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I was not hired because I speak slowly.

6 points by supervillain ↗ HN
I was interviewed 2 days ago for a software engineer position and though I'm very confident of my technical skills, the main reason I was rejected is that I speak slow.

As far as I know, I was speaking at a reasonable pace, I was keen at answering all the questions and I elaborate my answers further so that I can express my message clearly. I wasn't trying to answer the questions without even thinking about it so I was careful and keen.

How do you find the interviewer's decision? even if I speak slowly do you think that it is justified for a company to reject their candidate based on how fast one can speak?

14 comments

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jgrahamc
The company told you that?
jfb
And where are you located?
supervillain
It was previously a New York based startup that is now fully based in Singapore.

My english is fluent and compare to Singaporean english it was excellent, considering that majority of their employees are Singaporeans, they might have preferred Singlish speaking candidates.

tptacek
Interviews suck. You could get turned down for speaking too fast, too!

Anyone who thinks they're making sane hiring decisions based on conventional job interviews with developers is deluding themselves.

From just the circumstances you've described, obviously they made a dumb decision. They're allowed to make dumb decisions, though, unless your slow speech is related to a disability.

pfedor
Anyone who thinks they're making sane hiring decisions based on conventional job interviews with developers is deluding themselves.

So for example Google, Facebook, Microsoft, are all deluding themselves? Would they be not any worse off if they replaced interviews with say rolling dice?

tptacek
Yes. That's what I'm saying.

I'm not saying that (eg) Google has a better option than conventional interviews; Google has unique hiring problems. That doesn't make the interview system they use better. (Also, I don't have great intel on how Google interviews work; nothing better than you have. Maybe they've solved this problem in other ways... though, I'm skeptical.)

Startups, though, have no excuse.

pfedor
So do you believe that if you take a random sample of (eg) Google engineers, and a random sample of all software engineers, there will be no difference in ability between the two groups? Or do you think there would be a difference but attributable to something else than their hiring practices?
tptacek
I think conventional job interviews do allow you to target a broad range of competence, with a large margin of error, so if you were to compare Google employees to, say, State Farm line-of-business .NET application developers, sure, the Google engineers would outperform.

It's an interesting question whether a random sampling of Google engineers would outperform a random sampling of tech industry product developers from other companies. I don't know.

The bigger is, within the broad set of candidates that an interview process selects for, the conventional job interview is arbitrary bordering on capricious; it's inhumane for no business benefit.

orangethirty
Interviews are the sole reason I started to do consulting. Guess what? Three times the money, more flexibility, and less headaches.
onlyup
How did you get your first clients? Did that lead to more clients? What did you start consulting?
orangethirty
Advertising on various internet forums (such as YC). These days, I offer my complete marketing system to others. Shoot me an email if you want to learn more. (:
27182818284
I'm sorry this happened, but I have an anecdote that might cheer you up. A friend was flown out to Silicon Valley and put up in a hotel after completing their programming challenges. He was rejected because of just how bad his anti-social mannerisms were. Well that hurt him a lot, but a few months later, he did find a job.

If your speech is the type of thing you can work on, work on it. If it is something more medical that you can't control, think about mentioning it up front. I'm sure you'll get a job in a month or so if your technical skills are there. Don't sweat it, even if this seems is an utter kick in the gut.

groundCode
eh....companies say the darndest things.....I was rejected for a job a while ago because I preferred VIM over Sublime Text during my pair coding interview. Apparently, I didn't have the "right experience with their toolset". c'est la vie. Sometimes they just need "a reason" to not hire you because they just don't think you'd fit in.
xauronx
It depends on how it came off. If it sounded like you were talking slowly as a way of talking down to them, I probably wouldn't want to work with you either. A lot of developers can come off as demeaning, and this can be compounded by insecurity by the interviewers (if they think you're a better developer then they'll be more sensitive to you being uppity).

Otherwise, it could just be that you seemed like you were too slow moving for a fast paced environment. If I pop my head into your door and say "Hey, how do you feel about XYZ?" (looking for a one or two word answer) and you take 10 minutes to answer, that's not ideal.