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> The best candidates light up when they have a chance to explain something cool, no matter who is listening and get even more excited when you ask a question about a detail.

I agree this is true in a general human-conversation sense: many good engineers like discussing things with non-engineers if the latter show any interest, and the best can actually explain things in understandable ways. But I think in the context of Corporate Bureaucracy things can be a bit different: I can forgive somebody who's normally a patient explainer being frustrated if they feel their time is being wasted by endless HR bureaucracy. In particular, there's a difference between someone asking you about a detail because they're actually interested in it, and someone asking about it even though they don't care at all, because it's on a checklist and their job is to plow through the checklist.

Of course, that still wouldn't justify being a condescending ass, and certainly wouldn't justify giving wrong answers! If I felt the other person was uninterested and operating by rote, I would probably just recite correct, by-the-book answers.

I look a lot like a "pointy haired boss" type.

I used this to my advantage at times in interviews, I allow the candidate to think I don't know much about the topic at hand. It's nice to see how they can articulate something and you can smell the BS quickly.

That said I am looking for Attitude, Aptitude and Fit. It would be hard for me to spend much time with someone who started the call like that, I would have most likely politely bowed out pretty quickly (i.e. you failed Attitude in the first 30 seconds).

I thought that was needlessly vindictive. If you don't like the guy that much, just stop the interview.

Vindictive would be halting the interview immediately because the candidate made the (egregious) mistake. She's playing this part of the story for humor, but one imagines that a non-brain-damaged candidate could immediately correct for that boneheaded move. "Wow. I'm so embarrassed. I must sound like a complete tool. It's been a rough couple weeks dealing with HR teams. I'm very sorry, can we start over?" And, what she's saying is, predictably enough, most nerd candidates don't do this.

I don't know. In a world of sucky interviews, wasting a candidate's time on purpose, because they mistook you with an HR (statistically, that's a much more probable occurrence) is as unethical as it gets short of plain lying in the interview result sheet.

I can only hope that her not-that-productive-in-interviewing colleagues don't do such shit.

If she'd just stopped the interview, some other HN commenter would be writing an angry post about how that was unfair, too.

Not being able to just stop the interview must be a US thing. I'd take blunt response over sadistic 'derpy' torture any time.

There are two reasons for not just stopping the interview.

One is the corporate image that the company tries to project.

The other is that upset interviewees in the US occasionally develop theories about why they might have been discriminated against. And their mis-memories about what was said can figure into that. No matter how far off base, the lawsuits are expensive, and the truth does not always win you the case.

Therefore every competent HR person and anyone with experience in this part of the law will tell you that you never give anything away about why someone failed the interview.

"Oh, this is (candidate), but let me save us some time. I thought this was going to be a technical interview." That guy bombed the interview right then and there. I didn't tell him that, though. I let him dig the deepest hole he could imagine by doing my best ditzy/derpy voice and just saying things like "they want me to ask about the load... average...?". He'd make up some garbage, and I'd log all of it. This way I could bury him both for being a sexist bastard and for being a lying piece of trash at the same time.

He has already sunk the interview in her eyes, but she doesn't want to tell her employer that this guy bombed due to his interactions in the first 30 seconds with her. Moreover, he is a sexist bastard.

He then tells her something she disagrees technically about load average, and this makes him a lying piece of trash.

Regardless, he has bombed and sunk the interview, and her only duty now is to spend another 44:30 seconds to bury him.

Of course, she is playing this for humor, so I am out of line for thinking Rachel sounds like a jackass who has done a disservice to the candidate as well as a disservice to her employer.

So the sexist guy has an incorrect opinion on women in tech. He encounters one, who decides to play along with his stereotype rather than just be who she is. While it's not her responsibility to teach him not to be sexist, it's also specifically avoiding allowing him to see a positive role model. And all out of a vindictive power play. If he has 'already lost the interview', then there is no point in keeping up with the charade - you've already made your evaluation and now you're just being a cat playing with a mouse.

And at the end of the interview, we are left with a sexist man who has had his preconceived notions confirmed by encountering a female tech. That's something of an own-goal.

Wow, so Rachel encounters a sexist jerk, and then asks him a number of questions to let him hang himself, and it is Rachel who is the problem?

Given they have very few women interviewers, and the guy has to work in a team, any woman who has the unfortunate luck to work in the jerk's team is going to have their life made difficult. Rachel seems to have done a service to the company by flunking him, IMHO.

That's a good strawman fallacy you've got going there. It's pretty clear that I think the main problem is the sexist man.

Rachel didn't 'ask him a number of questions', she purposefully played the role of a ditzy, clueless airhead to play to his stereotypes rather than just ask the questions straight. Sure, it might feel good at the time and we can all laugh at the guy, ha ha, but what actually happened was the guy got reinforcement for his shitty behaviour. If the guy was giving weak answers, then being a straight interviewer isn't going to suddenly make him Einstein.

He might have gotten reinforced for his bad behaviour, but he still didn't get the job. To my mind, serves him right.

You're assuming there can only be one problem. Aside from being dishonest, carrying on a charade for an hour is a huge avoidable waste of time for everyone involved.

At large company, it's too much trouble to end the interview early. I ended an technical phone screen after five minutes, when I found a senior rails candidate had fudged his employment history and couldn't tell me anything useful about rails.

I had to spend the next half hour talking with recruiting and hr about this guy's claims of me verbally abusing him. They probably gave him another phone screen just to CYA.

Also, it's useful to gather evidence, because some hiring manager who has three more headcount to fill in the next two months before his performance review is going to wonder loudly if it was really sexism, or if we threw out a sterling resume over a misunderstanding.

CYA was my immediate thought too.

What if he has impressed everyone else in the process so far? Maybe he's very personable when talking to men, or other interviewers happened to not ask questions that would have revealed skill deficiencies.

If they want to hire him, saying he made a sexist comment might not prevent the hire. "Maybe he's not that bad." But if you have a couple of comments he made, and can show that he isn't technically proficient (or merely average) then you have evidence other people can use to make a good decision.

> statistically, that's a much more probable occurrence

Irrelevant even if it's true. If you're going to make that sort of assumption about people, knowing nothing more than their gender, I don't want to hire you.

Again, my point is not that the candidate doesn't pass, but that everyone's time is wasted. Just end the interview. I don't know why it should become a torture instead.

Knowing why similar episodes happen in first place also helps. Some people are socially awkward. Some people are tired of and irritated by numerous phone screens without followups. Some people come from another culture. Some people are genuine assholes, though, no doubt about that.

Still, I am surprised that such a tenured interviewer doesn't know that much about interviewees.

I know the process involved here. The reason why he knew to say that this was supposed to be the technical interview is that he was told he would be getting a technical interview. Therefore, statistically, he should expect that he's getting a technical interview no matter who he hears.

Secondly, even if you don't like your interviewer, if you're asked technical questions in a phone interview, it is just common sense to give the best answers you can. If you're competent, before long you'll realize that the person at the other end actually does understand what they are talking about.

In this case I fully agree with her judgement and decision. The fact that the interviewee failed to realize that he was getting a technical interview when told he would get one says that he was incompetent. The fact that he was then unable to answer the technical questions he was asked them says that she discovered ample cause to fail him. (No surprise - most interviewees will fail the interview process.)

He never got any feedback that he'd made a mistake. He thought he was talking to a recruiter, and she played that role, as if she wasn't an engineer at all.

A "no hire" is probably appropriate in that case, though, as anyone who makes that many assumptions without verifying that they're correct probably would make a terrible engineer anyway.

He's presumably a grown man at this point, not a preteen. He shouldn't need that sort of feedback. If he was confused as to what her role with the company was (for any reason) he should have just asked.

It's possible it was an innocent mistake, and she didn't allow that mistake to surface. Maybe he mistook her for someone he'd already spoken with. Maybe the recruiter he talked to was named Rachel and/or had a similar voice, or even a recruiter at a different company, and he got confused.

Confusions like that would have easily surfaced if she had asked "What made you to believe this isn't the technical interview?", but instead she played the part of a less technical recruiter trying to give a technical interview.

As the candidate, that's a curveball you should be able to handle and you should still act professionally.

If I went to interview with some small company and the technical interviewer didn't seem to know what they were doing, that would certainly be a mark against the company in my book. If they extended an offer, I might decide not to take the job.

But things can happen. What if the real technical interviewer had a sudden crisis come up and someone else without much experience was substituting in? If you do a good job they may be impressed with your communication skills on technical issues when talking to less technical employees. Maybe you'd get a further interview with the more technical person since you did a good job in that accidental circumstance.

There are quite a few people here saying she was unprofessional for handling things that way, that she should have cut the interview short. If he thought company was acting unprofessionally, he could have just cut the interview short, saying he didn't think it would be a fit.

For all we know, as soon as the interview started he made up his mind and stopped trying.