Am I just a whiny bitch? :/ | Hacker News Reader

Am I just a whiny bitch? :/

5 pointskurheim7 comments

Have you ever walked into an interview and you're greeted at the door with "we have to at least invite 3 females to our quarters when hiring, welcome"? Well, I have at least three times and by this time I'm so traumatised by all this bullshit, that I'm working undercover freelance most of the time and it's depressing. So often they let you do some programming exercise in advance, so you can verify you're worthy to talk to. Before you show up at the office you torture yourself with questions what to wear... Do you go all professional with the suit or casual? After all you might end up with som e people in your interview, who don't even take time to shower and will great you with a layer of grease and laugh at you for your neat outfit. I had to go through that. Several times. But that's alright. I don't care about how people dress in my team. But then they'd ask questions and won't let me answer. Once there was even one guy there for no particular reason except blurping out (wrong) answers. When I asked for feedback on the code challenge they couldn't find anything wrong, so the guy just told me while going through my code "umm, your code... I don't like it.".

No, they are the jerks. And they're often not qualified to perform an interview. No training, they don't know what they're doing most of the time. Probably the biggest problem here is the people performing the interviews are not qualified to do the interview. I received formal training on performing interviews and it still took 50+ of them until I did it well. Most of these people aren't taking it as seriously as they should be -- because they're jerks, probably.

Over time, the number one qualifier to accept an offer or make one is that I don't want to work with jerks. Neither do you. Good for you.

You're lucky to see such "flags" early in the process. So you're doing a great job finding out which jerky companies you won't like working for.

About what to wear: when invited for on-site interview, ask whether you should wear formal or informal business attire, always ask, its a perfectly valid question.

Anyone who says you are only there to be interviewed to fulfill some kind of gender quota is not someone you want to work for anyway. You want to be hired for the merit of your domain expertise and qualifications. I can't imagine any worse feeling than showing up for work every day and knowing that you're just the "token girl coder".

And you absolutely deserve feedback.

You'll be on the other side someday interviewing candidates, so please remember all of these experiences and make it a pleasant one for your next team members.

My best advice is that you have plenty of control. You can walk out at any time. You have the skills they need. It is your time. They need you.

Best wishes!

The use of "female" as a noun when referring to human beings is in itself a red flag for me.

You're not being whiny. Default startup culture is not particularly welcoming toward women, and it seems to be worse in some places than others - particularly where founders in their 20s who've never held a job outside a startup predominate. The behavior you describe is unprofessional and suggests some of these interviewers may be skirting the lines of legality (in the US at least).

May I ask what location you're looking for work in and how you're finding openings? It seems to me that typical culture varies from city to city.

Short answer: NO !

Slightly longer response: Your experiences are par for the course. Everybody has a stack of bad of interview experiences. In your case, you are also subject to vacuous discrimination. It really sucks when you are looking for a good job where you can work with intelligent, emotionally aware human beings. If the interview experience is aggravating, you can't expect the work environment to be any better.

one strategy you can try is to develop a better filter when evaluating companies to meet with.

What what cultural cues do you get from the product / service offerings?

Google stalk the employees in the company. What can you learn about them? For example, I imagine that Uber is no longer attracting the best and brightest in light of their recent scandals.

Putting in the time to really dig into the human sides of potential employers is important.

Reach out to former employees of said companies. See if you can get an opinion on things. I'm often surprised at how candid people will be, even over Skype.

Then, at the end of it all, you should listen to your gut feeling.

The deck is stacked against you... don't let the bastards get you down

No, you are not. This sounds crappy.

No. The moron who “didn’t like” your correct code is the whiny bitch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com