[sillysaurusx]

I flew to Seattle on December 5th to have a full day of interviews/meetings at Microsoft HQ. I met with four different people; three of the meetings were more like your typical interviews; the meeting with Andrew was more about what we should do once this is all over and how we would migrate AppGet’s process and infrastructure to be able to handle Microsoft’s scale. We talked about some of our options, but in general, I thought everything went well.

My last meeting ended at around 6 pm. I took an Uber to the airport and was back in Vancouver.

And then, I didn’t hear anything back from anyone at Microsoft for six months.

For what it's worth – and I'm not really sure whether it's helpful to say this, or whether it's even true – this situation often means "you didn't pass the interview."

The reason I mention it, is that it took an embarrassingly long time for me to understand this. Maybe it's common knowledge. But an identical situation happened to me at Magic Leap. I hesitate to mention their name, lest it sound like I'm calling them out or something, but I'm not. And in general I no longer feel negatively towards companies that end up doing that, so I don't think any particular stigma should be attached to Magic Leap for doing that.

I'm trying (and possibly failing) to share a personal experience of "I used to feel awful in situations like this; now I realize it's just business, and the decision of pass/fail has extraordinarily little to do with the skill of the programmer being interviewed, so don't take it as a sign of anything."

None of this is to undermine your overall point that it's generally not cool to ghost a candidate (to put it mildly), and that it's a doubly not-cool move to then clone the product of the candidate in question. But, it happens, and I just wanted to reassure you that yes, it does happen. It would've helped me to hear that at one point, so here it is, just in case.

[MatekCopatek]

Cmon, I live in a country where there is a legal obligation to inform candidates whether they passed the interview. It's not a very high bar. We shouldn't be accepting this kind of behaviour - especially from someone as renowned as Microsoft. It would have been absolutely trivial for them to send a polite three sentence email when they made their decision.

I mean, not to shoot the messenger, you're right, that's exactly what it meant, but it isn't acceptable behaviour.

[tw04]

You obviously live in a country where people aren't sue happy. Half of the reason they don't respond when you fail an interview is because they don't want to open themselves up to legal liability if the first-year HR rep says something stupid when the person asks "but why?"

[denni9th]

I think the best compromise is a polite email saying no, but any further "why" questions can be ignored to prevent legal liability.

[JoeAltmaier]

Yes sometimes it means that. But if the company is desirable, knows its desirable and knows the interview means a lot to the interviewee, then its the height of arrogance and cruelty to 'ghost' them. Screw that 'just business', its not just business, its shitty behavior out of a company that has the resources to do the right thing.

[npongratz]

> Screw that 'just business', its not just business, its shitty behavior out of a company that has the resources to do the right thing.

To put an even finer point on it, a business is made of people. Individuals. The individuals involved behaved exceptionally poorly (to be charitable) toward another human being. How shameful of these individuals to act that way, and then (presumably) hide behind the collectivist shield of "the business".

[tpxl]

A friend of mine sent a resume, didn't hear anything and then got a job offer _4 months_ later. Generally I agree, not hearing anything means you didn't pass, but fuck companies and the people that do that and I don't ever want to work at one.

[ra]

Under the circumstances, it wasn't just a regular interview and so it was either rude (neglectful) not to get back to him or possibly (unlikely) there were other reasons... i.e. someone in the hierarchy had another plan.

[wpietri]

> this situation often means "you didn't pass the interview."

To my mind, it also means the interviewers didn't pass.

A company that's indifferent to the people it's hiring is unlikely to be magically different once you're in the door.

[microtherion]

Yes, post-interview ghosting happens, and, I'm ashamed to admit, it happened to a few candidates that I was part of interviewing. But that doesn't make it an acceptable practice — I feel that professionalism demands to let candidates know one way or the other as quickly as possible.