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Search - "bad interview"
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I was recently hired as a lead devops to a giant shit show. The CTO said he needs someone to do things correctly instead of quickly. This is a conversation I just had this morning
HR: We want you to interview a potential new DevOps engineer
ME: okay, when?
HR: Tomorrow
ME: I won't be able to create interview tests and materials for tomorrow. How's next week
HR: This hire is urgent! It has to be tomorrow
ME: Then you'll have to do the interview without me
HR: We need you to interview them because we've had a few bad hires in the past that we don't want to repeat
ME: The best way to filter out bad hires is with technical tests, which will take time to develop. I can be ready by next week.
HR: We can't give you a weeks notice for each hire, we are in urgent need for more devops.
ME: ...14 -
Ask questions during interview.
Ask about trainings - it's usually a good sign when company offers training budget. Ask about specifics - sometimes it's a shared pluralsight account, and nothing else, which means that that had an idea and half assed it into existence.
Ask tech recruiter about overtime, a good sign is when they have no idea or say that it must be budgeted and scheduled - it means that it does not happen often.
Ask if it is possible to select and change projects, and how often it happens - if often, it may be bad low level management, or people learning new things and jumping between projects.
Also make sure to ask about rules for promotions and pay rises. Good company wił have a clear set of rules in place.
All of the above apply to mid to large companies.
For small company, i'm sure it will be different.3 -
So one day on tech huddle my tech lead got frustrated, don't know why and told me - "the tasks you're doing can be done by interns"
I felt bad. Ofcourse I was putting my 100%.
That day I decided to put the resignation. I didn't discussed with anyone about it and sent the resignation email directly.
After serving 2 months of notice period I was able to land a better job successfully!
I called the lead on the last working day in that company and shared him the news about my offer letter and a little about the company.
His first question was - "Did you cleared all the interview process?"
In my mind - "That's only why I'm sharing the news here with you man! Stop thinking of me as a noob."
I replied with - "yes, if needed/the new company try to get feedback about me then please be honest atleast there by keeping your ego aside."
You shouldn't pull someone's leg if you aren't able to climb higher!!
Lesson I learnt;
DON'T STAY AT A PLACE WHERE THERE'S NO VALUE OF YOUR WORK AND THE DEDICATION TOWARDS IT!
Working in a startup isn't that easy, mostly for those where there's no work life balance.2 -
Me: *Gives second round in an interview, didn’t go as expected, waits for the result (at this moment we can’t go further with your profile kinda result)*
HR: *calls after 2 weeks* Hi, hope you’re doing good, your last round was declared CNS (Candidate no show)
Me: was it this bad, that the guy interviewing me simply wiped off my existence?
HR: let me figure out something. *Calls back after 5 mins* since it was a no show, we’ve decided to not go with your profile further.
Me: 🥲 it didn’t have to be this brutal of a rejection6 -
So,
A) I suck at digital drawing.
B) They have not invited me to the third interview like they said they would in the second interview.
C) I am still working on the PhD application. Still think the CV is bad, the SOP sucks, and back and forth emailing professors about recommendation letters. I am not built for this, but who is. So out of comfort zone. So unrelated to actual research or brain capabilities.
D) Moving in with parents is all fun and games and "I can do this", until you get stuck inside with them for over a month because of lockdowns.
... I hope next year is going to be better...5 -
How do you judge the ability of the candidates during the interview?
Sometimes I find it hard to score their ability. I have seen some candidates with x years on paper yet does not know git more than push and pull.
Also there are few who didnt do very well at the interview, however we hired and doing quite well at work.
(As I also had a hard time getting a job before, I sometimes feel bad to reject some who seems to have good personality but didnt do well at work)5 -
This was a pretty bad interview process
https://devrant.com/rants/5443046/...
What’s funny is that they told me I lacked experience, but then within the following year they called me at least 5 times asking if I was available, as they were desperately looking for someone.
No thanks1 -
Failed the interview I was hoping for.
I already had 3 tech rounds, this was 4th and god I couldn't solve anything. Other rounds were fine but only this one was bad. I feel so exhausted, I finally thought that I'm out of this shit hole but no I have to continue working day and night. :( :(2 -
So, just had an interview for a junior position at a company but as a QA engineer.
I would've preferred to apply to a more dev kinda job but I gotta eat. Apparently they liked my CV and the job doesn't sound so bad, any QA engineer with some advice or tips of what to expect if I get the job?3 -
So I had got a company called me a week ago and scheduled an interview via Google Meet which was supposed to happen yesterday in the afternoon. I checked multiple times and was convinced that they didn't send me any invitation or any sort of URL to me as they told me they will send me on the day I will be interviewed.
Yesterday I didn't get any URL, I request the URL and asked them whether the interview is cancelled. They saw the messages I sent them but never reply. Until this noon, I receive a long message that they suggesting to put the blame on me for 'being Gen-z bad attitude worker who didn't show up in the interview and not responsible '. I was confused. Why would they make such a statement as yesterday hours before the interview I was sending them messages and emailing them continuously asking for the URL to the interview session in Google meet. I can't join the interview without the URL obviously.
In my defence, I did follow up with them just to get the link to the interview and get ghosted or silent treatments. As strange as this sound, magically their colour was revealed to me after they put the blame on me for their negligence.
Lastly, it is not a heavy chore to admit mistakes. Lucky enough for me that they revealed every plausible red flag to me before joining their team. I definitely do not want to work for a company that put the blame on me whenever they commit a mistake.1 -
Since the 3rd day, I have been telling y'all but none of you listened to me.
I kept repeating that I am the dumbest person I know. Why didn't you believe me when I said it?
Remember, Booking feedback? They sent me another official rejection with additional feedback. Mind blown.
That feedback really helped me understand what was going wrong. And now today in an interview, I was asked a question and the interviewer said, "I am looking for a specific details like xyz for why you should be a Sr PM".
That's when it clicked me, that I have done stuff and I know things. It's just that I didn't understand the question and wasn't able to articulate and communicate well.
My dumbass just needs constant feedback to learn. How much I love feedback more than ever.
The feedback cycle is interesting too. When I was new, I hated it. Then started to realise the value of it.
Then it did felt bad in the very instance whenever I got one, but quickly I used to incorporate the changes.
And now, I am crave and desperately seek feedback. It only helps me improve.
Funnily, everyone gave inputs when I didn't want it. And now when I am hunting for it, no one is giving inputs. This is how life is.
Nonetheless, I am pretty impressed with Booking. Good people, nice vibes, and kickass culture for sure.5 -
Some had teased me a bit on my previous meme so let me tell my anecdote...
I have to tell you a rather funny anecdote that happened to me during a job interview..
To put you in context, I am a front/back developer and the language where I perform best is JS. I started learning JS at an early age during an open source project to make animations on websites then I also quickly moved to the backend using NodeJS. I gained a lot of experience by going to small start-ups and this time if I wanted to try my luck on big companies in the field of video games.
So I wanted to present some projects to my interlocutor who seemed to be someone with an important position in the company, about 26 years old and we talked about the JS language. I showed him all my projects including those where I was doing free/open source and also in the field of video games such as volunteering like the back off https://mylolmmr.com And suddenly he called out to me and said "JS is not a real language".
I must confess that I was quite disturbed by his assertion and did not understand his condescension or his belittlement. This mind...
Especially since I find it extremely misleading to say that the JS language is not a real language when you know its advantages and disadvantages, but I did not dare to express myself on this subject and we continued the interviews, even though he saw that it bothered me.
The funny thing is that once the interview is over and I decide to go home and I receive a call from the company in question who wanted me to take a technical test telling me that the oral interview was successful...
I reassure you right away, I refused.. For a question of salary which was extremely low and obviously the bad experience with this famous director.3 -
update : we are at hr round baby!!!
part 1 : https://devrant.com/rants/5528056/...
part 2 (in comments) : https://devrant.com/rants/5550145/...
the tech market is crazy mann! it's one of the top indie fintech companies in our country and has a great valuation.
i totally felt that they i am crashing the interviews , and am seriously not trying to be humble. before the dsa round , i was trying to mug up how insertion sort works 🥲
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now my dilemma is should i switch if i get the offer. in a summary:
current company:
- small valuation but profitable (haven't picked funding for last 3 years , so poast valuation is some double digit million $, but can easily be a unicorn company)
- very major b2b player in my country. almost all unicorns (including this fintech company) and some major MNCs are their client and they have recently acquired a few other companies of us and eu too, making them- a decent global player
- meh work : i love being a cutting edge performer in android but here we make sdks that need to support even legacy banking apps. so tech stack is a lot of verbose java and daily routine includes making very minor changes to actual code and more towards adding tests , maintaining wrapper sdks in react/cordova/unity etc, checking client side code etc.
- awesome work life balance : since work is shit and i am fast enough, i am usually working only 2-4 hours a day. i joined gym, got into shape , and have already vsited 5 places in last 6 months, and i am a guy who didn't used to have time even on sundays. here, we get mote paid leaves than what i would usually need.
- learning opportunities: not exactly from the company codebase, but they provide unlimited access to various course learning platforms like linkedin learning, udemy and others, so i joined some web dev baches and i now know decent frontend too. plus those hybrid sdks also give a light context to new things
new company :
- positives : multi billion valuation, one of the top players in fintech , have been mostly profitable ( except a few quarters)
- positive : b2c so its (hopefully) going to put me back into racing shoes with kotlin, jetpack and latest libraries.
- more $$$ for your boy :)
- negetive : they seem to be on hiring spree and am afraid to junp ship after seeing the recent coinbase layoffs. fintech is scary these days
- negetive : if they are hiring people like me, then then they are probably hiring people worse than me 😂. although thats not my concern what my main concer is how they interviewed. they have hired a 3rd party company that takes interviews of people FOR THEM! i find that extremely impolite, like they don't even wanna spare their devs to hire people they are gonna work with. i find this a toxic, robotic culture and if these are the people in there then i would have a terrible time finding some buddy engineer or some helpful senior.
- negetive : most probably a bad wlb : i worked for an year for a fast paced b2c edtech startup. no matter how old these are , b2c are always shipping new stuff and are therefore hectic. i don't like the boredom here but i would miss the free time to workout :(
so ... any thoughts about it?4