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PIZZA.BAT
Nov 12, 2016


:cheers:


i guess for me i had to be pretty direct because they had 'unlimited pto' which raised a shitload of red flags for me so i had to be extremely sure i wasn't jumping out of the pan and into the flame, so to speak

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PokeJoe
Aug 24, 2004

hail cgatan


unlimited denied requests off

Not a Children
Oct 9, 2012

Don't need a holster if you never stop shooting.

meatpotato posted:

lol they came back today and said "actually, we can only do <way less than before>", which is about 10% more than my last job but the additional commute or moving expenses would completely negate and likely exceed the increase in salary :/

i think i flunked a phone interview today too, god dammit

Jesus that's some serious cajones for them to come back with a ~25% swing downward

Keep at it. It's a numbers game, 100%.

Fluue
Jan 2, 2008
had a company's recruiter reschedule from thursday of last week to monday of this week. then he no-showed and never replied to my "hey we still doing this?" email.

waste of an hour all said and done just to get ghosted.

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Nvm

qhat fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Sep 28, 2018

Arcsech
Aug 5, 2008

meatpotato posted:

lol they came back today and said "actually, we can only do <way less than before>", which is about 10% more than my last job but the additional commute or moving expenses would completely negate and likely exceed the increase in salary :/

i think i flunked a phone interview today too, god dammit

unless you really need the job, tell them to go gently caress themselves. that's really, really lovely imo

Hunter2 Thompson
Feb 3, 2005

Ramrod XTreme

Arcsech posted:

unless you really need the job, tell them to go gently caress themselves. that's really, really lovely imo

i do need a job, but probably not that job.

i didn't tell them to gently caress off, i just said that i'll make a decision in two weeks and in the interim i'd like information about their benefits package and any perks they offer so i can compare it with other offers i may* have

* don't actually

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Definitely worth holding out if you have like 5 other interviews coming up. If they can't wait 2 weeks :sever:

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

that doesn't bode well for what the place would be like to work at

Hunter2 Thompson
Feb 3, 2005

Ramrod XTreme
I don’t think they’re being malicious, just dysfunctional

either way I don’t want to work there

im doing an on-site interview today and another on monday, here’s hoping it goes well

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Interesting phone conversation with a startup.

Me: How do you guys make money?
Optional tips from our users and merch sales

Me: Are you guys currently profitable?
No.

Me: How much runway do you have?
We got 16 mill in funding two years ago so quite a lot.

splat

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

how much runway would that give the company? current startup (and likely only) I’m in would last a year, which uhh is a dull prospect

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Boiled Water posted:

how much runway would that give the company? current startup (and likely only) I’m in would last a year, which uhh is a dull prospect

My company is the same size and it would last about 2 years or less.

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Also they wanted me to do an 8 hour take home lol. No chance.

qsvui
Aug 23, 2003
some crazy thing
that reminds me of someone in a coc thread saying that was perfectly reasonable. lol indeed.

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

qsvui posted:

that reminds me of someone in a coc thread saying that was perfectly reasonable. lol indeed.

they went hog wild with it, that tangent was ridiculous

Symbolic Butt
Mar 22, 2009

(_!_)
Buglord
some time ago a company gave me a take home coding challenge and said it'd take me ~10h to complete, I did it in 1h30min

but joke's on me because I was ghosted after that

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Symbolic Butt posted:

some time ago a company gave me a take home coding challenge and said it'd take me ~10h to complete, I did it in 1h30min

but joke's on me because I was ghosted after that

They probably copy pasted it from the same place you did

Symbolic Butt
Mar 22, 2009

(_!_)
Buglord
I didn't copypaste poo poo, the task was about doing a super basic accounting sheet rest api. lol if they thought that takes 10h.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

qhat posted:

Interesting phone conversation with a startup.

Me: How do you guys make money?
Optional tips from our users and merch sales

Me: Are you guys currently profitable?
No.

Me: How much runway do you have?
We got 16 mill in funding two years ago so quite a lot.

splat

did they reveal what their burn rate was

Hunter2 Thompson
Feb 3, 2005

Ramrod XTreme
if they pay really poorly that money could go really far!

Hunter2 Thompson
Feb 3, 2005

Ramrod XTreme
I just got out of an all-day on-site with an well-known company and it was extremely stressful and off-putting so i feel like doodoo now

there were multiple interviewers on their phones at various points. one left early to do something else.

one guy had bad b/o and also got pretty frustrated with me over his made-up interview question. he handed me two pages of printed out multithreaded C code and told me to write code to optimize it for speed, memory, and make sure it runs reproducibly. it took at least a half hour of reading and asking questions to get to the point where I understood the intent of the code and I could even suggest optimizations so I basically ran out of time.

several people had difficult to understand accents so communication was challenging on top of the technical questions

not only that but nearly everybody seemed to lord over me how mission-critical their team’s code is to be bug free b/c it runs on a billion units but they also ship at an insane schedule and they only hire the brightest, etc. gah

nobody looked healthy either

sorry for the rant. if i even get an offer (lol) I’ll probably decline it b/c of “culture fit”. the situation actually left me with a headache and a bad impression of the company, or at least that team

Hunter2 Thompson
Feb 3, 2005

Ramrod XTreme
sorry, I can’t really place any blame on people with a strong accent. i should know better since ive studied another language. and plus, overcoming communication issues is more of a legitimate real-life challenge than the coding questions they ask.

the experience was just too intense i think
like, everyone who Interviewed was so drat sure/confident of of stuff I know almost nothing about
and i felt small and dumb and unsure

Symbolic Butt
Mar 22, 2009

(_!_)
Buglord
based on a recent experience I feel like good interviewers don't purposely try to crush you, harping on "we only hire the brightest" is a red flag imo

like I had an interview once where the guy kept repeating that over and over, testing me to see if I was MAN ENOUGH or something

Hunter2 Thompson
Feb 3, 2005

Ramrod XTreme
im a whiner, sorry people

some interviewers were just fine but about half seemed like people i wouldn’t want to work with

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


It sounds like that place would've been a nightmare.

Chopstick Dystopia
Jun 16, 2010


lowest high and highest low loser of: WEED WEE
k

meatpotato posted:

some interviewers were just fine but about half seemed like people i wouldn’t want to work with

Yep. If you're applying to posts instead of seeking out recommendations this is normal.

You are interviewing them.

Bloody
Mar 3, 2013

accidentally reactivated my account with the only good headhunters I've worked with and now they're blowing me up and I'm thinking about just rolling with it. if they can find me something with good tech for >20% more I'd prob consider it so I guess why not? I'm doing too much pm poo poo right now and want to do more ic poo poo and idk

Lord Stimperor
Jun 13, 2018

I'm a lovable meme.

I was recently hired as a data scientist.

I'm finishing my PhD at the moment but when I start I'll mostly have experience in MATLAB, Python, shell, different kinds of uni- and multivariate modeling schemes, bit of decoding/classification, and so forth. This is all cool and good. The company I actually ended up accepting an offer from uses: SAS and Excel. Welp... I accepted the offer anyway. I know someone who works there and it's a big corporation with unbeatable work/life balance, above-average salary, and lots of training opportunities. The job is in finance, which I've never done. Should I get bored or get the impression that my skillset is going to waste, I've decided to learn as much as possible about that industry and then move on. It was a real eye opener to see how much easier it is to get an industry job than an academic job.



There also was a different company where I had a very different experience. First off, they specifically were looking 'not for PhDs'. When I asked them why, they answered (I'm paraphrasing): "We have plenty of PhDs, all from the technical university around the corner. They're all socially inept and can't explain to our managers or clients what they're doing. We need someone who can behave among humans." So I explain to them that I did a lot of science outreach and if I can explain my PhD project to a bunch of third graders and medical regulators, I can probably explain their dumb regression analysis to a client. I talk an hour to their data science lead. Interview seemed good, they call in the CEO from his day off (!) who interviews me for another 90 minutes. Apart from the fact that they seemed a little unprofessional was really fine. Few days later I miss a call from a company that runs background checks. I call back and they tell me there's a guy who wants to check out my references, he'll get in touch with me for details. He doesn't. The company I applied at doesn't take messages over LinkedIn or email and doesn't pick up their phone. Feel like I dodged a bullet there.

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Lord Stimperor posted:

There also was a different company where I had a very different experience. First off, they specifically were looking 'not for PhDs'. When I asked them why, they answered (I'm paraphrasing): "We have plenty of PhDs, all from the technical university around the corner. They're all socially inept and can't explain to our managers or clients what they're doing. We need someone who can behave among humans."

If they actually said that, then lol, the PhDs aren't the problem.

qsvui
Aug 23, 2003
some crazy thing
def bullet dodged

prisoner of waffles
May 8, 2007

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

qhat posted:

If they actually said that, then lol, the PhDs aren't the problem.

yeah, who is hiring these phds and setting the boundaries and expectations for them such that they have the problem they are describing

or is the problem Not With the PhDs

Jort Fortress
Mar 3, 2005

meatpotato posted:

sorry, I can’t really place any blame on people with a strong accent. i should know better since ive studied another language. and plus, overcoming communication issues is more of a legitimate real-life challenge than the coding questions they ask.

the experience was just too intense i think
like, everyone who Interviewed was so drat sure/confident of of stuff I know almost nothing about
and i felt small and dumb and unsure

Just want to empathize with you. This has been my interview experience with every big tech co. Exhausting all-day onsites filled with intense, unhappy people and coding questions that are ridiculous. Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, Qualcomm were all like this. Google and FB reached out and I didn't even bother. These were all for senior level roles, FWIW.

I currently work for a large HMO with amazing benefits (remote work, pension, etc) and good salary, but I feel like a fake because I've never worked for a "real" software company. Our dev practices are poo poo and I learn nothing here, but interviews are insanely hit or miss now. There's basically no way to prepare for all the poo poo they can ask.

tl;dr interview too hard

Hunter2 Thompson
Feb 3, 2005

Ramrod XTreme

ForrestPUMP69 posted:

tl;dr interview too hard

thanks for commiserating and :same:

qsvui
Aug 23, 2003
some crazy thing
gently caress interviews and software

ShadowHawk
Jun 25, 2000

CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER
When I was interviewing for my current job I misheard the interviewer's thick accent of "sorted" as "salted" and started coding up a completely unrelated solution on the whiteboard.

We figured out the source of the confusion midway though.

Hunter2 Thompson
Feb 3, 2005

Ramrod XTreme
had another on-site today at a big company. it was the complete opposite of the experience I had last week.

everybody was polite and in a good mood. everybody told me about an interesting variety of work they did (no “ive been working on the same team for 15 years”). the coding questions were more challenging than last week’s, but the interviewers were far more helpful at guiding me to a solution or letting me hit the end of my knowledge and have a discussion.

I probably won’t get the job but at least im not pissed off like last time I interviewed :)

Gazpacho
Jun 18, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Slippery Tilde
post interview report: i tend to think it's a bad sign when more than one work area has a small table topped with liquor bottles. also when an interviewer says "our hundreds of developers just decide for themselves what to build, except when the founder-CEO personally requests something"

ultravoices
May 10, 2004

You are about to embark on a great journey. Are you ready, my friend?
i had my first day and i do not know how to process these bougie people and this environment that doesn't have open contempt for it's employees. i anticipate 3-6 months of feeling like a total fraud.

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Nomnom Cookie
Aug 30, 2009



Gazpacho posted:

post interview report: i tend to think it's a bad sign when more than one work area has a small table topped with liquor bottles. also when an interviewer says "our hundreds of developers just decide for themselves what to build, except when the founder-CEO personally requests something"

bad sign of what, getting paid to drink while loving around with a compiler? sounds like a pretty god deal to me. as long as the office is close to a bus stop or something

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