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Comment by marijnz | Hacker News Reader

I spent more time reading the threads than I should have, it's strangely addicting. I now feel naive for thinking that the people working at the big tech companies have a certain base level of "all-round" skills. In no way I expected so much cynicism, narcism and lack of empathy! Isn't this showing up in interviews? Or should it just be seen as online trolling and venting?

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> Isn't this showing up in interviews?

Probably? I mean, if your hiring process is leetcode hazing by these same people, then it is self fulfilling.

The conversation in Blind is not representative of "most people" in big tech companies. Blind is largely a dumpster fire with occasional pockets of unexpected value. Most people don't spend their time there, because it's such low value discourse.

Sociopaths are extremly good in faking empathy or a friendly personality when in need (eg interviews). To actually recognize them you have to look very close for at least some weeks once they feel they are not risking their initial position anymore. Sadly most companies at that point have no way of managing these guys or to recognize they have to fire them (often because they are still extremly careful to keep faking their personality with the higher ups, while being toxic to those below and at the same level of them)

Most assholes aren't sociopaths. The pseudo-anonymity and "exclusivity" of Blind encourages trolls and assholes to congregate. People say things just to piss others off, and they also say "publicly" the douchebag things they'd normally only say to close friends/family (overt racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc). None of this means they are actually sociopaths, though. Just run of the mill assholes and trolls.

Am surprised as well, its so easy to spot for those traits in an interview - apply some pressure or ask some pointed questions. I've weeded out those folk as an interviewer.My feeling is that the Bay Area has a huge tech engineer shortage and companies throwing absurd amounts of money/benefits has bred a culture of entitlement.

> Isn’t this showing up in intervires?

That depends on the interview, isn’t it? In my on-site with one of the companies, I was asked hard algorithm questions in four out of five rounds, and then one system design round. I doubt anything related to personality would show up

You can read plenty of behavioral signal from how candidates interact with interviewers while solving hard technical challenges. But many companies don't really invest much into training interviewers how to effectively interview and gather useful signal or calibrating their evaluation to the goals and standards of the organization.

> I now feel naive for thinking that the people working at the big tech companies have a certain base level of "all-round" skills. In no way I expected so much cynicism, narcism and lack of empathy!

Why? These companies are like Wall Street, they pay the most, so they attract people who are predominantly interested in money. These kind of people tend not to be the most upstanding.

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