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At university, a prof for theoretical CS (the kind of professor who thought CS students don't need computers) was looking for someone to program something for him. The requirements really showed that he had no clue about programming. His assistent, sitting beside him, obviously knew that, too.
I basically told that prof that he had no idea what he was talking about, and suggested that he should attend a basic programming course before I left.
When I was in Uni, we had the opportunity to apply for co-op at Black Berry when they still made phones with their own OS.
I was getting into mobile dev at this time and applied and got an interview.
I didn't know what I was expecting but what I got was a 10-20min sales pitch for their phone and I wasn't asked a question... I don't think. From what I gathered afterwards they just wanted to hire/rehire one guy and had to interview others to be in the co-op program.
Believe it or not I wasn't sold on black berry after that.
I interviewed for a shop in Ottawa.
I was working at the time, but it was declining situation so I was Motivated.
So I show up a the appointed time, and I meet a guy who can best be described as 'a little grizzled' and 'a little stressed'. We go over my resume, first off the bat.
"These are the things we need from you," he said, tapping items on a list. "And these are places you suck," he said, tapping the same list.
I basically checked out at that point; there was no way I was suitable for this post. I could learn it, but it was a lot. And while I had a lot of other skills that showed up on the job desc and my CV, missing so many important pieces was insurmountable. It wasn't a super-fun experience no matter how interesting he was - he was a great lead hand - and I left without much fanfare. Great rambling talk about all kinds of things, but it's the worst I've ever flamed out in an interview; and the fastest.
Imagine my surprise when he 'strong-hire'd me. I actually said to the recruiter, "Yeah, you've got it wrong. No no, and it's totally okay, but you're off by one or something. You mean to call the name above mine or the name below mine, and that guy is probably gonna love this job. But you don't mean to call me. No stress, all good, but yeah, I'm not the guy you wanted to call."
It was a great job and that guy was my lead. Brutal honestly is fabulous if you can take it.
I interviewed for a part-time web developer role during the summer of my second year at university. The "employer" wanted the interview at their house. No problem, I guess it's a small operation and I'd work remotely?
The interview was fine. It was a guy that worked with his wife, and they needed someone to pick up some work over a few weeks. Midway through the interview, the guy's wife came downstairs - in what I can only describe as the kind of dressing gown you'd see in porn.
She walked over, asked if I was "the guy". The man said, "oh yeah, he looks good don't you think?", to which she responded "yeah, he looks like he'll do the job nicely". She then came over and put her hand by the back of my neck, and asked if I wanted to help out with a problem they'd been having.
Being a socially awkward 20 year old CS student, I said something along the lines of "uhh no that's okay thanks, I'd better get going soon", and the man escorted me out. I had received an email minutes after to say the job was mine if I wanted it.
I turned the job down, saying that something else had come up. I'm 70% sure that the job was a threesome or some weird cuck thing, and if I didn't have a girlfriend and wasn't awkward as fuck I'd probably have gone back and plowed his wife/written some PHP. Either way, that's my worst interview experience - and probably will be for the rest of my days.
On the other side, one guy I interviewed for a startup was really qualified and we wanted to offer him the role. I thankfully Googled him, and found a Twitter account against his name where he had pics of him balls deep in a blow up doll. We didn't hire him.
It's certainly a bad sign if you leave the interview and you're not sure if the job is for writing PHP or pleasuring his wife.
PHP stands for Pleasuring His Partner.
PHP = Pleasuring Her Poosay
How about the other way around, I had this guy come in, he had been out of the business for a while and decided to go and be a mechanic for a few years. One winter in particular he decided that he was kind of tired of doing the mechanic stuff and wanted to come back.
I interviewed him on a phone screen. His knowledge was appropriately dated but he was not bad. I figure he'd be able to come in and get up to speed pretty quickly.
My company does kind of a nightmare scenario where they interview you all day long and you literally meet with everyone in groups.
First thing in the morning first group came through said he was great.
Second group came through asked him some questions and he was a little bit more cagey but still not bad.
The third group was the lunch group, They took him out to lunch and he threw out a bunch of racist stories and while people watching, made fun of people as they came into the restaurant for their ethnicity or their weight, or what car they drive or whatever else they could find.
The lunch crew came back and did a hand off but no one raised the flags right away so we went into the first after lunch crew. A couple of people from the lunch crew pulled me aside while he was in his next set of meetings and said they were extremely uncomfortable being around him and recounted the stories.
I had to bust up the interview and send him on his way. The person that was uncomfortable with what he said is one of the most IDGAF people I've ever met.
Years earlier we had a developer come in with a fantastic resume. They brought him in first thing he was rude, and we're not talking autistic doesn't know what he's doing rude he was clearly making a lot of generalizations about people and being nasty about the questions. Skill wise he was absolutely fantastic and he would have been fabulous to be a lead in front of a complicated project, But he was impossible to be around. Toward the end of the Early interview they told him that they had all they needed. He asked him if it was because of his attitude and they said that it was a team job and they needed somebody that was capable of working with a team. He said they could just put him in a one-man team and have him architect things or do other work by himself. There was simply no chance they were going to hire him. You don't willingly bring that much toxicity in the workplace if you can help it.
I retired as a programmer five years ago and now I drive a school bus. The difference in acceptable workplace behavior is pretty stark. In my software companies, nobody ever came anywhere close to saying anything even vaguely racist; meanwhile in the bus garage people routinely use the n-word and the g-word. And it's not like this is Mississippi or anything - this is a suburb of Philadelphia where the entire transportation department would probably be sacked if parents were ever to become aware of how their bus drivers talk.
Sorry what's the g-word?
Rhymes with "mook"
It's a slur for Asians, more specifically Vietnamese. I can actually trigger my coworker to say it, by merely mentioning that I like Chinese food.
Oh, we know. We're in a mixed race community and you can see the distaste on the bus drivers and teachers faces. We can see them ignoring the bullying, and we get to hear the stories when they go to tell the teacher or bus driver something going on and they just shut them down and tell them to go back to their seat.
i got an interview as an embedded software engineer for a company that makes wireless camera flashes. high-precision real-time programming. i wanted to dive further into that area.
the first task was... reading comprehension, basic arithmetic, and pattern matching. i was flabbergasted. i wrote a really negative passage in their feedback form about how they apparently don't trust their engineering candidates to be able to read, and how those pattern matching iq tests are bullshit since you can up your score by like 20% if you practice.
they called me back and explained that the reason they have everyone from cleaning staff to C-level take the standardized test is to create a workplace of "objective equality". also they were really confused about my stance on the test because apparently i had scored in the top 5%. that's the fastest i've ever noped out of an interview process.
That is pretty insulting tbh, going in assuming everyone is a moron. I kind of get what they were going for, but it's something that could be easily solved just with a normal interview. They probably got burned once and decided "This is our standard going forward, everyone will suffer now"
