I'll start with my own little story. I just came back from one. It's a small business, vaping startup I think. They're looking for someone to help with office work and deal with outside stuff. So apparently my interview wasn't going well cause I'm a fuckin neeerd with a college degree, while the two doods seem who interviewed me look like the bullies and trouble makers in high school.
The thing that turned me off is when they asked if I can handle "occasional harsh words". Like, be honest with me dude - you meant "will I shut up and take verbal abuse". I left with a distinct feeling they won't be calling me back, saying I got the job, but I sure as hell am not taking it if they do want me to.
P/S I don't smoke, vape or even drink. I only ever sucked dick, which is forever yummy
Recently I've noticed a trend of more and more companies requesting you film an intro video of yourself when applying. As if the process didnt require tons of effort anyway...
Also dont even get me started on coding interviews, where you solve stuff you never had to, and you never will in real life, and that has absolutely nothing with what you'll be doing day to day.
Yeah but that isnt even productive labour. Like this video wont serve anything, wont go anywhere beyond that application, and most likely even they wont see it.
But the racist AI that does watch it will note your every microexpression to decline your application.
I do some fairly sophisticated device firmware programming, and every time they've handed our department interview data it is useless because of the awful questions. We've had to demand that they use questions we wrote for them instead because pseudocode string manipulations tell us nothing about the quality of their 6502, 68k, and ARM assembly code. I actually love less experienced people because I can teach them well, but there are basics I need to do so and I need to know if they are able.
Code samples would be much better, but instead we have to play telephone with someone who knows zero about our field.
glad you won't be taking the job comrade, any day you can keep a small business tyrant out of your life is a good day
I have a friend who went for a job interview for a low level, minimum wage telemarketing job that basically put on a "Battle Royale" for the applicants where they started with 50ish and narrowed it down to the final few. The whole thing sounded completely pointless and unhinged but I guess that's the world of work in Hellworld for ya.
Sounds like you dodged a bullet with that job, at least. Life is too short to spend your days being yelled at by a small business vape bro if you can avoid it.
far from insane but I just feel like sharing a couple of my job interview experiences.
when I was interviewing with the first company I worked for, for some reason they split up my job interview into 3 separate days over the course of 2 weeks, and my start date wasn't until 2 weeks after I accepted the offer. but when I decided to leave and it was time to find a replacement, they did only 1 day of interviewing with each the candidates, and the replacement started about a week after that one interview. it's annoying to think about since back when I was interviewing, I lived about an hour away (one way) and it was summer in the US sun belt, so I basically spend $20 in gas and sweated my ass off for hours (even with AC it's fucking hot) to prove myself to them, but whoever replaced me only had to drive there and back once, in winter.
with another company I was interviewing with on my first job hunt, there were multiple rounds. first a phone screen with a recruiter, then a semi-technical phone interview with someone on the team, then a coding test (think leetcode/hackerrank), then a more technical phone interview with different team members, then another coding test, then a coding test but with interviewers watching who then ask you various questions about your code. after all that, it was finally time for the in-person interview. I scheduled it with the recruiter and started preparing, but a week later they randomly cancelled with no explanation! a week later I looked in the news and it turned out they had a massive round of layoffs, which was probably the cause of the disruption. I don't blame anyone in particular for my inconvenience, but it's so irritating that large companies will allow things like recruiting to continue when I'm pretty sure those at the top knew at least months in advance that it wouldn't be feasible, wasting both the time of their own employees and people interested in working at their company.
If management wound back the recruitment process, might that tip off employees to upcoming layoffs?
Yeah, I think that could happen if they’re not careful about it. I still think it’s a shitty thing to do
Fucking hate the sound of that. And the layoff story on top of that, too
from what I gather the layoffs happened because bain capital bought a big stake in the company and basically drove management to shit while pushing them to hit unrealistic goals
the same one
https://www.sevone.com/news/blog/sevone-receives-150-million-investment-from-bain-capital/
https://www.baincapitalventures.com/portfolio/sevone/
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/money/business/2016/08/01/sevone-begins-brutal-round-layoffs/87912724/and they're from Delaware, Jack!
Probably my worst is I went for a quite highly competitive job in server maintenance and other computery communication like stuff. It was actually a very high paying apprenticeship, £23k a year which is like 50% on top of minimum wage at a glance.
Obviously I wanted it. It was multiple rounds of interviews and then a group interview day bonanza. Of course on the day I felt like absolute shit, had a migraine, covered it with some intense painkillers which made me sweat like crazy.
There's a group interview problem solving session that lasts about half the day with 3 company people observing us all. We're given various tasks and made to split in to groups, that whole jazz. Usually I'm top dog in these situations but the feeling of impending death was holding me back a little.
Either way I'm still shining through. At the end we all sit down around a table and talk about our experience. To find out of the 10 people there I'm the only one without a degree....for an apprenticeship. I made some remark about it which got a laugh from the room but... why even invite me under these circumstances? Tokenism? Probably.
Anyway at the end of the thing I approach the company people resigned to the fact I'm not getting this job and ask if they would send me feedback. One of them calls me a few days later, she's one of the founders of the company. She thought I did amazingly, she acknowledged that I was up against it with no degree but they went with the guy who did have a degree soz...and said next time I need to show a little bit more 'enthusiasm'.
Then I burst in to flames and died.
That's gross as hell, sorry you had to go through that.
Semi related: I recently started at a new game dev studio and they're all a dream: flat hierarchy, super thoughtful of time/care and super invested in doing everything they can with the game money to better the world. Now I am putting my last job (which was coincidentally my first one in the gamedev industry) in perspective and goddamn, you really do internalize a bunch of crazy sketchy shit in your first job. Fuck "business" culture.
More possible than you would think! Depending on what you want to do and where you live there's a ton of job openings.
Ah christ, I'm sorry to hear that. Well, hit me up if you ever happen to need anything game related in Montreal! We gotta stick together.
What are some examples of the crazy sketchy shit you've internalized?
ugh - paying hourly workers monthly with constant delays even if the regional law is biweekly; absolutely messy management structure with LinkedIn-addict bosses constantly breathing down on your neck and giving contradictory answers to questions, no formally written down employee policies in a 15+ people studio, an obsession with hiring more people whilst mismanaging the current ones, zero long term planning in spite of going full businessman CEO wank and in general just fostering a very conservative attitude but it's ok because the bossman watches Hasan Minaj 😏
I'd start a worker cooperative if I barely knew anyone, knew what to do and had a business idea on hand. Oh and a fat load of capital, of course
fuck man i shouldn't have learnt about worker co-ops. now I don't wanna work anywhere else when I graduate.
had an interview once with some indian dudes that could definitely speak english but had such heavy accents that i couldnt understand a word that they were saying. they were asking me programming questions and doing that weird googlesque thing and im just like, bro, i have NO idea what youre saying and i have NO idea what youre asking me to do. i can tell you that i have a degree and a massive github, so look at those. i also showed up underdressed, because they said 'casual everyday wear' and i had just got back from helping homeless people at FNB. these motherfuckers were in full suits.
i didnt get the job.
I used to work for Indian managers that barely spoke english as a coder, you don't want that job. Indian managers in tech are insane conservative, full on fascism.
Small businesses suck to work for. There's no money, which means no benefits and the chance of your paychecks bouncing. There's no
Sat what you will about working for a massive evil megacorp, but the checks don't bounce and you don't have to deal with the CEO's fucked up outbursts
I had this one job interview that I had to do on Skype that was a mess of problems. Firstly the blurred background setting was on by default and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off, then when they asked me to describe the book I had read most recently, (Dune), I spent forever trying to explain the basic setting of the book and received nothing but a confused look, and finally my mind went blank trying to think of my strengths and weaknesses. It wasn't even an hour later that I got a rejection email.
