedly contributed to me not getting an offer. The only thing that kept me from walking was my professional and the fact that they paid for my flight. The organization was so poor, I would not put it past them to cancel my flight if I walked out.

abraham 13y ago

The people interviewing you are real people too and sometimes very interesting people. They don't choose what job you are interviewing for, they just get told to show up at a time/place and get a resume/job spec.