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Comment by schreiaj | Hacker News Reader

I was on the other side - I flew out to FB during a vacation earlier this year. I got there, could explain the solution but something was off and I kept losing the thread when I went to convert it to actual code.

The interviewers didn’t know I’d gotten a call from my cat sitter that morning and one of my cats had to go in for an emergency check up. (He ended up being fine but didn’t know that at the time).

Later that week I got the rejection from FB and then, 15 minutes later the positive response from Google. Really made me realize how much impact the day has on an interview outcome.

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A pro tip for anyone reading this who ever ends up in a similar situation: just postpone the interview. I promise you that everyone will understand. Everyone gets that these things are a little goofy[1] and wants to set people up for success and not doom them to failure.

1. Yes, there is a larger and more complicated discussion to be had about making the whole system better. But that isn't gonna happen in the short term. This is advice for dealing with the situation as it exists today.

Yeah I didn’t realize how distracted I was until I was there and just blanked.

I also have real problems with traveling to interviews since my other half has issues being alone at home hence doing the interview while we were visiting her family. Even then me being gone was highly stressful for her.

Google was willing to let me interview with folks local to us which really helped. I’m curious if more companies will conduct remote interviews in a post Covid world too.

If you explain extenuating circumstances to your recruiting contact, you probably can get a chance to reinterview sooner than the usual cool off period (especially if you did well in the earlier rounds).

So far I managed to avoid traveling for interviews by just telling them that I prefer doing it over the internet.

It's worth emphasizing, as a hiring manager: By the time you're in an interview, I want to hire you. I'm sitting there hoping to write "Strong hire" on my feedback form.

I think this is true as a hiring manager, but isn't necessarily true for an interviewer, who may be a senior engineer applying a very strong filter to the "who would I want on my team" test.

Same. If someone makes it that far, I (and several others) have already decided that they stand out. So I'm secretly rooting for them the moment the interview starts.

Uh, unless you saw a better candidate earlier in the day/week.

I'm senior enough that if I rate two people strong hire, I'm capable of getting more budget. This has in fact happened recently -- we couldn't decide between two great candidates, so we offered and hired both.

That depends on the size of the company, no?

Yes, and in some cases, the company needs one person now, and another one a bit later. Then can be nice to have a list of people who did well, to contact again

I mean this would apply to going on a first date as well. First impression is what matters and once the impression has been ruined, all bets are off.

It is not specific to the interview process.

Rescheduling a date or an interview at the last minute doesn’t make a great first impression either.

It doesn't give a good first impression, but failing miserably is somehow even worse...

I rescheduled the second date with my now wife at the last minute. Worked out well for us, but I was so tired from work that there’s no way that date would have gone well (busy period of a project at the time).

I would LOVE to get my 2 hours back in a day because of a last minute interview cancelation. The only person who would be truly irritated is the recruiter, who's job depends on meeting candidate quotas. Even then, they want you to be successful.

Trust me anyone reading this, if you are not feeling well, or something is distracting you, please, please, do feel free to reschedule your interview, even last minute.

Once you go through the process, and it's a no-hire, that is recorded in the system and you won't be allowed to try again for some extended period of time. At my company, it's 1 year.

This sounds like sth it could be good if companies informed the applicants about, hmm

I think I too wouldn't have "dared" to postpone, in some/many cases

For a small company it matters, but for a FAANG interview the person rescheduling your interview is completely disconnected from the people making the hiring decision so it would literally not make a difference.

The obvious counter to this is: Which will give the worse impression: Canceling for a good reason or showing up and being distracted and performing poorly? Companies like the usual FAANG are nice enough to merely give you a 1 year embargo. In other companies I've worked at, you interview for a team and if you do poorly, the team will simply never interview you again (although you could interview for a different team at the company).

Also: Do you really want to date someone who doesn't care that your cat may have a life threatening problem?

Finally, even if it's not that serious (cat emergency): Do you really want to work/date someone who is that susceptible to this bias? I know it's the norm to fall for first impressions, but for me, it's also a signal of problems I'll have with them in the future.

BTW, my cat had a serious health problem once. She needed lots of immediate care for a few months (at home, away from work). And the vets were telling us that even if she got through it for now, it will come back soon and we should really consider euthanasia - the condition would eventually kill her - not many cats would last a year with it, and chances are her she would be in pain for much of it.

And this all started a few days before I started my new job.

I went straight to my new manager (before my official start date), and explained to him that the cat was my priority - I could take a leave of absence or whatever was needed, but I needed to figure this out (either euthanasia, or time off for treatment options, etc) and could not be anywhere close to 100% at work.

Fortunately he was sympathetic and said I should not worry and do whatever was necessary.

The job turned out to be crappy, and I stayed there longer than I should have entirely because of this.

I think knowledge workers will have to learn more about human psychology in the future.

I know I go thru waves of high productivity and low productivity. That productivity seems to be closely related to the ability to concentrate in my environment, sufficient sleep, how closely I've followed y daily rituals, fewer stressors in the past few weeks, etc.

Sorry to hear! I have a similar (sort of) story.

While waiting at UBER reception area I got a call from a "tax office" telling me about suspected tax fraud transactions (it was a fraudster call but imagine me at that moment) a minute before I was called in for an interview.

Yeah, I was really kicking ass at that interview (NOT!)

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