Interview Humiliation
deliberate-software.com
deliberate-software.com
Lastly, this story fills me with an overwhelming desire
to never continue the cycle of abuse. I strive every
interview to try to respectfully work with the candidate,
and never humiliate them. I want every person I interview
to leave feeling loved as a human and respected, even if
they are completely incapable to perform the duties of the
job.Part of my job is making a positive impression on the person, so they want to work with me (more than they already did, perhaps), so the amazing candidate will choose us over their other opportunities, and the rest will at least say good things about us.
It's not you, it's them. You are lucky you got out of there, you would have been miserable.
This presentation is bullshit. You have no evidence,
nothing valuable to show, just spurious subjective
opinions. You've put up a straw man and now are trying
to knock it down assuming we are idiots. I've seen
enough.
I'm probably nitpicking like a nerd. Even if he were paraphrasing it wouldn't take away from the overall message.
If you wonder why the random dev in the interview thinks this is acceptable behavior, that's a clue.
A candidate is taking time from their busy schedule and are considering making a contribution to your company/team/project. You should appreciate that more.
In the real world, shit happens. There are an inordinate amount of things that can go wrong and delay someone. In this case it's all the worse, since the problem was the interviewers own organization. The interviewer should be apologizing on behalf of his organization instead of being an asshole.
Nothing justifies the interviewers' reaction.
Equivalent situation: If someone turns up 30 minutes late because they wanted to catch a couple extra zs, that's also understandable, but is just as unjustified and makes them just as much a jackass.
As professionals, we are called to treat everyone with dignity and respect, no matter what bug happened to crawl up our ass this morning.
It won't & can't change your past frustration - sure. But do you have to take it forward to the new few hours as you are judging another person trying to find his means of livelihood?
I know people that have suffered boss/coworkers bullying and I find this story plausible. And I know this industry and some people can be very inmature and unprofessional.
The people I have known who are truly that good are humble about it. Those who are not humble, IME are never as good as they think.
I would expect that, as the interviewers did not instantly bow down at this guys superior knowledge. This write write up is his personal interpretation of what the interviewers thought - why else would they not give him the job?
Interviewers perspective. "This cocky guy comes in, tells us everything we do is wrong, that he can improve everything we do, literally laughs and derides our working. In the end I walk out."
The other side of the story probably has a perspective/narrative that makes them look peachy. As with most stories, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Both sides made mistakes. I just hope this candidate turned interviewer realizes the solution is not as easy as, dont do what they did...or even " treat people with respect" those words mean nothing without taking ownership of your own screwups and working on being secure in who you are... IME nothing will make you a better human being than being secure in who you are intrinsically, owning your imperfections and striving to improve yourself...judging others, as this article does, while possibly true, id an indication of someone shirking their own culpability in this experience and blaming external variables. Its not about what actually happened, its about what you do with the experience, and being a nice interviewer is too subjective to know if you are actually nice or just think you are acting nice.
There's a large segment of the software industry that believes their way is right, and everything else is wrong. The phone you use, the computer you use, etc.
Recently I had someone tell me that if you're still writing apps that serve HTML, you're "doing it wrong" because everything should be an AJAX backend with JavaScript. Is that the way apps are going? Certainly. But is that the way to do everything? No.
I did a conference talk on Elixir this last week, and later ran into someone who told me that there's no need for that as he can do everything better and faster with Node, and "why should I waste my time learning THAT? I saw a benchmark showing that Node was faster, so I'll use that."
Here's what I think the problem is. Every morning you log on to Twitter and HN and you see ten new things out there. You don't know when your thing of choice will be out of style with the clique you run with. And it's tiring. So developers are so insecure about their own knowledge that they seem to seek out confirmation bias, surrounding themselves with an echo chamber that believes what they believe. That's more comfortable. And anyone who believes differently has no business being there.
It's like high school, really.
Excuse me, but what are the advantages of not serving HTML directly? I honestly find that way more convenient (possibility to give links for example).
Pros: You don't have to rebuild a full HTML page for every new query, be it server-side of client-side, you don't have to serve assets for every request and client doesn't have to recall/reinterpret them, less content means it's served faster,...
Cons: More strain is put on the client (virtual DOM, keeping the front-end framework in memory). Though it's negligible on most clients.
The rationale I've heard is that it saves both you and the candidate time.
But in practice, during the times when I've seen it done, the candidate ends up feeling really hurt.
In general, my belief is that any time a candidate reaches out, they're putting faith in me to treat them with the respect they deserve -- everyone is a good fit somewhere, and I have no time for people who want to use interviews as a chance to prove their intellectual superiority or to band the team against a possibly inferior "outsider." Same thing with using whiteboard-heavy interviews as a weapon -- I have yet to hit upon the secret sauce for finessing a candidate who might be a great fit but is floundering with the stress of a whiteboard problem, but I do try very hard to not make them feel like they're failing, while seeing if they can approach the problem in a rigorous manner.
I have a very difficult time imagining that, as the top comment says, "almost everyone on this site seems to have gone through similar interview experiences." During the dozen or so interviews I've personally done, I've seen interviewers arrive late and unprepared or unqualified to conduct the interview occasionally but I've never been treated discourteously.
Maybe the job market in 2003 was such that some people felt like they could get away with more in the name of "evaluation?" No clue, but seriously - planned evaluation or not I'd have certainly pardoned myself from the interview prior to the group lunch. Sticking it out to be avoid burning bridges only makes sense if you are being treated with the modicum of respect a human being deserves. Some bridges deserve to burn.
Edit: not about a story that occurred in 2003, so feel free to disregard my idle speculation about the state of the job market.
I understand why the OP doesn't want to name the company, but I can't help wondering if these guys are even still in business.
Edit: saw the OP's comment below about them going in the hole and having to lay off 3/4 of their staff.
Perhaps fear? Maybe they don't want to become an object of ridicule
Things cannot get worse for him unless the company is committed to ruining its reputation. Then again someone companies have been known to release personal information when threatened.
I'm going to guess OP may be 'liable' for damaging the company's reputation.
While I wish I knew the company's name (or knew their side of the story) I don't fault him for not sharing.
"This presentation is bullshit. You have no evidence, nothing valuable to show, just spurious subjective opinions. You've put up a straw man and now are trying to knock it down assuming we are idiots. I've seen enough."
At this point, the correct response is "Yeah, I've seen enough too. This interview is bullshit. I'm surprised you clowns are still in business. Good day." And pick up your stuff and walk out.
Obviously that won't get you the job, but nor will anything else; in reality, as very often happens, they made their decision no later than ten seconds after you walked into the room. (Anyway, would you even want to work for people like that?) Continuing to stammer meaningless-in-context words about tech stuff will just result in damage to your self-esteem, which can have significant negative consequences in your life for years down the line.
Yes, you treat the developer with utmost respect even when you know from the start of the interview that they are unfit for the job. People change over time and you never know how your company might meet him in the future. Make him an offer or not, you have to let the candidate leave with a good feeling.
I have interviewed at quite a few places including startups. But, never anything like this.
The OP should name the company if this interview was this terrible.
I do wish I know who my interviewers were, I want to meet them now and ask them what was up and what they thought of the whole thing. I do remember a few in the room seeming pretty embarrassed about it all, but I think the main three antagonists were their bosses or something.
But in all seriousness, sorry you had to go through something that terrible. Like someone mentioned already in this thread, you should have left the place when you heard the linux comment. Come to think of it, I'm happy for you for not getting stuck in an obviously poisonous environment.
While they were total assholes, you were not in a desperate enough situation that would justify you to say amen to whatever bullshit they say.
That's a rather macho way of handling things. Personally, and i speak only for myself here, i would be miserable in a job that required me to behave that way, but perhaps it's fine for others. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
Just bear in mind that not everyone functions that way, some of us prefer respectful and constructive environments. But i, too, concede that that's just my preference, and there are probably different personality types that will gravitate to different office cultures.
For the record, i still think it's boorish to make such comments. I know that i would also probably just mumble and steam in such a situation (after all, i'm in people-pleasing mode, i want the job, but at the same time, i'm being goaded).
I play the meta-game, wondering if perhaps this is a test to see how I’ll react when questioned and embarrassed. Even if this wasn’t a test, I was determined to be the most professional in the room and finish with my head held high.
Get the offer from the assholes, and use it as a bargaining chip.
However, much as I'm always game for a good horror story, I'm more interested in the damage that the ordinary, polite, courteous technical interview/exam may be inflicting on people and our industry.
As I've posted in the past, I believe that tech interviews are essentially entrance exams that software developers are forced to take over and over. Actuaries, for instance, take exams on topics that correlate closely with mathematics classes, like numerical analysis or vector calc and linear algebra. These exams are recognized for what they are - rigorous entrance exams to show competency in core subjects. We don't call these exams "interviews" and leave it to an some dude who sits in cubicle D-12 to decide how he feels like testing an experienced Actuary's understanding of integration by parts today.
The reason I prefer to focus on the polite, respectful, professional interviews is that it helps us see the fundamental problems with our approach, rather than the misbehavior that can occur in any interview situation. I do think that the intense technical interviews in our field have taken the place of the bar, the actuarial exams, the medical boards. However, most professional entrance exams adhere to a code of conduct - students have an associated study path, they get a respected credential (reassuring their peers and hiring managers that they really do possess this knowledge and ability), they are aware of who their examiners will be and are assured that they possess the proper credentials and expertise to conduit the exams properly, fairly, and most of all, consistently.
I really would like to see developers, as a profession, determine how our competence will be established relative to our peers.
Now, one more thing - I said that I prefer to focus on the polite interviews than the horror stories, but I absolutely do acknowledge that a process like tech interviews may be unusually prone to these horror stories. In short, horror stories like this may not be entirely orthogonal to the core issues, they may very much be a common side effect.
Instead of highly respected practitioners and acknowledge experts sitting on a board, we go grab a few developers and hope they know what they're doing. When I defended my MS project, Berkeley didn't go out and grab a few people who seem to know the industry well enough (uh, I guess, oh, he's busy, well, this other dude seems pretty good, have him sit in) and have them decide whether I would receive a degree. I'm not saying there is no variance among experts, some may pass you, others may not, without question. But I could be certain that the people on my committee were qualified to evaluate my work, that I had rights as a student sitting for an exam, and I would receive a lasting and meaningful credential with feedback (not just a "we've decided not to proceed with your application at this time, but we'll keep your resume…).
With such a capricious and chaotic process, yeah, the sort of thing described here is more likely to happen.
(Seriously though, a suit?!)
A suit? Get with the programme; we have a strict uniform in this game and you'd better not have the self-confidence or the sense of style to step outside the uniform. We hire people who are just like us, and don't you forget it. Monoculture and groupthink? Damn right. That's what we want.
Suit up!
Edited to add: I am surprised at "patent leather shoes" - for daytime business attire that's neither common nor traditional (which isn't necessarily a problem, but is certainly bolder). It's also possible he didn't actually mean "patent leather".