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Comment by anandsuresh

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Comment by anandsuresh

I understand and empathize with the sentiment here. Interviews have a skewed power-dynamic. A handful of people, or sometimes even a single person, can make or break your chances at what you feel is your dream job, and there is nothing you can do about it. It is an extremely frustrating place to be in, indeed.

I've had people with half my years of experience, ask questions that were likely from an algorithms course they took during their (under)grad school days, with little regard for its applicability to the role. These are the kinds of red flags I look for, and while I am yet to walk out of an interview, I do make it a point to provide feedback to the recruiter, along with my decision to withdraw from the process.

It is also pretty telling when a company fails to account for the candidate's experience. At best, it shows a lack of experience with recruiting; at its worst, it is a good indicator of poor culture. Having a person with 10+ years of experience write a quick-sort algorithm is unlikely to produce a good result; mostly because any engineer with that kind of experience would not really write a sort function by hand, unless working on a very low-level system (and even those are mature enough to have an optimized sort function readily available for use).

Like interviewing, conducting an interview is a skill that needs to be developed, and any good company would take measures to ensure it does a good job of it. Recruiting, after all, is a pretty expensive affair.

You've likely dodged a bullet there. Count your blessings, and move on to greener pastures. :)

Replies anandsuresh · 2022-01-14
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