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Admin
first to comment!
Admin
Oh no. Must resist.
Admin
I wasn't going to comment, but then I decided to go ahead and just do it.
Admin
Re: sixth guy - I've had a few like that - I indulge up to three questions, then respond: you've wasted enough of my time, thank you for yours
Admin
He's right, to compile a COBOL program you "just do it". And if you get a compiler error, you call tech support and say "it won't let me."
Admin
"Will I need to know that for this job?"
No: "Then why are you asking this type of question?"
Yes: "Why wasn't this mentioned in the job description?"
Admin
Admin
Did you actually read the job posting before interviewing me, or did you think you can just wing it?
Admin
The Sixth Guy
An hour of being asked off-topic questions? I wouldn't hire you either.
Admin
Oddly there never seemed to be "enough" for the dishwasher. But -- "tomorrow will be better".
Naive as I was, I took it for a little while. But on the morning of the last day of my fourth week, I decided that was enough. "Pay me now -- right NOW -- or I quit."
"Quit! You little ! After all I've done for you! I took a chance and gave you a job when you had no experience and all you want to do is f me in the a and kick me in the b**!"
Yeah. So I quit, went back to school, and now I make enough that if I ever find the guy I'm thinking of hiring him to wash my dishes.
Admin
That might just lead to a tirade on how the fundamentals of electronics are basic knowledge for any programmer and how you'd be a fool to think differently.
Admin
The way the interview is going he isn't going to recommend you anyway, and that way you can at least try and salvage the situation if there really is a miscommunication at play. Unless it's going to be your boss, letting one interviewer out of a whole procedure get to you isn't worth it.
Admin
"Moving on, why would one choose a power generation using the relative motion of conductors and fluxes instead of the modial interaction of magneto reluctance and capacitive duractance?"
There is only one correct answer to this:
Flux capacitor... fluxing!
Admin
That's how I read it, too...sounds like the guy just got called back from his day off, and didn't give a damn.
Admin
I once turned down a frankly middling job offer and received a similar tirade. They'd put me through a wringer of an interview - not difficult, but loooong, including one phase where the CEO took me into his office and spent about 25 minutes berating my resume ("C++? Pft. Who DOESN'T know that?") and telling me what an awesome programmer he was (which was, actually, true, he was sort of locally legendary). I found all this odd, but let it slide.
They did apparently decide I was the best candidate for the job...and then promptly offered me about 10% less than the salary I had at the time, with fewer benefits.
I called them back, and very politely said I appreciated their offer but would not be accepting it. If they were willing to negotiate I would consider it, etc etc. All the kind of diplomatic niceties you go through when you get an offer you can't take.
I was not expecting the head of the department to then start calling me names, accusing me of "wasting their valuable time and costing them money" and the litany of things about how my career was now over, I'd made a horrible mistake, I'd regret this for life, etc. I was sort of stunned. In fact I was so stunned that I just sat there listening to this ongoing rant instead of at least attempting to cut them off. Eventually she just hung up on me.
A few months later I met the guy who eventually did get the job, and apparently he had lasted all of six weeks in the position. He didn't have to quit, although he considered it, because the company hit some financial bumps and laid off the entire IT department. Last I heard that department manager was selling hats. The CEO runs a startup somewhere, and the rest of the company got chopped up and sold off to a few different organizations.
I've not really had much in the way of regret.
Admin
Those hardware questions are rough, even for the average hardware guy. Well, maybe not the first question, depending on how in-depth physics you want to get (i.e. what it does is easy, how and why it does it is much harder).
The question about duractance made me look up the word only to find the joke. Well played.
Admin
It's a game more than anything. They're trying to see how long he can ask questions before you give up. Nobody knows everything so they want to know how you react when presented with something you don't understand.
Will you waste everyone's time by declining each question individually, hoping to stumble on an easy enough question that you can formulate an answer and earn the interviewer's approval?
Will you throw a hissyfit and whine about him wasting your time?
Or will you explain that there must be some misunderstanding? This wasn't part of the job description and given the line of questioning, he might as well be speaking Greek. You're willing to hear him out, but you have zero knowledge/experience with the subject matter.
Admin
New rule: when reporting on weird-as-hell interviews, you must report the year the interview took place, and more importantly, the name of the company. Otherwise, nobody will take your report seriously and assume you are just winging it.
Admin
The sixth guy sounds like he had somebody else in mind for the job and was trying to sabotage John's chances of getting it. I know that's pretty cynical, but I can't imagine why else he'd ask such useless questions.
I'd like to think I'd have asked him to please just stick to questions relating to the job's ultimate responsibilities, but I know I really would have just declined the position halfway through the interview.
Admin
You Just Do It: Reminds me of a guy I worked with many a year ago at a insurance company. I was already there for several months and as the project was winding up, we needed another developer on the project to help with the work load. My non-technical boss hired Yugoslavia Bob without checking with me first... I still remember the first day he showed up: dude with a wicked cookie duster (always with a piece of food in it of course), tinted glasses and always wore a corduroy blazer with jeans...
He was nice enough, though he didn't know the difference between a value type and a bag of peanuts (it was a .Net role). His answer for when he didn't understand or know was always "yes, yes, conceptually... yes, yes." I would say "conceptually what? I was asking you if you were passing in an integer as a parameter". Then if you pressed him, he would just ignore you until you went away! He would literally just turn back to his computer and keep looking at you from the corner of his eye until you left.
I also remember he would go running over to random strangers if they were having a conversation and start laughing with them. I remember he did this several times a day: his ears would perk up, then he would stand up to acquire his target, then like a flash he would run over and start laughing with complete strangers...
I wasn't sad to see him leave (he got end-dated, and also black-listed for future positions). I don't mind inexperience, but when you flat out lie and waste everyone’s time, that pisses me off.
The funny thing is that I remember seeing him walking into the building a couple of months later... Apparently he was working under a different group in the organization. I looked him up in the email address book, and strangely couldn't find him until I accidentally misspelled his name. He applied for (and got) a role under a fake name...
Admin
damnum - damnum Askismet...
Admin
Wow, he really did a lot for you. An opportunity to do shit work for no pay! And who the hell needs experience to get a dishwashing job? Sad thing is, I've seen some small-time restaurant owners like that. The guy probably really did think he was doing you a favor.
Admin
You just do it.
Admin
The correct answer is to provide inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors and to automatically synchronize cardinal grammeters. Everybody knows that.
Admin
Admin
Well You Just Do It didn't give a year but had a decade, but that just made it less believable as the IBM DBMS was named DB2 in 1983.
Admin
The last one is a mirror image of one of my experiences. We were looking for a programmer in a boom period when programmers were hard to find. I did the general interview for one young lady who came over pretty well, and then passed her on to a couple of the technical guys (who I didn't know very well) for the technical interview. Their report was negative, but they were a bit vague on just why they rejected her. This put me in a quandary - were they just being sexist?
Eventually I decided to go with their judgement, and rang her to let her know that we weren't interested. The response was a torrent of abuse which at least let me know that I'd made the right decision ...
Admin
How exactly do you work with the Stress Interviewer if you end up getting and accepting the job? The way I've always seen it, I am interviewing prospective coworkers as well.
I imagine I would think that there are five people I can work with, but be surprised that someone higher up thinks that presenting a clueless and pompous ass to a candidate would reflect positively on the company.
I guess on the other hand, I have never been asked to be "that guy", so I must have done something right.
Admin
I'm pretty certain that the big-name company is Google.
Admin
Wow... I'm not going to begin to consider how messed up it is to
Admin
Admin
I hear that the COBOL guy went to work for Nike. :-)
Admin
Admin
Heh -- nope. More of a turboencabulator. ;-)
Admin
Admin
Looks like COBOL guy rejected call with Google.
Admin
Just like back in the Academy.
Admin
"Things were looking up great."
As opposed to, you know, things looking up badly.
Admin
No, things were looking down terrible.
PS - didn't you know Nagesh does the proof reading around here?
Admin
"Define the universe - give three examples"
Admin
It's sad how many brilliant people there are who simply cannot communicate. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he could boondoggle the frabbulators in his sleep, but he literally has no idea how to put the process into English..., which means that on the face of it, he could do the job great, but he couldn't document anything nor train anybody.
RE: interviewing mother, poor thing - everyone with kids is put into a mortifyingly embarrassing situation by said child processes at least once. The real kicker is she was probably thinking, "Once I get this job, this will be the last time I have to take my kids out because I can't afford a babysitter."
Admin
You're damn iritiating mosquito!
Admin
And if you need anything further, you can find me out front, skinny dipping in the pond.
Admin
See? Damn, you're good...
Admin
Your not too smart, are you?
Admin
I interviewed at a dinosaur computer company in suburban Philadelphia back in 1999. The manager of the department had three teams that reported to him. During the interviews I got along well with the leaders of two of those teams, but no so well with the leader of the third. They extended me an offer, but were unsure of which team I would work in. I think I was supposed to rotate through the three teams at some point.
When I arrived for my first day at orientation, I discovered that I reported to the person I didn't get along with. I only lasted four months. He wasn't a terrible guy, he just didn't seem to want to be bothered with having me report to him.
Admin
For this comment, inspired me, feeling this author words into my heart.
Admin
For this comment, inspired me, feeling this author words into my heart.
Admin
In the part of Unisys I worked in, up to at least early last year they had the opposite of the Exclusive Interview: employees were apparently expected to apply and interview for outside jobs regularly. They implemented a years-long salary freeze (including transfers and promotions within corporate units), but if you had a written offer for an outside job, they would try to match it to get you to stay.
Oddly, I didn't know anyone who took the matching offer.
Admin