We often prepare for interviews by polishing our CVs, grinding LeetCode, and rehearsing answers to “What’s your biggest weakness?”
But we rarely talk about the other side of the table.
Because interviews aren’t just about companies evaluating candidates.
They’re also a window into how a company thinks, communicates, and treats people.
And sometimes, that window shows more red flags than a beach on a stormy day 🚩
I originally planned to write about WebGPU this week. But I fell into a deep research rabbit hole and honestly… I’m not coming out anytime soon 😅 So that post will probably arrive in a week or two.
Meanwhile, this topic has been on my mind for a while — actually since I wrote Your GitHub Contribution Graph Means Absolutely Nothing (And Here’s Why). I kept postponing it, but my main thoughts were slowly evaporating. So I guess its time has finally come 🙂
I’ve been on many interviews (and I’ve also conducted over a hundred technical interviews myself). I remember most of them as perfectly normal or even positive experiences — even when I didn’t get the job.
But some of them? Absolutely horror stories.
This post won’t be an HR guide or a “how to interview” tutorial. These are real stories — mine and my friends’. All of them actually happened. And they show how weird, chaotic, or simply unhealthy recruitment can sometimes get.
Grab some popcorn 🍿
⏳ The Recruitment That Lasted a Year
This one isn’t about me, but a close friend. I won’t name the company, but think big, famous corporate. If you’ve ever written export class, or even just bought a computer, you definitely know them.
My friend applied and waited a month or two for a response. Then:
- HR interview
- weeks later → technical interview
- weeks later → live coding
- weeks later → manager interview
The manager liked him a lot… but didn’t need him. Another team did, though. So:
- another technical interview
- another live coding session (very similar task)
Then silence. For months.
No one from HR could even say what was going on.
After several more months (!!!), they came back.
And guess what?
Just one more technical interview, two live coding sessions, and a take-home task… and he’d get an offer 😀
Yes, for a regular developer role.
With a lower salary than he already had.
He declined.
👉 If a company can’t organize its own hiring process, imagine how they organize their projects.
⚖️ “How Much Do You Value Work-Life Balance?”
This one is mine. Actually, more than once.
I once filled out a form for a unicorn startup. One question was:
“How much do you value work-life balance? (1–10)”
Let’s be honest — I doubt they were looking for people who value it highly 😅
To be clear: I do value work-life balance.
Yes, I sometimes code at night, write articles, explore new tech. But I like the freedom to not do it when I don’t feel like it. To watch a series or read a book (currently polish noblist Olga Tokarczuk ❤️).
I’m also realistic. Sometimes you push harder near deadlines. Sometimes weekends happen. That’s part of the job.
But if during recruitment someone digs too deeply into your overtime tolerance — be careful.
I once ignored my intuition and joined such a startup.
10–12 hour days. Constant pressure. Endless urgency.
I lasted a year.
That was the average frontend tenure there.
I learned a lot, yes. Probably the most of any job.
But you should enter that world consciously — not by accident.
👉 If a company treats overwork as culture, believe them the first time.
👀 “Who’s Helping You There?”
A friend of mine was interviewing for an automation tester role.
Combined manager + technical interview.
Manager part? Great. She was impressed.
Then came the technical part. The recruiter quizzed her almost like a Python documentation exam.
She answered well, but then paused for a second, thinking how to phrase a more precise answer. Her gaze drifted slightly to the side while thinking.
The recruiter interrupted:
“What, is your husband helping you from the side?”
She politely ended the call.
No apology ever followed.
This story still shocks me. It sounds like a bad joke, but it wasn’t.
Imagine saying to a male candidate:
“Oh, your wife is helping you?”
Exactly.
👉 Disrespect during an interview is a preview of your future workplace.
😤 Offended Recruiters
Another of my stories.
Multi-stage recruitment, weeks long. Final stage — a discussion with developers after a technical task.
There was one tricky security-related part in the task about passing data from host to child. I secured it minimally, knowing it wasn’t perfect.
They pointed it out. Fair.
I was genuinely curious how they solved it internally. It was an interesting technical challenge.
Then they explained.
And… their solution was extremely vulnerable.
Like “people could potentially use their app for free and leak client data” vulnerable.
I thought I misunderstood and asked follow-up questions.
Nope.
They insisted it was “sufficient” and that the data “wasn’t that sensitive” 😅
To this day I don’t know if they rejected me for questioning it or for my poor TypeScript answers later on. 🙃
👉 If a company is defensive about flaws instead of curious, that’s a red flag.
🎥 Total Surveillance Mode
Last one 😀
A friend got a recruitment task on a HackerRank-like platform. Sounds normal, right?
Except:
- full screen sharing required
- camera on, wide angle
- no documentation allowed
- no external help
- fully recorded session
- strict time limit
All to ensure the candidate wasn’t cheating.
For a regular SaaS company.
Not nuclear code. Not Area 51.
In the era of AI, what does this really test?
Memorized syntax? LeetCode muscle memory?
👉 If a company assumes you’re a cheater before you even join, trust works both ways.
🤔 Final Thoughts
Interviews are a two-way street.
You’re not just being evaluated — you’re evaluating them too.
A bad interview process often reflects a messy culture, poor organization, or lack of respect for people’s time.
Sometimes the best offer…
is the one you decline.
What about you?
Any recruitment horror stories or red flags you’ve seen? 🚩
I’m genuinely curious 🙂
Top comments (83)
This list brings back some memories (and not the good kind 😅).
It is so easy to ignore these flags when you just really want the offer, but looking back, every time I ignored my gut feeling during an interview, I paid for it later.
We often forget that we are interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing us. Thanks for validating that feeling!
Exactly this 🙂
You can often feel it already during the interview. I honestly think I’ve never been wrong about that. Whenever the interview felt off, the job later turned out to be off too. And when it felt “just okay,” the company usually was just okay as well 😄
Our gut feeling picks up more than we sometimes want to admit. And you’re so right - we’re interviewing them too. Thanks for sharing this!
I think "gut feeling" is just experience processing data faster than our conscious brain can keep up.
You spot the micro-signals, the tired eyes, the chaotic energy, long before you can explain why.
The "just okay" trap is the real danger though. It is easy to get stuck in mediocrity for years because there aren't any screaming red flags to scare you away. 😊
Yes, I totally agree. That’s probably the whole essence of intuition: experience processing signals faster than our conscious brain can explain them 🙂
And honestly, “just okay” isn’t always that bad 😄 Especially if the pay is good and the environment is stable. Not every job has to be a life mission - sometimes “good enough” is perfectly fine for a season.
Great point about the mediocrity trap though - that’s very real 🙂
A boring job with good pay can actually be a feature not a bug. 😊Especially if you have a lot going on outside of work.
The trick is just knowing when that season is over so you don't wake up 5 years later totally obsolete.🙂
Sylwia, what you describe doesn’t surprise me at all — and what’s striking is that your writing almost makes us wish you had even more examples to share… even though every single one of these experiences is awful.
I’ve definitely lived through similar situations — and honestly, who in tech hasn’t at some point?
I’ve had companies insist on an in-person first interview while I was ~700km away from Paris, others asking me to travel for on-site coding tests (including well-known companies) only to completely ghost afterward. One even made me wait an hour before the interview, then asked me to stay on site while they reviewed my code — which was apparently “perfect” — and still never followed up. When I finally chased them, they told me that no response meant my application wasn’t worth pursuing… only to call back two days later because their cheaper hire (someone I happened to know) wasn’t working out.
I’ve also been asked deeply inappropriate questions about my private life, religion, or sexual orientation. Experiences like these inevitably change how you approach interviews.
These days, I still listen to what companies propose — but I also set my own interview conditions and boundaries. If the process doesn’t respect my time or professionalism, I simply decline and move on. It has made the whole experience far healthier and much more balanced.
These really do sound like horror stories 😅 Sadly, way too many of us in tech have at least a few like that.
And honestly, putting a candidate through multiple stages, assignments, travel, time investment… and then giving zero feedback or ghosting? That should almost be punishable by law 😄 Basic respect for someone’s time should be the minimum standard.
Your story about traveling reminded me of something too. Years ago (pre-COVID), one company offering a remote job still had a recruitment step that required traveling to Kraków — about 700 km from where I lived. I didn’t go in the end because I had sent out many CVs and had around five other offers to choose from at the time.
The funny part? Their CEO suggested I should spend 30% of my future time there on technical writing because he saw potential in me. I laughed it off back then… and now here I am, writing on DEV all the time. So maybe he was onto something after all 😄
You know what? The visionary saw a unicorn in you. Looking back, he was right!
Horror stories about interviews just keep coming and each one seems way worse than the last.
I’ve been on both sides of the table: as an interviewee and as an interviewer. Honestly, I’m not even sure which role is more stressful.
Some people seem to think that being the interviewer means being “in charge.” I’ve always hated that mindset. An interview is not power, it’s a responsibility - a huge responsibility. You might change someone’s career trajectory in a good or absolutely worst way.
As an interviewer, I’ve even confronted colleagues in the past who treated candidates unfairly or wanted to reject them immediately for completely absurd reasons. That kind of behavior does real damage not just to candidates, but to the company’s culture and reputation.
Everyone should pause for a moment and imagine themselves in the candidate’s place. Interviews are vulnerable moments. Behind every CV is a real person who prepared, stressed, and showed up hoping for a fair chance.
Being an interviewer is far more complex than just asking questions. It requires empathy, professionalism, psychology and self-awareness.
Thank you for this comment — I really appreciate it. I relate a lot to what you wrote, because I’ve also been on the interviewer side many times.
I still get stressed before interviews, and to be honest, it’s not my favorite part of the job. It’s a big topic on its own. I completely agree with you about empathy and the weight of making decisions about candidates.
The hardest situations for me are when someone is “in between” — not a clear yes, not a clear no. Those cases can stay in your head for a while, because you know your decision affects a real person.
I have to give credit to my current company here — they take this seriously and are careful about who becomes an interviewer. Technical skill alone isn’t enough. Social skills and empathy matter a lot too, because interviewers are also a company’s showcase.
You’re absolutely right: behind every CV there’s a real human being 🙂
When I was starting out as a junior developer with zero experience, I interviewed at a startup. They liked me and saw potential, but due to my lack of experience they hesistated. However it sounded very likely they were going to offer me some kind of internship. They continued to dangle this potential role for months on end before ghosting me. I learned the hard way to not rely on a single recruitment process but always have multiple processes ongoing to hedge your bets and not get emotionally attached to one single job application.
Yes - that’s a lesson many of us learn the hard way. I also realized years ago that it’s healthier to never get too attached to the idea of one specific company or role.
So many things in recruitment are outside our control. A recruiter (not even necessarily a technical one!) might just be having a bad day, be under pressure, or simply decide the “vibe” isn’t right 😅
Keeping multiple processes going is honestly the safest and sanest approach. It protects both your time and your emotions.
Thanks for sharing your story - I’m sure many juniors will relate to this one 🙏
Some companies are searching for unicorns, which are known to be phantasy creatures, and non-existent in real life.
Exactly 😄
And it’s also a bit suspicious when a company has the same role open all the time. It makes you wonder what’s really going on - do people leave that quickly, or are they just eternally waiting for a “perfect” unicorn to appear?
“How much do you value work-life balance? (1–10)”
10, 5 for work, 5 for life. That’s why it’s called balance 🙂
I do have some bad memories about this topic too. Spotting red flags is important, but sometimes you NEED the job. If you have options, great, choose carefully. But often I have the feeling the industry treats interviews like shopping for a commodity.
Also, yes, interviews are a two-way street, but one side (the company’s) is often ~90% blurry. They ask for unicorn-level skills, proof you’ve slain a demon lord and you can do it again here and now, yet you can’t see their codebase, how they run sprints (if they do), or how things actually work. It’s like they come to your house, demand a five-course meal while recording and questioning you, and all you get to see of their restaurant is Google Maps reviews.
So yes, watch for red flags but just remember you’re usually seeing only about 10% of the real picture.
Exactly — that’s very true. Sometimes you do need the job, and the ability to be picky is a luxury.
I actually ended up in that startup I mentioned for exactly the same reason. I had been let go from my previous job during COVID and I really needed the money, so the red flags became much easier to ignore 😉
And I love your restaurant analogy — that’s honestly very accurate. Candidates are expected to show everything, while companies often reveal only a tiny fraction of the real picture.
O Girl, this hit home. 😭
Last year, I had an interview where the CTO joined 20 minutes late, no apology, and said: 'Yeah, I was playing FIFA. So, tell me about yourself.'
I should have walked out then. But I didn't. Joined the company. Worst 6 months of my life.
Now my rule: How they treat you in the interview is how they'll treat you on the job.
Thanks for writing this — hope it saves someone! 🙏"
Wow… that’s honestly impressive in the worst possible way 😅 Some CTOs really manage to set the bar below ground level. This one especially handed you a red flag on a silver platter.
And sadly, it’s a common trait of empathetic people to rationalize it - “maybe they had a bad day,” “maybe it’s not that bad.” We try to explain their behavior instead of trusting our first impression.
"Exactly this! 😅
I once ignored similar red flags from a CTO — told myself 'maybe he's just having an off day.'
3 months later, I was the reason for everyone's off days. 🥲
Lesson learned:
How they show up on day 1 is how they'll show up forever. There's no 'bad day' — just bad personality.
Your comment hit way too close to home! 🙌"
Hi Sylwia,
nothing to tell from my side, anything that would challenge what you wrote above :)
it was very interesting to read these, thanks.
I wonder, if the number of these bad samples increases when the job market diminishes?
Honestly, I have no idea - I haven’t been actively looking for a new job for a long time 🙂
But my feeling is that it’s less about the market and more about company culture. Good companies tend to stay respectful regardless of market conditions - and bad ones… well, stay bad too 😄
Hearing that an interviewer asked if someone was helping the candidate is shocking. It reminds us that an interview goes both ways: we are also checking if the company is a good place to work. I will definitely remember these tips when I look for jobs in the future
Exactly - interviews go both ways 🙂 Glad the post was helpful, and I hope your future interviews are with respectful, professional people.
One thing I learned after finishing my training as an application developer and then becoming unemployed in Germany is that it does not matter if you are the best of the best, even better than an academic. At the end of the day it is about formalities and sometimes about pretending that people are needed.
I mean, maybe I do not have much experience like people here, but I have also seen people who were really skilled but still became unemployed even though they did everything right. I think the problem lies mostly with HR. In my opinion this could change.
If a company needs someone, then give that person a chance. Humans are involved, is that really so hard? He or she would also work for little pay, but just give the person a chance.
I had a similar case. I had two interviews and everything was really perfect. I presented my task perfectly. The recruiter called me and said it was also perfect on the phone. He said he would get back to me because they still had to handle administrative matters.
It has been three weeks and I have not received a call back. I am still waiting.
I do not know, maybe I am thinking wrongly, maybe not. I checked about 600 job postings. Even for simple tasks they want academics. I do not want to start an argument, but I have also seen many job requirements that are absurd, as if someone had to build a rocket out of a sheet of paper.
I’m really sorry to hear that — and yes, unfortunately the market is quite difficult right now.
You’re not wrong that sometimes formal requirements and processes play a bigger role than actual skills, and that can be very frustrating. I really hope things move forward for you soon and that you find a company that focuses more on people and potential than just checkboxes.
I thank you. I wish more people with the same experience would share and post about it as well so that others understand there is no guarantee even when all the criteria are fulfilled. (=
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