Then, I sat down with the VP of engineering, and he opened the interview with "so, what do you think it is we do here?" And I naturally stuttered through a canned answer about how they use arbitrage opportunities in the market to profit off of mis-priced securities, etc. Then he asked me, "but what benefit do we provide? Why is working here good for society?"

I blanked, and didn't answer for about 15 seconds. Then, I tried to start piecing together an answer until he stopped me, told me he had found my Facebook, and wasn't appreciative of my politics (I was moderately lefty in high school, significantly more so now; maybe this conversation is part of why). He had _printouts_ of some posts I had made criticizing George W. Bush, talking about why I thought we should be raising taxes on higher earners, supporting Obamacare, etc. He told me that he didn't think I had the "cojones to stomach the job" (direct quote), and told the recruiter not to bother with the last interview and that I had failed.

I _sobbed_ on the train home; I think it was the worst I had ever felt about an interview in my entire life, and yet looking back at it, I think this was the best possible outcome. Imagine if I had worked for this asshole.

I've worked for companies I don't personally agree with in the past; it's part of living in a society(TM). I am able to hold my nose to a certain extent to make an income for my family (heck, I am currently having to cross picket lines to come to work, which makes me feel icky). But I can't fathom what hell I would have been living under had I gotten and taken that job.

Whenever I have shitty experience like that I always think of the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, there's some part where somebody doesn't deliver and the bad guy loses out, and upon being told he lost something valuable, he says "not as valuable as knowing who to trust". Like you say, it was a bad experience but actually the best possible information you could have gotten.

An example is onions futures; see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act and check the onions price history: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU01130216/ compared to a commodity where futures trading in common, like corn: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PMAIZMTUSDM where there are price swings but the volatility and frequency of the swings is lower.

I’m a layperson, not involved in finance, but this is the value add I most commonly hear about.

For instance, the oil/car industry pays for basically none of the large negative externalities they create. In this case, I hazard that futures industry captures more value than they create. And that value is extracted from other players in the vertical chain, particularly farmers.

When I was an undergrad, I interviewed at a then-very small, now-very-prestigious quant firm. In the last interview or so, I asked the quant head something like, “but what value do you provide to society?”

He said, “we provide liquidity.”

I turned down the job they later offered and went to work at a software company that sells a thing people buy.

I would prefer the price of onions - seems like the price is a lot more stable other than a few points out of the year where it is very high. For those times, I could choose to have a small store of onions or go without.

For the price of corn, if the price is high, chances are it will be high for a while, so I'll have to go without for a while...

What do other people think?

Sounds like you gave an answer that didn't mention that at all, and may have presented the firm as merely taking advantage of other people's mistakes to make profit. Clearly that's not how he saw it, and the VP correctly guessed from your social media that you may not actually have understood the part of the finance industry that you were applying to work for. The question was to check whether you'd actually be enthusiastic about the work you were doing and you did indeed fail it.

This would be like if you turned up at Google and an interviewer said, "What do we do here" and you said "exploit data to profit from people's ignorance" and when they gave you a second chance you couldn't answer.

Frankly you can't get a job at most firms if you can't explain why you think the company should exist.

I really enjoyed "The Rational Optimist" where it explains things like trade, which tends to make everyone wealthy, while generally the people trading think they are both getting the better end of the deal.

Stock markets, I can see- they existed and exist to share risk and profit. But shorting and arbitrage, it's much harder for me to understand those.

(and yes, that VP was a sociopath)

If there is an imbalance in the market, someone will balance it. That's how it works. Let's say you have two different securities, that both represent the same underlying aspect of the economy. This happens all the time; there are multiple ETFs that represent the same basket of stocks, there are options and futures on those ETFs, including different types of futures that represent the same ETF but at different levels of leverage, there are options on those futures, and so on. All of this exists because there is no reason for them not to—people believe they can make money, reduce risk, or whatever by using these derivative instruments, and maybe they can.

But all of these stocks, funds, and derivatives are valued by one thing, and one thing only: their price on the open market. So, what happens when one of these funds get out of whack with the value of its derivatives, or even the underlying stocks themselves? Remember how we had multiple securities representing the same underlying aspect of the economy? Well, one is now worth more than the other, despite the fact that they represent the same thing. There's an imbalance, and if it gets too far out of balance, people are going to realize, wait, I can just buy 500 shares of SPY and short one ES contract, and that's free money! And that's entirely correct, you can. But the result of doing so is a minor market correction; the price of SPY goes up and the price of ES goes down, and boom, we're back in equilibrium.

So, arbitrage is a necessary and unavoidable aspect of the stock market. You can't have a stock market without arbitrage, because the stock market reflects so many different facets and ways to trade ownership and value of companies. Arbitrage is, in essence, the means by which information flows between various aspects of the market, and it connects them together so they effectively move in lockstep. It is nothing less than the market leveling itself, just as water poured into one side of a swimming pool fills every part of the pool.

It means you can actually ask the question "how many dollars is a pound worth" and get a meaningful answer.

If arbitrage wasn't possible for some reason, and it's a natural phenomenon so that would have to involve pretty horrific levels of state-backed control, then the answer would be:

"It's $X in London and heading down, was $Y in New York yesterday and heading up, and $Z in Chicago but you probably can't get an account there because it takes ages and requires special paperwork, and <thousands of additional prices>"

You would then spend the rest of the afternoon attempting to figure out how the hell to do a basic international trade or FX transaction and by the time you'd finished reviewing the prices they'd have all changed again.

Arbitrageurs seek out and correct fixable price disparities, thus enabling you to talk about one global price for a particular type of trade. This has tremendous value for everyone.

2/ people do it for their own (expected) personal profit

3/ at the market level, these transactions contribute to price discovery

You could imagine banning currency arbitrage, but then you’d have to at the same time enforce somehow consistent prices on all markets (I.e. literally do the same thing as arbitragers do)

Someone outside of finance exchanging one forex for another could get a more fair rate if their exchange is more efficient due to increased liquidity.

But by the same token, the other side of that trade is getting a less favourable (but still more "fair") rate

Longing == buying a share

Shorting == selling a share

Robber Baron Capitalist comes in and says "hey wait a minute, there's money to be made!"

He starts buying goods in A, then selling them in B.

This is a very, very stupid idea, your 5 year old could have it. So that means as soon as Business A figures it out, B , D, E, and F aren't far behind.

The net for people in Market B is that now they don't pay the previous scarce price, but something closer to Market As, and more people can afford the good. This means that someone does all the work of building out all that logistics for us, simply to exploit the price differential.

He wore a full motorcycle-style helmet with a mirrored face visor which he refused to open; it was like talking to a member of Daft Punk. It had fake hologram bullet-holes on it.

More importantly, he skied like an asshole: cutting people off, sudden stops or changes in direction without checking if anyone else was coming, cutting ahead in the lift line, stopping to readjust his gloves or whatever directly in the lift exit ramp, shouting at people who he felt were in his way -- just totally self-absorbed and borderline dangerous.

It turned out to match his management style 1000%.

- I am autistic

- I don't need any particular accommodations

- I will attempt to overcommunicate what I'm doing so that I can get your help if I rabbit hole on something (one of my common tendencies)

- I tend to need mental health days slightly more often than usual

- I will tell people I work with when I'm comfortable doing so, but this isn't a secret and don't feel bad if you accidentally out me.

I've never had a manager be anything but extremely appreciative to receive this context. Normalize talking about your needs, even if you don't have a diagnosed neurodivergence!

"I'm autistic"

"Oh, you don't seem autistic"

The fashion for high functioning, highly articulate individuals calling themselves "autistic" is relatively new. To the vast majority of people the word autistic means severe disability that requires constant care, involves repetitive stimming motions and often is directly visible via an abnormal facial structure.

In this conventional usage of the term autistic people don't turn up to job interviews and say "Oh your brother is autistic, cool that it inspired you, I'm autistic too!" because they don't turn up to job interviews at all. Depending on how severe her brother's condition is she may well have been quietly offended that you were trying to pass yourself off as having a similar problem.

I said that I was appreciative that she wanted to make healthcare better for her brother, because it would help people like me too. And her response, after hearing my story about struggling to navigate the system she claims to want to improve on account of my very real, and sometimes very debilitating, disability, was "but you don't seem disabled." I don't think I'm in the wrong for being offended here. In my mind, It'd be very similar to if I had said that I struggled with the healthcare system due to losing a leg in an accident, and her response was "oh, but I can't see that your leg is missing because this is a zoom call."

The fact that I wasn't, at _that moment_, having a visible need, doesn't negate the existence of a disability that occasionally renders me mute, or makes me so overwhelmed I lash out at the people around me, or causes me actual physical pain. And mind you, I _was_ stimming; out of necessity many autistic folks who work in professional environments find stims that are relatively invisible on camera or in person in order to help us get through social interactions without losing our minds. It wasn't visible to her, but that doesn't change the reality of my story and my situation.

It’s a spectrum, and you don’t know the struggles of the person you’re replying to. Just because someone can mask or play off as high functioning doesn’t mean it’s not a struggle, especially with people making flippant remarks like this - in fact one of the struggles that keep people from being continually employed is that accommodations aren’t taken seriously because people assume that a working mask means they’re trying to make up excuses. Your statement that the “vast majority of people” only equate it with only the most severe disability is based on… what? Almost everyone I know especially in tech have worked with someone on the spectrum.

I've had that answer before... That was a fun but volatile place to work for a summer internship.

just a question about the phrase, not this particular person

how does this give any predictive insight aside from you thinking they're hiding the rest of the time

> he skied like an asshole: cutting people off, sudden stops or changes

It sounds like Mr. Bean was mistaken as a CEO and was just rolling with it.

They always do.

This was Nvidia in 2006 and their stock is up about 200x since then.

Who knows, maybe if you joined you would have hated it too, or loved it ! The story you shared is likely shared by many other companies that went through hyper-growth

TLDR: Stuff is hard!

Some opportunities I missed but they didn't go anywhere: Docker, Qualcomm.

Consumer Devices is a general dud I think. Software and data is where it is at. I dunno?

Even in other posts here, people are like “whew I wouldnt want to work for a company where an unrelated recruiter and hiring manager did something nonstandard” as if it was a predictor of their team

Nowadays it may be easier somewhat to get some insight into inner workings, but in 2006 there was no Blind, Glassdoor, etc. Sometimes the positive signals outweigh the negative. In my case they did not.

They’re just people like everyone else, subject to the same psychological failings as anyone.

Giving people a lot of power over other people might just be a recipe for disaster.

Of course I’ve met some compelling leaders and I’ve seen them replaced with total fools so maybe there are people who are better at it than others. (Eric Schmidt springs to mind as an example of the former and Sundar whatever his name is an example of the latter) Maybe it’s just hard to tell the difference. Or maybe our selection process is flawed.

The question comes from a self-selecting population.

This reminds me of the joke where the economist sees the $100 bill on the ground and says if it were real, someone would have grabbed it already. It assumes that the market is perfectly efficient when it is not. There are tons of reasons why someone would work at one job when they would prefer another job:

Maybe the local job market is poor, but the worker can't move.

Maybe their spouse has a medical condition that requires really good health insurance, and moving to another job would lose that coverage.

Maybe the worker has been job-hopping too much and has to stay at this job for another year or whatever.

etc., etc.

Everybody would improve something, and it can give you insight into actual day-to-day challenges.

If they say, “Nothing,” either it’s the one rare perfect workplace or they are too afraid or checked out to give a real answer.

Either way it’s informative.

(sort of like: "my one weakness is I work TOO hard!")

Fortunately I had the presense of mind to see through that and walked out. When I got back to school, I found out that a friend of mine had worked for the same company selling Bibles in rural Tennessee; he hated it so much that he quit after a couple of weeks. He didn't make any money because the contract he had signed required that he stay for the entire summer before seeing a penny.

During a phone screen at one company, they asked my salary expectations, and I said $60K. They asked what I was currently making, and I (naively) answered the $13.25/hr. They said they could do $16/hr, and that I should consider that generous, as I shouldn't expect to get more than 15% more when getting a new job. Also, they would expect 50-55 hrs/week of work.

I noped out. Yeah, I needed work, but I wasn't desperate.

After looking at Glassdoor, I got the impression that this company was preying on desperate new college grads, underpaying the shit out of them while expecting the world so they don't have time to apply for better jobs. One guy, in his review, said that when asked about work-life balance, the manager said "We believe in work-life integration." He noped out just as quick.

I always have an answer that is locked and loaded 20-40% more than what I’m actually making and generally ask for about 20% more than that. I’ve bumped my pay over $100k in 5 years doing that. Keep in mind I also refuse to work for FAANG-y companies.

"I'm pretty happy where I am, but if you can offer me at least $X/year, I'm interested."

I imagine most recruiters would say they can't match that. Some would scold me for just looking for a paycheck, as if that's not what literally everybody is doing.

Now, I flunked out of college, but I spent 7 years on Wall St., and 12 years with MAGMA firms. College was over 20 years ago. I made this clear up front and the recruiter told me it wasn't a problem.

The call with the CEO was two hours of "why did you get a C in Martian and Lunar Geology?" and "Why did you get an F in Intro to Viticulture and Enology?" After that I get the offer (it was all cash and about $150k more than my current role even with equity factored in). I refused and told the recruiter that it was because I was drug through the coals like that. The recruiter's response was "yeah, I know, we keep asking him not to do that."

They called every couple years asking me to reconsider. Always a new recruiter. And every time I told them exactly why I refused and asked if that policy had changed. Every time I was told it hadn't and the call ended.

It is okay to bring up something like flunking out of school 20 years ago but why drill someone on it?

Your resume is a showcase of your best accomplishments. Short of clearance-level interviews with your family and friends, people in C-level positions ask for transcripts from 20 years ago because it's the only intelligence concerning your failures they can get their hands on (your previous employers won't ever attest on-record that you sucked).

So with that in hand, think about how you're going to feel when the only things they want to talk about are topics you were struggling to understand while your brain was still underdeveloped. He's big-dicking you to ensure your submission in any ongoing business relationship, and probably lowball you on salary just because he likes taking things from people after humiliating them.

Asking about failures in past jobs is fair game-- you are free to disclose that much at your discretion. Asking for a transcript itself isn't even that weird either, just to verify you went to the school you said you did. But grilling you about failures from 20 years ago is someone engaging in emotional abuse; they're desperate to have something to hold over you.

This firm clearly put a huge amount of stock in education. They were 4 blocks from a major CS university, and a significant number of staff were recent grads. I suspect the CEO had a masters which only adds credence to their belief in the education system.

On top of that, they knew how much I was making ($x), how much I was asking for ($x + $50,000), and ended up offering me more ($x + $150,000). That's not the kind of thing you do when you're trying to dissuade someone from taking a job with you. Especially when the offer is 100% cash (company was private and they offered no equity).

I strongly suspect that this person came from a bubble of education, and just didn't understand how you could be a poor student and then successful outside of academia.

My dad was overly sensitive about not having a degree too, I wonder if its a generational thing

From what I can tell, this nonstandard question would have no bearing on the work experience and never come up again, but you are acting like it would

Should a company not ask you that? Why are you hung up on flunking martian geology?

I don't understand

just as frustrating as wanting code samples. none of my work of the past decade is public, and it's not mine to share. all i can show is ancient stuff

At some point, really deep down the rabbit hole, I remember saying, "I don't actually recall, it WAS over 15 years ago"

That is totally bizarre.

The reason I give is that I had some family issues that required me take a break. During that time I started working in tech, and after a few years I never saw the need to go back. The real reason was the grades, which was caused by an undiagnosed neural-divergent issue.

But this was different. It was an hour and half of going course by course down the list, and asking exactly why I got that specific grade for that specific class if it was less than an A (including a few that were A-). I didn't flunk Martial Geology, but still was asked to explain that grade. Do you remember what grade you got in a freshman physics class 20 years ago, much less why it was that grade and not higher?

In the end I'm glad that I got an offer, glad it was higher than I was making, and glad I rejected it. It was proof to myself that I have morals that can't be bought. Not for that price at least.

The moment I met the HM I wanted to leave. He was brusque, felt like our entire meeting was a waste of time, and was, quote, surprised that they had finally filled his job req. I tried to brush this off as him having a bad day, and sat down for coffee with him. We started having a stilted conversation in which I mentioned that I had just adopted a dog, and his first response was, "oh god, I _hate_ dogs, please never bring it to work."

That was kind of the end of that. Sure, maybe it's petty, but I was getting bucketfuls of bad vibes from this guy.

I was always honest with candidates and tried to give them advice to navigate the hiring process and the first few weeks of work. I told them what work would realistically be like. Some joined, some didn't, but I like to think I gave them a good perspective on the company in a non-judging, non-interview environment.

Nope... I have worked there 20 years so far.

My first job was to evict the former sysadmin, and within the first 90 days I was relocating the whole company, building out the new IT infrastructure.

So in the spirit of the recent post about Charlie Munger killing a lot of pilots I would suggest not judging the company solely by its lobby. Make a list of real deal-breakers and consider overlooking the rest.

Mind linking this? The search box isn't giving me any recent results that look right.

Intelligence test? Story about high school? Reflex test? The actual red flag for me was their final admission that they require an unpaid internship in the form of "community participation."

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/tkc348/my_interview_...

I was about to burn out at my current job at the time. Too much stress, too many hours, too much crazy. At this interview, every one I talked to talked about how “exciting” and “cutting edge” everything they were doing was. “We barely finish a prototype before they’ve changed the design and we have to start over without testing the last one.” “It’s very fast paced, stuff is changing all the time.” “We work over some. Last week, I put in 72 hours, but that’s not typical.” “A dozen companies have tried to solve this problem, but we think we’ve finally figured it out.” And so on. And it was a weapon technology, which I had ethical qualms about.

I called them back and withdrew my application. The HR guy said he was preparing my offer. I told him I didn’t want to see it. My biggest fear was that it would be enough money to tempt me to take the job and I would have been miserable.

Six months later, half of everyone there was laid off. They never got the big problem solved. They lost several contracts. Dodged that bullet (pun intended).

Then literally two hours of me stumbling through possible technical issues to do with the internals of a system I had never seen. Even though I had thought I was being considered for my maths rather than my computer skills.

"Well just so you know, it turned out that one of the guys trading on the platform was doing something different." Laughing politely, "but you told me...". "Oh well no that's not what I would consider a market participant."

I call my laughter polite but I suspect it had an edge to it. Anyway he immediately walked me out saying, "we'll send you feedback." The feedback was that I had asked for too much money. (I hadn't asked for anything.)

The last one, the guy was twenty minutes late for an hour interview. I had a hard stop to get to JFK, so I was getting anxious and ready to walk. He finally comes gets me. The place is tiny and everyone is squeezed into two large tables, one being a large round dining room table. No one made a sound, and it seemed like a sweatshop.

Not kidding, we maybe spent about ten minutes talking about my experience, and he took the remaining 20-30 minutes talking about how he was likely going to leave soon to do a Masters in PolySci. Guy was smug as hell. He basically said I should expect an offer, which was great to hear, but seeing the place, and vetting me only after really ten minutes, I thought that was a huge red flag. I withdrew the next day when I got back home.

They sold to a major newspaper about 8 months later. Not sure what the terms were or if it would have been a quick payout for me, but my gut says that would have been a miserable 8 months. The job I took instead turned out to be four years at a great company. It ultimately failed, but I was managed by a sharp boss who I greatly respected, and colleagues who many ended up being great friends.

Also their compensation comprised a fixed salary and a "guaranteed" bonus of about 20%, which together added up to the market rate. However the bonus wasn't mentioned in the written contract.

It was a high-tech hardware company of several dozen people with their own clean-room manufacturing facilities. Interesting tech, good product, but the CFO felt like a grifter and the CEO looked like a retired gangster, with mannerisms to match, who spent all interview telling how much business prowess he had.

That was really bizarre.

The biggest red flag ever

But some companies take this to an extreme.

I was working on a niche clothing brand at home in my spare time for example when I wanted to work for a gaming startup. They were giving me such a repulsively hard time about my side project even though the clothing had literally nothing conceivably close to the company's business model.

It's so stupid because companies should try and hire people that have diverse experiences and are working hard to achieve something.

But, for companies that are batshit anal about side-projects, they're going to make you sign some onerous contract and have management that are assholes about this kind of thing.

What happens in the event that you "hit the lottery" and some side-project becomes a big deal worth a lot of money? Somebody from your company is eventually going to find out about it: maybe from a public interview or from public records. If they put 2 + 2 together about when you built this and figure out that they can file some legal claim to it, you're in a mess of a legal situation that you don't need to be in.

Safer to put your cards on the table and make sure there's nothing in an employment agreement that puts something you really care about at risk.

The percentage of companies that are very anal about side-projects isn't substantial. They need you more than you need them and it's safer to be honest and look elsewhere for employment.

Was told exactly the same, verbatim, followed by "besides you won't have time to work on them anyways".

like texas and california diametrically opposed (I think)

texas: we own you

california: you can start a startup in your garage while working for someone else

Role-play starts and this guy storms in, slams the door and starts shouting about how the software department are useless and how are we going to proceed. At one point he yelled that without his department we wouldn't have money to keep the lights on.

In retrospect, I'm sure this was a lot of fun for him and it might have been a good filter but I also am more than happy that I did not proceed to the next round if this is what they wanted to show me about their culture.

Wonder if your responses helped them practice for real meetings. :)

You can never expect them to be on any better behavior, so expect this as your top bar for your relationship and you'll not have many surprises.

As a corollary, that means anything that looks like a red flag is probably an iceberg.

I was coming from contract work for the federal government, preceded by salary work for a state government - both of which allowed me to work flexible hours, eg start at 10, finish at 7 or what have you.

I asked the guy if they supported flexible working hours (this was a year or so before I started working fully remote) - their office was literally the other side of the city to my house so commuting during non peak hours would be a huge benefit for me.

His response: "well we have a standup meeting every day at 8am which you must attend, and we don't allow overtime so you need to finish by 5. But you can take your lunch break any time you want".

They offered me the position a couple of days later and I never bothered to respond.

If your working conditions make government employment look flexible, there's something very wrong with your company.

I did only the core app, but none of the others stuffs beacase that looked like way to much unpaid work just to "prove" my ablities.

I should have known better becase they rejected me because the project was to simple, wasn't going to "scale", and did'n used any complex design patterns, a day an a half of work wasted.

Physically not enough room to put in everything with explanations.

I got the impression I failed because I didn't put in an WAF but then the recruiter said they'd decided not to hire anybody so I suspect they were not all that serious.

It turned out the company actually couldn't afford to lose him, and started addressing his concerns. He reconsidered staying after they gave him a huge raise and promised to hire someone to help him.

If the soviet-parade-in-red-square number of red flags wasn't enough, the recruiter proceeded to say they were looking for someone who loved the job and wasn't seeking to work for money.

I walk into a completely dark and empty cubicle space, one lit office in the back.

Lunch meant the interviewer ate a Hot Pocket off a paper plate as we talked.

Didn’t even offer me any.

First interview I walked out of.

I hope that middle bite was frozen.

I remember dumping a full lunch in the trash can as we walked out towards a conference room for the next interviewer I would meet...

If a company cannot negotiate salary because of some corporate rules, I'm not interested. If a company will not give me any flexibility in working hours I'm not interested. If a company tries to make me feel bad about not immediately accepting their offer I'm very likely to not accept their offer at all.

Rigid companies which have no regard for your emotional wellbeing are not pleasant places to work and I struggle to give my best when I feel I'm not respected.

Another red flag is that it's a freelancing site.

Did all the coding tests and such for both, both claim I 'aced' them. One made me an offer about half of what I was asking, in line with the Glassdoor salaries. The other didn't provide an offer after basically trying to ask how little I'd take.

I didn’t get the offer, but I didn’t want to work for somebody who would say that to an engineer applying for a job. (plus they had the weirdest stack i’ve ever seen)

Answer: "Well, we just open the file on the server and Vim will tell you if someone else has it open too."

Nope, nope, nopity, NOPE.

was the first time I heard about Perforce :-P

The listing was on the edge of too good to be true, and the immediate and desperate attempts to reel me in were a huge red flag.

I withdrew my application, did everything I could to block them, and reported the listing to indeed.

I have no idea what the scam was, but I'm absolutely convinced it was a scam. It was honestly pretty scary, and I'm sure that a slightly less vigilant person would get pulled in.

After a while you can tell which positions these are by how they are worded and how the recruiters associated with them talk and behave during the call.

I have NEVER ever ever ever seen a red flag (in an employer or employee or any other relationship) that was not real.

Not every red flag needs to be a deal killer, but it never is just your imagination or just goes away.

I did that, got hired, and wouldn't comply again. First job after university.

Nothing bad happened. Years later I could read the report, and it was nothing remarkable.

"Graphology is the analysis of handwriting with attempt to determine someone's personality traits."

I went ahead and filled it out while I was there, but I'd already decided not to move forward by the time the interview was over.

I believe interviews are a two-way street, and if a company isn't willing to engage in meaningful dialogue, it might signal potential issues down the road.

For those interested, we have open positions! https://www.ratherlabs.com/open-positions

I remember he asked me if I was married and/or if I had kids. According to him, they needed people who are "committed" with the company and people without responsibilities are more likely to leave the company if they don't like it there.

This question caught me off guard and I just answered. By that time I was young and single, but I somehow managed to defend that I was committed and so on... Later, when the interview finished I noticed I should have stopped the process immediately, I wasn't desperate or anything like that I don't know why I continued. I guess they needed people who have no choice but to keep working due to the shit show the company was and I decided to ignore the offer. They tried to call me twice but I didn't answered. I bet I dodged a bullet.

The length of the recruiting process, no comms back and didn't want to bother my friend if it was a dud. Communication is important. Speaking with the other managers and CFO: "We're agile, we're not against procedures and process but we need to move fast" Met the CIO for 10 minutes who did a 'Machine Gun Style' interview: Rattled off questions one after the other for 10 mins and I guess I did ok since I got the job.

Suffice it to say, my buddy was laid off 1 month after I joined, the CIO another 4 months after that. So many good people to work with (thank goodness) but the culture was so messed up because of the impression that moving fast meant to cut corners no matter the cost to the company and employees. I lasted 2 years and learned so much about what to look out for now.

I wasn't hired in the end, despite doing well on the tests. But it was for the best as everything worked out in the end.

When I asked about the company culture and the team I'd be working with, the answers were vague and dismissive. It gave me the impression that they were more interested in filling a seat than finding the right fit.

That experience taught me the importance of mutual respect and genuine interest in a hiring process. If a company doesn't take the time to get to know you during the interview, it's a strong indication of how they'll treat you as an employee.

"It's close to where I live / I can walk here" = You probably don't have to worry about their "car breaking down" or general issues getting to work.

"My friends work here" = You're going to have a bunch of teenagers dicking off if you're not running a tight ship.

And there are a whole bunch of neutral responses too. "I need a job and you all are hiring" is a perfectly acceptable, accurate answer to this question that literally every applicant can provide.

When I was applying for jobs like this as a teen, applications specifically asked about my transportation situation.

> You're going to have a bunch of teenagers dicking off if you're not running a tight ship

Just run a tight ship, then. People who didn't know each other beforehand will also dick around. I've made plenty of friends out of work colleagues.

> "I need a job and you all are hiring" is a perfectly acceptable, accurate answer to this question that literally every applicant can provide

Then I'd argue it's the opposite of legit: it's completely superfluous.

GP must never have worked in that industry, or they only worked that one job at Outback Steakhouse for a manager thinking they were changing the world. It’s a familiar mindset to those in tech…

If that's a red flag, the whole world is red.

I think it's hilarious being asked this question when I'm in early discussions with a company that reached out to me.

Even for fast-food service jobs, there is always some differentiator.

People who can't answer this question are more likely to turn over. That's why it is asked.

From the moment I first savored the delectable aroma of your signature charbroiled burgers, I knew that my destiny was intertwined with your esteemed establishment. The synergistic blend of your brand's values and my personal ethos is a match made in culinary heaven, a union that promises to revolutionize the gastronomic landscape.

The prospect of contributing to Hardee's renowned legacy of taste innovation and unparalleled customer satisfaction resonates deeply with my quest for self-actualization in the fast-food industry.

Each meal served, every customer smile elicited—these are the very keystones that embolden my commitment to fulfilling my dream of championing a new era of succulent satisfaction. With utmost fervor, I implore you to consider my application, for it is not just a role I seek, but a calling I am destined to embrace with zest and zeal."

EDIT: illegal drug trafficking

Ignore my gut and took the job. That was a big regret :-(. Most dysfunctional org I have worked at. As one of many examples I got made a team lead then someone was put on my team to help a tough deadline.

Turns out (hidden from me) this person was someone on their last legs they wanted to test out for a final go before firing. And I was being tested too: blamed for not spotting he was struggling within a couple of weeks of him joining the team.

$_Insert another 10-20 dysfunctional war stories here

I ended up resigning with no onward job. Only time I have done that.

Gut instinct can be good.

I doubt this was the case, though.

One of them condescendingly asked me if I voted for Trump, simply because I am originally from a non-blue state.

It was very strange, anti-toxic/toxic, and came out of nowhere. It made me consider secretly filming & voice recording interviews, especially in the SF Bay Area where people are a bit more influenced by political trends.

"anti-toxic/toxic" --> meant to say "anti-social/toxic"

Never looked back, never got a security clearance. Now I'm a dual citizen, so basically neither of my countries probably trusts me. :)

It was something like a fifth or sixth interview, and CTO told me they decided to offer me a position requiring more solid technical skills. I was happy to hear it, and I didn't think my boss should be also a different person and didn't ask about it.

Later I realized my boss was awful at management and speaking with people, so I understood why no one wanted him to interview me. If I had an interview with him - I wouldn't take the offer.

I left the company in a couple of days, and it was the worst scam in interviewing I have ever had.

Nope.

Over the course of 3 interviews, I was ghosted by the CEO (had to email to see where they were 10 minutes into the scheduled interview), left with no contact for weeks between interviews and then when I emailed to check in was told, “Sorry for keeping you waiting, we were going to email you today…”, and then they wouldn’t let me read the company handbook before signing the offer letter.

It was a real stark example of telling vs. showing.

This was a long time ago and for a large scale internship programme for teenagers (18-20) at a once-big tech firm that shall remain nameless. The goal appeared to be seeing how we worked together under pressure or something that, so after a while I guessed that the puzzle might not have a solution at all, as if it did some groups would finish a lot faster than others and then they wouldn't be able to watch us for the same length of time in each group. But none of the other kids had seemed to realize that. When the girl started to cry she was really sobbing and saying stuff like "we're not making any progress", so I said something like "yes that's true but bear in mind there might not be an answer" and she stopped crying immediately. I had to spend the next five minutes explaining this idea to the group and then the five after that convincing them that we had to keep working on the puzzle anyway, because even if the guess was right it didn't make any difference to the correct course of action.

The whole exercise struck me as needlessly cruel for teenagers who were probably in their first job interview ever. Like, if you're recruiting for a serious job where you need to make fast decisions under pressure then fine, but putting kids through that? Later I became an interviewer for big tech myself and never saw anything similar. I must have been right though because I got an offer, but turned it down in favor of a more interesting company that had used a more individualized interview process.

I ended up interviewing with a company that did contract work for software in government agencies, like DMVs. It sounded so depressing. Their technical screening was checking if a number is prime. I was familiar with checking all number up to the square root of the target number to see if they divided evenly from when I was a kid. Always knew it from some math or computer book.

After implementing that, I began to be investigated if I had done interview prep where I found this. I honestly told them that I hadn't but this back and forth went on for a few minutes of disbelief over something that shouldn't have been a big deal in the first place (considering how esoteric the problem they gave me was anyway).

Fast forward to the end of the interview, they ask me what my GPA was. I told them it was 2.98. They said that they couldn't accept anything below a 3. My GPA was going to get a massive bump at the end of the semester but they didn't care. A company that will flat refuse a candidate over two hundredths of a number (low because I didn't care of philosophy or other non CS classes) means they will be just as irrational during your employment.

I ended up finding a much better job with a much better culture the next week which lead me down what's been an excellent career so far. I'm terrified what would have happened if I ended up working there.

For all people saying that philosophy is not important for engineering/cs grads - here's the proof it is!

When I got to the interview they asked me about the game I was playing. It really threw me off. I've always tried to be really careful about linking my real name to my online presence and I always search myself to see if I can find myself when I'm interviewing to make sure there's nothing I need to scrub.

They found me anyway. I'm still not sure how exactly. I'm not a genius about online opsec but I like to think I'm more careful than most.

I wound up programming an interview exam program for them (which they paid me for, super nice) and they did offer me the job, but I was still weirded out that they dug into me so much online. I decided I didn't want an employer that monitors my non-work Internet activity so I declined.

I'm not stupid. I know that most employers probably try and monitor their workers social media for questionable stuff, but my hope is that most aren't trying too hard to track down all of my pseudonyms. Or they don't care what I do as long as I don't post with my real name or the company name.

I can't remember if it was through a third-party recruiter or direct to the company, but I was fairly desperate for a sysadmin job, and I might have been out on the streets already at that point. I strolled on down to see this place, which was nestled behind a Motel 6 and a future mental health clinic; charming neighborhood.

I met the HM and I swear to god that he was a dead ringer for an old boss I'd had years ago. Once I got over that shock, we had a little chat, and along the way of course, he said "you know that we're the biggest service provider to the pornography industry?" and I said "yeah" and he said "you don't have a problem with that?" "nah... [I NEED THIS JOB NOW]"

I didn't get the job of course, but I really dodged a bullet, and definitely did not need something like that in my past or on my résumé.

- team/company works like a family

- we even party together on weekends

- then things like: we “love and own” our work we only leave once it’s done

Or a place that’s not clear and don’t want to be specific about availability/timing requirements i.e clarity about hours (which is by the way like 100% of job posts here on the HN!!!)

I will take that any day over those trillion remote work only job boards.

Eventually fired because I’m handicapped and wouldn’t join their softball team and pretend the baby faced bully was cool.

Glad it finally broke me. Social security disability time.

They own all IP I create outside work hours, unrelated to the company. I need permission to work on my side business, which basically got me the job. That business has a community I've built over 5 years.

HR called me early morning, and three times without warning during office hours of my current job. Their first offer was about the same as my public sector position, where the salary is public.

I tried hard to resolve these problems with HR but most of the time I was just gaslit, as if the problems didn't exist. The hiring team and work seemed really great.

This was before the first, codility level interview.

Also the interview was super early, not to accommodate me interviewing off-hours, but because they (interviewers) "weren't allowed" to impinge on work hours to conduct the interviews!

I've worked there now, for ~2 years, and the prodding hasn't gotten much better. Work's fun, though. :^)

- You never know how it's going to be judged (style, efficiency, error handling, abstraction, thread-safety, type-safety, commenting, etc).

- You're given a very short time-limit, but well-designed, maintainable software is almost never written like that.

- etc., etc.

Everyone's a "mercenary" and you can't compel loyalty by being a control-freak dick. They want compliant slaves who will work for nothing and will never leave the unending crash schedule. The end isn't gonna be either pretty or successful.

Similar to OP, I had to verbally accept the offer before they would give me an offer letter. And then the offer expired in 12 hours.

It felt like a high pressure sell that really turned me off the place.

I later went on a business trip with him and found out that 1) he was left of center and 2) a prior CEO was very much a Randist and sent the book to every SVP and up in the company.

The implication being that they're likely to jump ship as soon as anyone else makes them a better offer (and that they'll be at least semi-actively looking for that better offer while working for you), and that the quality of their work output suffers because they're not sufficiently passionate about the problem to be solved.

They're the opposite of "missionaries", in this particular vernacular.

So, a plain old business.

  We can't pay anything at start