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> But what really bothers me is that you got a reply from a no-reply address. What the actual fuck. You were there for an on-site interview, this is not the situation where you send people automated no-reply-click-this-link mails.

Yah. Three years ago, When I was fresh out of school, I interviewed at a very popular startup. The interview went reasonably well, with the team lead asking me questions like when I would be able to join and so on. I had a great rapport with their HR guy too. It was kind of harsh to casually get a reject from a automated no reply email.

Two years later. The same guy, the lead of the team randomly emails me telling me I have a "great profile" and if I would like to grab coffee with him. I was amused to find out when I met him in person that he had no idea that I had come there previously. And all the assorted bullshit that went through. To be frank, I never seriously considered the offer the second time around. (I have a policy of never trying the fish if there is a cockroach running around in the floor of the restaurant. )

It is not fucking hard to send a personal email to someone who came all the way for face time with your company. In fact, it says a lot about your company's culture and attention to the little things.

Sometimes it's not a good idea to give too much feedback, if any at all.

I used to automatically provide feedback of why a candidate did not pass the interview, then I had a few sour encounters where the candidate just did not react professionally. For example, one candidate bemoaned the emphasis on CS fundamentals in our interview. In that case, the candidate was coming in from a mostly front-end webdev background, but our tech stack extends far below the typical webdev "full stack", where knowledge of OS/Networking/Compiler fundamentals is helpful in everyday design decisions. As a small team, we bias towards generalists for now, so while the person might be a great fit for his skillset in another organization, it just wasn't a great fit for us at that time. I tried to explain this, but I received a wall of text complaint email back. I had taken an hour out of my day to write immediate and specific feedback about his interview, and all I got was pushback. This is probably why HR stands between engineers and candidates.

For some reason your "I had taken an hour out of my day" comment really bothers me.

The guy you interviewed probably spent ~4 hours preparing for the interview and then all of the time in the actual interview.

Let's say he takes 7 hours out of his life to interview for your place. The least he deserves is a legit reason why he was declined because your company still benefits from not hiring him. You get to refine your interview process based on real feedback.

The interviewee's time is just as valuable as yours. A wall of text complaint sounds pretty good. There's probably a lot of good feedback in there unless it happened to be filled with insults and other garbage in which case you should have been able to figure this out quickly and then not replied.

If you give a reason, there's a small chance that you may have to defend that reason legally. Therefore, it's best to not give a specific reason. It's harsh, but protection of the business is more of a priority than potentially hurting someone's feelings by not giving a reason.

It's true. Sometimes giving your reasoning about things just leads to the other person trying to point out why your reasons are wrong. Rather than taking it as information they can use to improve their chances with other jobs, it's like they think it's an argument that, if they could win it, would lead to them being hired anyway.

> Sometimes it's not a good idea to give too much feedback, if any at all.

Sure. But a form letter from the HR person saying you are not a good fit is way better than your application has been rejected blah blah blah. Tech, especially Data Science is a small fucking place. Making enemies is incredibly bad. I know that I would go out of my way to strongly recommend that any of my friends who are ever rarely in the job market to not look at that company, or the tech lead.

Also, to look at it from other point of you. I once interviewed at another startup where the guy gave me cold harsh feedback as to why I was not the right fit. I still respect him for doing that. It was not the right fit for me. But, I would heartily recommend the place to anyone else who I think would be the right fit.

"But what really bothers me is that you got a reply from a no-reply address."

That would have bothered me too. But it could have been even worse. I've read plenty of accounts of how job candidates didn't get any reply at all after having interviewed for a position. Being busy doesn't exempt a company from the obligation to exercise common decency.

A few months ago I went to two on-site interviews with a company that a friend (who works there) referred me to. They were the ones to call me up asking for an interview. The second interview was a coding one, which I did pretty well at. I never even heard back from them.

Tbh, thinking about it now; I dont think I would want to work at a company that doesn't have the courtesy to reply to someone they approached to come and interview with them. Particularly someone who was referred there by one of their employees.

I agree the no-reply@company.com was weird. Btw, I'm not sure if it was a cultural fit, because I interviewed with 8 people up until the meeting with the head of engineering, and all gave me the thumbs up.

Maybe I was just not prepared enough for my conversation with the head of engineering. Still though, I would love to know why.

Thank you for your advice, I feel that's really all I can do. Still, it's hard to not let this get to me.

> it's hard to not let this get to me.

I have not had something like this happen to me, but I am sure it will get easier after another round of interviews with another company. You will almost forget about this experience after you land a good opportunity, other than for the anecdotal value :-)

> it's hard to not let this get to me.

Don't let it bother you and just think of it as another story to tell[1]. If the no-reply bothers you, then they probably have a lot of other habits in how they treat people that would really bother you if you had got the job. Its the canary in the mine. Don't think of it as getting rejected, think of it as dodging a bullet.

1) my most wtf? story is getting rejected for an internship because the area code of the high school and college I went to was the same. Told me that over the phone. I did at least point out the whole state is one area code.

> what really bothers me is that you got a reply from a no-reply address

I had pretty much the opposite rejection experience. I had interviewed on-site with Stripe, but for some reason was turned down. A week or so later I got a thank you card signed by all the people who had interviewed me. (Actually, the reason I applied was because of a handwritten card in response to the first Capture-the-Flag.)

> But what really bothers me is that you got a reply from a no-reply address.

I've had interviews where you go from frequent emails and phone-calls, everything looks like it is going wonderfully, and then you hear nothing. Silence. Even when you try to chase things up after a few days.

Having no reply is deeply frustrating, although after a few days I guess you learn to take the hint.

At a small company, there's never an excuse to not send a personal email to a candidate.