What do I do when my boss is sabotaging interviews? | Hacker News Reader

What do I do when my boss is sabotaging interviews?

workplace.stackexchange.com

84 pointsmooreds114 comments

> Put in 1pt font in his email signature "wear a red tie to the interview" then berated a candidate who showed up without a red tie for "lack of attention to detail"

Stopped reading here, this boss is a joke. leave asap. if this boss isn't directly damaging your career, they are indirectly doing so as an opportunity cost. you can't learn anything from them, being around them is a net loss for you.

I agree the boss is a joke. But the asker is pretty clear leaving isn't an option: "I don't want to job hop right now as I have other obligations."

You might not have the option not to...

I've never seen a company give 2 week notices of firing or layoff. It's not like they care when business numbers go a certain way.

ALWAYS and I do mean always have a contingency plan. And if you somehow feel "obligated" to a workplace, quit thinking that right now.

The proper solution to a bad workplace is to make it a FORMER workplace.

I'm not arguing that the author should give notice or would not be better served by leaving, I'm just saying that the author explicitly rules out departing and wonders what can be done without doing that.

The candidate should've come to the interview with a 1 millimeter long red tie, and when the boss started blabbering about "attention to details", the candidate should've handed him a loupe.

> Emailed a candidate at 3:00 scheduling an interview for 9:00 that morning because "the perfect candidate is always available.

I feel so bad for some of these candidates. Hiring is broken, but some of these are unreal. Can’t imagine how the manager justifies this kind of thing internally.

The best restaurants always have a table available.

They do? In China the best restaurant had one table.

A bit of scarcasm there, people who are any good are going to be currently employed by and large.

Of course not. the best restaurants would usually be full and require reservations in advance

Which is the restaurant in that analogy? The employer or the job candidate?

> some of these are unreal. Can’t imagine how the manager justifies this

It seems pretty clear to me that the manager in that story does not want to hire someone. One reason is even given - they believe they get a half day of free time with every candidate. As soon as they hire someone they lose their half days. It’d be plausible if the manager has a budget for another person that they’re redirecting as well, or that the manager’s manager is going to start getting rough when the lower manager is operating near their budget ceiling. I can imagine a bunch of reasons this kind of thing happens that the employee might be unable to see.

> Hiring is broken

This phrase gets repeated a lot, and for a long time before the recent COVID related labor shortages, but I’m not sure what it means. I’ve only ever seen it in the context of frustrated newbie candidates complaining that they have to put in some non-coding effort in order to get hired. Is hiring broken from the actual job/business perspective? Have many/most companies on the whole been unable to hire people when talent is available? What statistics are there that shed light on how hiring is broken? I’m curious and asking honestly, because it’s been a long time since I was fresh out of college, and I don’t know how hiring has changed, and I don’t know what it’s like for fresh graduates. But I also have changed jobs several times, and been a manager and participated in hiring and interviews for many years, and I haven’t seen any large scale indicators that hiring is broken.

people for whom the system is working, affirm that the system is working.. check

I asked an honest question about how the system isn’t working, and admitted right up front that I might be ignorant of real systemic problems. Maybe you could elaborate and/or provide evidence that the system isn’t working? Who is it not working for, and how is it not working?

This is just disingenuous, because it can also be easily stated as “people for whom the system isn’t working, affirm that the system isn’t working.” Except it is much easier to state that the system is not working, because one can easily attribute personal failures to the failures of the system.

I am yet to meet a clearly skilled software engineer who took a bit of time to study for interviews who couldn’t pass the interviews. And we aren’t talking some insane prep, we are talking either a couple of weekends or an hour a day for a month at the very most. To add, it is mostly upfront work, and you dont need that much time to study later on. With every interview, I need less and less time to study in the future. Back in college, i used to study intensely for those. But many years later, I find it sufficient to refresh by grinding leetcode for just one weekend being enough to pass your typical FAANG interview.

Paper credentials don’t mean much, and relying on those is setting yourself up for some poor experiences. I’ve seen candidates with 15+ years of experience and impressive resumes not being able to code their way out of a wet paperbag. We are talking not being able to solve actual FizzBuzz in a language of their choice, which is mindboggling, as it is literally just a for-loop and 3 if-conditionals (or 2, if you want to be fancy and use string concatenation).

disingenuous -> "stated with an intention to be deceptive"

"I am yet to meet a clearly skilled software engineer who"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy

"Paper credentials don’t mean much"

other employers here disagree on that particular point

>> "Paper credentials don’t mean much"

> other employers here disagree on that particular point

I didn't mean it in a sense that paper credentials don't matter, period. I assumed it was obvious in the context what I actually meant, but that's my mistake, so let me clarify. "Paper credentials don't mean much" when you are trying to really assess skills of someone. Which is evident by my example of many people with impressive resumes not being able to code their way out of a wet paperbag.

> disingenuous -> "stated with an intention to be deceptive"

I admit, I used the closest word that was somewhat expressing the point I was trying to make. I still cannot think of a better word. So if someone can provide a word that is more fitting for "a situation when someone makes an assertive statement about something, without trying to consider the other side of the equation at all, which leads to a conclusion that simply affirms what the person is saying", it would be more than welcome.

> I’ve only ever seen it in the context of frustrated newbie candidates complaining that they have to put in some non-coding effort in order to get hired.

This surprises me because I've generally heard hiring is broken because of how it affects seasoned programmers. The argument, as I understand it, is that "broken" interviews largely consist of "grind leetcode and solve my ever-more-specific algorithmic challenges" that have very, very little to do with the actual nature of the work or a candidate's general aptitude.

I know many many seasoned programmers, both in and out of the Bay Area, and I haven’t met any seasoned programmers who deserve to get a job but can’t. Even if companies are asking for leetcode grinding, what I’m asking about is the outcome - what hiring or unemployment numbers actually demonstrate that hiring is ineffective somehow?

It is true that some companies do coding challenges as part of the interview process, one part of many. I’ve never heard of an interview process where leetcode style puzzles are the whole interview, or even a majority. I had one job in the recent past that had an interview coding challenge (actually it’s the only job I’ve ever had that asked for coding during the interview), and I totally enjoyed the coding challenge. It wasn’t leetcode, and I was allowed my choice of language, but it was on the spot puzzle solving unrelated to the eventual work, but definitely related to my general aptitude.

It certainly might be unrelated to the work, but it’s a bad assumption, I think to claim that doing a little programming has nothing to do with a candidate’s general aptitude.

I have seen & heard of a few seasoned programmers getting upset when they are asked to write code on the spot, and believing that their years of experience and heavy resumes should exempt them from demonstrating their ability to write code during the interview. I personally interviewed one guy who did that, and he was rejected specifically because of his attitude; companies don’t want bitter old-timers who refuse to do some dirty work, nobody is above being part of the team, sometimes doing boring tasks, and always learning new things. I don’t really identify with seasoned programmers who feel like they shouldn’t have to demonstrate their abilities, who don’t understand that people pad resumes all the time and that interviewers might not take your promises at face value. There are people interviewing who have experience and can’t code their way out of a paper bag, so these coding challenges are filtering for that. But people who want to write code full time should have no trouble attempting and even enjoying some code writing during the interview, no?

One of my fondest memories from interviewing was a take home exercise from Accolade (or may have been Acclaim) which was: given this framework (a working application with a TODO: write these two functions to implement the NPC strategy to fly an airplane across a map of open squares and mountain squares to navigate from the origin airport to the destination airport without crashing. On each turn, the airplane could turn 45° either way (or not) and then moved forward one square each turn.)

Your two functions were “init/plan” and “give me the next move” (or maybe it was just "give me the next move" but you could decide to do the planning on the first move). The program then ran and kept track of how many successes and failures happened with your strategy. IIRC, the problem didn’t specify a fitness function, so I decided “success first, then shortest flight, then least turns, then longest straight-in approach” was what I’d use.

I enjoyed doing it. Got called out for an interview where the senior engineer had clearly read my code and asked about it a bit. I was then offered a job that couldn’t pay for a comparable standard of living in CA as compared to Boston, so I declined, but the coding “challenge” was the best one I’ve seen: bounded, easy to understand, could use my tools, in my environment, take however long I cared to (I spent about 90 minutes on it and then ran it overnight just to make sure I didn’t have any (airplane) crashes that I didn’t predict as inevitable before takeoff), and was relevant in context and difficulty to the job.

My own story is somewhat similar - the coding problem was a Tetris style game that was bounded and easily achievable in an hour. No graphics, just console text. Even though the job would be JavaScript and my expertise was C++, I chose to use Python (and I have no idea why anyone would choose a language other than Python for a time-constrained interview, given the choice. ;)) Move or rotate a block, and drop it until it rests on the pile. The main requirement was to implement a scoring routine, and then “extra credit” was offered if someone wanted to implement an AI if they had any remaining free time. I was so excited to get the thing working and flex by writing a basic AI player that I completely forgot to write the required scoring routine (my AI heuristics maybe should have, but didn’t depend on score). The interviewer was kind and just asked me to explain how I would have written the scoring routine, and then later offered me the job. I took it. (It was lower pay than my previous job, but not egregious. No regrets though.) This interview is for me, like you, one of my favorite interviews ever. BTW I completely bombed the MVC database schema portion of the interview. Like really totally bombed it, I was terrible. But they were reasonable and everything else was fun. Six months later I was giving all the same interview questions and hiring people, trying as hard as I could to make the interviews as much fun as I’d had.

I've seen it before (with my own eyes) where a manager would make hurdles like this... then go on to say, "We have found no acceptable candidates we need to use consultants for this project." Then hire consultants, paying them out of the project's budget. Then... use the "data" that show his operational expenses, as a department, are low because he only really needs 3 FTEs instead of 6. (Excluding the 3 consultants that don't count as FTEs...)

To be clear, I’m completely fully aware that bullshit and bad stuff really does happen. There are bad managers, and there are bad companies. There are places where interviews are a true waste of time, or worse where employment is a waste of time. The manager/company in the story sounds like it might be one of them.

That much has always been true. But I’m asking for more than anecdotes, I’m asking for higher level and broader evidence that people who are capable and qualified are failing to get a job anywhere for long periods of time. At least, that what I assume must be meant by “hiring is broken”.

Alternatively, just a better explanation for what broken means and how to fix it. I haven’t yet seen a very strong argument & evidence for hiring in general being “broken”, so while I’m obviously a little skeptical, I’m also curious to question my own assumptions and to be shown why and how hiring in general isn’t working for a large group of people. Having to do several interviews before getting a job was always expected. Is it worse than that across the board?

Maybe, the manager was getting a cut from the staffing company that sends consultants.

> Emailed a candidate at 3:00 scheduling an interview for 9:00 that morning because "the perfect candidate is always available"

Essentially he's selecting for unemployed and even "desperate" candidates.

This might seem absurd at first but some bosses do it on purpose. They know they cannot attract good employees (for whatever reason) and they select those who will work out of dire necessity and are not going to quit and be hired elsewhere easily.

>Essentially he's selecting for unemployed and even "desperate" candidates.

I once hired someone who was a little "outside the bounds" of qualified. In the interview, I sensed his "brain was bored" - I assumed from underemployment. He came to my team with a refreshing "hunger". I only managed him for a couple of months, but I hope he went somewhere that properly fit his skills.

I mean for me, I would much prefer red flags like this come up as part of the interview process than when I'm already there so I can politely bow out, but yeah, these are all powertripping BS

I would certainly not wake up early enough to do the interview, let alone read the interview. FWIW, the candidate dodged a bullet

I worked at Sutherland Global a few years ago. They would literally just pull any random manager to do interviews, with no instructions or qualifications for the task whatsoever.

I found out that one of the managers who was in charge of interviews for about 6 months drunkenly revealed to some colleagues that he invited people back based on whether they looked cool or not.

I recently had an interview at a company named Fluz. The CTO cancelled last minute and had an engineer fill in. Presumably, this engineer had no bias training, interviewing training or management training, not to mention the lack of preparation time. It seemed like he made the questions up as we went. This was not a technical interview whatsoever. They then ghosted me.

I interviewed at Dwolla and they did a panel interview as the last step. Again, several dozen questions completely irrelevant to the role I applied for. Why is a person on the marketing team interviewing me, a full-stack engineer?

I did a technical screening for givemomentum.com. I applied to a Node/React job. The interviewer used Java. Thanks for the lack of heads up on that curve ball. Ghosted.

The whole process is a joke.

> Why is a person on the marketing team interviewing me, a full-stack engineer?

To make sure that you're not a jerk and can work with people other than engineers?

That's not a very charitable interpretation of my rhetorical question. More to the point, why would a person presumably not specialized in hiring be tasked to make a decision about a role they have no expertise in, based on a 40 minute video conversation? What signal could they have possibly picked up on in that timeframe that should override the judgement of HR and engineers in the preceding multiple screenings and technical assessments?

"Don't hire. Brown guy didn't smile enough. Total jerk."

I wasn't trying to imply anything about you personally being a jerk or otherwise.

Of course they're not assessing you on engineering ability! They're assessing your soft skills, like how you are at talking with people in other departments.

It's kind of like if you go on a date with someone and you're rude to the wait staff, that's a big red flag, right? You're not going to ask the server if you should plan on a second date, but their presence in the interaction gives you information.

> Why is (non-technical person) interviewing me, a full-stack engineer?

> "Don't hire. Brown guy didn't smile enough. Total jerk."

It's possible to do the soft skills, personality and culture fit section of the interview really really badly, as in the racial bias example that you gave above.

That's not the same thing as asking why it exists at all though. You could say exactly the same about the technical section, e.g. "don't hire, Brown guy misplaced a semicolon on the whiteboard". And yet a technical interview still needs to exist, has value when done with some fluency.

Hiring well is hard.

At least two people doing each stage of the interview is supposed to mitigate this bias. How well it works is other matter.

Do the engineers also have input into the marketing hires?

At my last job it was bidirectional.

Fair enough, I've seen situations where tech was a lower caste and this could be a sign of that if it wasn't bidirectional.

I was interviewed by some engineers as well.

Usually that would be the job of an HR person. Design for the worst case: if a candidate is bad at working with others, you don't want to expose your staff in other departments to them unnecessarily. (This is why, in most orgs, the "HR pass" is usually the first pass, before any technical qualification — you don't want some random asshole engineer verbally abusing / sexually harassing / etc. your engineers during an interview. HR people are trained to deal with random assholes — they have the verbal judo to calm them down, and the trained-in wherewithal to shut down interviews early rather than trying to trudge forward. People without HR experience, don't.)

You have multiple assessors for personality fits in the same way you have multiple assessors for technical ability.

I mean, I've certainly interviewed candidates where I thought they did great and should be hired, while coworkers--who talked to the very same person barely an hour apart--thought they were idiots who shouldn't even have gotten in the door. (Or vice versa). Personality fits work the same way. (For example, maybe I was the only one to whom the candidate complained at length about their previous employers, or, being a dude, the only one to whom the candidate's sexism wasn't apparent).

Thank you for naming the organizations. Keeping them anonymous just allows this sort of behavior to go unchecked (and unverifiable).

I've resolved to share my experiences candidly here, on Reddit, on Glassdoor, etc.

I urge everyone to do so. A lot of us are going through it, as exemplified by r/antiwork's huge spike in popularity, the "great resignations", and so on. Abusive practices thrive in the shadows.

The problem with employment in America is, in most states, the employee has NO protection. Employer can fire for no reason at all, on a whim, so complaining is dangerous. The only realistic protection is to line up a new job before making waves, but if you go to all that trouble, it's easier to simply take the new job.

Obviously, those in software have it a bit better than most. It pays well enough to have a decent cushion and finding a new job isn't as difficult. In my little niche in the World, I could have a new job before I got home. Please consider most people aren't in that position.

This is not true, employers cannot fire employees without cause. The US has somewhat strong labor laws, but people are not educated about them and employers often ignore them. You'd be surprised how fast most HR departments will settle if you get a lawyer. GET A LAWYER.

At-will employment varies by state, so CapitalistCartr's comment above is true in many states[1]. For example, in Georgia, your employment can be terminated for no reason at all at any time (as long as it is not for a protected reason, i.e. firing because of the employee's race, religion or sexuality).

edit: changed Florida to Georgia because Florida specifically appears to have at least some exceptions to this[2]. In Georgia it seems even if your employer is doing something illegal and you report it, they can legally fire you in retaliation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment#By_state

[2] http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...

At-will are executives, not employees. If you're at-will and not an executive, get a lawyer -- that's not legal.

There are a handful of states where non competes only apply to executives, but at-will is typically applicable across the board.

Looks like I'm wrong on this one.

You can be fired without cause in all at-will states, with very few exceptions.

If you are fired without cause you continue to get paid via unemployment insurance. At least in every state I have been too.

At max $855/wk pre tax.

$275 per week in Florida. Completely useless. And we're not the lowest.

From https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/at-will-e...

> Employment relationships are presumed to be “at-will” in all U.S. states except Montana. The U.S. is one of a handful of countries where employment is predominantly at-will.

> At-will means that an employer can terminate an employee at any time for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without incurring legal liability.

Also, retaining a lawyer is prohibitively expensive for much of the workforce (even with free consultations, and excluding public options like filing complaints with labor bodies)

"Insubordination" is the key word you need to look at.

Is it really a problem? I don't understand this mindset. If a person offers value to a company (and vice versa), there's a mutual benefit. Why should either party be forced or coerced to stay in business with one another? Employees may just as much leave on a whim as they could be fired or laid off. There are bad people all over the world. The best option is for this employee to start looking ASAP. Once they have a solid job lined up, they could then submit their resignation. In the letter, write a detailed response as to why they're leaving.

Jobs are not hard to come by right now. Outside of tech, there are places hiring left and right. It's a madhouse, and not only minimum wage things people criticize. There are some great paying jobs out there in the trades. People are needed badly.

> Please consider most people aren't in that position.

Many people could (and should) plan, but choose not to. It's wise for anyone to set aside an emergency fund. The concept isn't hard, but the discipline is, whatever the cause may be.

It's amazing how many people think like this. I bet the job isnt even that bad. I've had managers who were so terrible at interviewing but actually good managers. I realized a few years into my time with them that they would never actually be able to grow a team because their interview funnel is a trickle. No amount of feedback seemed to do anything about it either.

I had one boss, again a good boss, who used to not call candidates he was interested in and move them to next stages because if they were really interested they would call him. It was... odd.

You may want to assess whether you want to invest in fixing this (perhaps with some risk to yourself) or just move on.

It's often difficult for employees to fix problems with those above them in the org chart.

More than a decade and a half old now, Ask the Headhunter's "Death by Lethal Reputation" is an evergreen essay: https://www.asktheheadhunter.com/halethalrep.htm

I wonder which company they wrote about. First I thought that it might be Microsoft but Microsoft is not located in Silicon Valley.

Which one is it? Edit: Is it Oracle? Or Sun?

This is like a greatest hits list of annoying interview techniques. Most of this applies outside of tech too. In fact, outside of tech this type of hazing would be considered perfectly normal or character building (food service etc).

I always kind of appreciate it when this sort of thing comes out in the interview because it's an important signal to not work for that person.

It speaks to just how rampant this sort of behavior is in interviewing / hiring though. Why doesn't the Stack Exchange poster just leave the company so he doesn't have to deal with this manager? Because then he would have to go endure these types of interviews himself of course!

> Most of this applies outside of tech too.

Is this job in tech? This detail suggests not: "Put in 1pt font in his email signature "wear a red tie to the interview" then berated a candidate who showed up without a red tie for "lack of attention to detail"

I wouldn't wear any tie to an interview. Not least because it would be seriously out of place to be that formal nowadays.

However, if someone did this to me: "berated a candidate who showed up without a red tie"; and then I found out about the 1pt text in the email, I honestly think I might end the interview right there with a "sorry, I can see that this company won't be a good fit for me", which is polite-speak for "I am running away from this micromanaging weirdo and his pointless desire to police how a coder dresses themselves". Or laugh out loud at the absurdity.

The company is also being assessed by the candidate during an interview.

Is it possible that either

1) "run away" is the reaction that this boss desired or

2) this story is made up. I find it hard to take seriously. IDK, how would an interviewer react if you laughed in their face at the "red tie request" ? Would they make that request again?

If your boss is sabotaging interviews, then it's time to start interviewing.

This is one of those cases where I wish it was possible the chain of command was bidirectional. If the majority of your direct reports want to fire you, they can. I would fire this guy in a heartbeat. It seems unlikely the superior can do their job at all effectively, given even this one description of hiring attitudes.

You can always go around. Just make sure to cultivate your relationship with your boss's boss and peers.

Sometimes you gotta lead from below a bit. Other times, just be squared enough away to GTFO.

“If you can’t change your company, change your company.”

You can fire your boss; you might not be able to get them fired from their job, but you can fire them from being your boss.

"I'm in an abusive relationship, what should I do?"

This type of question defies easy answers on a forum. Anyone with an ounce of self respect and marketability would find a new job in this situation.

The real pertinent part of the question is in the "other obligations" that are keeping the poster from leaving. What are they? Are they really preventing the poster from switching jobs? Is the poster underestimating the difficulty in finding something else?

I agree, though having an abusive boss and being burnt out can really hurt one's level of self respect/image of one's self and what's achievable.

That was my situation for 7ish years until getting laid off in Oct 2020 which was a heaven sent. During those 7ish years I had many interviews, many of which seemed to go very well, but upon reflecting since the layoff I can see that it was likely I didnt project a confident enough image mostly due to the conditioning from the abuse and the loss of self esteem.

It's taken a little over a year now to recover, but my outlook and self esteem are quite bright now and I'm excited for the path I'm on.

Tldr: Abusive bosses can demolish one's self esteem which has reverberating effects and can lead to failing to gain alternative means of income/employment. Usually takes time to recover and succeed after such shit experiences

This person should find another job, obviously. But if at all possible, it would also be nice to try and get the manager some kind of counseling or mental health assistance. Their behavior is definitely more than just a little odd.

I would try to incite a employee led mutiny - convincing my co-workers that we all quit at the same time if our leader is not fired.

This how the chimpanzee world works. Most believe that the alpha male chimp rules all like a powerful, authoritarian tyrant with size, power, and intimidation.

Not so. The alpha male keeps the peace and stability of the group, lays down the law when the law needs laying, distributes resources and food fairly, spends time grooming (socializing and happy hour in the chimp world), building coalitions and relationships with other chimps, etc. The actions of the alpha male chimp elevates the group and he gets first dibs on mates and food bc of that. That is also how effective leadership works in the human world.

But the alpha chimp also takes responsibility and accountability should his actions become a liability for the group. When the alpha male starts causing chaos and instability in the group, 3 beta male chimps gang up on the alpha male and tear him apart limb by limb, then they elect a new alpha male. This also why we hate our leaders right now in the western world - they get all the rewards and status but none of the downside accountability. Its why no finance CEOs or managing directors got any jail time or even had their bonuses clawed back; in fact the opposite happened, they gave themselves record bonuses the year after.

here for this

Let’s be more like bonobos and less like chimps.

Not everyone's interested in becoming swingers.

It’s interesting that humans have decided to allow violence to be acceptable and commonplace, celebrated even, while sex is the thing that is taboo. Seems backwards, especially when you consider consent.

Some people don't consent to infidelity. It's very practical.

People who are shopping around for sex are rarely reliable and committed and you couldn't trust them at their word if they say otherwise.

If it's consented to, it's not infidelity.

The thing you have to consider is genetics (parentage). Most don't men don't want to raise a child (and all the effort involved in that) that is not their own (without consent, outside adoption, etc). It's a very reasonable position and the basis for this arrangement appearing in most religions and legal systems.

Matrilineal societies are a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_matrilineal_or_matrilo...

Their are - but even so, they generally couple up and understand who the father of their children is.

I am all for being like the bonobos but you forgot to describe some important details...

I would prefer that, but...

That works if you're a bonobo that is dealing with other bonobos. When you try to be a bonobo when you are in a troop of chimps, you will become the alpha male chimp's concubine.

In other words, its better to be strong and tactical in order to push the values you believe in. Its also why the progressive caucus got screwed with the Build Back Better bill - they trusted the benevolence of their leadership, and then got taken advantage of [1, 2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swcMOxEJMV0

[2] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/progressive-ca...

I don't understand people. I don't understand why anyone would ask this question.

Would this equally naive question get upvoted on HN?

> There's a restaurant right next to my house that is very, very convenient for me to eat at, but I always see the cook spitting in peoples food. Do you think I should try to find another restaurant?

This is somewhere along pathologic narcissistic behavior. Quit or get him fired through his boss. When you work with narcissist, especially if they are your superior, they will destroy your life. So do yourself a favor, know when to spot them and act.

Power-tripping middle management is unfortunately a common issue. The question I'd ask is whether this behavior is limited to interviews, or whether it's just particularly visible in the interview situation with the largest power imbalance.

Are there other places whether the manager abuses power dynamics or makes life difficult to sate an ego? - Do they involve themselves in situations where they're unnecessary? - Do they make employees grovel and beg for vacation time? - Are annual reviews a cavalcade of negative feedback where people are just happy they didn't get fired? - Are people afraid to speak up in the workplace?

"""Put in 1pt font in his email signature "wear a red tie to the interview" then berated a candidate who showed up without a red tie for "lack of attention to detail"""

This made me laugh.

Probably the point I'd say, "I saw it but thought you were an ass, so I ignored your instructions. As an engineer, part of my job is cutting through the bullshit."

That would be satisfying. But probably not something on which I'd want to invest a half-workday.

It's really an in the moment decision. So yeah, I wouldn't plan to just do that.

Seriously, I don't even have a red tie. And I wouldn't buy one for an interview, even if I read the message.

> then berated a candidate who showed up without a red tie for "lack of attention to detail"""

I'm curious: could it be because the candidate's resume listed "attention to detail" as one of their strengths?

(but yeah, like the other commenter, I don't even have a red tie... or any tie, for that matter)

Explain to HR that you paid attention to the detail that the boss was a psychopath.

It was the tie thing that made me open the comments here to reply.

I have been to a few interviews like this over the years. Some I knew would be problematic in advance yet I still went because I wanted to experience it and learn from it.

I got offered the job for two positions and took great delight in turning them down. It is very interesting and a fantastic learning experience to be in that position of power over some difficult asshole. Especially when it is a sudden and unexpected reverse of the power dynamics.

These are people that act very antisocially and so I see it as a good opportunity to "poke the tiger" in a safe way. They're not my employer, I would never want then to be my employer and I am fine with the minimal risk associated with it because I took away so much in being able to really push their buttons with essentially zero consequences. What I mean by this is I was able to better see how such people actually react rather than just read about it. I am fascinated by human behaviours.

In both cases these people cycled between begging to acting like absolute psychopaths. Shouting and swearing at me down the phone, telling me how they would ruin me, that I was pathetic and then back to begging like they were "my mate" and they were "just joking around". Highly unprofessional behaviour that I made sure to feed back to their companies HR departments with evidence.

It is a feeling quite like anything else to remind such a person that all your calls are automatically recorded by your VoIP system after they have spent 5 minutes calling you every name under the sun.

I think the thing that really gets under these peoples skin though is when I calmly explain I don't need to work. I have more than enough money to live a very long and comfortable life and that I choose to work out of personal desire to do so rather than necessity. They hate not being the most powerful person in the room. You take that away from them and they collapse to nothing.

Learning this first hand has allowed me to be far more confident not just during interviews but in probably all aspects of my life. In any kind of negotiation I am calmer and so better able to prepare a sensible response. This is important when emotions are all over the place.

It is all well and good reading about how to negotiate or even taking part in role play workshops offered by many management training firms but until you actually experience someone that is genuinely that way and not just acting it is all just theory. Experiencing it first hand was very different to any training I have ever had and while these people were truly terrible people (at least in a professional capacity) I am actually quite grateful to them for giving me that real world experience to learn from.

It is simple. Accept that there won't be any hire in near future and recognize that you have a very good job security. Understaffed teams have incentive to retain talents.

use this fact as leverage to negotiate a higher increment! and use the "understaff" excuse to lower your work pressure.

I can't imagine anything else which is both desirable and possible from such a situation.

PS: I consider hiring someone into the team as undesirable as it will be bad for any candidate worth hiring.

Trashes 75% of resumes. Sounds like he's doing those candidates a favor.

I wouldn't be able to work for that person after what they had done. I'd instantly lose all respect for them.

I wouldn't be surprised if annoyed candidates report this issue for the OP. If one candidate complains about shitty interviews to the company, then it can be hand-waved away as them being sour grapes. But once nine or ten say the same thing, someone is going to realize that the problem is internal.

If you want actual advice... What I have done in the past is coach candidates that the interview process will suck but the job is good for xyz reasons. Its hard to do if you dont get to be the first touch point for the candidate but it did work at least 50% of the time.

Could it be he's sabotaging interviews because there are no funds for a full team?

Can you elaborate more on your "Other obligations"? This job sounds like a movie parody of a shitty office job and you need to get out of there ASAP.

Somewhat off topic, but this could lead to a fun hobby for people that are retired. Gather lists of bad companies like this and interview at them. Record the interactions then make youtube videos and ask their investors, board members and partners if this toxic liability is a good idea.

This guy is wasting everybody's time, either deliberately or grossly negligent. There should be a way for the candidates to sue him/the company for lost opportunity cost as candidates could have spent their time doing something worthwhile or even gainful.

Fortunately for us, there are no laws against wasting time, nor losing opportunity cost, nor doing gainful things with every moment, otherwise Hacker News would be long gone. ;) The manager might be wasting time, but we only have one lopsided view of the situation. Keep in mind that as far as we know, the manager might be protecting the team from something worse, and the employee may have no idea what it is.

Writing "wear a red tie" in 1pt email signatures is not just accidentally wasting time, or wasting time for procrastination/entertainment purposes. That's deliberate and he has to know he is playing with people's (professional) lives.

Good for him if he somehow does this to protect the team, but he is abusing candidates at the same time, so fuck that.

When I waste my time on hacker news, I know what I am doing, and hacker news is not trying to trick me, and hacker news does pretend to offer me money or a job.

An interview however suggest there is an opportunity for gainful employment, and if there really isn't and you sink time into that regardless, then that's a different beast.

The guy is absolutely definitely wasting time consciously and on purpose. Fully agree with you there. Figuring out how to fix that particular case still requires knowing the whole story. And yeah, when I interview, I know some of my time is going to be wasted, there’s no way around that, but it’s better to (1) research the job/company before interviewing, (2) use the interview as part of your research to filter out bad companies to work for like this one, (3) focus on the goal of finding a good employer, good salary, etc.

One way to look at this is that the manager might be, in the big picture, saving time for the candidates. It might be much worse for them if they were to take the job, it might be years of time wasting as opposed to an hour.

Sounds like he thinks of himself as an awesome super manager while at the same time being completely divorced from reality.

I am wondering if this is real or an Office/IT crowd fanfic.

     1. Join www.reddit.com/r/antiwork
     2. Get resume up to date
     3. Apply fast and furious
     4. Sign accepted offer at double what you're making
     5. Walk the fuck out 0 notice mic drop style

The faster you recognize poisonous woprkplaces would turn you over their ass if it made them a dime, you'll learn to play their game. And with the stunts listed, yeah, they deserve no notice and extreme prejudice.

Hopefully, when you leave, the dept/company will die. Ive seen that happen a LOT with someone doing 2x-3x the work they're getting paid for.

Work. Your. Wage.

I think one possibility is that the boss is trying to bypass hiring procedures to hire "his" candidate.

I've never been in this situation but I would probably take all those examples to his boss and demand they replace him or quit myself, he sounds like a complete asshole and possibly a sociopath.

Tell him to knock it the hell off

Be direct and show some authority in your domain

Run.

People on hacker news are extremely naive at career management. This is all the worst advice I have ever seen in my life.

If you complain about your boss in any way, and it isn’t fatal and you have no other plan, you are going to get targeted for destruction in 95% of work environments.

The fantasy that “Upper Management” somehow cares about your problems and are benevolent gods is often not a good assumption.

Furthermore, there are a lot of downsides to having peers. Unless you are the hiring manager and you need these people to get things done, why do you care at all?

Some of the happiest moments in my career came from when I was the only one doing the work. Those moments often ended when peers joined, took over parts of the work then started competing with me.

I have learned that peers are mostly competition.

If you are happy, have no competition, have a pay check - Why would you spend a single instant wanting to report your boss and screw up your life.

If you are happy, just be happy. It isn’t your job to save the company and be the hero.

you get absolutely nothing in return for complaining. What do you win here if you are successful? Do you want your boss’ job?

Yup. This is many data points of plainly toxic behavior by the mgr., and he's getting away with it.

Unless you actually know with solid evidence (multiple data points, all pointing in the same direction) or direct reliable communication (i.e., you really know the person, not just polite conversation with 'sure we care' platitudes), you must assume that do NOT have allies in higher management.

I'd usually try to make things work from where you're standing, but actively toxic environments are the clear exception. This qualifies, no question.

The only sane move here is to align your mallards as well as possible, find a new job and bolt. ASAP. Bonus points for the three of you doing it together.

> People on hacker news are extremely naive at career management. This is all the worst advice I have ever seen in my life.

My friend, the same should be said about your comments.

> Some of the happiest moments in my career came from when I was the only one doing the work. Those moments often ended when peers joined, took over parts of the work then started competing with me.

You are likely an introvert, which in and of itself is not wrong. What is wrong is assuming everyone wants to be an introvert like you.

Humans are highly social animals. When a person gets laid off, they experience the same hormonal and emotional response as losing a loved one or losing a limb. This is bc being laid off form your company is the equivalent of being banished from your tribe, and that means certain death from prehistoric times. Obviously, almost no one dies form being laid off, but that biological programming is still in the human psyche. Point being - the relationship with your tribe (the team you work with) is important.

> I have learned that peers are mostly competition.

You need to change your mindset, my friend. Have you not had the experience of a coworker helping you out when you really needed it? Have you never relied on a community or a tribe?

> People on hacker news are extremely naive at career management. This is all the worst advice I have ever seen in my life.

Agreed. It's obvious that the boss doesn't want to work and is just dragging OP along. The OP already said they One of the ways of minimizing harm in this scenario is by keeping your mouth shut and doing your job well enough so you don't get fired. Don't be emotionally invested in you work. Just put in your hours and get out. If you want to learn something, learn it in your free time. Going above your boss for an issue like this is very risky. Basically a 'he said she said' and if your boss has more social capital than you then your workplace becomes even worse. Does anybody actually think that what the boss is doing is a fireable offense? Because it's not. HR will most likely give them training or do nothing.

>I have learned that peers are mostly competition.

Don't agree on this. Everything else is pretty solid though. If you are trying to climb the social/corporate ladder then I can understand how you might view them as such but as an individual contributor its really a non issue.

The option is to get a new job lined up, or just deal with it. There's no incentive for this boss to change. You might get someone like this to change with an ultimatum that you're leaving for a new job but do you really want to stay somewhere like that??

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