Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I recently drove 3 hours to a technical interview. I had done plenty of screening, including screenshare while I wrote code to the guy's delight.

He invited me down for the technical interview. I came down a week later. His wife had just delivered a baby, so he was out. The guys in the room were a business level ex-marine who was there for god knows why, and a technical dude who clearly was pissed he had to sink to the level of doing the interview in the first place.

For the first 45 minutes, I aced everything he threw at me, and I noticed that he wouldn't drill in on anything that I clearly knew very well. He kept jumping from topic to topic, and eventually asked to do an extremely tricky SQL query, but write the code to do it in awk on the whiteboard. The job posting said nothing about awk, and I told him I didn't know awk that well. He then sensed i wasn't a command line master (the job posting said nothing about needing to be a fucking sysadmin or know advanced CL stuff) and hammered me on things that I had already said I didn't know.

2 things became clear:

He wanted to show off to his boss and make himself look like a badass while simultaneously making me look incompetent.

There was no fucking way I was going to accept a job working here if it was offered.

I didn't so much as get a phone call or an email to thank me for driving 6 hours round trip. Nothing. Which screams out to me that this company sucked.

I recently flew in for a 4-hour on-site interview halfway across the continent, which included a live test of programmer skill which required knowledge of javascript, bash shell commands, and Google searching, along with exposure to the company's internal tools. Also featured was an abstract problem solving interview, and a short sales pitch for myself in front of the whole team.

After I left, I also did not get so much as a phone call or e-mail. Neither thank you nor followup. When I attempted to re-establish contact, it was like shouting into a black hole.

The feedback I received on site from the interviewers was neutral to positive, with one interviewer claiming that I was the only applicant to come up with the correct response to their abstract brainteaser.

If I take two whole days off from my existing job to come to you and indulge you in your cute little skill tests intended to prove my bona fides, you ought to have the decency to follow up.

So you're not the only person to be on the receiving end of this unacceptable behavior from interviewing companies.

holy shit. I'd be furious.

In my case, I was pissed, but mainly due to opportunity cost rather than the trip itself.

By the way, you should email their founder and let them know. I doubt he/she is aware of this, and would be equally furious to know that their workers are burning bridges like this, because that's exactly what they did.

In my case, the company did actually burn a bridge. My much larger company was looking for a strategic partner with high levels of data science expertise on sensor based data. This particular company came into consideration, and I made sure to remove them from selection. Hell hath no fury like a geek scorned.

Founder? The company in question was founded in 1986 and swallowed by a multinational in 2000. If I'm going to tilt at windmills, I'd prefer to aim my lance at those that have not yet unseated me.

A bit of a side note, but would it be acceptable to request to be re-imbursed for travel expenses in a case like this?

Companies routinely pay for airfare and lodging, it would seem to only make sense if they also paid for long car trips, no?

Absolutely, and in the United States there's a standard mileage rate that the IRS will let you use for computing a tax deduction (if it's for business), which companies often use as the amount to reimburse. For 2014 it's $0.56/mile. Obviously a company is under no obligation to reimburse you for travel expenses to an interview, but in the case of a long drive like that I would certainly ask. In fact, for a 3-hour drive each way I would probably also ask to be put up in a hotel room the night before the interview, reimbursed by the company, so that I wouldn't be tired from the drive on the day of the interview.

See http://www.irs.gov/2014-Standard-Mileage-Rates-for-Business,... for more details.

This sums up the general problem with intervie(wer)s: most of them are wrongly focused on "catching the candidate on incompetence" instead of verifying how well will s/he perform on a given job.

During my last job hunt, I attended an interview at a mega corp. A interviewer walked in and then the interview started. Not sure why, As it went along, the guy seemed to get angry and angrier every time I answered a question. It was weird behavior.

But from what I know, running into such people is pretty common in interviews.

I think that last sentence is the key point here - it doesn't sound like somewhere that would be a very friendly environment in general. This kind of thing wouldn't happen where I work, but either way, the technical interview isn't really at fault.

Yeah, that pretty much sucks. I generally try and ask people about what they did and drill into whatever it is they know, but most interviews I've gone on the interviewer wants you to know the stuff the interviewer knows/is good at.

The applicant is always wrong.

Perhaps your comment was intended as a sarcasm, in which role it serves admirably. I'll please myself nonetheless to answer as though it were genuine: If you want to make absolutely certain that you never, ever hire the best candidate you can find for any of your positions, I can't think of a better way of doing so than to bring this sort of attitude to the hiring process.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com