[sohcahtoa]

Interviewer: We need someone with [describes soft skill set for my dream job]

Me: Great career opportunity, I'd certainly be willing to move across country for this

Interviewer, day 1: Here's your desk, now I'm going to assign you a ticket off the backlog. Let me know when you're done and I'll assign you another one. [pats me on the head and walks away]

Bait'n'switch, and I fell for it. I think it's the only way they can get people to come to this no-good podunk town, with not a sushi bar for miles, and 19th century development practices. And yes, I am preparing my awesome flameout exit. I hope to hear the lamentation of their womenfolk.

[x0x0]

A valley company with an ex-early-google-engineer founder hired me to do ML. It turned out he lied; nothing I worked on for 8 weeks was in any way related to data science but rather pure backend engineering. Said founder actually got super butthurt when I quit 8 weeks in, and had the balls to ask me to stay for a couple weeks to finish projects. After the job description, the interview, and the list of sample projects I'd asked for were all machine learning work. None of which I actually did. This was particularly frustrating because I'd turned down another great offer for them, and it was no longer available after I realized I'd been deceived.

[rco8786]

Not sure what your dream job is. But pulling a few tickets off the backlog is a pretty normal way to ramp up new hires.

[sohcahtoa]

I take your point, and I do that with new hires myself.

I'm compressing things for comic effect, but I promise you the core of the story is true - I got suckered in by wonderful promises, and interviewing in the industry hot spot I was in is going to involve significant time and cash outlay.

[eitally]

If you're in the Bay Area and want a new dream job, send me a note. I'm incubating new B2B/B2C products at Google and need a senior full stack dev* who's as comfortable talking with customers & biz execs as they are coding.

* Google SWEs aren't typically swiss army knives. I need a swiss army knife, so this is not a SWE position, if that matters to you.

[jamespshields]

Bay Area swiss army knife here. That sounds awesome! @jamespshields