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Oldest comments (49)
Oh, so many bad experiences to chose from. Which is the worst? Thatโs hard to pinpoint, but I would have to say driving to Beverly Hills to be charged parking (w/o validation) only to be greeted by two developers who didnโt really even introduce themselves much less give me any context for their positions, but they did offer a desk I could sit at.
The two developers had a compouter waiting, logged in. They wanted me to code a feature of an app, but didnโt bother putting an IDE on this computer. They watched me stumble, download an IDE, try to install it, and fail (lack of permissions). Yeah thatโs right, you heard me, they watched me, over my shoulder the entire time. When they could finally resolve the permissions, I had to figure out the directory structure of an app, then code against it, in 30 minutes. Something told me at the time nobody at the office knew front end, which at the time of my career appeared more like a curse than a blessing.
Then there was the time Amazon flew me to headquarters. I stayed in a nice hotel, I thought it must be nice because I recognized basketball players staying there. The next day, I interviewed all day long, multiple rounds of technical interviews increasing in difficulty, but along the way, thought I performed well. I flew home from Seattle, waited a week to be told I didnโt get the job because of one point. One point? Really? The Amazon recruiter said heโd never seen it before and if I had earned one more point on their test, I would have had an offer.
Iโm sure I have repressed so many bad experiences.
...and I took the Lincoln tunnel instead, true story
One place I interviewed at, I got really bad vibes from quite quickly.
Turned out their business model was essentially like payday loans, but for businesses, which immediately made me think I didn't want to work there on moral grounds.
Then they mentioned that their entire platform, which I would have been maintaining, was built entirely by offshore developers and they were looking to bring it onshore. I don't have an issue with working with offshore developers, but the quality of the code base could easily be really awful, and outsourcing the development of a core part of your business strikes me as a very, very bad idea.
The recruiter phoned up afterwards and I told him in no uncertain terms that they needn't bother offering me the job because I wouldn't be accepting it. Didn't stop him badgering me repeatedly about it, even after I'd taken a better offer elsewhere - he didn't seem to grasp the idea of it being any issue other than "not enough money being offered".
The entire company interviewed me. It was a startup years ago, but still, nine people interviewing you at the same time asking you questions non-stop at a roundtable was rough.
Similar happened to me
The "entire company" interview should be classified as a form of abuse or torture. I also had one of those. Big conference table with 8 to 10 people at a time, people coming and going, me on the long side in the middle getting whiplash trying to see who was talking and how the senior people were reacting to answers. After a while everybody was grinning a bit, and it was funny but I felt like a zoo animal. No feedback, no followup, classic ghosting. Over 3 people at one time is a waste unless its a presentation or something.
Once I had interview in chinese firm, in first round two people interviewed me and right after (one hour long) first round, second round started and it was with their chinese CEO. He didnt understand English and I didnt know Chinese. He called his translator from China on Skype. ๐
In short, it was a mess. Skype call was getting disconnected I had to repeat things hundred of times. I end up getting the job offer but many things were wrong about them so I didnt join.
Algorithms interview where I was given a question and then 2 minutes into asking questions and explaining my thinking (like normal algorithms interviews) I was told I had 3 minutes left on this problem before I needed to move on to the next. The interview was an hour long and continued with questions around classic algorithms where basically if you didn't have them memorised, you probably didn't finish even one of them
Biggest telecom company in my country wanted someone to work in a small, very specialized team that dealt with maintenance and disaster recovery for it's largest clients (other very big companies).
After being interviewed by two intermediaries I finally talk to the team leader that drives the point that this is a stressful job and that, when something fails, we need to fix it asap.
Minimum wage. No thanks I'm out.
Kinda related, I finally got a job in IT today! Small company that deals with lots of different things, I'll have so much to learn :)
I showed up for an interview and was asked to wait in an otherwise-empty waiting room. The secretary went back and told the hiring manager I had arrived. He walked into the waiting room, and scanned the entire room looking for his applicant, not seeming to notice that I was sitting right in front of him. He then asked the secretary where Jesse was. It was immediately clear that he was not expecting a female applicant.
I can barely remember the details of the actual interview - the interviewer seemed disinterested, didn't ask me very many questions.
In my eyes the interview was over before it had even started - I did not belong there.
I feel if I answer "The next one" I might almost always be right? :) Given what appears to be the state of interviews in tech over the past couple of years.
I had a job interview once for a junior PHP role (that didnt mention anything about multi-lingual support) and one of the question was how I would deal with chinese characters in my code. I explained that I didn't have any hands on experience dealing with chinese characters and that I would probably search stackoverflow for the best way to deal with the problem. They indicated they wanted a better answer and I panicked and said I would probably look for a library to deal with special characters. This made it even worse. They then went on a rant about how libraries are bad and that they only used code that they wrote themselves. They didnt go as far as calling me stupid, but their contempt for me as a developer was oozing through the (very tiny) room when they said goodbye. To this day I am happy that they didnt hire me. I consider it the best thing that ever happened to me ๐
So if the have to validate a phone number for example, they do their own library yup.
Yes, the best thing of that interview was that they didn't hire you xD
And the best part is, after 12 years, they still only offer their application in Dutch, English and German ๐