[joshklein]

My "never again" story was around a decade ago. Thoughtworks had me interview with roughly a dozen people over half a dozen or more interviews, lasting ~20 hours (if you include the proctored Wunderlic test they administered to me on premises). At the end of that lengthy process, they said they would have loved to bring me on but "didn't have any open positions that fit my set of skills". You know, that set of skills I listed next to my work experience on my 2-page resume.

I no longer submit applications to any job until I've spoken to someone who works there to ask hard questions of them before I interview. I also no longer consider any job that lacks clear articulation of the platonic ideal of a candidate.

[throwaway81523]

I hadn't heard of the Wonderlic test before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderlic_test

Interesting and a bit creepy.

I think here in California for nerds who have been around for a while, companies have at least some concept of what competitive rates are, so I hadn't worried about posted salary ranges. If they waste your time leading up to a lowball offer, they at least have wasted their own time as well, so they have an incentive to not do that. That of course assumes you didn't do a take home assignment ;).

[fennecfoxy]

Pretty sure I got made to do this one when I got my first job in the UK (at a sports betting company, that turned out to be a pretty terrible job overall - I misinterpreted "gaming company" to mean video games...)

One of their investors came in to run the test, it was his thing, apparently. Weird industry full of weird and corrupt people.

[rustybelt]

It’s famously administered to all nfl quarterbacks. Tom Brady got a 33.

[BooneJS]

All NFL players, not just quarterbacks, right?

[jdwithit]

Yes, all positions, there's a little more info about it in the linked Wikipedia article.

Apparently Frank Gore had one of the all time lowest scores with a 6. He is a borderline Hall of Fame caliber running back.

[mandeepj]

Thoughtworks also screwed me like that. They gave me a take-home assignment which took few hours. At the end, their feedback was - my code is not cloud scalable and their were some values that I used directly and not from a configuration :-).

How can those people claim to be interviewers?

[invig]

My (albeit limited) experience with companies like this is that their interview process is far more hurtful than helpful. The processes are so long and so narrow that I can't see how it wouldn't be more effective to just say "come work on this thing for a day with me" and we'll see how it goes?

They must be leaking so many great makers arbitrarily. I assume that this helps the kind of work they do in some mysterious way?

[calvinv]

My team has thoughtwork contractors in it and I'm not surprised by your comments. Their actual ability to get things done is pretty bad

[mandeepj]

By mistake - I used the wrong 'their'. Apologies

[jokethrowaway]

I passed a Nearform interview years back when they didn't have employees, just contractors.

They said "Good, you passed the assignment, we'll call you when we have clients for your range". I kept my old job and I'm still waiting for a client from them.