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ryguytilidie | 4 years ago
In 2015 I was laid off from a startup that unfortunately shut down.
During my search I was intro'ed by their VC to the CTO. The CTO told me they were hiring for my exact, kind of niche role. I was pretty pumped as I hadn't really lost a job before and wanted to get something new quickly.
I met the CTO at a coffee shop, he kept asking me a bunch of questions that were clearly more being asked with the intention of picking my brain about a project versus interview questions. I asked him what was up and he said they hired someone for the role the week before, but that he wanted to pick my brain so he kept our time on calendar.
I had taken BART into the city, pushed back a different interview and taken time out of my day so a CTO with a ton of funding could exploit my labor for zero compensation.
I said something along the lines of, "um, okay I need to focus on my job search, good luck." and got up to leave. He then kind of did this act as if I was being kind of a dick for not helping him.
Luckily a Director of Engineering I'd worked with at a past company was sitting two tables away and I said hi and he said he had overheard what happened and I ended up interviewing at his company.
Still, to this day, seeing all of those "Flexport is hiring!" posts has always made me wonder how much of their interview process is just wasting the time of potential employees. They seem like they have a fairly noble mission, which is why I interviewed in the first place. But man, that whole situation still feels really gross to me.
thepasswordis|4 years ago
I like problems, and I like solving problems. I've been lucky enough that the pay is honestly just a bonus most of the time. Having a contact at a company I think is cool is way more valuable to me than the cost of taking a train an a few hours of my time.
ryguytilidie|4 years ago