You are the candidate and hold equal power. In the thought process you had "I think I should terminate this interview." If it ever gets to a point you are uncomfortable due to rudeness, leave. Sure, in a big faang world you may never have interaction with that person, but them being on the panel has a chance they would be your boss, peer, or in your org some way.

Toxic people can ruin what would otherwise be good careers. Alternatively, this can also be a huge indicator a company tolerates and promotes this behavior. To me, while it's possible, that this was a once and rare thing that only this person has done... Screw betting my career on the least likely possibility.

Their recruiters continue to reach out to me to this day, not a snowball's chance in hell.

Contrast this with a scenario at Dropbox where I was underprepared for a datastructures question (BitSet). While the interviewer was mildly taunting me, he at least was gracious enough to give hints and talk me through the solution as it ended. I knew I wasnt getting the role, but at least I learned something that day.

* not that rudeness in youth is acceptable or expected but a lack of life experience can lead to a lack of perspective or realization that life is much longer and you only get one reputation

Some are trying to see you fail. They're looking for a reason to say "no". They tend to not be of any help on a problem, will often try to find ways to trick you. They also tend to have an ego problem -- you need to prove to them that you're worthy of joining the team.

The other class of interviewers are those that want you to succeed. They will answer questions, and help clarify things. Even if you are unqualified for the role, and they know it, they still want to help you along so they can see your best work. People that shut down when they get nervous tend to open up to these interviewers. They also tend to be the people that are more pleasant to work with.

So ~14 years ago - after about a year at Microsoft, I was encouraged to assist with interviewing new candidates. At that time, there was no official guide/rulebook for interviewing, but I was told unofficially;

"We hire people with a solid technical base, who may not know EVERY thing at the time of interview, because we really want to hire on their future potential".

"If a candidate is doing poorly, don't be rude - if they asked where they failed, tell them - because, they may very well interview again in 6-months, and if they show a significant improvement, they may well get hired then."

"Any technology they list on their resume is 'fair game' - they had better know it, and if you have direct experience in a niche technology that they list, grill them to see if they are being 'honest'"

And - we were often paired with other technical interviewers, and everyone kept detailed notes. A single veto by any interviewer during any of the multiple phone sessions (and/or eventual in-person interviews) would end that stage of the process for that candidate.

It worked well - I interviewed more than one person who didn't make the cut in the first round of tech screen calls, but 8-months later - they did - and ended-up being very valuable members of our group.

However - there were definately other interviewers that were basically trying to trick the candidate at every step of the process - they were not some of our better team members and honestly, should not have been involved in interviewing.

Such a strange stance for MS to take (IMHO). I've got 20+ years experience in lots of different languages and different technologies. I've been looking for a new job and have been brushing up on skills for interviewing. I just don't think it's possible for me to be ready to be grilled by a current expert on 15+ languages that I've shipped high quality, production code. The flip side is to only list the three I can take a grilling on today on my resume? It seems like a pretty short sighted approach. Maybe they have moved on in this stance?

If a candidate lists multiple languages on their resume, I'll often ask them to do a compare and contrast -- what do they think are the strengths and weaknesses of the languages? What did you use language X for? Do you think language Y would have been better/worse/same to attack the same problem?

I'm not looking to trip them up, just find out if their resume is an accurate reflection of their experience.

I was surprised that they approached me because the team works primarily in C# and Go, and I've been doing JVM languages mainly, and only a small amount of Go, but the interviewer emphasised that they want people who can learn and enjoy learning.

They then asked me to choose a language I know well and describe a strength and weakness of it.

It was a really good interview experience tbh.

I would say the port/protocol memorization may be required depending on what job you are interviewing for. If its for a tech support job, maybe the ports/protocol question is pointless.

I have no respect for such people. Not because of their lack of "niceness", but because that kind of behaviour betrays a lack of technical confidence.

That remark isn't just about interviewers; it applies to all colleagues. More generally, I tend to respect people who are smart enough to know what they don't know, and honest enough to admit it.

Yes agreed. I've seen this in interviewing and in teaching. People who are insecure make it about how smart they are, people who are confident make it about helping others.

I considered it a privilege to have the potential to influence progress in someone else's career.

I am very much in the latter category of wanting to see folks succeed.

We had one candidate that didn't have experience in the particular technology we were interviewing for, but I could tell he was highly intelligent, just very nervous.

I asked him questions on another complex technology that he'd listed on his resume, to try and draw out some of his thinking on his problem solving skills.

He did great.

I suggested to him that he should come to us with questions, and interview us as much as we were interviewing him. I wanted to see him get the job.

He didn't… at first.

The others on the panel didn't give him their vote. We'd picked someone else that ended up flaking out.

I went back and tried to make the case that we should extend him an offer.

They ended up doing so… dude was an absolute ROCKSTAR.

Please be the one that wants people to succeed. Interviewing is hard, people.

That's how I go about it. Even unprepared candidates can return someday with more experience/knowledge, or apply to a different position where they can succeed - or letting their friends/acquaintances know about the role.

Also, as we can see in this post, a bad interview experience can really taint a company's image, which can to some degree prevent people from applying

a) I think as interviews as auditions rather than exams.

b) I try to find someone's edges, so that the hiring manager has better information. In other words, if I were to give a candidate full marks, I've probably failed as interviewer.

Consider: You're hiring for a senior systems software development role, and the candidate doesn't know what an instruction is.

etc.

Something trivially google-able is like not knowing the syntax for generating permutations of a sequence in Python. But not knowing the idea of permutations would not be trivially google-able.

I did spot them the malloc() call (I certainly would not have wanted the interview to get bogged down for that), but yes, I did hold not knowing that against them in my evaluation.

That is, local LAN only, with no access to the internet, and no internet-capable "personal electronic devices" or cellular phones permitted in the development area.

You had whatever paper documentation you brought yourself, what was in your head, and whatever was in the /documents directory for that project.

It's a different work mindset. I've since moved to a sysadmin position, running a closed network. When programmers decided they couldn't hack being cut off from the net, they'd quit. Dealing with vendors who signed a contract swearing their product didn't need internet access to install or function, when it won't even complete the install without internet access, is more awkward. Particularly when we call the lawyers in. Because that's why we tediously explained the while "no internet" thing in the contract. That they signed. No, not even for just a few minutes. And by the way, can you explain why your installer times out trying to contact servers in three different countries? Our network admin is curious...

It definitely tests your skill and you can identify who can solve problems on their own. Hopefully you have an additional network that you can do research on.

If what they Google would provide them the correct answer, I'm OK with someone who knows how and when to Google something. Those that don't think about researching themselves usually end up asking me in-person. And I usually then ask them if they have done any research themselves.

here's the basic operating model.

you have a controller but unlike a typical web controller, you are rally controlling the lifecycle for a long lived server process thats specific to the user in a session. you get callbacks for the startup where you can load data structures into the session. You also have functions that let you write frontend components from the backend similar to server side react.

Here's where it gets interesting. The frontend maintains a long lived websocket connection. if you change a piece of data on the backend, the frontend will automatically update to reflect the changes. additionally, you can set event triggers in your html that trigger server side callbacks from which you can update that server side data.

so you might be asking yourself, "big deal, meteor does that"

The big deal of course is that you're using elixir, a mostly functional language with immutable data structures and concurrency abstractions that make node look amateur hour. Spawning thousands of one off short lived persistent sessions, one for each user, that each have a websocket connection is a trivial task for the beam virtual machine that phoenix runs on. Scaling the backend for this is trivial compared to ding it in node which is what meteor is doing. The underlying platform is just a better fit for what meteor is trying to solve. Every thread has its own heap of memory and is isolated from others. You have no such guarantee in meteor unless you dedicate an entire OS process for each user, a task that will be expensive and nontrivial)

of course, its a backend process. so phoenix liveviews can also do a few other interesting things. need to upload an image or perform a background task? have your callback send its process id to the background worker and the background worker can send a message back to your session enabling you to update your session data. the frontend will automatically reflect the change. by comparison, tailing mongodb's oplog is child's play. If you can have your data source emit events on changes, you can plug it into elixir's pubsub system and accomplish the same reactivity in a live view.

Oh yea, and fly.io already works with both meteor and live view's limitation of needing the physical machine to be close to the users for keeping the latency down.

but to get a better handle, here's some interesting reading

https://www.phoenixframework.org/blog/the-road-to-2-million-...

https://expertise.jetruby.com/websockets-how-to-rails-action...

I could tell you the result but the difference is so stark, you might think I'm exaggerating

People change, they get given second chances. I wouldn't mind giving a company a second chance, especially after they probably had a real kick-in-the-nuts because of their approach to your interview, since it most likely wasn't that easy to find another qualified MeteorJS dev.

I wouldn't even interview there after hearing the story.

It was refreshing to be interviewed like I would be a valued addition to their team with my unique skills rather than quizzed on the information.

I frequently see comments like this on HN and I don't really buy it.

When every job opening has several qualified candidates, and it can take several applications to land a new job, I still think the employer has more power.

At the very least for the last half year, I think developers may have an "upper hand".

I had to get no less than 6 offers before I got one that was reasonable in my last search. 6. I had done about a dozen onsites and dozens of phone screens at that point. This was just a year ago. I expect the same this year - if not worse because of the market doing so poorly.

...

Then...up your pay? It doesn't take an Einstein-level IQ to figure that one out.

Developers might have an upper hand at salary negotiation, but actually landing an offer? Nah. Employers still have the power.

The candidates don't control the comp you offer. Claiming that those darned candidates have the upper hand because everyone else pays better is a bad faith argument. Not that you can tell your boss that, I'm sure.

This is the mentality that gets you bullied. There are more openings than qualified people, and businesses can't make money without employees. No one is doing you a favour by giving you a job, they are literally making off your back.

The interviewee loses a day of PTO, or continues to be unemployed (and usually in a financially precarious situation).

Imbalanced outcomes means imbalanced power.

At the end of the day, the company wants to hire you and you probably want to be hired. I generally urge people to think of this as a cooperation exercise and not a power struggle.

Interviewers should treat interviewees with dignity and kindness, even when the interviewee is doing poorly. Interviewees should be gracious to the interviewer, even when they have decided to work elsewhere. The first side to stop being cooperative loses.

The above does not however apply to salary negotiation.

No, at the end of the day, the company wants to hire SOMEBODY. That somebody is not necessarily you, hence the interview. You're being compared to all the other candidates.

Maybe this is different late in your career when you've got 10+ years experience under your belt, but there are a LOT of candidates in that "3-5 year" experience point.

Any "adversarial interview" techniques are a big red flag, imo. They also make it easy to quickly recognise places with a toxic culture, so there's not need to beat yourself up if you fail. You dodged a bullet, plus now have an excuse to rant with your friends over a pint!

Hence, my favourite interviews (regardless of the side I was on) were the one when we had a chance to spend a day working with the candidate.

Yeah, and the company continues being understaffed for what they want to do, and often the interviewer is one of the people on that team who needs more people.

(no it's not exactly the same)

I don't believe this.

The only way this is true is if there are a lot of openings at companies that are going to pay significantly under market and can't figure out why nobody is accepting their offers, even when candidates tell them.

Based on another comment [0], maybe this is actually the case.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31341966

Layoffs and hiring freezes at big tech might change things in the next few months though

That's very easy to explain within a framework of there being lots of available workers and few available positions.

Employers post hiring ads, get responses, and conclude that posting ads works and they should keep doing it.

Job seekers post hire-me ads, get no responses, and conclude that posting ads doesn't work and there's no reason to do it.

This answer could change your conclusion.

Usually I feel like interviews are staged in a way to put Interviewees in a tense, or underdog sort of way. From the moment you walk in you feel like you are in their hands. I am always somewhat nervous and tense in a interview, but that could be more my mentality than anything, but I can see where they are coming from.

In an ideal world we feel equal and have the opportunity to walk out but when you really need a job or have had troubles finding one it can feel pretty powerless.

Sorry to ramble a bit.

N number of candidates enter that month's job market, companies are able to offer N number of positions.

At the end of the hiring cycle, they make the N-to-N matches and execute the cycle.

A candidate can (and must) have several offers from different companies, just as companies have several candidates for each position.

Depends on what role you're interviewing for. C# dev? Probably. What about full-stack Javascript dev? Totally lopsided in favor of the developers. I have, on average, a dozen emails from recruiters looking for full-stack JS devs. I barely do JS work any more, but the everything is so scarce, if companies can just find someone who's mildly fluent in JS, they'll hire and train you - its that bad in the Midwest where I live. The entry level roles are pretty competitive, but anything mid to senior level there aren't enough people to go around right now.

You just have to know your market and when you have leverage. When you have leverage, you can really take advantage. Don't like the people interviewing you? Wait a day or so. You like a company? Use your leverage to get more vacation, higher salary, play companies against each other to get more for yourself.

Knowledge is power, simple as that.

It's easy to name a bunch of names that everyone on HN has heard of, and you can bet anything that in job negotiations they are the ones who have the power. Companies have to come courting them, not the other way around.

Overall, people seeking work have less overall power and a generally poor position, unless they have saved or earned enough to not require the work.

They may be a gatekeeper for the job, but you are the gatekeeper for your time. Hiring a person is a mutual decision. Since job descriptions are usually quite vague on some important details about the team and company, applying for the job is simply expressing interest in the job, not a confirmation that you would take it if offered.

You just never know who you may find on the other side of the table!

Every applicant also has several qualified companies they can work for.

It's not totally equal, but if your mindset is not peers meeting to see if there's a good fit, your interviewing experience is going to be worse than it could be.

Not only does 6-figures of cash get burned, but you're back at square one needing to find a new hire, not to mention your project now being behind schedule because you expected work from someone, and now the existing team has to go through another interviewing spree.

The employee may have left a job where they were relatively secure - maybe they even relocated for the role. Now they're back on the job market and their employability has taken a major hit. Not to mention that being fired is often a very traumatic experience with all the health consequences that entails. Seems a lot more serious than a project being pushed back a couple months.

(btw, "bad" according to which criteria? a lot of the time when I hear this phrase thrown around it's a smokescreen for unrealistic expectations or an exclusionary team culture)

If that were true companies would give out huge raises to keep employees. They don't.. they prefer that people leave and new people get hired by them.

No one wants a bad hire because it taints their brand at the org. Having someone else recommend someone means someone else takes the blame. Referrals get hired quickly.

Ya, you really have to pay attention to red flags, you'll be working (stuck) with them for at least a year, possibly more, and you will depend on them for your livelihood and family's survival.

Not during interviews, but sometimes I close my eyes when I want to focus intently on what the speaker is saying. I used to twirl my pencil.

I try and give both interviewers and interviewees the benefit of the doubt.

Walking out without saying anything seems pretty rude, but I don’t know all the circumstances. Laughing in your face seems much worse. It’s a two way interview. If it doesn’t feel right, hopefully you’ve got other options and don’t need to proceed. Or get an offer (if it isn’t going to take 5 more rounds of interviewing, you’ve already committed time to the interview, consider whether it’s worth taking it to completion) and then raise concerns and listen to how your concerns are addressed.

Why is that? Do you mean it looks bad in the CV if you leave too soon?

That's one thing, also life happens where it's more beneficial to stay someplace to keep the income coming in than it is to spend hours off the clock finding and preparing a different job. Say a medical problem, or you need to pay to fix damage to your house, or a spouse lost a job, etc.

1. Either trying to kick a cocaine habit, and was still going through the motions with something that looked like cocaine

2. He was going to offer the coke to OP and see if he was a culture fit.

Was a very useful interview for me, and I've told a few old colleagues who were approached by the company also about it, so it saved them time too.

Any company might have a random asshole pop up into a chance encounter. What that random asshole does is less telling than what everyone else around them does to address it.

It was a bad experience, but the other two interviewers were very nice and I really wanted to work for this non-profit, so I sent a follow-up email apologizing for upsetting the Lead Architect so much, saying that I thought it was just a misunderstanding, that there were multiple correct answers, and provided some documentation to further explain why I answered the way I did.

I got a job offer that afternoon, and two weeks after I started they fired the Lead Architect. That same week, I went out to lunch with the team, where one of the interviewers told everyone about how I made the Lead Architect look so stupid during the interview and that I was so incredibly nice about it that they knew they had to hire me. Turns out it was a workplace where everyone highly valued politeness and the Architect had been antagonizing and bullying everyone for years. Ended up being one of the friendliest places I've ever worked.

I bet that lunch made you feel great!

Customer service persona, I like it.

«“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.»

In other words, cause them suffering by being super nice to them.

Be nice with the intention to harm.

This is so twisted.

In my book kindness means literally wishing good from the depth of my heart.

Its ok to continue the interview but its also ok to finish, leave and never return. They're as much under investigation for fit as you are. Hold them to your standards.

You got a glimpse of what working with them would be like in future. I'd say you found them lacking. Can you imagine a code review with that person?

All that assumes that the interviewers' behavior was "just" rude, if the cross line like sexism, racism and similar thing the solution is standing up and leaving. Their is only so much you can learn from abusive people.

The interviewer may still tell people that you gave up halfway through, but if anyone else is listening or the interviewer is accidentally honest, it is more likely to trigger change by emphasizing that the company is losing you rather than you are losing the company.

I would also suggest this; it signals to the other interviewers that they just lost a potential candidate because of John Doe's behavior. They might take action, but they need to understand the consequence of having that guy on the team, or at least in the interview room.

You would waste your own time, too, with this approach.

I was asked to show up at 8am, but I was not told I would not be leaving the office until 6pm.

Also, I was told it was a direct hire - when I got the offer for something like $35/hr in a major city as a mid level programmer, I sorta lost it on the recruiter. No vacation, purely contract work through the recruiter.

More or less lied to during the entire process. I guess some candidates are happy to get a job and just put up with it? It has to work sometimes...

* "We have this amazing CTO / CIO / VP Role."

* "What's the pay range for this role?"

* "We pay market rates"

* "I'm currently making $X at my fancy FAANG role. Can you beat that?".

* "Oh. Nevermind".

It's helped, but there are still false promises made.

Sadly yes and they don't have a choice, but anyone accepting that shit who do have a choice are lowering the standard for everyone else.

I would have had to move across the country and they recently laid off 1000 (50%) of their staff, so in retrospect I figure I dodged a bullet, but wow!

My co-founder paused, and very calmly said something like "X, if this isn't a good use of your time then tell us so we don't waste ours, either". He immediately put his feet down, his phone face down on the table, and politely paid attention the rest of the pitch. He obviously didn't invest but we walked out of there with our heads held high.

We could’ve pitched to ourselves on a blank zoom call and come out more confidente. The worst part, we spent a bit of time on that presentation and really tried to make it less boring.

Fuck you Icehouse ventures.

The NZ startup funding scene is bare and so the guys with money now think they're gods.

But very true, ultimate beta move.

I have a little tingling sensation that we could use more women in positions of power in tech.

We might benefit from slightly different ways of thinking about working with fellow human beings.

(In case that wasn't clear, I agree with your point. I'm just a bit sad about the language and mindset you're describing!)

If you look up the origin of the phrase "shit test", you will find a lot of irony in this statement :)

When i worked at Tesla everyone was on their laptops answering emails/ working in meetings. I don't think it takes your full attention to listen to someone, but i guess it's a bit different if you were just pitching him and not a room full of people.

I disagree to this with every fiber of my being. If you're multitasking doing something that requires anything beyond mechanical tasks then you're not really listening.

I challenge you to actually try and listen to a person with a completely silenced mind. It's surprisingly hard.

I often listen to podcasts and videos on 2x or even 3x speed because the speaker talks so slow.

When they talk slow and the amount of information they're relaying is relatively low or mostly familiar, my mind tends to drift and I can actually multitask relatively well.

It's when I speed up the rate at which they're speaking that it becomes more difficult to multitask, until at last I really need to concentrate in order to follow what they're saying and then my focus remains glued to the speaker.

That said, I do think it's rude to focus on anything else when one is interviewing someone. They should have your full attention, or you shouldn't be there.

- During a retro decide to have a quota of meetings left early/skipped as a team action/working agreement. - Keep inviting people as you are, but mark everyone as optional. - No phones, no laptops (unless they're for taking notes)

Rapidly changing from topic to topic but having everyone in a conference room while everyone is working is highly effective. People can jump in and give input on the topic they were half listening too. How many times someone has said "Oh, i have a supplier for that" or "I wrote a script for that".

The above example is really off topic from "He was on his phone while we were pitching" but i think it applies to the fact that smart people are actually really good at multi-tasking, bad a social ques and norms but you shouldn't take it as a sign of disrespect.

> perceived power differential

Not really. It is game theory.

You earn nothing by throwing shade apart from emotional satisfaction.

It is only beneficial to go above and beyond to ensure nobody feels any shade to anybody. You never what you will need in the future.

> everyone's time is equally valuable

Trying to repeat a tautological statement is a shade, IMO.

If you never see the person again and you've held your head high you will feel more confident.

If you play game theory the emotional damage might haunt your next interview.

Getting revenge emotionally is a passing pleasure with no real benefit. There is only possible downsides.

This is why high EQ people are generally more successful.

When they directly insult you during the interview, that should be the end. If you're willing to tolerate abuse during the interview process, you should expect the culture to persist and you advertise that you're okay with it.

Respect of my time and the time of those around me is important to me. I had a recruiter that didn't understand this concept. He was representing a major media company that seemed like it'd be interesting to work for. But since the recruiter advertised to me that he couldn't care less about my time, I took that as an ongoing issue at the company and I ended the process.

It's just not worth it, especially when you have other potential opportunities that may still be interesting. Respect is important and if they can't respect you at the interview, they will not respect you in the job.

One can arrive at that place earlier in life, and will given mentors and a robust set of early experiences.

And the crazy thing is, knowing that power dynamic means you can, likely, command more compensation.

I think the worst interview process I've been through is when I did 8 interviews at a company, 6 of which were technical, and then was not hired (overqualified apparently...I'm old enough to start encountering ageism and all that). Such a monumental waste of time.

The interview process should be a conversation, not an interrogation.

If it isn't, I probably don't want to work there.

If time comes up, I let them know I have the time needed and would not have asked if I didn't.

Do they have the time needed? If not, why?

Answers to that can make sense and can bias the session toward a more productive exchange.

"Gentlemen, it's clear to me that we're not a good fit here. Let's not waste anymore of our time"

Say it 10 times in front of a mirror or something and just push the mental button when you need to.

"If you find yourself speaking with a person who does not make sense, in all likelihood, that person is not real. Allow the person to finish their thought then provide an excuse why you cannot continue talking."

https://thestanleyparable.fandom.com/wiki/Dialogue#Choice_Vi...

For my part, I prefer "amigos" in all but the most formal contexts, except ... that's arguably not gender neutral either.

This is all just flow and it depends on the speaker. Having a bit of a lead in can help some people. Gets in the way for others.

This is all just flow and it depends on the speaker. Having a bit of a lead in can help some people. Gets in the way for others.

Not sure how that happened.

"My noble friends"?

"Good people"?

Does not quite feel the same. Perhaps it is my linguistic habits too ingrained

[Not an English native] Isn't that a little too informal? Bugs Bunny came to mind.

Is "ladies and gentlemen" somehow out of fashion?

Some women get pissed at being called a "lady".

It is a minefield, but better than using low English phrases like: "folks", or "guys" (that is a gender neutral slang term in my world)

Always use high English when talking business. Formal language every time.

Fuck the cunts!

Gentlefolx

IMO this effectively terminates all possibilities. IMO it might be more effective to say a break in the convo adding something tailored to what you're feeling/observing.

"I'm getting the sense that something's off here. "

Distracted/Disinterested - "Is there something more pressing you need to attend to?"

Rude - "Can you tell me about your company values and how you treat eachother?"

Superiority - "Can you tell me a bit about how CompanyX mentors and develops new talent?"

etc -- put it out to them assuming the best, but implying you're now interviewing them about their qualities.

They didn't like the not finishing part. I got an email later on saying thanks but no thanks. I asked them if they wanted to see the work they asked me to do. That piqued their interest. They then asked if I was still interested.

I said, "No, I think we are done here."

Assholes are a major red flag. You really need to avoid them. Your life will be much better without them. Look up the companies on glassdoor, search for the people you speak to ahead of time, see if there are any major issues. You'd be surprised at how easy some of these are to find with careful digging. Though you need to be adept at filtering disgruntled people seeking reputational revenge versus specific critiques.

Perhaps have a harsher/rude version in case you see someone not respecting your time and are being rude.

"Folks, it's clear to me that I don't want to work here. I don't want to waste any more of my time".

Such disagreeable situations call for calm and playful assertiveness. You catch the opposite party off guard by politely calling them out and exposing them for being an asshole. You leaving thereafter also strips them of the opportunity to correct their immediate behavior and thus, robs them of a chance to demonstrate that it was, in fact, a misunderstanding. That can be quite frustrating, since most rude people really like to project the veil of being decent human beings and hate the idea of someone thinking less of them.

I might make a quick crack like: "Wow. Must be important. Anyhow, let's get back to what we were doing." in order to see what the reactions of others are and whether I get an apology. But I might not. Shrug.

However, the probability of my taking a job there would be close to zero after that. It's just a huge red warning flag.

Practice interacting and being in a professional conversant situation without reading too deeply into what you think is going on for the other person. Accept the situation on face value with the best and worst interpretations in mind, but not in effect. That's good for negotiating too. If you feel on the defensive because of an implied power relation, or misunderstanding, hold that thought, wait and see, it could get interesting.

Since you allocated the time anyway, make the best of a recon opportunity. If the interviewer is being rude, the fact that you are unruffled makes you the bigger person. Smile politely and you may unbalance them. Save any grand decision for the end.

In my experience, most people do pay a lot of attention to nonverbal communication… and they're really awful at interpreting it. Basically taking any vague body motion as evidence in favour of their preconceived ideas :/

My communications got noticably smoother when I made a conscious decision to ignore the majority of nonverbal communication; and if it seemed like somebody was trying to say something, I’d explicitly say “Hey, I get the impression that you’re <angry/sad/etc>, am I reading that correctly?” and go from there rather than assuming.

I like this and am going to try it!

Any human being should understand.

  * Other interviewers don't say anything -> ask what's up, and whether this means the interview is over. Point out that you don't feel comfortable continuing like this.
  * Other interviewers show they are "on your side", i.e. as confused as you and don't endorse that behavior -> continue the interview, and maybe later try to figure out what happened. Consider it a yellow card (in Football speak). Make sure that you don't ever work with that specific person.

And leaving when the "interview wasn't going well", makes me picture OP struggling at the whiteboard and somebody not wanting to interrupt him. Sometimes people have to leave. To me, this fits into the category of devs often being unthinking rather than actively rude, and those are completely different categories to me.

I feel like we too often ascribe malice to people for what are often just cultural differences.

They were interrupting me constantly during the whiteboarding. That was actually one of the other things I didn't like about the team. They wouldn't give me time to fully answer their question before butting in and telling me how they would do it. Half the time I felt like they were solving it for me. When I expressed my dismay they told me they didn't actually want a solution from me but were just trying to determine whether they could work with me or not, because that's how they came up with solutions at their company.

In any case, they clearly had no problem with interrupting me. So when the person who had laughed at me later just got up and walked out during the interview (after the whiteboarding) without saying a word, it did seem kind of rude.

I've been in lots of interviews throughout my life, and never once did anyone act remotely like this.

Of course, I could have misinterpreted them, and maybe their laughter was good-natured (it seemed condescending to me). Maybe they had some good reason to leave in the middle of the interview, but they could have just excused themselves.

I had good feedback too! It was a sort of take on a sorting/search problem with a ton of inserts if I recall. Each loop I had, I was reallocating the size of the array by 1 or so. They pointed out, hey, we actually know the size up front right? Let's just allocate the perfect amount right up front.

The better other interviews I had weren't whiteboarding as much as talking through a problem. One is the famous "Urinal Algorithm". you walk into a bathroom with 10 urinals. Where do you stand? No right or wrong answer there. Now you walk in as a second person.. where do you stand?

A second was a sort of "Whats the minimum number of steps you can take to determine where an element is in an array?". you know getting 'hotter/colder' like the kids game, but you can jump around. It's not stated in all algorithmic terms, but you can figure it out with a bit of grasping around and its important for me to see someones process than it is to memorize an algorithm.

it forces a junior person to think through a problem, with some guided help and as a more senior person now, i see that's more valuable in assessing if a junior person can fit in with your style of teaching.

I would say that has a certain logic, too and maybe all in all you were just not a good fit for that company culture. Not that you lacked skills, but simply that your social norms are not compatible with that company (the company seems special, though)

It seems both parties should have ended the interview more early.

I want to address this quote because I’ve been this guy, and I’ve had to train myself out of habits like these. When one acts without thinking the results are often quite rude. Not thinking through your actions and the impact those actions will have on others is itself rude!

Now, I don’t mean to ascribe malice here either, but you can be quite rude without malice. Intent matters, and its worse with malice. But simply being “absent minded” is also rude! Good people acknowledge it, apologize and move on. Some people dig in their heels and won’t concede. YMMV. :)

Once walked out of a big meeting in frustration with a bunch of upper microsoft partners. The head of ops said something like "Well the only guy who actually knows what's going on just left. so the meeting is over" (at a fortune 500).

I was an asshole. the whole team was assholes. We burnt out after about 18 months and 4 acquisitions.

I don't want to be that person anymore

But god damn do other humans make it hard.

The others completely ignored it and acted like nothing unusual was happening... though I did sense that one of them was uncomfortable when the interviewer who had laughed at me just got up and walked out.

The person who was rude might have been in a situation where he didn't want to hire someone but was compelled to, so his reaction might have been an unskillful projection of not wanting to go through the process. The others could very well have been mortified to the point of inaction or pretending it didn't happen. There's no way they could justify the behavior of their colleague.

In any case, yeah, it's a sure sign of a toxic environment. That said, if the OP was in the right head-space, he could have used it as an opportunity for humor to take the edge off and help him and the others feel better.

Good responses are, on one side of spectrum, they think it's funny and interesting. In the middle (also good responses) they or ask why or politely disagree. On the not so good, they politely disagree but think you're stupid without saying it. Then, out of all those response options, if they pick being rude, then you have a very strong indicator.

If they're discussing alternative music, I say "uh, i like Taylor Swift". If they're discussing cars, I'd say I love minivans ("they're so useful!").

After reading the OP comment, saying my favorite language is Scheme is one I might try when talking programmers haha. In this case, I don't know anything about Scheme, so I'd see their reaction and just say I was just joking.

That said, I've had several interviews I'd concluded I wasn't interested quite early in the process. In one case I wrapped relatively quickly, and immediately told the recruiter I was not in the least interested. In another, the situation wasn't hostile, but was so bizzare I continued the interview simply to try to understand what the heck was going on.

It would be extraordinarily rare for an interview to pose a direct threat, so continuing with a viewpoint that the experience is simply practice doesn't hurt. I've also had other staff who'd interviewed me and then left that position contact me with other offers, so from a networking perspective, the experience can still be useful.

There were other opportunities I should have passed on but did not. Having additional options is extraordinarily useful. Those are among my regrets.

Interview was conducted by a recently-hired, recently-graduated (and very fresh-out-of-school) developer.

The business prop just didn't make sense.

After about 15--20 minutes, I was just trying to make sense of the situation / why they were even at the firm.

I watched for further developments from the company for a few years, I'm not aware that anything ever came of it, so at least this one time my sense that this could never pan out was in fact correct.

(Stupid ideas often have a much longer runway than seems remotely possible, especially when money also gets stupid.)

I don't recall the name of the company any more.

They were in search space, and are neither alphabetic or waterfowl-inclined.

Yes, what was so bizarre?

Before I could decline the position in the system, they called me and offered the job. I said something to the effect of "thanks but I'm don't think it was a good fit. Good luck in the search". Then he started pressing me for why I'm turning it down. I told him I didn't think I would get enough support/growth from the tech lead if they can't even take time for the interview (also it made me think the team might be overworked).

Then the manager called my current manager. Both managers couldn't understand why I turned it down. How? How can they not understand that even after I explained it?

So in summary, I finished the interview and declined the offer. I would have withdrawn my application but didn't get to it fast enough.

No need for any further explanation, no need for excuses, just simply pack your stuff calmly and leave.

Other unrelated career advice (after 15+ years of experience):

1. Don't participate in any abusive/toxic behavior (even if all employees are doing it)

2. Document abusive behavior (emails, texts, etc) with screenshots whenever possible (especially if it involves you)

3. Try to quit professionally whenever possible (provide no feedback or very little ad give a notice), in cases where you _know_ you absolutely can't mentally/physically take it anymore, then leave immediately (i.e NEVER put your health in danger, all the legalities, logistics, etc can be dealt with later; even in extreme situations)

4. Never overwork yourself, your compensation has nothing to do with your effort.

5. Don't constantly criticize the code base, especially if you are new, you don't know the history yet and many people have emotional attachment to their code.

6. If you want to play the office politics (for whatever reason, e.g raises, extra vacation time, etc), find out who are the _bigger_ decision makers and make sure they are aware of YOUR contributions. Don't burn the midnight oil, thinking they will care, that's not how it works; they need to constantly hear your name and ideas.

7. Office romance is NOT worth it _most_ of the time; however if you are going to take this route, make arrangements to be able to leave the company if necessary.

8. Don't talk behind other people's backs, don't partake in excessive drinking or become _too_ attached/close to your coworkers (especially with their family lives). Always maintain a healthy boundary, even if you genuinely think some of your coworkers could become your life-long friends.

9. Use spaces instead of tabs.

10. Your workmates are not your friends. Your friends are your friends.

and

11. The way a company shows it appreciates you is mainly, not only, through money. (Related to 10) Having fun "team building" activities in otherwise non working time is not them showing appreciation.

Mainly you want to leave a good impression on the other people in case you meet them elsewhere in the future and only show a lot of initiative fixing something like that if you are being hired in a role that actually focuses a bit on those soft skills.

Personally, I once got far too involved in discussions with HR at a place where it clearly wasn't going to work out and they are high enough volume that it never mattered.. but I would prefer to have practiced the skills of never showing my hand and continuing along to learn more about their part of industry.

The minute I suspected any kind of inappropriate questioning, I used to just get up, thank them for their time and walk out. If you're getting stupid questions thrown at you, the interview is pretty much a lost cause anyway, so why waste time?!

A little later, I discovered an even more enjoyable way to end a "lost cause" interview, that can repay to the interviewer some of the discomfort they caused you.

Once you sense the interview is going south, and the interviewer is unnecessarily enjoying putting you under pressure, as a final resort, request that someone from HR be called to observe the interview. Even better if you have the HR reps number, so you can call them directly! Say that you feel that the methods being used in the interview are inappropriate and unnecessarily pressurising. It's no good sending an email after - you need to strike before the interview is over, while the iron's hot.

It really changes the mood in a beautiful way, and lets you get your own back on power-tripping trash bags. You obviously won't get the job, but that's probably for the better, given the trashy people you'd be working with!

Note: I worked in finance, where horrible interviews are sadly quite common.

One of my good friends is an analog custom layout expert in Cadence Virtuoso and its built in scripting language SKILL is a version Scheme / Lisp. If you told him that your favorite language was Scheme he would probably try to hire you just for that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_SKILL

~20 years later, I should have politely left after one of the sessions. I should have found the hiring manager, told him that "I don't see myself working out well here," and then given much more candid feedback to the recruitment agency.

But also, from that experience, I've learned to guide candidates more if they don't give me the answer I'm looking for. Specifically, if a candidate writes what I think is a sub-optimal solution, I'll say something like "can you make it faster?" or "can you make it more robust?" I never expect a candidate to read my mind the first time, especially if the candidate is feeling overwhelmed.

If I was in your situation, I probably wouldn't have walked out right away. If I was turned off the company, I'd have stayed until a break between sessions. If I was still interested or curious, I'd have discussed this particular employee with the hiring manager or HR rep.

I've only "walked out" of an interview once; it was a phone screen and it very quickly was obvious that I wouldn't be happy there. I told the interviewer that I really liked their product, (I really did,) and I wished them luck. (I really did wish them good luck too.)

Now, I'm not advocating being an asshole. But when working with top people in high pressure environments it certainly helps if you can deal with assholes. It is a bit reminiscent of Postel's law: Be strict in what you send, but tolerant in what you accept.

In this case, it could be that there was some other important meeting the person had to attend, and didn't want to interrupt the interview process with an explanation or goodbye.

If you conclude that this is not the environment you want to work in, fair enough, and concluding the interview politely at that point would certainly have been an option - it seems that the organisation and you were not a good fit anyway.

Watch the walkback.