What is the worst company you ever interviewed with?
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That's annoying. You find a position that sounds good, get all dressed up, and realize that you wasted your whole day.
Logifusion[^] If not entertaining, write your Congressman.
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I had an interview several years ago at a place and was offered the job but something wasn't quite right so I asked to visit them again. This time I made sure I got a chance to look around and talk to people - they were scared to look up from their desks and then the boss showed me how he allocated tasks to software engineers timed to within 30 minutes :wtf: Run, run away now...
Wow... :laugh:
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Have you ever gone to an interview at some company to find that the company is a complete and utter joke? I have. No names, just descriptions. Here's my worst... Went to an interview at some company in NYC, at the time that I was looking for my current job. The "HR" person I spoke with told me that the gig was all .NET 2.0 and I'd be working with a team of .NET devs. That's what I was looking for, so I went to the interview. I show up, the office is in shambles. Disassembled furniture all over the place. Cardboard boxes laying around, with styrofoam sticking out. Really messy. I first interview with this guy, the "HR" guy (he actually was co-owner I think), and he ends up rambling on about some theory of economics that he couldn't quite remember. He showed me the product and tried to impress me with the fact that people from all over the world use it on a trial basis. oooh ahhhh. After that, while waiting for the CEO to show up, I get interviewed by one of their developers. He told me that he was interested in C#, but they only use VBScript there. My stomach turned. VBScript?! Yikes! Ugh. I then tell him that I was told that the company uses only C# 2.0, and he gets all emotional yelling "Well, we use VBScript here, and if that's not good enough for you, you should just leave!" :| After that, I'm still waiting for the CEO. As I wait in a room full of disassembled office furniture, I overhear two people in the office say how much their jobs suck. At this point, I stuck around just to see how much worse it could get. It was fun, at this point. Sort of. The CEO finally shows up and brings me into his office. He tells me that the company has always used free-lance developers and wants someone to "hold accountable" for their product. Let me rephrase that..."We want you to inherit this mangled blob of VBScript and then we'll hold you responsible for making it work." No thanks. To determine if I was technically savvy, he asked "If you were to design a database that stored info about books and publishers, how would you set it up?" I was very tempted to say "I'd copy the pubs sample db." :laugh: The moron thought that I wouldn't have seen Pubs. What a loser. Well, that's my tale. I hope you can top it! :-D
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
It was in the year 2001 when I was invited for an interview with a japanese firm located at ermita manila. Their HR personnel told me that they need a VB developer using access and oracle as the backend. I got interested so i went there immediately. But when I got in the office the HR guy gave me a written exam. It is somewhat like a logical exam fortunately I passed the exam and I was told to come back next week and so I did. Again they gave me an exam but this time an actual programming examination. Ofcource I was able to do what they want me to do. Then the HR guy told me to come back again next week for the final interview. I really got excited because this would be my second job and im looking forward to having a bigger pay. So after a week I came back this time the japanese project manager interviewed me. Telling me all the things I should know. after that short conversation she brought me to my own working table. When I opened the computer i was surprised cause the O.S. was in japanese language and worst the lead programmer a "filipino" told me that they don't allow the use of DLL, CLASSES etc., in their projects. And theres more, to my surprise this lead programmer told me that I should use MSaccess or VBA for that specific project. Imagine wasting my time. Thats almost 1 month telling me later that I have to use VBA. What a fucking story ha!!!.
geboy
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Have you ever gone to an interview at some company to find that the company is a complete and utter joke? I have. No names, just descriptions. Here's my worst... Went to an interview at some company in NYC, at the time that I was looking for my current job. The "HR" person I spoke with told me that the gig was all .NET 2.0 and I'd be working with a team of .NET devs. That's what I was looking for, so I went to the interview. I show up, the office is in shambles. Disassembled furniture all over the place. Cardboard boxes laying around, with styrofoam sticking out. Really messy. I first interview with this guy, the "HR" guy (he actually was co-owner I think), and he ends up rambling on about some theory of economics that he couldn't quite remember. He showed me the product and tried to impress me with the fact that people from all over the world use it on a trial basis. oooh ahhhh. After that, while waiting for the CEO to show up, I get interviewed by one of their developers. He told me that he was interested in C#, but they only use VBScript there. My stomach turned. VBScript?! Yikes! Ugh. I then tell him that I was told that the company uses only C# 2.0, and he gets all emotional yelling "Well, we use VBScript here, and if that's not good enough for you, you should just leave!" :| After that, I'm still waiting for the CEO. As I wait in a room full of disassembled office furniture, I overhear two people in the office say how much their jobs suck. At this point, I stuck around just to see how much worse it could get. It was fun, at this point. Sort of. The CEO finally shows up and brings me into his office. He tells me that the company has always used free-lance developers and wants someone to "hold accountable" for their product. Let me rephrase that..."We want you to inherit this mangled blob of VBScript and then we'll hold you responsible for making it work." No thanks. To determine if I was technically savvy, he asked "If you were to design a database that stored info about books and publishers, how would you set it up?" I was very tempted to say "I'd copy the pubs sample db." :laugh: The moron thought that I wouldn't have seen Pubs. What a loser. Well, that's my tale. I hope you can top it! :-D
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
My worst interview was during the .COM boom, when I interviewed to be a database designer for a startup web site. When I arrived, the office was filled with about 40 people, most of whom seemed to have no experience whatsoever, as I discovered by chatting with people during the very long wait. The first thing they did was to give me a long personality test. Multiple choice. Then someone who appeared to be a secretary told me that the company is run based on the principles of Scientology, and did I have a problem with that? Since I had already wasted my day and at that point it seemed that there was at least a slight chance that one of the principles of Scientology as they understood it might be to hand large bags of cash to spiritually promising interviewees I said that I wasn't familiar with Scientology but I'd keep an open mind. Then I was interviewed by several people in a conference room, only one of which ever spoke to me, and asked suspiciously about whether I knew various areas of programming, though no one ever asked an actual technical question. Then they told me that the job paid far less then they had advertised, but that "there might be some stock options at some point". On the good side, the whole experience galvanized me to move into more defensive stocks ahead of the market crash. Of course, the owner probably became a millionaire... Paul
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Have you ever gone to an interview at some company to find that the company is a complete and utter joke? I have. No names, just descriptions. Here's my worst... Went to an interview at some company in NYC, at the time that I was looking for my current job. The "HR" person I spoke with told me that the gig was all .NET 2.0 and I'd be working with a team of .NET devs. That's what I was looking for, so I went to the interview. I show up, the office is in shambles. Disassembled furniture all over the place. Cardboard boxes laying around, with styrofoam sticking out. Really messy. I first interview with this guy, the "HR" guy (he actually was co-owner I think), and he ends up rambling on about some theory of economics that he couldn't quite remember. He showed me the product and tried to impress me with the fact that people from all over the world use it on a trial basis. oooh ahhhh. After that, while waiting for the CEO to show up, I get interviewed by one of their developers. He told me that he was interested in C#, but they only use VBScript there. My stomach turned. VBScript?! Yikes! Ugh. I then tell him that I was told that the company uses only C# 2.0, and he gets all emotional yelling "Well, we use VBScript here, and if that's not good enough for you, you should just leave!" :| After that, I'm still waiting for the CEO. As I wait in a room full of disassembled office furniture, I overhear two people in the office say how much their jobs suck. At this point, I stuck around just to see how much worse it could get. It was fun, at this point. Sort of. The CEO finally shows up and brings me into his office. He tells me that the company has always used free-lance developers and wants someone to "hold accountable" for their product. Let me rephrase that..."We want you to inherit this mangled blob of VBScript and then we'll hold you responsible for making it work." No thanks. To determine if I was technically savvy, he asked "If you were to design a database that stored info about books and publishers, how would you set it up?" I was very tempted to say "I'd copy the pubs sample db." :laugh: The moron thought that I wouldn't have seen Pubs. What a loser. Well, that's my tale. I hope you can top it! :-D
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
I have to say that the worse interview was at Microsoft, of all places. It was a long time ago, and I think I was interviewed with either the VB team or the C++ team. I don't remember. The guy that interviewed me as named Steve Bond. I thought it was a cool name, which is why I remembered it. The thing that sucked about it was: 1) I had written a BASIC interpreter at a previous job. One of the other interviewer read it out loud and said something to imply that it wasn't true -- something like, "Well, you claim you've even written a BASIC interpreter...". Didn't really ask me anything about it.. It kind of put me off, but I let it go. 2) Then Steve asked me to implement strtok(), the C-runtime library function -- well, not the exact version, but other than one minor change, it was basically that function. He wanted me to do it on the whiteboard, which is fine. So I started doing it, and speaking what my thought process was as I did, which is what he wanted. I went through the whole thing.. told him, weird to write code without actually testing it as you go. He found this bug on it.. which I admit. but I'm thinking, okay, well, it's not like I'm saying I write bug free code, and that's not a bug that would happen in real life because I would testing my code as I wrote it. So based on that, they told me that they didn't think I had very good coding skills, but wanted me to interview for a program manager position. I might have done that, but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I kinda felt that I really didn't want to work with this team that behaved this way. It was just a weird experience. I doubt this is common practice in that company. It must have been my great luck. ;P
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Have you ever gone to an interview at some company to find that the company is a complete and utter joke? I have. No names, just descriptions. Here's my worst... Went to an interview at some company in NYC, at the time that I was looking for my current job. The "HR" person I spoke with told me that the gig was all .NET 2.0 and I'd be working with a team of .NET devs. That's what I was looking for, so I went to the interview. I show up, the office is in shambles. Disassembled furniture all over the place. Cardboard boxes laying around, with styrofoam sticking out. Really messy. I first interview with this guy, the "HR" guy (he actually was co-owner I think), and he ends up rambling on about some theory of economics that he couldn't quite remember. He showed me the product and tried to impress me with the fact that people from all over the world use it on a trial basis. oooh ahhhh. After that, while waiting for the CEO to show up, I get interviewed by one of their developers. He told me that he was interested in C#, but they only use VBScript there. My stomach turned. VBScript?! Yikes! Ugh. I then tell him that I was told that the company uses only C# 2.0, and he gets all emotional yelling "Well, we use VBScript here, and if that's not good enough for you, you should just leave!" :| After that, I'm still waiting for the CEO. As I wait in a room full of disassembled office furniture, I overhear two people in the office say how much their jobs suck. At this point, I stuck around just to see how much worse it could get. It was fun, at this point. Sort of. The CEO finally shows up and brings me into his office. He tells me that the company has always used free-lance developers and wants someone to "hold accountable" for their product. Let me rephrase that..."We want you to inherit this mangled blob of VBScript and then we'll hold you responsible for making it work." No thanks. To determine if I was technically savvy, he asked "If you were to design a database that stored info about books and publishers, how would you set it up?" I was very tempted to say "I'd copy the pubs sample db." :laugh: The moron thought that I wouldn't have seen Pubs. What a loser. Well, that's my tale. I hope you can top it! :-D
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
After several interview I was offered the position of "Director of Internet Technologies" for a utility company in Hong Kong. I was dubious as to what exactly I was meant to be doing, so I asked to meet my future-supposed-boss one last time before I accepted the job. My first question was could he just outline who I would be accountable to and who I would have working for me in my team. Two hours later he was still trying to answer that question, and the white board he was demonstrating on was a morass of black lines. Basically from what I could work out, I would be accountable to everyone, would have no-one working for me, and had only 3 months to totally migrate their internet site to a new content management based system (as yet to be defined/agreed/budgeted/etc) or I would be fired. Needless to say I didn't accept the job offer.
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Have you ever gone to an interview at some company to find that the company is a complete and utter joke? I have. No names, just descriptions. Here's my worst... Went to an interview at some company in NYC, at the time that I was looking for my current job. The "HR" person I spoke with told me that the gig was all .NET 2.0 and I'd be working with a team of .NET devs. That's what I was looking for, so I went to the interview. I show up, the office is in shambles. Disassembled furniture all over the place. Cardboard boxes laying around, with styrofoam sticking out. Really messy. I first interview with this guy, the "HR" guy (he actually was co-owner I think), and he ends up rambling on about some theory of economics that he couldn't quite remember. He showed me the product and tried to impress me with the fact that people from all over the world use it on a trial basis. oooh ahhhh. After that, while waiting for the CEO to show up, I get interviewed by one of their developers. He told me that he was interested in C#, but they only use VBScript there. My stomach turned. VBScript?! Yikes! Ugh. I then tell him that I was told that the company uses only C# 2.0, and he gets all emotional yelling "Well, we use VBScript here, and if that's not good enough for you, you should just leave!" :| After that, I'm still waiting for the CEO. As I wait in a room full of disassembled office furniture, I overhear two people in the office say how much their jobs suck. At this point, I stuck around just to see how much worse it could get. It was fun, at this point. Sort of. The CEO finally shows up and brings me into his office. He tells me that the company has always used free-lance developers and wants someone to "hold accountable" for their product. Let me rephrase that..."We want you to inherit this mangled blob of VBScript and then we'll hold you responsible for making it work." No thanks. To determine if I was technically savvy, he asked "If you were to design a database that stored info about books and publishers, how would you set it up?" I was very tempted to say "I'd copy the pubs sample db." :laugh: The moron thought that I wouldn't have seen Pubs. What a loser. Well, that's my tale. I hope you can top it! :-D
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
I'm not sure I can top that, but I have a fairly scary story. I went for an interview with a company that sell branded shoes in shops in the UK and over the internet. I went for an interview for the position of "Web Developer" at this company and as part of the interview I was to do competency test, which involved working my way around a mock up version of their live system and doing various tasks with it. I had a "temporary" username and password which allowed me access into the mock up database through enterprise manager and query analyser. Once I had finished the competency test and even completed the "if you have additional time" section I decided to have a look through some of the other table in the database which I never really used. After bored with picking thorugh thoseI went back up to the main node only to notice a few other databases in the list. Yes, you can see it galloping over the horizon; it was the live database which my "temporary" user certainly had SELECT permissions to all tables (don't know about the other - i didn't think it was entirely ethical to try it!), including a table which contained all the users credit card details....unencrypted! I got the job and within the first few days I'd made many suggestions to tighten up on security, etc. Funnily enough I got hauled into the bosses office on the thursday after I started and got told that there had been a mistake about the position I was offered and I was being asked to leave with immediate effect...with 2 months salary. It does make me wonder how some of these companies survive!
Pol
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Have you ever gone to an interview at some company to find that the company is a complete and utter joke? I have. No names, just descriptions. Here's my worst... Went to an interview at some company in NYC, at the time that I was looking for my current job. The "HR" person I spoke with told me that the gig was all .NET 2.0 and I'd be working with a team of .NET devs. That's what I was looking for, so I went to the interview. I show up, the office is in shambles. Disassembled furniture all over the place. Cardboard boxes laying around, with styrofoam sticking out. Really messy. I first interview with this guy, the "HR" guy (he actually was co-owner I think), and he ends up rambling on about some theory of economics that he couldn't quite remember. He showed me the product and tried to impress me with the fact that people from all over the world use it on a trial basis. oooh ahhhh. After that, while waiting for the CEO to show up, I get interviewed by one of their developers. He told me that he was interested in C#, but they only use VBScript there. My stomach turned. VBScript?! Yikes! Ugh. I then tell him that I was told that the company uses only C# 2.0, and he gets all emotional yelling "Well, we use VBScript here, and if that's not good enough for you, you should just leave!" :| After that, I'm still waiting for the CEO. As I wait in a room full of disassembled office furniture, I overhear two people in the office say how much their jobs suck. At this point, I stuck around just to see how much worse it could get. It was fun, at this point. Sort of. The CEO finally shows up and brings me into his office. He tells me that the company has always used free-lance developers and wants someone to "hold accountable" for their product. Let me rephrase that..."We want you to inherit this mangled blob of VBScript and then we'll hold you responsible for making it work." No thanks. To determine if I was technically savvy, he asked "If you were to design a database that stored info about books and publishers, how would you set it up?" I was very tempted to say "I'd copy the pubs sample db." :laugh: The moron thought that I wouldn't have seen Pubs. What a loser. Well, that's my tale. I hope you can top it! :-D
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
I definitely can't top yours, but some of the amusing interviews I've had: 1. I was interviewing with my would-be boss who was really selling me on the job, "No overtime, no weekends, no on-call..." Later in the interview, that went exceptional, he let slip, "I can't wait to get you in here so I can finally go home at night to see my family!" What happened to no overtime?! I also figured out through talking with him further that the only way I would possibly move up in that position is for the guy I was interviewing with to retire or die. I didn't see either happening any time soon, so I declined the job. 2. I interview for a Systems and Network Administrator position on a well known and growing consulting firm who was starting a new long term contract in my city. The first interview went very well. I got a quick call back for a second interview with 2 of the new team's technical architechs. The interview consisted of all really detailed Java programming questions, ridiculous theory questions, and abstract theoretical "What if" questions (i.e. What if I asked you to give me 6 ways to measure the height of the building using this tape measure). I was able to answer most since I had been a programmer for a few years and had done a few years in college, but nothing as technical as "What do you like and dislike about make and how would you fix it and how does it compare to ant, in your opinion?". If I had an issue with make I always thought it was my fault for not know how to use the tool. That assumption was usually correct. After a while, one of the interviewers said, "Wait, I think based on this guys resume and answers that he was looking for a System/Network Admin job." At that point the main interviewer jumped up, screamed "I don't know anything about Systems administration! This is ridiculous!", threw down his pen and stormed out of the room. I stayed to answer, successfully, all the admin questions from the second guy only to never receive a call back or letter from the company again. 3. Was more amusing and happened to be from the sys admin dept. of the company I am currently a .NET developer for. Months (about 6 or more I believe) after I interview with them I received a call from one of their admins asking me some generic, ridiculously easy questions about Windows administration. After 2 questions and obviously dragging this out, he finally started talking quicker and got to the point, "Why haven't you accepted the position with us here?" "Well, that would be because you never offere
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I once showed up to an interview that I was told was for C++ developmemt in Windows - exactly what I wanted. When I got there, the secretary made me a coffee and I relaxed in the reception area for a couple of minutes. After the usual 5 minute delay, the CEO invites me into the boardroom and the first thing he says is, "This is a Foxpro position. Are you interested?". I said, no, and that I was expecting it to be a C++ position. Then he said, "Well, I don't really want a C++ programmer and you don't want to work in Foxpro, so do you want to continue this interview?". I declined, and walked out 5 minutes after I arrived without even tasting my coffee! I think the guy was just trying to save us both some time, as he had apparently been sent a lot of unsuitable candidates by a particular employment agency. I'm not sure if this qualifies as the "worst" interview, but it's certainly one that I'll never forget!
The StartPage Randomizer | The Timelapse Project | A Random Web Page
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Have you ever gone to an interview at some company to find that the company is a complete and utter joke? I have. No names, just descriptions. Here's my worst... Went to an interview at some company in NYC, at the time that I was looking for my current job. The "HR" person I spoke with told me that the gig was all .NET 2.0 and I'd be working with a team of .NET devs. That's what I was looking for, so I went to the interview. I show up, the office is in shambles. Disassembled furniture all over the place. Cardboard boxes laying around, with styrofoam sticking out. Really messy. I first interview with this guy, the "HR" guy (he actually was co-owner I think), and he ends up rambling on about some theory of economics that he couldn't quite remember. He showed me the product and tried to impress me with the fact that people from all over the world use it on a trial basis. oooh ahhhh. After that, while waiting for the CEO to show up, I get interviewed by one of their developers. He told me that he was interested in C#, but they only use VBScript there. My stomach turned. VBScript?! Yikes! Ugh. I then tell him that I was told that the company uses only C# 2.0, and he gets all emotional yelling "Well, we use VBScript here, and if that's not good enough for you, you should just leave!" :| After that, I'm still waiting for the CEO. As I wait in a room full of disassembled office furniture, I overhear two people in the office say how much their jobs suck. At this point, I stuck around just to see how much worse it could get. It was fun, at this point. Sort of. The CEO finally shows up and brings me into his office. He tells me that the company has always used free-lance developers and wants someone to "hold accountable" for their product. Let me rephrase that..."We want you to inherit this mangled blob of VBScript and then we'll hold you responsible for making it work." No thanks. To determine if I was technically savvy, he asked "If you were to design a database that stored info about books and publishers, how would you set it up?" I was very tempted to say "I'd copy the pubs sample db." :laugh: The moron thought that I wouldn't have seen Pubs. What a loser. Well, that's my tale. I hope you can top it! :-D
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
I've got two :-) I live in London and a German agency contacted me for a job in Connecticut - which is a little odd in the first place. Anyway the company interviewed me, quite a technical interview, and it was an ASP and SQL Server role which is what I did at the time. So I get the job, pack up my flat and move to the US. Turn up on day one and it turns out the job is a VB and Oracle job. I'd never really used much VB and never touched Oracle. They then gave me my first project which was supposed to take a week, but they would understand if it took longer. It took 5 hours. I lasted 4 weeks and then quit, soon after their backers quit too and they no longer exist. My first ever London job interview was with a well known tv & movie company. I did the interview and got on well with the guy interviewing, but unfortunately the role was too junior. He decided that I would get bored and not stick it out. The thing is the job was £15,000 more than I was expecting, I was 26 and single, the office was 90% female, and it appeared that instead of using a recuitment agency they used a modelling agency - it would have been a job for life!!;P Andrew