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Comment by 0xmattf | Hacker News Reader

You reminded me of one of the first interviews I ever had in tech. I took 2 phone screens, and a take home assignment. Last step: Zoom interview with some of the IT team (3 people). It started well, but I slowly started panicking. All three of them were shooting questions at me, which I answered them all correctly, as far as I know, but I was so... cold. Started stammering my words and speaking like a terrified child at the principals office.

I could observe myself and knew what I looked like, but couldn't break it. The CTO stopped me as I was speaking and said "this isn't going to work". As soon as he said that, I ended the call. I had some major imposter syndrome during that time, I think that played a huge role in my fumble. Still massively cringe when I think about that, though.

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Honestly, it sounds to me like the CTO, not you, is the one who should be embarrassed by memories of that experience. Unless being a polished speaker under high pressure situations was a requirement for the job, the CTO, as leader, should have had the skill to make you more comfortable expressing your knowledge and skills.

I have memories of experiences freezing up and losing the physical control required to speak as well, so I have empathy.

(Having such experiences as a child are what led to me joining the high school speech team doing extemporaneous and impromptu events to get over them. I eventually went on to be a regional champion and a state competitor, but I still sometimes have to fight the physical tension when speaking in certain situations).

One of my worst experiences as a junior member of our interview team was when a candidate was "walked out" when the hiring manager decided that the person was not going to work out. I still feel embarrassed about it myself. What a terrible experience for the interviewee.

That shit makes me so mad. Bringing people to your office in a truly vulnerable state - they're inviting you to judge them. Anyone who doesn't treat them with compassion and kindness lacks what it takes to be a good leader.

I've had the pleasure of interviewing someone, for a coding job in C, where it became clear within 10 minutes that they just didn't know C beyond "hello world". Through body language etc they indicated they weren't chagrined by their lack of knowledge and we should just move on with the interview. At one point I said literally, "You know this interview is for a C coding position, right?" I stopped that interview early and recommended we let the candidate go without completing the loop. No sense in wasting everyone's time and creating some kind of false hope.

This is one of those cases where "nice" != "compassionate". They applied for a job they were not qualified for. We could have been "nice" and held up the delusion that we were still considering them, and let them down later with some vacuous corporate platitude like "you were great but we ultimately gave the role to a stronger candidate". Providing instant feedback that their skills were just not up to snuff is not 'nice' but it's more compassionate in the long run.

> We could have been "nice" and held up the delusion that we were still considering them, and let them down later with some vacuous corporate platitude like "you were great but we ultimately gave the role to a stronger candidate". Providing instant feedback that their skills were just not up to snuff is not 'nice' but it's more compassionate in the long run

You're right, however

> At one point I said literally, "You know this interview is for a C coding position, right?"

This is absolutely not the right way to go about it.

It's completely fair to say "hey, thanks for your time but we really need someone with C experience and we don't think you're a good fit for what we're looking for", but that's not even close to what it sounds like you did

You can cut an interview short and make it clear they won't be considered without being a huge asshole about it

Welp, this was 20 years ago and I was 25, and literally no one ever gave me any instruction on how to conduct interviews (over my entire career). If I was a "huge asshole" to this person, then I'm sorry, that wasn't my intent, and I hope they're doing well and weren't too negatively impacted by my attitude.

To be honest though, the whole corporate world is institutionalized assholery, from giving candidates take-home coding assignments and then ghosting them, to laying people off without even giving them a chance to say goodbye to their coworkers. The entire leadership of that particular startup was assholes through and through. It's difficult to maintain one's humanity in the face of that (esp at a young age) and I'm glad to be out of that game.

I wouldn't judge based on the limited context we've provided.

I've interviewed candidates for jobs requiring highly specific skills who claimed to have those skills, but in the interview they kept trying to divert the topic to something else. An analogy would be bringing someone in for a C interview and they keep trying to write all the answers in Python and pretend that C and Python are interchangeable.

So some times, asking the candidate if they know what they're interviewing for is really called for. You want to be sure the person understood the interview, not that they were confused by the questions.

Yeah, I agree with you. There is a right way to do that, and I assumed the comment I was replying to was describing the wrong way to do it given their reaction.

I've ended plenty of interviews early when it's clear the candidate isn't going to work out. I agree there's no point in wasting everyone's time, and hiring is time consuming enough. But there's a way to do it with kindness, and I think everyone in the interviewer's chair should have some sense of how. (That said, there are some candidates that are going to take rejection poorly no matter what - you can control how you treat a candidate but now how they react).

I was that person once. It was horrible because the entire time during the interview I knew I was unqualified, and I had to do a coding task to prove it. But before the job, I had no idea, the recruitment agent assured me I had enough experience and I could learn more on the job.

There's a right and wrong to do this.

Some of my worst interview memories are from a company where the VP leading hiring had ideas that candidates needed to be made to feel as comfortable and positive as possible and treated equally, including giving them the same interview length after they got past the screener.

The screener mostly filtered out unqualified candidates, but when someone slipped through and then was obviously not going to make it through the interview we all had to pretend that they were doing a great job and keep pushing through anyway. There was lots of fake encouragement that most candidates could see right through. Really painful for everyone to have to sit through interview sessions when everyone in the room, including the candidate, knows it's not going to work out.

That's just a tech version of the age-old hostile (panel) interview.

I don't think it's a useful interview practice, at least in tech, below director level, but you just have to keep your composure and gently assert control. If that CTO favored it maybe their company culture was unusually aggressive.

tbf it sounds like you might have dodged a bullet there, so try to not beat yourself up too much for thinking you weren’t good enough.

we all have imposter syndrome when we start out. as long as you didn’t outright obviously lie or something then you probably didn’t do anything particularly wrong that’s worthy of the cringe.

(i’ve done the exact same thing in interviews, most of us probably have some story like that).

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