I have a lot of interaction with mental health professionals, due to an organization in which I participate. Have, for the last 45 years.
Many, many of them are "Doctor, heal thyself" type folks. Definitely non-boring people. I am quite sure of this, for reasons that I won't go into, here.
Sorry it didn't work out, but you dodged a bullet. Take it from me.
The furthest I've gone in these jazz style culture interviews is asking people what they do outside of work for fun. This was for fully remote async positions. And it was important to know you had other stuff going on because the mental/personal health risk in failing at remote work is massive and life altering.
If, through wherever that discussion went, I wasn't 100% sure that you could stand on your own feet and wouldn't sink into the abyss, it was impossible to move forward. It was a tough line to walk sometimes because you don't want to pry personally. But that doesn't appear to be a universal opinion, it turns out.
I would've ended the interview. "I don't want to waste any more of your time. It's clear to me I won't be a good fit here. Thank you for the consideration." <end call>
Sounds like a behavioral interview that silicon valley sometimes uses - the questions are designed to ascertain how you deal with difficulty, stress, and certain situations which they absolutely can't legally ask about directly - they are looking for you to discuss challenging times where you succeeded by working harder, doing more than peers, etc. It's not about shaming you, and understanding what they are looking for and why is key - they want people who stick with them through difficult times that they anticipate having.
For interview questions like these, they can only tease about what they are really after - finding employees who "go the extra mile" or "stay late" or "don't give up in the face of adversity". They are looking for you to find evidence of these patterns to corroborate your story. If they drove you to the answer they were after, it wouldn't be a passing score in their interview summary write-up.
There is, and should be, a red flag for these situations. No make that RED flag. If you go into an interview that leaves you feeling the least bit helpless or at someone's mercy then run screaming. Not politely, not quietly. Just say to calmly to the person that you find the situation abusive. It is. As you go out, if you see anyone or have a chance to talk to anyone, just tell them you found that your interviewer to be personally abusive. That you will not be willing to take the position if it is offered, that you will share you perception with others around you and expect an apology.
Then fall down and appreciate that you did not end up in that situation. And tell everyone you know not to apply or work there.
Beats my worst interview. For some reason I mentioned that I like reading. The guy then demanded to list the last ten books I read. I just named ten random books that I had read at some point in my life, even in childhood. Pretty bizarre. Glad I didn’t get that job.
Would be funny if the interviewer wrote the exact same blog post; "I had the worst candidate interview today, I asked him a simple ice-breaker question before getting into more technical stuff, and he just went off about his family and relationships for an hour; weirdest interview I ever gave."
I've had that before. I asked a woman to walk me through her career (I told her I've obviously seen the profile before, but I'd love to hear the elevator pitch directly from her) and she started off by saying,"Well, you need to know that I was raised in a cult."
And, yeah, I feel bad for her. But also: time and place.
I passed on her because she didn't have the technical skills, but that was definitely a case of the setting not being right.
Yep. This is definitely an OP-is-autistic problem, or is perhaps inexperienced. Not an interviewer problem. Keep it professional. If an interviewer asks a personal question then you simply refuse to answer (politely), or steer it back towards a professional context. If they persist then you end the interview.
I had one job, where at the very end of the process there was a multi-hour evaluation by a psychologist / consultant they used. Went over my full life history, school, jobs, etc.
It was all disclosed up front, so no surprises. Not really that bad.
I fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics, but they were, in fact, non-technical — covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way... These kinds of questions are part and parcel of non-tech interview processes.
You can redirect with some subtlety "Well, my hardest ever day at work was..." to avoid talking about dead babies or whatever. Your interviewer doesn't get to look over your whole life history and determine whether your /truthfully/ chose the actual hardest ever day. So really it's a chance for you to say "Here's a [big] challenge I once faced, and here's how I survived/overcame it."
> Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way.
Cut to the interviewer telling his friends about the weirdest interview he ever conducted, with a guy who unloaded all his life issues on him instead of focusing on work. :)
I've done a couple bay area startup interviews where the interviewer specifically asks for 'personally / family' related anecdotes. With the explanation that they view their company as a literal family and want to make sure candidates would fit in. So I'm inclined to believe OP's description and understanding of the question
> covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
> talking about failed relationships, family struggles, and interpersonal challenges in previous work environments.
I think that's an interpretation that wasn't necessary (though I agree they're terrible and risky interview questions). I'd stick to hard challenges is my professional life, hard problems I had to solve, etc. My personal life is none of their business.
And I think there's the possibility you may have been rejected for sharing too much. But I agree that kind of question does invite sharing too much.
I was excited, it was a game company, and I'd wanted to get back into games - or more specifically, game engines - for a few years. The tech of this particular company was interesting, an in-house engine developed by wunderkind, of course, and they'd invited me for an interview because I had done a fair bit of low-level work, which would be handy for their rough edges. Apparently.
Half way through the interview, I had an epiphany. I really didn't want to work there. It was cultural, it just wasn't going to fit.
I didn't waste any more time. Half-way through a white-board challenge, I put down the marker and said, plainly, "okay, I've seen enough, I don't want to work here - thanks and let me not waste any more of your time", picked up my coat and left.
It wasn't a bad interview. It wasn't a terrible one. Nor was it because of the whiteboard question, or anything like that.
I just didn't like the guys. That's all it was. And I couldn't stand the idea of working for them - just the way the interview proceeded. I don't need to give details.
It was really the only time I ever got up mid-interview and left.
I had a similar experience with another company. At one point during the interview, the HR department asked me to do a really stupid exercise, despite the fact that I am an engineer with over 20 years of experience.
I wrote an email saying I would not pursue the position, and they wrote back asking me to have another interview with them. I politely declined.
They probably understood that their method was not good.
I had a similar thing where they were going through my code from a takehome.
It was with an architect and a lead developer and the architect was really rubbing me up the wrong way. Stupid nitpicks that were all style preferences. Not at all talking about the actual code. I start pushing back and he starts getting a bit combative, which sets me off a bit too as these were the days jobs were plentiful.
At some point he offhandedly mentioned I didn't need a particular line of code in the startup config. So I say, "Yes, that's required, it initializes the routing". He quips back, "No, that line's not necessary at all, you don't need it". The lead dev is looking completely exasperated at the architect at this point.
I paused, started a screen share. Went to the line. Commented it out. Ran the program and it fell over.
I then said, "I'm not interested in working with you, thanks for your time, bye"
I remember interviewing once and they told me what they were working on.
I was actually familiar with the product, but it had some glaring shortcomings, and I kind of groaned a little inside.
And I told them that I liked some things about the product, but then I unfiltered sort of pointed out what was wrong. I really wasn't interested in working on it (though I didn't say that outright)
And then they decided they loved and needed me. (and I didn't go there)
Sort of like dating I think. Show a little skepticism and you might unintentionally get more interest than if you were open and sincere.
Nothing will take years off your life better than working for people you don't like in a company you don't want to work at.
I guess that is the problem with the current state of the world. Employers hold most of the cards and people are desperate to find and retain employment. As someone who has coupled themselves to the wrong trains more than I'd like to admit, I'd encourage all young engineers to ask themselves, "Is work more important than your mental and physical health?" Don't underestimate the affect of toxic people, management and companies on your brain and body. Over time you may pay the ultimate price; an early death.
I have a two way tie for the worst interviews I've ever had, for very different reasons.
First, in 2023 I interviewed for a startup as a lead architect.
They had me do some virtual whiteboard stuff, and so I was drawing rectangles and cylinders and mentioning things like "database" and "message queues" as generically as I could.
They would interrupt me and say stuff like "Which message queue? Where do you download that?". The interview went on for a long time, with many bizarrely-specific questions for a whiteboard interview, but I figured that it was just their way to make sure that candidates didn't bullshit them by handwaving away important details.
They did make me an offer a few days later, but not for as much as I wanted. That's fine, no hard feelings over that.
But then a week later the CEO emails me asking for technical help on a question. I was on the train when I got it. I don't remember the exact question but it was something to do with RabbitMQ and Redis, and it was pretty easy, so I just typed out a quick answer to my phone and replied without even really thinking about it. Then another half-hour later he responds back to my reply asking for more detail on everything.
After his last reply I sent a response like "I am happy enough to continue this conversation but I'm afraid I will need to start billing the time it takes for me to reply. Give me a call and we can discuss the rate.
He didn't reply.
And then I realized something: this company was using interviews as unpaid consulting. That's why they were asking for bizarrely-specific stuff during the interview, and that's why the CEO was still trying to get free consulting out of me even afterward.
Really pissed me off, and I am very glad I didn't accept their offer. I am generally a person who is happy to help answer technical questions for free [1], but I felt like my trusting nature was kind of weaponized.
---------
Second was last year at a big bank.
I was really excited for this job, so I showed up to the interview in my best (and only) suit, made sure everything looked nice, and had studied for many of the technical questions I thought they were likely to ask the previous night.
Off to a bad start, it was one of the hottest days in NYC of the year, and I sweat a lot by nature, so in combination with the full suit, by the time I got to the building I was already kind of drenched in sweat.
Once I get in, they start giving me some conceptual algorithm questions on the whiteboard. I don't remember the exact question, but I remember they asked the runtime complexity of my solution and I said "Looks like O(n + log m) where n is the length of list A and m is the length of list B". One of the interviewers very confidently corrects me an says "You got your n and m backward".
I look at the board, go through my solution, and, no, I actually hadn't gotten the variables backward.
I have no idea what you're supposed to do in a situation where you're right and the interviewer is wrong [2], so I just do a trace through my solution and explain that, no, my variables were appropriately assigned. He still confidently "corrected" me again.
At this point I really don't know what I'm supposed to do, because I'm not going to just lie and say "oh you're right", but if I'm wrong, then I do want to know why so I don't repeat the mistake in the future. So I ask him "Ok, let's trace through this again because I really don't think my understanding is wrong here".
It was this bizarre gaslighting experience, because he would agree with every premise of why I thought the answer was O(n + log m), and every reasoning step along the way, but then still insisted I got the answer wrong. I do really know my Big O complexity, I have been doing this for a very long time, so eventually I just said something like "I guess we n...
> Off to a bad start, it was one of the hottest days in NYC of the year, and I sweat a lot by nature, so in combination with the full suit, by the time I got to the building I was already kind of drenched in sweat.
You'd need a Summer-weight suit for this to be at-all comfortable. "High-twist wool" and "unlined" or "half-lined" are your search terms. Silk-wool blends also OK. Other fabric options for warm weather open up in some contexts (linen and linen/wool/silk/cotton blends, warm-weather cotton weaves like seersucker, maybe even rayon though that's a bit niche) but probably not if you're looking to dress for an interview at a bank in New York. Part of why suits are in-practice expensive and inconvenient (and why only-occasional wearers judge them unpleasant to wear—not unreasonably, given their exposure to them) is that you need at-minimum one set for moderate-and-lower temps ("three-season"), and another set for hot days.
I have one unlined high-twist wool navy blazer that's so cool it's actually kind of a problem because offices often have their AC cranked up on hot days. I end up needing an overcoat or second, winter-weight jacket indoors, LOL. Hold the thing up to a light and it looks like a star field seen from outside the Earth's atmosphere, dark with endless dots of light, so air goes right through it.
It’s kinda ironic that after interviewing with a mental health startup, you ended up so emotionally disturbed that you might now need some actual mental health support to tackle the thoughts it brought up. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
These are essentially sociopath screens where they expect you to memorize some STAR stories and regurgitate them on demand. And I don't mean screen out.
Let me preface this by saying, I know this might be a privileged take. However, I've had some bad interview experiences but one thing I have never had happen and I never will do is cross the "just business"/"personal" line with anyone I may or am working with.
> hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
I would take these types of questions as "from a professional standpoint". If the interviewer corrected and wanted personal answers, the interview would be over.
I had an interview many years ago, that wasn't nearly as traumatic, but the interviewer asked me about my failures like 4 different ways.
- Tell me about a time you made a professional mistake.
- Tell me about your biggest failure.
- Tell me when you last shipped a bug.
- Tell me when you took down production.
Never asked me about my accomplishments, or the positives. I'm prepared for being asked about making mistakes, and have a few examples ready to give depending on the job I'm interviewing for, but to get asked so many times in a row was just deflating.
Second this. Canonical is currently winning the race to the bottom for tech interviews (I'm speaking with a couple of decades of experience on both sides of the table). They use lots of AI on their side (of course, none allowed on your side). A strange focus on your school years. Dark patterns in technical questions with no opportunity to get clarity. Ghosting afterwards.
Interviews always involve some asymmetry but Canonical exploits that to the maximum.
Earlier this year I was told I failed an interview because when asked why I wanted to join a company, my answer "could apply to other companies in the same stage of life." They apparently required me to be _uniquely_ interested in their company. There were other oddities about their interview process.
I mean... He knew, you knew (or should have known), but it's part of the silly little dance you have to do to flatter their ego.
Imagine having a first date with a girl and saying "you're basically the only one who would talk to me on tinder, but I could date someone else". Technically correct, still not something you say unless you're pretty far on the spectrum.
Every time I've been asked this question, I answer with total honesty up to and including the one-word answer "money." I got an offer with that, by the way.
I'd prefer not to work for a firm that's smelling its own farts. I'm happy to have worked for several firms where I really believed strongly in the product and the mission, and I've left companies when I felt they had lost sight of their mission. But at the end of the day, it's a job. I give you labor and expertise, you give me money.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadMany, many of them are "Doctor, heal thyself" type folks. Definitely non-boring people. I am quite sure of this, for reasons that I won't go into, here.
Sorry it didn't work out, but you dodged a bullet. Take it from me.
The furthest I've gone in these jazz style culture interviews is asking people what they do outside of work for fun. This was for fully remote async positions. And it was important to know you had other stuff going on because the mental/personal health risk in failing at remote work is massive and life altering.
If, through wherever that discussion went, I wasn't 100% sure that you could stand on your own feet and wouldn't sink into the abyss, it was impossible to move forward. It was a tough line to walk sometimes because you don't want to pry personally. But that doesn't appear to be a universal opinion, it turns out.
"Cracked engineer" is throwing me, but maybe I've just never seen the word cracked used this way before. Should it be "crack", like "crack team"?
For interview questions like these, they can only tease about what they are really after - finding employees who "go the extra mile" or "stay late" or "don't give up in the face of adversity". They are looking for you to find evidence of these patterns to corroborate your story. If they drove you to the answer they were after, it wouldn't be a passing score in their interview summary write-up.
Then fall down and appreciate that you did not end up in that situation. And tell everyone you know not to apply or work there.
And this was for a mental health startup!? Please name-and-shame them. Awful.
And, yeah, I feel bad for her. But also: time and place.
I passed on her because she didn't have the technical skills, but that was definitely a case of the setting not being right.
It was all disclosed up front, so no surprises. Not really that bad.
Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way... These kinds of questions are part and parcel of non-tech interview processes.
You can redirect with some subtlety "Well, my hardest ever day at work was..." to avoid talking about dead babies or whatever. Your interviewer doesn't get to look over your whole life history and determine whether your /truthfully/ chose the actual hardest ever day. So really it's a chance for you to say "Here's a [big] challenge I once faced, and here's how I survived/overcame it."
Cut to the interviewer telling his friends about the weirdest interview he ever conducted, with a guy who unloaded all his life issues on him instead of focusing on work. :)
> talking about failed relationships, family struggles, and interpersonal challenges in previous work environments.
I think that's an interpretation that wasn't necessary (though I agree they're terrible and risky interview questions). I'd stick to hard challenges is my professional life, hard problems I had to solve, etc. My personal life is none of their business.
And I think there's the possibility you may have been rejected for sharing too much. But I agree that kind of question does invite sharing too much.
Half way through the interview, I had an epiphany. I really didn't want to work there. It was cultural, it just wasn't going to fit.
I didn't waste any more time. Half-way through a white-board challenge, I put down the marker and said, plainly, "okay, I've seen enough, I don't want to work here - thanks and let me not waste any more of your time", picked up my coat and left.
It wasn't a bad interview. It wasn't a terrible one. Nor was it because of the whiteboard question, or anything like that.
I just didn't like the guys. That's all it was. And I couldn't stand the idea of working for them - just the way the interview proceeded. I don't need to give details.
It was really the only time I ever got up mid-interview and left.
I wrote an email saying I would not pursue the position, and they wrote back asking me to have another interview with them. I politely declined.
They probably understood that their method was not good.
It was with an architect and a lead developer and the architect was really rubbing me up the wrong way. Stupid nitpicks that were all style preferences. Not at all talking about the actual code. I start pushing back and he starts getting a bit combative, which sets me off a bit too as these were the days jobs were plentiful.
At some point he offhandedly mentioned I didn't need a particular line of code in the startup config. So I say, "Yes, that's required, it initializes the routing". He quips back, "No, that line's not necessary at all, you don't need it". The lead dev is looking completely exasperated at the architect at this point.
I paused, started a screen share. Went to the line. Commented it out. Ran the program and it fell over.
I then said, "I'm not interested in working with you, thanks for your time, bye"
I was actually familiar with the product, but it had some glaring shortcomings, and I kind of groaned a little inside.
And I told them that I liked some things about the product, but then I unfiltered sort of pointed out what was wrong. I really wasn't interested in working on it (though I didn't say that outright)
And then they decided they loved and needed me. (and I didn't go there)
Sort of like dating I think. Show a little skepticism and you might unintentionally get more interest than if you were open and sincere.
Pretty much like that Office Space scene when main character meets the Bobs.
I guess that is the problem with the current state of the world. Employers hold most of the cards and people are desperate to find and retain employment. As someone who has coupled themselves to the wrong trains more than I'd like to admit, I'd encourage all young engineers to ask themselves, "Is work more important than your mental and physical health?" Don't underestimate the affect of toxic people, management and companies on your brain and body. Over time you may pay the ultimate price; an early death.
First, in 2023 I interviewed for a startup as a lead architect.
They had me do some virtual whiteboard stuff, and so I was drawing rectangles and cylinders and mentioning things like "database" and "message queues" as generically as I could.
They would interrupt me and say stuff like "Which message queue? Where do you download that?". The interview went on for a long time, with many bizarrely-specific questions for a whiteboard interview, but I figured that it was just their way to make sure that candidates didn't bullshit them by handwaving away important details.
They did make me an offer a few days later, but not for as much as I wanted. That's fine, no hard feelings over that.
But then a week later the CEO emails me asking for technical help on a question. I was on the train when I got it. I don't remember the exact question but it was something to do with RabbitMQ and Redis, and it was pretty easy, so I just typed out a quick answer to my phone and replied without even really thinking about it. Then another half-hour later he responds back to my reply asking for more detail on everything.
After his last reply I sent a response like "I am happy enough to continue this conversation but I'm afraid I will need to start billing the time it takes for me to reply. Give me a call and we can discuss the rate.
He didn't reply.
And then I realized something: this company was using interviews as unpaid consulting. That's why they were asking for bizarrely-specific stuff during the interview, and that's why the CEO was still trying to get free consulting out of me even afterward.
Really pissed me off, and I am very glad I didn't accept their offer. I am generally a person who is happy to help answer technical questions for free [1], but I felt like my trusting nature was kind of weaponized.
---------
Second was last year at a big bank.
I was really excited for this job, so I showed up to the interview in my best (and only) suit, made sure everything looked nice, and had studied for many of the technical questions I thought they were likely to ask the previous night.
Off to a bad start, it was one of the hottest days in NYC of the year, and I sweat a lot by nature, so in combination with the full suit, by the time I got to the building I was already kind of drenched in sweat.
Once I get in, they start giving me some conceptual algorithm questions on the whiteboard. I don't remember the exact question, but I remember they asked the runtime complexity of my solution and I said "Looks like O(n + log m) where n is the length of list A and m is the length of list B". One of the interviewers very confidently corrects me an says "You got your n and m backward".
I look at the board, go through my solution, and, no, I actually hadn't gotten the variables backward.
I have no idea what you're supposed to do in a situation where you're right and the interviewer is wrong [2], so I just do a trace through my solution and explain that, no, my variables were appropriately assigned. He still confidently "corrected" me again.
At this point I really don't know what I'm supposed to do, because I'm not going to just lie and say "oh you're right", but if I'm wrong, then I do want to know why so I don't repeat the mistake in the future. So I ask him "Ok, let's trace through this again because I really don't think my understanding is wrong here".
It was this bizarre gaslighting experience, because he would agree with every premise of why I thought the answer was O(n + log m), and every reasoning step along the way, but then still insisted I got the answer wrong. I do really know my Big O complexity, I have been doing this for a very long time, so eventually I just said something like "I guess we n...
You'd need a Summer-weight suit for this to be at-all comfortable. "High-twist wool" and "unlined" or "half-lined" are your search terms. Silk-wool blends also OK. Other fabric options for warm weather open up in some contexts (linen and linen/wool/silk/cotton blends, warm-weather cotton weaves like seersucker, maybe even rayon though that's a bit niche) but probably not if you're looking to dress for an interview at a bank in New York. Part of why suits are in-practice expensive and inconvenient (and why only-occasional wearers judge them unpleasant to wear—not unreasonably, given their exposure to them) is that you need at-minimum one set for moderate-and-lower temps ("three-season"), and another set for hot days.
I have one unlined high-twist wool navy blazer that's so cool it's actually kind of a problem because offices often have their AC cranked up on hot days. I end up needing an overcoat or second, winter-weight jacket indoors, LOL. Hold the thing up to a light and it looks like a star field seen from outside the Earth's atmosphere, dark with endless dots of light, so air goes right through it.
> hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
I would take these types of questions as "from a professional standpoint". If the interviewer corrected and wanted personal answers, the interview would be over.
- Tell me about a time you made a professional mistake. - Tell me about your biggest failure. - Tell me when you last shipped a bug. - Tell me when you took down production.
Never asked me about my accomplishments, or the positives. I'm prepared for being asked about making mistakes, and have a few examples ready to give depending on the job I'm interviewing for, but to get asked so many times in a row was just deflating.
I'm glad I didn't get that job.
They make us write essays and life stories and reject in 24hrs.
Felt the exact same frustration.
Some interviewers just want to feel special.
If their interviewing results in a handful of qualified candidates, guess which one they’re going to go with?
Imagine having a first date with a girl and saying "you're basically the only one who would talk to me on tinder, but I could date someone else". Technically correct, still not something you say unless you're pretty far on the spectrum.
I'd prefer not to work for a firm that's smelling its own farts. I'm happy to have worked for several firms where I really believed strongly in the product and the mission, and I've left companies when I felt they had lost sight of their mission. But at the end of the day, it's a job. I give you labor and expertise, you give me money.