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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

> Some candidates feel humiliated if their interview is cut short

As someone over 50, that interviewed at several places, before giving up, and accepting that I'm retired, I can say that there seem to be a number of companies that actively seek to humiliate prospective employees.

It's entirely possible that it was not the usual experience, but I have found that modern HR philosophy seems to be "Always keep the employee/candidate on their back foot." Always make sure the corporation is Alpha Dog.

A humiliating interview is a great way to filter out candidates that won't roll over for the Alpha.

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> modern HR philosophy seems to be "Always keep the employee/candidate on their back foot." Always make sure the corporation is Alpha Dog.

This is absolutely true. A good way of accomplishing a more submissive team is by making it more diverse. If the members of the team can't relate to one another, the less personal connection, and the more submissive each person is to the guys on top.

I am sure some people will think this is not the case and that companies just care about "making things right".

Learning how to understand, relate to, and collaborate with people who are different from you is part of growing up.

Sure, but do you think that's the reason why there is an interest in promoting diverse teams? For helping the people "grow up"? Besides, that's only true if the differences are relatively small, you can't understand and relate to everyone. You can obviously collaborate with them on a professional level.

I think mature individuals will be able to overlook significant differences in one another and focus on the outcome: helping the team and the business succeed. If I picked up a signal that a candidate wouldn’t meet this bar, I wouldn’t hire them.

Reminds me of working with Japanese teams.

Some of these guys hated each other, but, when the boss said "Go!" they put their differences aside, and all gave 110%, to meet the goal. They helped each other out, shared information, and never sabotaged anyone else's work.

Japan has the strongest teams that I've ever seen, but there's cultural reasons, and it would probably not scale to many other cultures. There's also tradeoffs, and many people would not be happy with those.

If you want a culture that is really good at ganging up on a problem, then Japan is a good bet.

They wouldn't dream of testing for "cultural fit," because that is assumed.

It's also a shady technique some companies use to preemptively soften up a candidate they genuinely want for negotiations. They really want you but don't want you to think that so they can get you to accept less in the negotiation. Needless to say, the antidote is to interview as widely as possible even when you're in demand, to get a more objective view of your market value. Also needless to say, it's a huge red flag for company culture. If they don't think you're great, why are they making an offer? Are all your coworkers and managers also going to be people they don't think are great but settled for anyway? Or is it that they're not very profitable and can't afford to pay for quality? Do you want to work for someone who may not be in business much longer?

> If they don't think you're great, why are they making an offer?

They could actually think you are indeed great but want to get you at the lowest possible price.

> Are all your coworkers and managers also going to be people they don't think are great but settled for anyway?

Extremely likely.

> Or is it that they're not very profitable and can't afford to pay for quality?

That one is 50/50, many companies, even those not very successful, can afford programmers just fine, but they want to get away with paying less.

> Do you want to work for someone who may not be in business much longer?

Of course not, this is why I am asking uncomfortable questions during the interview, like are they profitable, are their customers bound with longer-term contracts, do they expect sudden inflow of competition, are there any regulation changes on the horizon, and others.

> They really want you but don't want you to think that so they can get you to accept less in the negotiation.

I wouldn't call this shady, it's just basic business. If you want to buy a house, and you want to lower the price, you can't act all excited.

That's an arm's length transaction with a counterparty you'll never see again.

An employer-employee relationship lasts for years, perhaps many years, and requires the employee to act as the agent of the employer, repeatedly.

Would you accept this kind of thing if you can help it from a potential future spouse?

Come on.

They're welcome to try this stunt. They're also welcome to lose their best candidates who would have been most loyal after showing a lack of capacity for loyalty on day zero, and instead select for only those candidates who are equally disloyal in return.

> They're also welcome to lose their best candidates who would have been most loyal after showing a lack of capacity for loyalty on day zero, and instead select for only those candidates who are equally disloyal in return.

I have been contracting for little over 8 years now and I can tell you this happens a lot. Likely, really a lot. Very often.

And then they moan that programmers are overpaid divas who can't achieve anything, while just yesterday their 20-year old HR girl refused yet another NASA level 40-50 year old guy who can practically solve half the tech problems of the company, because she couldn't relate to him in a semi-informal interview.

Yep. This happens. All the time.

> A humiliating interview, is a great way to filter out candidates that won't roll over for the Alpha.

Having the employee commit to more interviews is also a great way to get them into a sunk cost fallacy mindset, which might lead to them accepting a lower offer. There was an article about this on HN a while ago, where it was revealed that Meta would lowball you, unless you had a competing offer on the table (which can be hard to get when you need to do several interview rounds at several companies).

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