My answer on this depends on whether we want to be an emotionally supportive group for people who make a badge of honor out of being socially and professionally inept, or whether we want to give advice which will actually move careers forward.
A company which is not a cultural good fit for you, and the employees thereof, can still be very valuable allies. I would not act to antagonize them absent substantial provocation. Not being like you is not a substantial provocation. Most people in the world will, after all, not be like you, and you'll end up not working for approximately all companies in the industry. That's OK.
You've already got the day blocked off in your calendar. Smile. Firm handshakes. Thank them for taking the time to interview you. Heck, they're giving you free live-fire practice for your next interview, make the most out of it. You should never say a word of criticism about the company to anyone but your primary point of contact and you should be darn circumspect with how you word it to him. (I like something along the general lines of "Thanks for your time and allowing me to get to know $FOO_CORP better. We're really in the same boat: I only want to work at employers where I'd do my best work, and you only want to hire people who'd do great things at $FOO_CORP. Having had the opportunity to hear you guys out a bit more, I don't think we're a great mutual fit. I will keep my ears open for you in case any of my friends would be a good fit for your position.")
This is spot on. I can't even fathom why somebody would needlessly burn bridges like this. The fact that we live in boom times and enjoy near-unprecedented demand for our skills is no excuse for this type of myopic behavior.
What really surprised me was that the OP's candidate was a referral. It's one thing to risk burning your own bridges, but it's completely inconsiderate to possibly tarnish the reputation of someone who spoke up on your behalf. Speaking for myself, unless this was a close personal friend, I would be very reluctant to ever subsequently recommend this individual again.
Without delving into anecdotes, I've witnessed a scenario quite similar to this one. A candidate who was referred (as a "rockstar") struggled with the technical interview, and subsequently walked out. It goes without saying how he, and to a lesser extent the individual who referred him, were viewed in the aftermath.
TLDR; Please don't do this. It's completely unnecessary and possibly inconsiderate.
I would not act to antagonize them absent substantial provocation.
Nothing indicates that the person did anything to antogonise other than requesting to end the interview due to his perspective on the company changing. For all we know, his request to terminate the interview was a polite one.
If an individual or organisation considers this antagonistic then I would argue that they are an ally not worth having.
Whilst I understand your point about 'heck you've got nothing to lose by putting up with it for a few hours', I would argue that day long interviews are a massive drain on energy and time and in this industry both are immensely valuable to a developer. Whilst this may be a shock to an organisation who are obviously not accustomed to individuals standing up to them, decent organisations would learn from this and possibly review their interview process.
A developer sitting throughout the interview and providing polite feedback afterwards on why they won't be pursuing the role would be lost in the noise and most of the people who need to understand their motivation won't even hear it.
I strongly disagree. Perhaps he should have made up an excuse and be less confrontational. But it's not OK to let people abuse you. If you don't respect yourself nobody will.
Absolutely disagree. To anyone reading this: if you're interviewing with my group and you realize partway in that you're not interested, please, by all means, tell us immediately. The last thing we need to do is to waste time interviewing someone who doesn't want to work with us.
You should never say a word of criticism about the company to anyone but your primary point of contact and you should be darn circumspect with how you word it to him.
Maybe my question is "socially and professionally inept", but why is realizing that you're not going to fit into a company automatically a criticism?
I'm not talking about the guy who walked out in the example or the way the poster described the situation. I'm asking a much more general question and I'm genuinely interested in an honest answer.
To me it seems quite legitimate that one could come to a realization that there are irreconcilable incompatibilities between oneself and one or more aspects of the job. I consider that a case of "it's not you, it's me".
Are you really objecting to the fact that it might be interpreted as "I've got better things to do with the rest of my day"?
I'm trying to understand the reason why you're so emphatic about this (e.g. couching it in terms of "antagonizing").
A company which is not a cultural good fit for you, and the employees thereof, can still be very valuable allies. I would not act to antagonize them absent substantial provocation.
You know.. that's true. Very true. But I think it should come with a caveat... any random person you interact with could one day be a valuable ally, yes. But the odds of any given person blundering into your life in a significant position to aid (or harm) you, late down the road, by happenstance, is very low. This is my observation anyway.
I don't go out of my way to antagonize people, or burn bridges, but I also don't go out of my way to pander to people or kiss ass just to maintain a "bridge." And while you never know what you don't know, I have zero reason to believe that any relationship I've damaged through this attitude, has ever had any negative consequence subsequently in my life. The world really is a big place, and you meet a LOT of people over a lifetime... there's a steady stream of new relationships coming along, displacing the old ones.
Again, this isn't to say one should go out and wantonly burn bridges for no reason, and it's not to say that one never benefits from a happenstance encounter with someone from a different part of your life. But I do think we should question how important it really is to worry about burned bridges - especially if your intuition tells you that the person is question isn't likely to be a future ally anyway.
I completely agree with your reasoning, and how we as adults should be able to keep emotions and thoughts in check. However...
Where this particular situation differs is that this was an all-day interview. I've been at these and they are taxing on the mind and body, to say the least. If you know you aren't a good fit, there must be a good way to end the interview part-way and explain the differences. While I don't agree with getting up and leaving, I think it is wrong to waste people's time with a fruitless prospect.
Depending on who you are, this advice can be anything from perfect to the worst possible thing you could try to do. I'm guessing that it is perfect advice for you, and it is not bad advice for me, but I know a lot of people for whom it is bad to truly terrible.
The issue is that we have to work with the limitations that come from the people we happen to be, not the people we wish we were. If something has happened during an interview that makes you actually angry, and you stay in a stressful situation for several hours following, it is extremely likely that your anger will come out in a bad way. If this is your situation then leaving, despite being bad, is the least harmful thing that you could do.
Yes, it is convenient not to get angry. Yes, it is wonderful to keep a professional face and pleasant demeanor no matter what may have happened in the interview. But we are humans. We have human limitations. If your limitations have been exceeded, the sooner you recognize and cope with that, the less likely you are to do something you will really regret. And getting space is one of the best techniques available to us. If that means leaving the interview, so be it.
Now you may agree and immediately say that this is a personal limitation that should be fixed ASAP. I strongly disagree. I recommend reading First, Break All The Rules. We're talking about a personality trait here. In adults, trying to change your personality is usually a lost cause. For most people it is FAR more effective to find ways to structure your environment so that you play to your strengths rather than your weaknesses.
So try to keep an even keel. Avoid argument. And if, in the stress of an interview, you get angry, try to get space. If need be, ask if you can have a few minutes alone in a room to collect your thoughts. But if you can't get that, and fear you'll do something you regret, you're probably right. In that situation, exiting the interview may be your best remaining option. (But note that best does not mean good.)
I couldn't disagree more with this appeasing attitude. Companies have known to cut interview short when they realize the candidate is not a good fit, in the guise of not wasting everyone's time. Why can't the interviewee reciprocate when s/he has found out it's not a good fit?
Why make false lying pleasantries when honest feedback is more helpful? Even if you have blocked off the day for the interview, it would still save time on the company's part to not continue the interview.
If we want to give advice that will insulate people from making a poor networking decision, stick to: "go through the motions for the entire process."
Because the negative reaction from the interviewer isn't to any perceived rudeness in the way you decline. The reaction comes from the fact that you declined at all; the part where you effectively say: "I don't want to work here and no plausible amount of money is going to change my mind."
I have both cut an interview short and I have stayed through an entire interview and then politely declined to discuss an offer.
Even when I went through the entire process up to, but not including the negotiation over compensation, I was still given looks of shock and dismay. I was still treated as if I'd had three heads and told them their baby was ugly. It was essentially the same reaction as when I'd cut an interview short.
So unless you're going to go all the way through the motions, including haggling over an offer and then stringing them along until you have (or fabricate) some other, better opportunity, I don't think it really matters.
I take your point, and I certainly wouldn't burn any bridges, but surely there is a way to politely draw an interview process to a close without offending the people concerned?
I once interviewed for what I thought was a PM role, and started getting asked lots of in-depth business analyst questions about pricing derivatives. After the first couple of questions, I interjected and said that I had been told the role was X, they clearly want Y, and that's not me. They agreed and I wished them good luck in their search.
Your first sentence implies that the interviewee wasn't acting professionally. I didn't get this impression from the post. It sounded like he just politely tried to end the interview process. Without more details and perhaps both sides of the story it's a mistake to label his behavior as inept.
You make a good point about moving careers forward. Gaining a useful industry contact is probably worth putting up with just a few hours of unwanted technical interviews (which are good, free practice like you said). This is true even if the culture is not a good fit. However the company was hostile and rude. They should have calmly and casually abided by the interviewee's request then followed-up with a non-confrontational email. The company's behavior during the interview process (when they should be on their best behavior) makes me highly doubt their value as a useful industry contact going forward.
What confuses me is why he didn't ask them their opinion. Why didn't he say:
At this point, I'm concerned I'm not a fit for your organization. Much of my time has been spent enhancing my business knowledge in lieu of coding, and that doesn't appear to be valued for this position. I don't work on open source projects and my free time is spent broadening other horizons, not coding. Do you still think I'm a good fit for this position?
Even if he wasn't technical enough for their coding position, maybe there was another position - PM, team lead, consultant, etc. - that he would have been hired for.
I'll may get flamed for this, but I see a guy who spent who got insecure about his technical skills for a heavy coding job he shouldn't have applied to (or been recommended for). I see this all the time. This doesn't mean you can't provide value if you're not a coding ninja; I'm not, yet think I do a pretty good job of it. But I also don't compete with recent CS grads for coding jobs at Google.
I find this attitude moderately disgusting and I would decline to do business with anyone who thinks about the world this way.
The reason is: it shows a worldview where everything is about your personal advantage and not making things bad for yourself. It comes across as selfish and petty. That final paragraph is just kind of gross.
I want to do business with / hire / socialize with people who care about the good of the world, hopefully more than they care about their own small situation. It's hard to describe what that looks like -- it is different for everyone -- but it almost certainly does not look like this.
Your first paragraph so much describes the dilemma I have with answering many "soft-tech" questions online! Nicely put.
Knowing how to say "no, thank you" politely isn't difficult and is always worth it regardless of which side of the desk you're on.
The position I currently have is not the one I initially interviewed for. After being phone screened and then flown halfway across the country for an in-person interview, about 3 hours in I told the people interviewing me that the position they were describing did not match the job description that I responded to. Their response was to send me to another group whose needs matched my skills perfectly and we turned out to be a great fit. I'm still there years later.
I don't understand why someone cannot walk out in a peaceful way that both sides understands.
You tell the other person you've decided you don't want to work there, due to whatever reason, and in the interest of not wasting their time or effort it would make the most sense to stop the interview.
Why would anyone take offense to this? I'd appreciate someone not wasting my time once they've made their decision...
Yeah, this is basically the behaviour of a nut. It would be different if this was a multi-day interview process where the candidate has to come back (possibly flying in) several times over a period of weeks. In cases like that, it can certainly make sense to end the process after the first day if it really isn't going to be a good fit, because there is a significant future time investment that you can avoid by doing it.
In this case though, you're saving yourself a few hours (which you already had blocked out in your schedule) at the expense of alienating the people running the interview as well as the person that referred you. Not only that, but stalking off in response to a difficult interview where you are challenged is a huge red flag. That's especially true for a senior position where you're looking for the skills required to lead a team.
I see some people in this thread and in the original defending this guy's "right" to leave at any time. Sure, of course he has that right, but so what? I have the right to do and say all kinds of things that I choose not to do or say.
I'm pretty much always on the side of people who say that you shouldn't waste any of your precious time on Earth, but in this case that's exactly what this guy did! He would have to be outrageously productive to get enough work done in the few hours he saved to make up for the damage done to his (potential) network.
Not only that, but even at a company where he didn't care for the atmosphere it would beggar belief for there not be a few people at least that he'd like to work with in the future.
Actually, there is no need even to be "fake" (answering something generic). Try to find a good, real, reason to stay in good terms. There is always one.
Be genuinely interested in them as people and as a company.
In other words, always look how are you going to get new friends / allies. People are good in general (there are some jerks but that is beside the point).
we want to be an emotionally supportive group for people who make a badge of honor out of being socially and professionally inept
Unwarranted assumption. If this interview was as bad as I think it might have been, it is not at all inept to cut it short. It's done all the time here in the US; interviewers cut short day-long interviews when they realize the candidate is not going to work out. There's nothing wrong with politely abdicating.
"I don't think we're a great mutual fit. I will keep my ears open for you in case any of my friends would be a good fit for your position."
That is a perfect thing to say while you're cutting it short.
Lets get this straight- this was a completely incompetent interview. It should not take a full day. A half day is a bit extravagant, but acceptable because a company wants to be conservative. Taking someone from programming question to programming question tells you right there that the company is incompetent in its hiring process, which means it isn't going to hire good people, which means you'll not be working in the best environment.
Seriously- if you're asked to write code in an interview, your interviewer is incompetent at the job he's been tasked with. This means whether you pass or not, the interview is capricious and a waste of time. It also tells you a great deal about the management of the company.
Being asked the write code is what junior programmers do when they are put into this situation, gleeful at the chance to try and make a candidate squirm and still full of enough hormones to see a potential new hire as a challenge to their position. Anyone with experience in software development knows it is not a performance art and that this kind of challenge is all about the interviewers ego, not about producing useful information. You can figure out what you need to know simply by talking to the candidate (and if you can't, you shouldn't be interviewing.) It really is a tragedy that this kind of cargo cult questioning has become so common, but it is also why companies are so messed up. Bad hiring processes produce bad teams.
But of course, the problem with bad teams is they don't know they are bad.
Patio you are being judgmental towards this guy based on your projections of your own inadequacy (e.g. feeling the need to be deferential to people who are abusing you.)
Politely leaving an interview with a company that has proven to you that, not only is it not a good fit, but they are incompetent at interviewing is not "socially inept", it is actually quite the opposite. It is the meek nerd who is afraid of what others think of him who will subject himself to abuse only to avoid an akward situation or confronting someone.
If people's skins are so thin that they cannot handle you canceling the interview, when they are clearly in the wrong, then that's their problem.
You can't limit your life by other people's insecurities.
The idea that an interview is some sort of power affair where the meek come and beg for the charity of a job is silly.
Showing integrity by not wasting people's time-- whether it is by having a quality interview process, or by leaving one that is a waste of time, should be honored. And anyone who gets upset that someone else exhibits integrity, well, are they really going to be much of an ally in the future.
Also, for what its worth, I've worked in software for 20+ years, and worked for a lot of startups. Only once have I worked with someone at one company and then worked with them again at a later company, and it was a complete coincidence. When I have gone looking for work, I've tended to limit myself to 5 interviews because that would give me 4 offers and a callback.
To do 5 interviews in short time (because I didn't want to have to answer an offer when I still had interviews that hadn't yet happened) you can't be doing all day interviews! That would be 5 days right there, and by the time I went to the 4th one, I'd already have 2-3 offers waiting for an answer!
Doing the all day interview is, itself, an indication that the company is only looking for desperate people.
I once declined an offer over email and promptly got a conference call back from them where the CEO was incredibly hostile, the purpose of the call seemed like the CEO just wanted to publicly berate me and tell me that I was making a bad move.
Afterwards I realized that its entirely a subconscious alpha dominance thing. There's this unsaid very primal, tribal power trip that goes along with the interviewee vs employer relationship.
As the interviewer you want to be holding the power card - you sit in a position of power and have other people dance around and do what you say in order for you to be able to judge them and make them prove their worth to you in order to join your tribe.
Its really one of the few times we get to break down our democratic social structure and revert back to this primitive social order in adulthood, so its a pretty important ritual for alpha-types.
When someone comes in and disrupts that natural boundary it becomes offensive as they've unconsciously told you "I don't respect you as a leader" in front of your staff and team. The interviewer then needs to re-affirm their ego and dominance over the tribal unit in a public display.
If you look at all these articles floating around about judging candidates and "top grading" and you look at it from this tribal alpha-dominance perspective it really breaks down some of what we assume is necessary in hiring. I think the whole system is based around some silly ancient ritual that we haven't been able to shake from our culture.
This is a very interesing note. It is undubitably a real phenomenon. A counterfactual case, however, might exist. Consider a similar non-hierarchical situation. For example, the relationship between a host and guest (at a private party). Where you were the guest of honor. As the guest of honour, you are not at the dis-advantage of power. In fact, just the opposite. But, the same question can be asked..."If you were the guest of honor at a party and the party sucks, is it OK to leave early?" If so, how would you handle it?
More than half of the interviews that I have had involve having to impress someone with the ritual.
Unfortunately the interviews that require something of a skill test or the chance to have a chat about something that isn't complete BS are extremely rare. A lot of interviews are nothing more than listening to someone talk about how good they are and agreeing with them.
Quite a few times I have interviewed people I have cut it short and told them why, then thanked them for there time. Most people are appreciative of straight talk.
I have spents hours stuck in an interviews listening to three different people telling me about their degrees, experience, how great their skillset is, how great they are, how working there is the greatest thing ever and failing to talk about the job.... I have spent far too many hours in meetings like this. It is a great indicator company culture. Life is short enough as it is, I don't care how much you want to pay me.
Interesting note. I think it is subconsciously embedded in many interviewers' minds that they are doing the candidate an favor to provide an opportunity for a job. The attitude could be condescending. Although it is true in some scenarios, it is completely ridiculous in others. For example, if you are looking for a teammate to strengthen your team, please TALK to the candidate.
As a team lead, please be careful to decide who are good interviewers and who are not. A bad interviewer, which doesn't mean a bad person or anything else, could drive a good candidate away.
I was once contacted by a company which was in urgent need for a position. The interview went well with the first two interviewers. The third one was young and aggressive. He was almost mad when I disagree with him to a technical question. When I knew he was one of the 4 team members including the position, I already decided not to join them before the interview was ended. They gave me an offer. No surprise, I didn't accept it.
Hackers should realize that if they want to go into business for themselves, they will encounter this alpha dominance ritual All. The. Time. If you cannot cope with this ritual, then learn how or your startup life will be hell.
You will find this all the time from procurement department "buyers", aggressive technology managers, and virtually everyone who makes spending decisions. If you are prudent enough to structure your business model so you do not have to land every single sales opportunity to survive, then it is pretty easy to come through this ritual with respect on all sides.
Having been on both sides of interviewing, one thing I see is that the interview process can be a very intense power play. The interviewers are usually on a power trip judging and deciding someone's fate. When the interviewees not playing along like walking out or even declined an offer, the interviewers are really surprised and upset. It's a direct attack on their power position.
I think a situation like this is better handled one on one--wait for a natural break, pull the interview lead aside and explain politely that you appreciate the time and consideration but think it is just not a good fit culturally. Then the lead can explain it to everyone else and excuse them from the rest of the interview process.
Announcing any kind of surprise or unwelcome news can be problematic in a group situation. When people have an emotional response, they want to express it, and in a group situation the mutual reinforcement can quickly scale up the emotion.
This is why it's generally not a good idea to quit by standing up in a staff meeting and announcing it to everyone at once (unless you're trying to make a scene :-)). It's much smoother to tell your boss first, so that they can help manage the emotion of the team.
I debated doing this once. I was still in college interviewing for an entry level position where the company found my resume on some job site and invited me for an interview.
I arrived at the place and was told to go into a large conference room. In the room were about 30 other people all staring at each other wondering what just happened. We were all given a coding test in Java (Java was no where on my resume and I had zero experience with it). After answering what I could with C we were broken up into teams and started a Jeopardy style game on Java and XML. I can't imagine they gained any insight into any candidate with this game since so many different people were answering questions.
Once the game was finished we were then kept in our teams and given engineering problems to work out as a group and then had to present the solutions to the "judges". Every team was pretty much told their answers sucked, I can only compare the feedback to something out of the TV show "Apprentice."
I left the interview completely dumbfounded as to what just happened. People had flown in from out of state to be there for the interview and were blind sided by this horrendous group interview that felt like it took place solely to stroke the ego of the guy leading the whole charade. I also remember the head guy preaching to us that Java was the future and if we didn't learn it we'd be left behind.
I remember being sent to an interview for a PHP developer, only for it to transpire that the company was actually after a Perl developer. The recruitment agent had sent me along anyway, having helpfully added a couple of lines to my CV.
The strange thing was that after I explained what had happened (after 15 or so minutes of initial interview fun) and said something like "Thanks for taking the time to see me, and sorry it couldn't be more productive," the interviewers were suddenly really keen on me; I was standing halfway through the door, answering questions for a good few minutes until I worked out how to leave, much to the interviewers' reluctance.
Had I more sense at the time (I was 18 or 19 then), I would've sat down the extra ten minutes and tried to work out if we could've done business together one way or another. So whilst there are definitely times to leave early, nowadays I wouldn't be too hasty in doing so.
I left an interview early too, with Google in fact. I told them I obviously did not fit in their culture at least for that very position (SRE) , as we had divergent views, and that I wanted to abort the interview process. No need for them or I to lose time if I was going to refuse anyway.
The guy (technical person) was shocked, as if this was impossible. He also insisted more than 5 times to continue with the process, which, I refused.
Later on, they contacted me, telling me that they marked me as "failed interview process" (ie: do not hire in the future).
That told only one thing, that indeed, I wasn't a fit for that culture - probably at any position then.
Professionalism cuts both ways. Any company employee that reacts negatively in ways similar to what is described here (when the interviewee announced he was leaving) would display what I consider to be extremely unprofessional behaviour. The fact that this reaction seemed to have been shared by a number of employees is perhaps a symptom of groupthink. The best feedback ever I got when we were in the process of hiring was from one of my very laid back employee, who is often dismissed as "unimportant" and has a way to put people at ease, and who got some unique insight into what a prospective employee would be like.
I see this type of interview a typical "alpha male hehaviour competition" where existing employees are trying to assert in advance their worth to a potential future colleague (to put it nicely).
I walked out of an interview, furious, probably two decades ago at "major cellphone company". HR advertised for an RF engineer position, which I had the education and experience for. I can totally sympathize with being rude because I'm normally very calm and I was Barely, just barely able to keep under control. So I burned 10% of my annual vacation days to come here, and drove half way across the state for hours to be bait and switched into a 1st level high school dropout call center support job at about a fifth my current pay? I'm thinking are you F-ing kidding me? I just barely kept it civil and made sure they understood perfectly why I was walking out of the interview. I saw in the bathroom mirror on the way out that I was blazing red in the face so I must have been quite the sight. The HR woman who screwed up the job req and ad and phone interview was more embarrassed than I was, and I actually got along excellently with the technician dept team lead, because we were basically at the same level at different companies (I wasn't mad at the individuals, solely at the situation).
What HR meant by RF engineer was by RF they wanted a call center guy to handle dropped call issues and by engineer they wanted to never pay overtime. Um, sorry HR lady, thats not really what I went to school for, nor is it anything like what I was doing at that time for about five times the annual salary, admittedly with a very similar job title.
Technical jobs present a unique opportunity for HR to screw up. Once, HR sent us a candidate for a data warehousing job because the guy used to work at a warehouse.
What I find interesting here is the contrast in expected behavior for a company and for an interviewee. Most companies won't tell you why they're rejecting you if you interview with them. Most of them won't even send you a rejection email! Yet most people commenting on SE point out that you should explain why you're cutting the interview short and leaving.
There seems to be a double standard in the comments here.
Companies regularly cut short interviews (speaking from personal experience). They've all been polite about it and explain why, usually saying "it's not the right fit". There are some companies that ask between multiple interviews if the candidate is still interested in talking to the next person.
A candidate should be allowed the same ability to "walk out". From the OPs story I got that he cut his interview not during a round but before the next one was to begin (the reason for moving him into another room). Thats the perfect time to do it. The reason the candidate gave is sufficient, he doesn't wish to waste anyone's time. The response of the company in this case is actually arrogant and unprofessional.
That is not a double standard, most people here are just making pragmatic judgements rather than moral ones. Should the power relationship between employee and employer or between VC and portfolio company be perfectly symmetrical? Maybe. Is it? Usually not, though of course that depends on current market conditions.
It's always okay to politey and professionaly not waste people's time. Don't come across as judgemental, angry, or anything similar or you risk burning bridges you may not even realize you have.
From the brief description, it sounds like the guy was showing a bit too much emotion in leaving. Also - just because an interview process seems harsh doesn't mean the company is harsh - the interview is one thing, the job is often quite another - results tend to speak for themselves regardless of culture (and as long as you aren't a snob or jerk to your co-workers)
If a seasoned, experienced professional doesn't get that, maybe they aren't a good fit...
The problem here isn't the interviewee; it's the interviewer.
This is exactly why we do phone screenings and brief initial interviews. If something like location, development technique, interior design or dress code isn't going to work out for someone, you should be able to flush some of that out in a 15-minute phone screen, and the rest in a 30-60 minute initial interview.
By the time you're bringing someone in for a full day, the interviewer should be at well over 75% sure the person is a do-hire. Don't waste your team's time or effort on someone you're not going to go with (unless you're stress-testing your interview process...).
As far as walking out: there's so much data here. For the company, they've either got a dysfunctional interview process or some seriously difficult fellow developers. Both those problems need to be addressed.
For the interviewee, there's the information on how the team responds. If there's a problem, and they want to solve it, they need to be more pro-active about it. "Can we break now and continue later?" Also, "Can we get a post-mortem from you?" At the very least, it's a good time to break for coffee or beers around the corner.
> He could feel sudden hostility from everybody in the room at the time.
Sounds like he made a good call here. With a professional interviewer, the worst you might get is "perhaps you could help us by explaining why you feel that way?" Who would seriously want to bully someone into staying to be interviewed for a job they didn't feel they could do? Personally I would thank him for his honesty.
You'd only need to do this in the scenario of an all day (or longer) interview, which in itself is something you should not enter into without some pretty good feelings developed from the preliminary/phone interview.
In this case it sounds like a fairly conventional "business" type guy didn't like the idea of working in a open environment with a bunch of kids wearing jeans. But that kind of basic "what's your work environment like" information should have been known or ascertained by him before accepting an invite for an all-day on-site interview.
In rare cases you may realize during the final screening that there's some fundamental incompatibilty, but if you do your due diligence in the preliminaries this really shouldn't happen.
Having to walk out of a final interview means that both sides executed the initial screening poorly.
People seem to think its fine to walk out of an interview early ... but how do they feel if the interviewer ends the interview early, or your "full day" of interviews is cut to just 1 or 2 hours because they just didn't think it was a good fit?
I'm guessing some of you would be pissed because you took the whole day off for the interview only to be kicked out early.
On the other hand, if I was on an interview loop, and the person left before it was my turn, I'd be grateful ... now I have extra time to do meaningful work.
It's 100% fine to end the interview early as the OP did. The interviewers/hr will end the interview early the moment they're sure it won't work out.
The fact that the interviewers acted rudely is a great sign that it's an awful place to work. Would be nice if the company were named so others can avoid interviewing there.
Companies with all-day interview affairs have no qualms about cutting the process short at lunch time. Why should an interviewee not be able to do the same? It must be handled delicately and gracefully, but that hopefully goes without saying.
An interview shouldn't be a position of superiors grilling an inferior. If you find yourself in that kind of interview you're unlikely to be finding a great working environment.
From that I'd suggest an interview should be a meeting of equals - they want the right person, you want the right company, both sides have an interest in figuring this out. Companies have no hesitation cutting short a day long interview process if by mid-morning the feedback to HR is that this is going to be a no-hire. Nor should candidates feel bad about cutting short an interview if it's clear early it'll be a no-accept to any prospective offer.
Honesty helps all parties. Analogy by anecdote:
I have always felt that an interview is a fair dialogue. Back in 1997 (yes I am THAT old) I was interviewed for a tech support position near London, for a massive multinational which had a completely failing tech service desk catering to tens of thousands of desktops. At the end of the interview the interviewer - who'd be my prospective boss - asked the question "does that sound like something that appeals to you" after describing the job.
My answer was honest: "no not really, but I wish you all the best in the search."
"Why not?"
"Well, I might have interest in leading a team like that because it sounds like there's a real problem to be solved in servicing your internal customers, but it doesn't sound like it's a process I'd enjoy working in, as it is".
This being London in the late 90s where there was a massive IT shortage (a bit like Silicon Valley and engineers today) I got a call back from my agent (fancy name for recruiter) who asked what I'd done. Apparently they'd called him back and offered me the job of running the Service Desk and fixing the problems that made me not interested in working on it.
I ended up with a much higher paying job offer, my first management experience (eventually building the team to over 40 people from the 6 I started with) and they ended up with someone who finally solved their problems, turning first line fix around from 17% to 70% in about six months.
Interviews aren't there for you to say yessir nosir. They're a back and forth between equals trying to find the best for both parties. This guy is absolutely right to call it a day early, if he feels it's not the right fit.
A a good friend of mine interviewed with one of the current powerhouses of technology when they weren't quite so big.
After successfully navigating a few rounds of technical interviewing they gave him one of those famous brain teaser type questions. He responded by asking the interviewer to explain how the question would be relevant to his work with the company.
The interviewer immediately explained that he clearly "wasn't a good fit" and ended the interview.
Everybody's talking about burning bridges but it's a bad analogy. Bridges like these won't always catch fire even if torched and then again some burst into flames even if you didn't even touch your matches. The guy in the question seems to have just walked on the bridge.
Sounds like the guy just spoke directly. Some people can't take that; I don't know how much more neutrally you can give the message "I'm done with the interview" than saying pretty much just that. If you want to sugarcoat it then doing so still won't change the message: it just makes it a slightly more difficult for others to express how badly they take it.
I don't know the exact words used in the situation but he seemed polite yet firm. I would expect such language from anyone who's used to not waste people's time, including his own. While he doesn't want to be rude, he also can't control what can be considered rude by others.
There's no question whether such behaviour is allowed: of course the guy can just go and decide to abort the day. Nobody lost anything there: no money, no time. If he has seen life at all, he must have already learned that no matter what you do you will piss off somebody anyway so it's best to not anticipate too much what others will think of you.
[+] [-] patio11|13 years ago|reply
A company which is not a cultural good fit for you, and the employees thereof, can still be very valuable allies. I would not act to antagonize them absent substantial provocation. Not being like you is not a substantial provocation. Most people in the world will, after all, not be like you, and you'll end up not working for approximately all companies in the industry. That's OK.
You've already got the day blocked off in your calendar. Smile. Firm handshakes. Thank them for taking the time to interview you. Heck, they're giving you free live-fire practice for your next interview, make the most out of it. You should never say a word of criticism about the company to anyone but your primary point of contact and you should be darn circumspect with how you word it to him. (I like something along the general lines of "Thanks for your time and allowing me to get to know $FOO_CORP better. We're really in the same boat: I only want to work at employers where I'd do my best work, and you only want to hire people who'd do great things at $FOO_CORP. Having had the opportunity to hear you guys out a bit more, I don't think we're a great mutual fit. I will keep my ears open for you in case any of my friends would be a good fit for your position.")
[+] [-] doktrin|13 years ago|reply
What really surprised me was that the OP's candidate was a referral. It's one thing to risk burning your own bridges, but it's completely inconsiderate to possibly tarnish the reputation of someone who spoke up on your behalf. Speaking for myself, unless this was a close personal friend, I would be very reluctant to ever subsequently recommend this individual again.
Without delving into anecdotes, I've witnessed a scenario quite similar to this one. A candidate who was referred (as a "rockstar") struggled with the technical interview, and subsequently walked out. It goes without saying how he, and to a lesser extent the individual who referred him, were viewed in the aftermath.
TLDR; Please don't do this. It's completely unnecessary and possibly inconsiderate.
[+] [-] Peroni|13 years ago|reply
Nothing indicates that the person did anything to antogonise other than requesting to end the interview due to his perspective on the company changing. For all we know, his request to terminate the interview was a polite one.
If an individual or organisation considers this antagonistic then I would argue that they are an ally not worth having.
Whilst I understand your point about 'heck you've got nothing to lose by putting up with it for a few hours', I would argue that day long interviews are a massive drain on energy and time and in this industry both are immensely valuable to a developer. Whilst this may be a shock to an organisation who are obviously not accustomed to individuals standing up to them, decent organisations would learn from this and possibly review their interview process.
A developer sitting throughout the interview and providing polite feedback afterwards on why they won't be pursuing the role would be lost in the noise and most of the people who need to understand their motivation won't even hear it.
I think the developer did the right thing.
[+] [-] alecco|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ScottBurson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeMage|13 years ago|reply
Maybe my question is "socially and professionally inept", but why is realizing that you're not going to fit into a company automatically a criticism?
I'm not talking about the guy who walked out in the example or the way the poster described the situation. I'm asking a much more general question and I'm genuinely interested in an honest answer.
To me it seems quite legitimate that one could come to a realization that there are irreconcilable incompatibilities between oneself and one or more aspects of the job. I consider that a case of "it's not you, it's me".
Are you really objecting to the fact that it might be interpreted as "I've got better things to do with the rest of my day"?
I'm trying to understand the reason why you're so emphatic about this (e.g. couching it in terms of "antagonizing").
[+] [-] mindcrime|13 years ago|reply
You know.. that's true. Very true. But I think it should come with a caveat... any random person you interact with could one day be a valuable ally, yes. But the odds of any given person blundering into your life in a significant position to aid (or harm) you, late down the road, by happenstance, is very low. This is my observation anyway.
I don't go out of my way to antagonize people, or burn bridges, but I also don't go out of my way to pander to people or kiss ass just to maintain a "bridge." And while you never know what you don't know, I have zero reason to believe that any relationship I've damaged through this attitude, has ever had any negative consequence subsequently in my life. The world really is a big place, and you meet a LOT of people over a lifetime... there's a steady stream of new relationships coming along, displacing the old ones.
Again, this isn't to say one should go out and wantonly burn bridges for no reason, and it's not to say that one never benefits from a happenstance encounter with someone from a different part of your life. But I do think we should question how important it really is to worry about burned bridges - especially if your intuition tells you that the person is question isn't likely to be a future ally anyway.
[+] [-] typicalrunt|13 years ago|reply
Where this particular situation differs is that this was an all-day interview. I've been at these and they are taxing on the mind and body, to say the least. If you know you aren't a good fit, there must be a good way to end the interview part-way and explain the differences. While I don't agree with getting up and leaving, I think it is wrong to waste people's time with a fruitless prospect.
[+] [-] btilly|13 years ago|reply
The issue is that we have to work with the limitations that come from the people we happen to be, not the people we wish we were. If something has happened during an interview that makes you actually angry, and you stay in a stressful situation for several hours following, it is extremely likely that your anger will come out in a bad way. If this is your situation then leaving, despite being bad, is the least harmful thing that you could do.
Yes, it is convenient not to get angry. Yes, it is wonderful to keep a professional face and pleasant demeanor no matter what may have happened in the interview. But we are humans. We have human limitations. If your limitations have been exceeded, the sooner you recognize and cope with that, the less likely you are to do something you will really regret. And getting space is one of the best techniques available to us. If that means leaving the interview, so be it.
Now you may agree and immediately say that this is a personal limitation that should be fixed ASAP. I strongly disagree. I recommend reading First, Break All The Rules. We're talking about a personality trait here. In adults, trying to change your personality is usually a lost cause. For most people it is FAR more effective to find ways to structure your environment so that you play to your strengths rather than your weaknesses.
So try to keep an even keel. Avoid argument. And if, in the stress of an interview, you get angry, try to get space. If need be, ask if you can have a few minutes alone in a room to collect your thoughts. But if you can't get that, and fear you'll do something you regret, you're probably right. In that situation, exiting the interview may be your best remaining option. (But note that best does not mean good.)
[+] [-] ww520|13 years ago|reply
Why make false lying pleasantries when honest feedback is more helpful? Even if you have blocked off the day for the interview, it would still save time on the company's part to not continue the interview.
[+] [-] roc|13 years ago|reply
Because the negative reaction from the interviewer isn't to any perceived rudeness in the way you decline. The reaction comes from the fact that you declined at all; the part where you effectively say: "I don't want to work here and no plausible amount of money is going to change my mind."
I have both cut an interview short and I have stayed through an entire interview and then politely declined to discuss an offer.
Even when I went through the entire process up to, but not including the negotiation over compensation, I was still given looks of shock and dismay. I was still treated as if I'd had three heads and told them their baby was ugly. It was essentially the same reaction as when I'd cut an interview short.
So unless you're going to go all the way through the motions, including haggling over an offer and then stringing them along until you have (or fabricate) some other, better opportunity, I don't think it really matters.
[+] [-] gadders|13 years ago|reply
I once interviewed for what I thought was a PM role, and started getting asked lots of in-depth business analyst questions about pricing derivatives. After the first couple of questions, I interjected and said that I had been told the role was X, they clearly want Y, and that's not me. They agreed and I wished them good luck in their search.
[+] [-] spaghetti|13 years ago|reply
You make a good point about moving careers forward. Gaining a useful industry contact is probably worth putting up with just a few hours of unwanted technical interviews (which are good, free practice like you said). This is true even if the culture is not a good fit. However the company was hostile and rude. They should have calmly and casually abided by the interviewee's request then followed-up with a non-confrontational email. The company's behavior during the interview process (when they should be on their best behavior) makes me highly doubt their value as a useful industry contact going forward.
[+] [-] liquidcool|13 years ago|reply
At this point, I'm concerned I'm not a fit for your organization. Much of my time has been spent enhancing my business knowledge in lieu of coding, and that doesn't appear to be valued for this position. I don't work on open source projects and my free time is spent broadening other horizons, not coding. Do you still think I'm a good fit for this position?
Even if he wasn't technical enough for their coding position, maybe there was another position - PM, team lead, consultant, etc. - that he would have been hired for.
I'll may get flamed for this, but I see a guy who spent who got insecure about his technical skills for a heavy coding job he shouldn't have applied to (or been recommended for). I see this all the time. This doesn't mean you can't provide value if you're not a coding ninja; I'm not, yet think I do a pretty good job of it. But I also don't compete with recent CS grads for coding jobs at Google.
[+] [-] jblow|13 years ago|reply
The reason is: it shows a worldview where everything is about your personal advantage and not making things bad for yourself. It comes across as selfish and petty. That final paragraph is just kind of gross.
I want to do business with / hire / socialize with people who care about the good of the world, hopefully more than they care about their own small situation. It's hard to describe what that looks like -- it is different for everyone -- but it almost certainly does not look like this.
[+] [-] HeyLaughingBoy|13 years ago|reply
Knowing how to say "no, thank you" politely isn't difficult and is always worth it regardless of which side of the desk you're on.
The position I currently have is not the one I initially interviewed for. After being phone screened and then flown halfway across the country for an in-person interview, about 3 hours in I told the people interviewing me that the position they were describing did not match the job description that I responded to. Their response was to send me to another group whose needs matched my skills perfectly and we turned out to be a great fit. I'm still there years later.
[+] [-] tshile|13 years ago|reply
You tell the other person you've decided you don't want to work there, due to whatever reason, and in the interest of not wasting their time or effort it would make the most sense to stop the interview.
Why would anyone take offense to this? I'd appreciate someone not wasting my time once they've made their decision...
[+] [-] Mvandenbergh|13 years ago|reply
In this case though, you're saving yourself a few hours (which you already had blocked out in your schedule) at the expense of alienating the people running the interview as well as the person that referred you. Not only that, but stalking off in response to a difficult interview where you are challenged is a huge red flag. That's especially true for a senior position where you're looking for the skills required to lead a team.
I see some people in this thread and in the original defending this guy's "right" to leave at any time. Sure, of course he has that right, but so what? I have the right to do and say all kinds of things that I choose not to do or say.
I'm pretty much always on the side of people who say that you shouldn't waste any of your precious time on Earth, but in this case that's exactly what this guy did! He would have to be outrageously productive to get enough work done in the few hours he saved to make up for the damage done to his (potential) network.
Not only that, but even at a company where he didn't care for the atmosphere it would beggar belief for there not be a few people at least that he'd like to work with in the future.
[+] [-] tlogan|13 years ago|reply
In other words, always look how are you going to get new friends / allies. People are good in general (there are some jerks but that is beside the point).
[+] [-] studentrob|13 years ago|reply
I would ask the OP, Would you like it if someone did this to you? Has anyone ever walked out on you?
[+] [-] sabat|13 years ago|reply
Unwarranted assumption. If this interview was as bad as I think it might have been, it is not at all inept to cut it short. It's done all the time here in the US; interviewers cut short day-long interviews when they realize the candidate is not going to work out. There's nothing wrong with politely abdicating.
"I don't think we're a great mutual fit. I will keep my ears open for you in case any of my friends would be a good fit for your position."
That is a perfect thing to say while you're cutting it short.
[+] [-] nirvana|13 years ago|reply
Seriously- if you're asked to write code in an interview, your interviewer is incompetent at the job he's been tasked with. This means whether you pass or not, the interview is capricious and a waste of time. It also tells you a great deal about the management of the company.
Being asked the write code is what junior programmers do when they are put into this situation, gleeful at the chance to try and make a candidate squirm and still full of enough hormones to see a potential new hire as a challenge to their position. Anyone with experience in software development knows it is not a performance art and that this kind of challenge is all about the interviewers ego, not about producing useful information. You can figure out what you need to know simply by talking to the candidate (and if you can't, you shouldn't be interviewing.) It really is a tragedy that this kind of cargo cult questioning has become so common, but it is also why companies are so messed up. Bad hiring processes produce bad teams.
But of course, the problem with bad teams is they don't know they are bad.
Patio you are being judgmental towards this guy based on your projections of your own inadequacy (e.g. feeling the need to be deferential to people who are abusing you.)
Politely leaving an interview with a company that has proven to you that, not only is it not a good fit, but they are incompetent at interviewing is not "socially inept", it is actually quite the opposite. It is the meek nerd who is afraid of what others think of him who will subject himself to abuse only to avoid an akward situation or confronting someone.
If people's skins are so thin that they cannot handle you canceling the interview, when they are clearly in the wrong, then that's their problem.
You can't limit your life by other people's insecurities.
The idea that an interview is some sort of power affair where the meek come and beg for the charity of a job is silly.
Showing integrity by not wasting people's time-- whether it is by having a quality interview process, or by leaving one that is a waste of time, should be honored. And anyone who gets upset that someone else exhibits integrity, well, are they really going to be much of an ally in the future.
Also, for what its worth, I've worked in software for 20+ years, and worked for a lot of startups. Only once have I worked with someone at one company and then worked with them again at a later company, and it was a complete coincidence. When I have gone looking for work, I've tended to limit myself to 5 interviews because that would give me 4 offers and a callback.
To do 5 interviews in short time (because I didn't want to have to answer an offer when I still had interviews that hadn't yet happened) you can't be doing all day interviews! That would be 5 days right there, and by the time I went to the 4th one, I'd already have 2-3 offers waiting for an answer!
Doing the all day interview is, itself, an indication that the company is only looking for desperate people.
[+] [-] rwhitman|13 years ago|reply
Afterwards I realized that its entirely a subconscious alpha dominance thing. There's this unsaid very primal, tribal power trip that goes along with the interviewee vs employer relationship.
As the interviewer you want to be holding the power card - you sit in a position of power and have other people dance around and do what you say in order for you to be able to judge them and make them prove their worth to you in order to join your tribe.
Its really one of the few times we get to break down our democratic social structure and revert back to this primitive social order in adulthood, so its a pretty important ritual for alpha-types.
When someone comes in and disrupts that natural boundary it becomes offensive as they've unconsciously told you "I don't respect you as a leader" in front of your staff and team. The interviewer then needs to re-affirm their ego and dominance over the tribal unit in a public display.
If you look at all these articles floating around about judging candidates and "top grading" and you look at it from this tribal alpha-dominance perspective it really breaks down some of what we assume is necessary in hiring. I think the whole system is based around some silly ancient ritual that we haven't been able to shake from our culture.
[+] [-] 001sky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tnuc|13 years ago|reply
Unfortunately the interviews that require something of a skill test or the chance to have a chat about something that isn't complete BS are extremely rare. A lot of interviews are nothing more than listening to someone talk about how good they are and agreeing with them.
Quite a few times I have interviewed people I have cut it short and told them why, then thanked them for there time. Most people are appreciative of straight talk.
I have spents hours stuck in an interviews listening to three different people telling me about their degrees, experience, how great their skillset is, how great they are, how working there is the greatest thing ever and failing to talk about the job.... I have spent far too many hours in meetings like this. It is a great indicator company culture. Life is short enough as it is, I don't care how much you want to pay me.
[+] [-] jamesli|13 years ago|reply
As a team lead, please be careful to decide who are good interviewers and who are not. A bad interviewer, which doesn't mean a bad person or anything else, could drive a good candidate away.
I was once contacted by a company which was in urgent need for a position. The interview went well with the first two interviewers. The third one was young and aggressive. He was almost mad when I disagree with him to a technical question. When I knew he was one of the 4 team members including the position, I already decided not to join them before the interview was ended. They gave me an offer. No surprise, I didn't accept it.
[+] [-] yourapostasy|13 years ago|reply
You will find this all the time from procurement department "buyers", aggressive technology managers, and virtually everyone who makes spending decisions. If you are prudent enough to structure your business model so you do not have to land every single sales opportunity to survive, then it is pretty easy to come through this ritual with respect on all sides.
[+] [-] ww520|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcantelon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] topbanana|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|13 years ago|reply
Announcing any kind of surprise or unwelcome news can be problematic in a group situation. When people have an emotional response, they want to express it, and in a group situation the mutual reinforcement can quickly scale up the emotion.
This is why it's generally not a good idea to quit by standing up in a staff meeting and announcing it to everyone at once (unless you're trying to make a scene :-)). It's much smoother to tell your boss first, so that they can help manage the emotion of the team.
[+] [-] jlintz|13 years ago|reply
I arrived at the place and was told to go into a large conference room. In the room were about 30 other people all staring at each other wondering what just happened. We were all given a coding test in Java (Java was no where on my resume and I had zero experience with it). After answering what I could with C we were broken up into teams and started a Jeopardy style game on Java and XML. I can't imagine they gained any insight into any candidate with this game since so many different people were answering questions.
Once the game was finished we were then kept in our teams and given engineering problems to work out as a group and then had to present the solutions to the "judges". Every team was pretty much told their answers sucked, I can only compare the feedback to something out of the TV show "Apprentice."
I left the interview completely dumbfounded as to what just happened. People had flown in from out of state to be there for the interview and were blind sided by this horrendous group interview that felt like it took place solely to stroke the ego of the guy leading the whole charade. I also remember the head guy preaching to us that Java was the future and if we didn't learn it we'd be left behind.
[+] [-] mootothemax|13 years ago|reply
The strange thing was that after I explained what had happened (after 15 or so minutes of initial interview fun) and said something like "Thanks for taking the time to see me, and sorry it couldn't be more productive," the interviewers were suddenly really keen on me; I was standing halfway through the door, answering questions for a good few minutes until I worked out how to leave, much to the interviewers' reluctance.
Had I more sense at the time (I was 18 or 19 then), I would've sat down the extra ten minutes and tried to work out if we could've done business together one way or another. So whilst there are definitely times to leave early, nowadays I wouldn't be too hasty in doing so.
[+] [-] zobzu|13 years ago|reply
The guy (technical person) was shocked, as if this was impossible. He also insisted more than 5 times to continue with the process, which, I refused.
Later on, they contacted me, telling me that they marked me as "failed interview process" (ie: do not hire in the future).
That told only one thing, that indeed, I wasn't a fit for that culture - probably at any position then.
[+] [-] aroberge|13 years ago|reply
I see this type of interview a typical "alpha male hehaviour competition" where existing employees are trying to assert in advance their worth to a potential future colleague (to put it nicely).
[+] [-] VLM|13 years ago|reply
What HR meant by RF engineer was by RF they wanted a call center guy to handle dropped call issues and by engineer they wanted to never pay overtime. Um, sorry HR lady, thats not really what I went to school for, nor is it anything like what I was doing at that time for about five times the annual salary, admittedly with a very similar job title.
[+] [-] rada|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heliodor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinker|13 years ago|reply
Companies regularly cut short interviews (speaking from personal experience). They've all been polite about it and explain why, usually saying "it's not the right fit". There are some companies that ask between multiple interviews if the candidate is still interested in talking to the next person.
A candidate should be allowed the same ability to "walk out". From the OPs story I got that he cut his interview not during a round but before the next one was to begin (the reason for moving him into another room). Thats the perfect time to do it. The reason the candidate gave is sufficient, he doesn't wish to waste anyone's time. The response of the company in this case is actually arrogant and unprofessional.
[+] [-] Mvandenbergh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dedward|13 years ago|reply
From the brief description, it sounds like the guy was showing a bit too much emotion in leaving. Also - just because an interview process seems harsh doesn't mean the company is harsh - the interview is one thing, the job is often quite another - results tend to speak for themselves regardless of culture (and as long as you aren't a snob or jerk to your co-workers) If a seasoned, experienced professional doesn't get that, maybe they aren't a good fit...
[+] [-] evanprodromou|13 years ago|reply
This is exactly why we do phone screenings and brief initial interviews. If something like location, development technique, interior design or dress code isn't going to work out for someone, you should be able to flush some of that out in a 15-minute phone screen, and the rest in a 30-60 minute initial interview.
By the time you're bringing someone in for a full day, the interviewer should be at well over 75% sure the person is a do-hire. Don't waste your team's time or effort on someone you're not going to go with (unless you're stress-testing your interview process...).
As far as walking out: there's so much data here. For the company, they've either got a dysfunctional interview process or some seriously difficult fellow developers. Both those problems need to be addressed.
For the interviewee, there's the information on how the team responds. If there's a problem, and they want to solve it, they need to be more pro-active about it. "Can we break now and continue later?" Also, "Can we get a post-mortem from you?" At the very least, it's a good time to break for coffee or beers around the corner.
[+] [-] m0nty|13 years ago|reply
Sounds like he made a good call here. With a professional interviewer, the worst you might get is "perhaps you could help us by explaining why you feel that way?" Who would seriously want to bully someone into staying to be interviewed for a job they didn't feel they could do? Personally I would thank him for his honesty.
[+] [-] ams6110|13 years ago|reply
In this case it sounds like a fairly conventional "business" type guy didn't like the idea of working in a open environment with a bunch of kids wearing jeans. But that kind of basic "what's your work environment like" information should have been known or ascertained by him before accepting an invite for an all-day on-site interview.
In rare cases you may realize during the final screening that there's some fundamental incompatibilty, but if you do your due diligence in the preliminaries this really shouldn't happen.
Having to walk out of a final interview means that both sides executed the initial screening poorly.
Edit: typos
[+] [-] lawdawg|13 years ago|reply
I'm guessing some of you would be pissed because you took the whole day off for the interview only to be kicked out early.
On the other hand, if I was on an interview loop, and the person left before it was my turn, I'd be grateful ... now I have extra time to do meaningful work.
[+] [-] spaghetti|13 years ago|reply
The fact that the interviewers acted rudely is a great sign that it's an awful place to work. Would be nice if the company were named so others can avoid interviewing there.
[+] [-] psykotic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardjordan|13 years ago|reply
From that I'd suggest an interview should be a meeting of equals - they want the right person, you want the right company, both sides have an interest in figuring this out. Companies have no hesitation cutting short a day long interview process if by mid-morning the feedback to HR is that this is going to be a no-hire. Nor should candidates feel bad about cutting short an interview if it's clear early it'll be a no-accept to any prospective offer.
Honesty helps all parties. Analogy by anecdote:
I have always felt that an interview is a fair dialogue. Back in 1997 (yes I am THAT old) I was interviewed for a tech support position near London, for a massive multinational which had a completely failing tech service desk catering to tens of thousands of desktops. At the end of the interview the interviewer - who'd be my prospective boss - asked the question "does that sound like something that appeals to you" after describing the job.
My answer was honest: "no not really, but I wish you all the best in the search."
"Why not?"
"Well, I might have interest in leading a team like that because it sounds like there's a real problem to be solved in servicing your internal customers, but it doesn't sound like it's a process I'd enjoy working in, as it is".
This being London in the late 90s where there was a massive IT shortage (a bit like Silicon Valley and engineers today) I got a call back from my agent (fancy name for recruiter) who asked what I'd done. Apparently they'd called him back and offered me the job of running the Service Desk and fixing the problems that made me not interested in working on it.
I ended up with a much higher paying job offer, my first management experience (eventually building the team to over 40 people from the 6 I started with) and they ended up with someone who finally solved their problems, turning first line fix around from 17% to 70% in about six months.
Interviews aren't there for you to say yessir nosir. They're a back and forth between equals trying to find the best for both parties. This guy is absolutely right to call it a day early, if he feels it's not the right fit.
[+] [-] incision|13 years ago|reply
After successfully navigating a few rounds of technical interviewing they gave him one of those famous brain teaser type questions. He responded by asking the interviewer to explain how the question would be relevant to his work with the company.
The interviewer immediately explained that he clearly "wasn't a good fit" and ended the interview.
I tend to feel they were both "right".
[+] [-] yason|13 years ago|reply
Sounds like the guy just spoke directly. Some people can't take that; I don't know how much more neutrally you can give the message "I'm done with the interview" than saying pretty much just that. If you want to sugarcoat it then doing so still won't change the message: it just makes it a slightly more difficult for others to express how badly they take it.
I don't know the exact words used in the situation but he seemed polite yet firm. I would expect such language from anyone who's used to not waste people's time, including his own. While he doesn't want to be rude, he also can't control what can be considered rude by others.
There's no question whether such behaviour is allowed: of course the guy can just go and decide to abort the day. Nobody lost anything there: no money, no time. If he has seen life at all, he must have already learned that no matter what you do you will piss off somebody anyway so it's best to not anticipate too much what others will think of you.