Old Content:
Idiot Interviewers
July 3, 2008 by Kyle BradyTags: Idiot, Slide
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I just got off the phone with the "Lead" on a project over at Slide (very much like RockYou), who was supposed to gauge my technical abilities. He asked about my experience - fine. He then asked me a database question that I answered, but prefaced with "I'm not a db admin, and this isn't what I want to do/was told the position entails".
Next question was a "data sorting" one... I gave him a correct answer, but he wanted a faster one. I gave him one. But he wanted faster. Said I couldn't think of any more, but this is the sort of thing I'd do some quick research and documentation digging on. The guy told me what he wanted... I immediately recognized it, and it was the type of thing that only academia and Google care about/use.
The best part? He ended it there, and said I was "too junior" for what they were looking for. After asking me a n/a question, and then giving him an answer that was correct... just not "enough".
And then he called the hiring manager and told her the same thing.
How the hell do you judge someone's programming talents based on that? You can't. Even if you're going to talk by phone, it's difficult. This sort of crap is what pisses me off about snooty nosed academia idiots... you don't know everything unless you've used everything, and apparently that's not a good answer.
Even if you're awesome (like me), how can they know if they don't bother to go any further than two questions - one of which you answered right, but docked on?
God damn bullshit. Good thing I don't like companies like them anyways.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.
