from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are your personal red flags when you're interviewing at a company?

by bazil376 on 6/11/24, 6:09 PM with 131 comments

• by karaterobot on 6/11/24, 7:15 PM

  The ones that come to mind:

  * If they are a small company who outsources any step of their interview process to another company. If you're only interviewing for a couple positions—people you will work with every single day—take the time to do it yourself.

  * If they are a startup that says they are looking for people who are interested in solving exciting problems. For some people, this is going to be an enticement, but based on my experience, what I hear is "we're going to work you like a dog and pay you in equity, and at the end neither your work nor your equity will matter because we're definitely going to go out of business". I recognize this is a bias, but it's happened to me a couple times, and I'm in my 40s now and just not having it anymore. Plus, the problems are never that exciting, they're usually "how to sell a SaaS product that is basically a CRUD app, in a crowded marketplace with lots of competitors".

  * If the interview is composed of like 10 rounds of 30 minute interviews, each with different groups in the company, that to me is an indicator that Conway's Law is at the helm of that organization: lots of groups that want input into everything, nobody empowered to make a decision on their own. Plus, it's just not a very good format. Give me a smaller number of hour long sessions where we can actually get into it, rather than racing through pro forma questions.

• by avgDev on 6/11/24, 7:31 PM

  * Open office bonus points for adding "because we like collaboration"

  * No remote or hybrid

  * Unlimited PTO can potentially be a red flag depending on other aspects

  * Dinners at the office

  * Business model that is not generating any revenue

  * Needing 5 references for a junior position and they had to be people I worked with(my team was 3 devs). So, I listed other people I knew. One of them a VP of a tech company, who worked for large tech companies. They called him and grilled him. He told me he did his best but not to take the job and maybe just come work for him.

  * Another time, I was told my code was wrong and wouldn't compile during the interview, I said "I am certain it will", but the dev said unless I change the answer is wrong. I changed it, he was wrong. I got the offer, and did not take the job.

• by Tainnor on 6/11/24, 7:10 PM

  All of these have happened to me:

  - The interviewer is wearing a suit.

  - The interviewer asks "you've worked with [person who now works at our company] before, what do you think about them?". Bonus points if they insist after I give a diplomatic answer.

  - "Why are you using microservices?" "Because everyone is doing it"

  - Not following up. For weeks.

  - "Can you send us your high school diploma?"

  - Take home assignment with a time limit.

  - No feedback on take home assignment except "we didn't like your approach".

  - Developers use separate laptops for coding and for internet access.

  - There are three architects on a single project.

• by kelnos on 6/11/24, 8:29 PM

  * Referring to the company as a "family", or cliches like "work hard, play hard" or similar.

  * They don't leave time for you to interview them.

  * They're stuck on looking for particular, specific answers to their questions, even if other answers are valid and workable.

  * The questions/problems given are one-sided and don't invite discussion. I really enjoy interviews where the interviewer will kick off a design or architecture question, and then instead of just sitting there, waiting for me to respond, taking notes and moving on, they engage with me on the problem and we discuss it mutually, like peers, with a lot of back and forth. This might not be a strong "nope" signal (some people just aren't very good at interviewing, and often that doesn't reflect all that poorly on the company), but it's definitely concerning.

  * Being inflexible on compensation mix. If I think the salary is too low, I might ask for more equity. If they can't budge on the financial part of compensation, and have fixed/accrued PTO rather than unlimited, I might accept starting out with more vacation days instead. Answers like "sorry, this is the standard that everyone gets and it can't be changed" are big red flags.

  * If we get to the offer stage and they want me to sign things that I'm uncomfortable signing, and their response is "oh, it's just standard boilerplate, we'd never enforce something like that". Well, I'm not comfortable with selective enforcement, either. "Never" really means "as long as we don't end up having an axe to grind with you later on".

• by cryptoz on 6/11/24, 7:05 PM

  Making fun of my side project.

  An interviewer looked at me with this vicious, incredulous look when I described my side project in ~2019, which was a weather network built on the sensors inside phones. Guy said, “a weather app, really?! You think that’s a good use of your time in 2019? What makes you think a weather app is useful to make today?”

  MFer, it was a good idea in 2011 and it’s a good idea today and it’ll be a good idea in 10 years.

  And it wasn’t just a weather app omg! But he didn’t care, just kept pressing me for like 5 mins why I would ever think making a weather network service was useful. No amount of explaining the complexity or novel recently-developed techniques that made it possible would convince him I wasn’t wasting my time.

• by aristofun on 6/11/24, 6:32 PM

  I prefer reasonably scoped take home assignment to leetcode "prove me you're awesome in 30 minutes" kind of interviews.

  Relying on these kind of signals as a main input is a sign that company didn't think through their hiring process and rather just cargo-culting.

  But all that are still secondary concerns: good people can make bad process work, bad people tend to ruin the best of processes.

  So for me the only important "flags" are specific people I contact — their attitudes, levels of professionalism, questions they ask, answers they give, their decision process etc.

  On all steps of the interview process.

• by gumby on 6/11/24, 7:53 PM

  I think a lot of companies forget that the interview is the applicant selling themselves to the interviewer and *the company selling itself to the applicant". That's a strong "reject" signal to me.

  But also some of these examples could be from companies who understand the bidirectional dynamic. E.g. if you consider wearing a suit to be a bad sign the company might just as well be glad you don't want to work at a place like that. Win-win!

  My contribution to the argument: people who use vapid business buzzwords/ like "win-win" except in the rare cases where it really is appropriate.

• by vusjandus23857 on 6/11/24, 6:55 PM

  When I was 35, I had a mid-20's startup CEO ask me if I still had it in me... what?

• by asdz on 6/12/24, 11:11 AM

  1 Interview time - if the interviewer schedule the interview time out of office hour (like 8PM or 10PM), it's likely overtime is a common thing for them

  2. Interviewer asking template questions and doesn't show any interest - if interviewer asking those basic questions and don't understand even what the job means, it's a sign that they don't even bother, they are just there to filter you

  3. Interviewer pushing for the interview ASAP - it's very likely the position is needed as soon as possible, sometimes this could be something really serious and they are hiring someone to put out the fire, sometimes it's already a crisis and they expect someone to save the day

• by JohnFen on 6/11/24, 7:34 PM

  Outside of a couple of phrases I consider clear-cut red flags (such as "we're a family here", "we work hard and play hard", etc.), what I'm really looking for is a bit squishier and not tied to particular phrases and such.

  Things that I think indicate a poor fit for me include places where it's expected that people work more than 40 hours per week (I have no problem doing that in unusual circumstances, but if it's part of routine practice, that's a problem); where it's expected that you'll take part in extra-curricular activities; where they take agile methodologies too seriously; where there's too much social stratification in the workplace; and such.

  Concrete red flags include using leetcode tests, using personality tests, absurd interviewing hoops (too many interview rounds, too many days to complete the interviewing process, etc.).

  Not being interviewed by (or at least meeting) the members of the team I'd be working with is a bad sign, as is the interviewer not knowing the position I'm being considered for. The interviewer not answering my questions (or being vague or evasive in their answer).

  I pay attention to the other devs I see. If most of them look unhappy or stressed, that's an enormous red flag. If in-person, most of the desks in use being pretty bare (little in the way of knick-knacks, personal photos, funny or interesting things hung on the cube wall, etc.) is bad. A lack of enthusiasm about what the devs are working on is bad.

  Immediate showstoppers are having an open office plan or hot-desking.

  Having too fancy of an office is a bad sign, but more of a yellow flag than red.

  I'm sure that I've omitted a bunch of things here. I don't have a literal list in my mind. What I tend to do complete the interview process and then put it out of my mind until the next day. Then I go through my notes and examine to totality of what I observed, both things that pleased me and things that didn't.

• by haliskerbas on 6/11/24, 7:01 PM

  Justifying lower pay with "we just want people who truly believe in the mission"

• by snovv_crash on 6/11/24, 7:14 PM

  If they have the company values written on the wall, it probably means they don't actually live them.

  Engineering leadership doesn't understand (or care about) the business side.

  Trying to shoehorn you into a role obviously you're overqualified for.

  A focus more on time spent and dedication rather than achievements and outcomes.

  No clear business model. Maybe it isn't an issue today, but for 99% of businesses it will be an issue soon.

  A pattern of getting interns or juniors to do an initial chunk of work, and then getting seniors to clean up after them, rather than letting seniors lay a foundation and the juniors/interns filling in the gaps.

• by dilippkumar on 6/11/24, 7:10 PM

  Back when in-person interviews were a thing, I’d use the opportunity to just look at the office space.

  Specific red flag signals:

  1. Dominated by Windows

  2. Too many people in formals

  3. Nobody wears badges (and other indicators of a lax security policy)

  4. Old/worn out office furniture

  5. Low resolution displays

  6. Old laptops

  7. No evidence of people collaborating or chatting at a microkitchen etc.

• by hoerzu on 6/11/24, 6:56 PM

  Coding challenge, HR more involved than engineers, not remote friendly

• by tharne on 6/11/24, 6:24 PM

  If they have an interview process that involves a take home project or something similarly time intensive. To me that screams, "I don't care about any family responsibilities you may have, I want a bunch of childless 20-twenty somethings I can burn and churn".

• by tg986 on 6/12/24, 12:26 PM

  1. Interview questions where it's clear the interviewer wants a specific answer even if it's not the only correct answer. Especially true if that interviewer would be your boss.

  2. I once had a technical interview where I was given a Jupyter notebook that set up a problem and then asked me several questions about it. The interviewer was on the other side of the desk watching me on a separate monitor. The interview itself was 1 hour long but he wouldn't stop talking for more than a minute or so. I didn't have time to read and understand the problem, nevermind design and execute a solution. Instead, he kept asking me questions, breaking my concentration... just a total nightmare.

  3. Keeping me locked in a room all day. I've interviewed at several places over the years where I'd go, sit in a meeting room, and have a day's worth of interviews. Sure, I got a brief tour of the office, but even my lunch I'd eat in that meeting room. If I can't talk with employees in their natural habitat then how am I supposed to get a real feel for the office culture?

  4. Interviewers who don't seem to know why they're interviewing you. I've had this happen many times. They don't know what the position is for, they never work with the person in that position, why bother?

  5. Your potential boss can't give you a reasonable description of the work you'll do. Huge red flag.

  6. Too many detailed questions about work I do at my current job that I obviously cannot get in to. If they can't respect my inability to tell them company secrets then there's a problem.

• by Quinzel on 6/13/24, 10:27 AM

  Red Flags:

  When one or more people on the interview panel behaves extremely unprofessionally. ie, ridicules the interviewee, or makes inappropriately offensive comments.

  When the interviewer decides to give an interviewee they particularly like a tour of the premise and introduce them to other staff before they've even offered the person a job.

  When there are heaps of relatives, or best/close friends within the management structure of the company.

• by j45 on 6/11/24, 7:01 PM

  Pro-tip: Too many interviewers can be threatened by incoming talent being better than them.

• by MattPalmer1086 on 6/11/24, 9:01 PM

  When asked if they want a faster result or a higher quality one, they say both.

  This was for an open ended coding test. I just wanted to know if they wanted to see if I could work fast, or produce a better structured solution.

  I should have left right then. The interview did not get any better. At the end they asked repeatedly how I would deal with problem employees. I had just about figured they were problem employers by then.

• by fetus8 on 6/11/24, 8:33 PM

  Recently interviewed with a startup, and during the process via email, I was constantly communicating with different people. After the 3rd interview with the CTO, I thought they ghosted me and emailed the last interviewer and got no response. Over a week later the director of engineering emailed me to schedule the 3rd interview with the CTO. I immediately knew that they had internal communication issues and decided I wasn't going to pursue the role further.

  My current role has a somewhat misleading title, but to offset that I make sure I really highlight my experience and the projects I've worked on. If an interviewer starts asking me about my title and why I'm applying for something more 'generic' I immediately know they didn't read my resume or pay attention and I'm out.

  Years ago I walked out of an all day interview, maybe 2 hours in, because one of the engineers was on his phone the entire time, seemingly just scrolling and not paying attention.

• by idopmstuff on 6/11/24, 7:17 PM

  I just got a generic message on YC's job board that ended by asking me if I'd be interested in doing their case study with a link to the case. No, head of product, I am not interested in doing a case study before I spend, y'know, fifteen whole minutes talking to you about the company and role.

• by djleroy on 6/13/24, 6:43 PM

  Lots of people without degrees in data science (or statistics, or even computer science) in supervisory positions. Silly interview questions like “define multivariate” or “write python code to find factors” or “write SQL code to join tables”

  These are all signs of an immature data science function- which predicts working on ill posed problems and a problematic business justification. If the people already there are mediocre it’s not a great place to join. A strong sign of that is if the interviewers don’t know enough to construct thoughtful questions about real, non trivial, issues from their work. There are too many people in data science who, sadly, are at this level.

• by lukehefson on 6/12/24, 11:50 AM

  For any early-career people reading this thread– take the responses with a pinch of salt. As they may be very true for more senior folk but not always true if you're trying to get your foot in the door and/or find a place you can grow quickly.

• by noashavit on 6/12/24, 3:51 AM

  - Dinner at the office - No remote or by hybrid options - Team is fresh out of college. If no one has more than 2 years of professional experience except for the founder/s, they are looking for followers. - Multiple case studies / take home exercises (difficultly making decisions / moving quickly) - If you have an interview scheduled with multiple ppl and one of them is a no show more than once. - If you’re interviewing for team lead / head of position and the team/part of it isn’t part of the interview process. - If there are co CEOs that disagree on the vision or mission

• by QuiEgo on 6/12/24, 4:40 PM

  Screening questions to them:

  - how many hours a week does a typical dev work?

  - what source control do you use

  - what ticket system do you use

  - how long does a typical, at-desk incremental dev build take?

  - do you have automated builds (CICD, Jenkins, pipelines, nightly build system, etc)?

• by projectileboy on 6/11/24, 8:33 PM

  This is almost too a high a bar, but I would prefer to take a job at a place where the interview isn’t about the interviewer demonstrating how smart they are. But… that would rule out most places.

• by 000ooo000 on 6/11/24, 9:58 PM

  I'm adding to my list "using ancient tech". Not because I think that orgs should always be on the new shiny, but to me using old tech is a yard stick for uninteresting and low-growth culture WRT software engineering; is there an interest in technology? Do the people there like to code for fun? Are they open to improvements in the way things are done? If I know that you're happy still using TFS, jQuery, ASP.NET Razor, etc, I can probably guess the answers to a lot of those kinds of questions.

• by kkfx on 6/11/24, 8:07 PM

  Some random points:

  - not offering full-remote for all jobs actually doable from remote;

  - trying to start selling itself as a super-duper-enterprise naming vague roles with unclear responsibility and so on;

  - choosing external recruiters who have no clue about real opened position so they just run HR games and absurd questions;

  - talking about proprietary software they use, requirements like "you will use this IDE", finding normal using a laptop for desk-fixed works;

  - not possessing anything themselves living on someone else iron and even worse develop on someone else services.

• by DocColorado on 6/12/24, 1:10 PM

  I interviewed with Dell during their acceleration rise around 1999. The big red flag for me was all the interviewing people were late and in a ultra hurry to get the interview over. I had a would be peer that said he "Was tired of people being hired & then leaving within 30 days because of the chaotic work load!" This was a management/executive position.

• by swader999 on 6/11/24, 7:06 PM

  DEI everywhere.

• by captaincaveman on 6/11/24, 7:13 PM

  Pompousness and self importance, we all get interviewed at some point don't power trip, it should be a humble two way conversation.

• by Original_SYN on 6/12/24, 2:25 PM

  I get linked to threads like these in a newsletter, and I’m just curious. Are these threads only for coders or do coders just happen to be the majority of respondents?

  Or will interviewers actually be sending me homework for an interview where I have to code something when the job is a SOC analyst or incident response?

• by SaberTail on 6/11/24, 6:45 PM

  I've walked out of an interview when the employee doing it took a phone call in the middle of it. It was so rude and disrespectful.

  I once got a whiteboarding problem and proposed a solution, and the interviewer gave me a flat out "that's not the one I had in mind". I'd already asked clarifying questions and thought my proposal was reasonable in light of the constraints as I understood them. After a few minutes of trying to play mind reader, I asked, "Is there some constraint or requirement I'm missing?" and they said no. I retrospect, I should have walked out on that one, too. I still have no idea what they wanted from me. Communication goes both ways.

• by oj179933 on 6/12/24, 10:53 AM

  For remote interviews, when the interviewer(s) have their cameras turned off. Or the camera is on but they look completely disinterested or disengaged. Once I had a guy's phone go off and he checked the messages while he was asking me a question...

• by codr7 on 6/11/24, 6:56 PM

  Not so much about words for me, more about the vibe:

  Unwillingness to compromise.

  Unwillingness to evolve.

  Lack of empathy.

  Lack of trust.

  Lack of flexibility.

  A fetish for telling people what to do.

• by 0xbadcafebee on 6/11/24, 7:12 PM

  When they start describing the dysfunction in their team or the org as a whole. One interviewer talks about a "legacy team" that needs help "modernizing" and "migrating to the cloud", and then you talk to the "legacy team" and they don't think they need any help. Or they're just a collection of acquisitions with no standardization. Or they try to avoid talking to corporate IT about anything. Or they regularly get woken up at 3am on-call. Or they deploy less than once a week, or need someone to manually validate it and schedule it and have all-hands-on-deck. Or you ask about test coverage and they laugh. Or they have one database for 100 services. I don't find a ton of huge deal breakers, but a lot of "ehhhhhh......." things. The biggest deal breakers are attitude and culture, whether the business creates abusive demands on employees, signs of poor leadership, disorganization. And pay. The business shows you what they really think of you in their offers.

• by giantg2 on 6/11/24, 7:20 PM

  I had one where the TL was on their laptop the whole time. They were prompted by their manager to ask me a question. They asked and immediately went back to typing while I was responding they didn't even acknowledge my response. I was offered the role but turned it down. The manager was furious. Why would I want to work with/for someone who doesn't have enough time or desire to show basic respect?

  Another time went for a code screen that said we could use any language on our own machine. When I go there the hiring manager handed me a Mac and told me I'd be using Angular to code a given problem. That's great. I had no experience with Macs, no experience with WebStorm, no experience with Angular. What a waste of time. I asked why he even brought me in if I didn't have any of this listed on my resume and the recruiter told me it'd my choice of machine and language? His response was that maybe I had the experience but just didn't list it on my resume. Fuck you too.

• by FearNotDaniel on 6/12/24, 9:00 AM

  "We only employ ninjas. Are you a ninja?" Really happened. I rejected their offer after somehow inexplicably proving my ninja credentials.

• by drewcoo on 6/11/24, 10:12 PM

  - "Bring your whole self to work" . . . when the interviewers all seem like cloned/pod people under the skin.

  - Any job ad for a FOO Dev, where FOO is a language. They're hiring code monkeys.

  - A panel of interviewers suggests the company doesn't know how to interview.

  - "Gotcha" trivia questions.

  - Giving me a take-home assignment that takes much longer than their estimated time to complete . . . then asking me how long it took.

  - Telling me what IDE to use (even if it's one I would prefer).

  - Interviewer is another dev and is unwilling to tell me what they wish were different.

  - Whiteboard coding where interviewer says nothing. Maybe they stare at me. Maybe they do work. Either way . . . no.

  - Any question where the goal is guessing "the correct way to answer."

  - Hiring managers who clearly want to hand off responsibilities instead of just delegate. Seems more common in small startups.

  - Interviewers are late to call or join the video conference. Especially if they're at least 5 minutes late.

• by mattnewton on 6/11/24, 7:28 PM

  Frat bro vibes. Bragging about alcohol in the office, offering me liquor around 1pm, talking about how great every is to hang out with at the office late. I don’t have a problem with others enjoying things, but assuming they are a major selling point for people during the interview is a big red flag to me.

• by jverce on 6/12/24, 2:29 PM

  A dead silent office

• by treeface9000 on 6/11/24, 6:16 PM

  If they answer yes to any of the following:

  - Have you ever had to work on the weekend or well beyond 5pm outside of your own personal interest/initiative?

  - Are we required to be on-call

  If there's any hint of "nah, we don't really write tests because we just need to ship stuff, y'know"