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Telling a candidate for a 35k/yr CSR position about your struggles finding paid apartment cleaning while at Harvard is in fact tone deaf. That's not a crime, but it's germane. It speaks to mismanagement.

Requiring employees to buy their own computers is past unprofessional; it implies among other things zero IT security. For a CSR position that depends on IT connectivity, it's economically abusive. But it's also penny-wise-pound-foolish. It speaks to mismanagement.

The constant "want to hear a joke" sexist/racist stuff is unlawful. An employee that leaves because they feel forced to make a decision between a hostile environment and no job has a claim against the company. It does not matter if it was supported by the people "working there at the time". It's an example of company mismanagement.

I agree. One (among many) issue here is that this person should have been interviewing with the actual support team and not with the founder.

> "Having to provide your own device is not really that insane for small teams."

Not that unusual to garage or ramen-stage companies sure, but these are guys with an office in one of the hottest startup hubs of Manhattan with $45 million in funding.

It's also insane - trusting hardware of unknown provenance with your customer experience? Is it really that hard to buy a few iMacs (or cheapo Dell desktops if that's your speed) for your support reps to use? That way hardware that's critical to your support infrastructure isn't traveling on the subway every day, getting broken, stolen, or god-knows-what.

This is a Series B startup with $45m in funding so far, they should be way past the point of being able to buy some company machines for people to work on.

How does a company like this get $45 million in funding? Is that really cash in the bank, or "on paper, committed under certain circumstances, with only $1 million actually in the bank as of today?"

I guess I just don't understand how a business like this could ever get funded to $45 million.

Where's the competitive advantage?

India sent a satellite to orbit mars for $74 million, these guys have people answering phones to book odd jobs for $45 million?

> India sent a satellite to orbit mars for $74 million, these guys have people answering phones to book odd jobs for $45 million?

And the phones aren't even provided by the $45,000,000! Lunch is though, so maybe that's what the big bucks get you.

If you have somebody at your company who is well connected, good at making connections and is good at delivering presentations to investors, then you can get money even if your office is poorly run.

At a minimum buy some mac mini's to leave in the office with some phones. Requiring use of own hardware on top of 12 hour shifts for a company with $45m in funding is just silly.

And possibly illegal.

Yep, given the size, it's a bit insane.

> The author of this piece made the classic, and often unavoidable mistake of being between a rock and a hard place and not vetting the company she interviewed at and ultimately worked for for a day.

Vetting a place for a hostile work environment, esp. when the company is small and has had few employees, is really difficult.

> First, I didn't find Ajay's interview to be that weird, saying why you came up with the idea for your company and your qualifications should be expected, not interpreted as a way for the founder to diminish the potential future employee. If you don't believe in your leaders, and don't trust them, you are in a lot of trouble.

His attitude isn't troubling except in hindsight after we learn that sexism and sexual harassment are A-OK in the office and that service providers shoulder a ton of blame for little reward.

> 12 hour days is insane, and wrong. Having to provide your own device is not really that insane for small teams. Obviously it's great if a company provides it, and probably larger companies should always provide a workstation, but this doesn't come across as totally abnormal.

For the low pay those customer service people received, it is abhorrent that they must also pay for supplies to do their basic job. It's a safe bet to say that the programmers there didn't have to buy their own desktops for development.

> The constant "want to hear a joke" and racist/sexist tone at the company is also not acceptable, but clearly was supported by the people working there at the time, if the anecdote is taken at face value.

Uh, the author clearly related that several people seemed uncomfortable by the sexual harassment in the office. Did you even read the anecdote about 'Josh' being harassed in plain view of the office?!

> There appear to be a lot of growing pains at Handy, which isn't a surprise, but hopefully they can move fast and get their support/service wing to be as tight and focused as the rest of their team.

A hostile workplace, sexual harassment, demeaning low wage service providers, and being general assholes isn't growing pains, it's a sign that the company is horrible and no one should do business with them.

> Vetting a place for a hostile work environment, esp. when the company is small and has had few employees, is really difficult.

From the anecdote, it doesn't sound like she interviewed with anyone from the support team, that is a big problem and something she could have asked about. You're right, it's easy to hide, but since she only worked there one day and ran into this, it seems likely it would have been a red flag in the interview process.

> His attitude isn't troubling except in hindsight after we learn that sexism and sexual harassment are A-OK

I agree, which is why I said "but clearly was supported by the people working there at the time" so I'm not sure why you said:

> Uh, the author clearly related that several people seemed uncomfortable by the sexual harassment in the office.

Being uncomfortable with it doesn't mean that it isn't pervasive and effectively sanctioned by the company. So I think we actually agree here, maybe I've phrased something poorly, sorry about that.

> For the low pay those customer service people received, it is abhorrent that they must also pay for supplies

I agree, they should provide equipment at this company, given the context, and the salary of the service employees. My reaction is that I've done this kind of work and this seems to be a common situation at many companies, again this is why I said engineers may not relate well to the story.

You should check with your less prestigious teams and make sure they are getting the same care and attention that your engineers are, you may be surprised at how poorly non technical people are treated even at your own companies.

> From the anecdote, it doesn't sound like she interviewed with anyone from the support team, that is a big problem and something she could have asked about. You're right, it's easy to hide, but since she only worked there one day and ran into this, it seems likely it would have been a red flag in the interview process.

Nobody should ever have to vet a workplace to see if it has a hostile work environment!

And how would you vet for that anyways? If the candidate were to ask "do you tolerate/encourage racist/sexist/homophobic jokes?", would the interviewer ever respond in the affirmative?

I agree, nobody should have to, and I don't think I ever suggested that people should! Hostile work environments exist, and there are things an interviewee can do to try to pick up on them.

First step is to actually interview with people from the team that will be your peers, not just your superior. It sounds like the author didn't do that, which is a huge red flag, again, this all seems to boil down to the author being desperately in need of work and not responding to the red flags that were already present.

saying why you came up with the idea for your company

No, that's puffery. No-one cares except him. The interviewee wants to know what kind of work she will be doing, what the pay is, what the benefits are, and the expected working hours. Anything else is way down the list, especially for a low level employee.

Having to provide your own device is not really that insane for small teams

Yes, it is. Do they bring their own chairs and tables, too? It's a business with employees FFS. I might let this go if they were contractors, but you do business on company-owned equipment with specific exceptions as needed.

It's super easy to pay for a trial period

If they work for you, you pay them. End of story. My kid was supposed to work on a neighbor's farm, but got let go after 1/2 hour due to illness. He was still paid for that 1/2 hour. Again, it's a business

Not having any onboarding, given that the trial was for a day isn't too surprising

The only reason it's not surprising is because they have already shown how disorganized they are. Seriously, I've had temp jobs where I was supposed to work one day and the owner still took 10 minutes to explain what I was supposed to do for that day!

These aren't "growing pains." This is a purported business operating like a frat house. Yes, I seriously hope they improved over what it shown here but as it is, I'm still amazed somebody actually gave them money. I am really in the wrong business!

I should have clarified, by not insane, I mean, this is standard for people who are looking for jobs in support/service, so it doesn't come as a surprise. It is insane by objective standards, and given the context of the company the author interviewed at.

If anyone is looking to build a support/service team, here's a few simple steps to make part of your interview process:

1. Before a phone screen, send several real problems you've encountered and have the candidate write what they would respond, these can be happy and unhappy customers, and they should be answerable without any special knowledge of the company, or with resources available to them (a FAQ page etc...)

Answers should be empathetic, recognize the emotion/state of the person on the other end and attempt to be responsive and human, and apologetic if necessary. Ideally, provide at least one actual response so the candidate can get an idea of what your company's tone is. Some favor long, descriptive answers, others go for short, direct answers. It highly depends on your customers.

2. On the phone, do a live writing exercise (like live coding) see how they respond to a question and how they write while being observed. If your service/support is primarily over the phone, replace writing with a simulated phone call from a customer.

This is mainly to see if they can write ad-hoc, this doesn't even need to be a specific support/service question, it could be something like, write in as much detail as possible about the last amazing meal you had. A lot of support/service is being able to respond quickly and descriptively, and having good communication skills.

3. Onsite, you guessed it, more writing. If you have a technical product, you can add some more technical things here that may involve interacting with your product/internal tools. Have them debug something that actually has happened in the past, or a common issue that your customers run into.

This can be guided, you should help them along if they need it, similar to a complex programming problem, course correct and see how they respond to guidance.

0. Put your salary range and benefits package in the want ad so as not to waste people's time.

But how will you lowball candidates if you do that?

Working at places you love and believe in is for trustafarians. If you manage to do that, congrats -- seriously. You're lucky. Many people have to be practical about paying rent and bills, and that often requires compromises.

Also, bring your own laptop is cool now? Shall I start bringing office furniture to work too?

> Working at places you love and believe in is for trustafarians

Even worse, it bids down the price of labor for people who actually work for a living.

> The author of this piece made the classic, and often unavoidable mistake of being between a rock and a hard place and not vetting the company she interviewed at

> Even if you're not an engineer/designer/data scientist (or one of the typically highly desired people for a startup), you should be working at places you love and believe in

Look.

The job market most people participate in is very, very different than the job market for Silicon Valley engineers. In the job market most people participate in, there aren't a whole lot of jobs to go around, at the moment. This means that participants don't have the luxury of having so many opportunities thrown at them that they can afford to pick and choose between them, or to walk away from one just because a place they "love and believe in" more might come along tomorrow. Walking away from a paying job could mean weeks or months or even years of unemployment. Not "funemployment," but the real kind, where you lose sleep at night wondering how you're going to make next month's rent.

In that kind of environment, you can't blame people for taking a paying job when one is offered to them. If you were in their position, I guaran-dang-tee that you would do the exact same thing. When you have few options, you take the least bad one that's on offer, not the perfect golden unicorn of your dreams.

> If you don't believe in your leaders, and don't trust them, you are in a lot of trouble.

You know what real leaders do? Real leaders lead. They don't let an office full of people they are paying run around saying and doing potentially legally actionable things on the company's dime instead of getting work done, for instance. They organize those people into functional teams, and keep those teams so busy working on things that create value for the business that they don't have time to pretend they're back playing Ultimate Frisbee on the quad.

> 12 hour days is insane, and wrong

And also potentially, um, illegal. You know?

> The constant 'want to hear a joke' and racist/sexist tone at the company is also not acceptable, but clearly was supported by the people working there at the time

Again, real leaders lead. If there's an environment in a workplace where behavior like this flourishes, it's because the managers are OK with it flourishing. If they weren't, they would put a stop to it. They don't, so they are.

One of the subjects HN is obsessed with is "culture," but many HNers seem to not understand that culture is not just a synonym for "dumb rules we force underlings to follow." If you're in management, culture is the tone you set through the decisions you make. And if the story is anything close to accurate, at Handy those decisions resulted in a culture where playing with toy helicopters and telling "ching-chong-Chinaman" jokes are a higher priority than making sure their products and services are excellent, obeying the law, or even just being a decent human being.

If I were an investor in that company, I'd be pretty furious about that.

> Look. The job market most people participate in is very, very different than the job market for Silicon Valley engineers.

I know, I'm not an engineer, I work in support, this is the point I was trying to get across, I seem to have gone wrong by nit picking a few things about the story, which I otherwise see as a reasonably accurate representation of the hell people who aren't engineers go through when looking for work. Agreeing that these things happen isn't an endorsement of those things, if anything, they are a call to action to recognize they exist and make sure they don't exist in your own organization, which is what I do :)

> There appear to be a lot of growing pains at Handy, which isn't a surprise, but hopefully they can move fast and get their support/service wing to be as tight and focused as the rest of their team.

Which part of their team is tight and focused?

I don't know the details of how their team runs, I am generalizing the engineering culture at many well funded startups.

I think you could just as easily generalize the engineering culture at many well funded startups as "amateurish to a near criminal degree"

That is, I don't think you can generalize about startups, funded or otherwise.