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by iLoveOncall 1104 days ago
Have you ever taken notes during an interview? If I wrote "the candidate" every time, I would just lose track of what the candidate is saying.

On top of that, I don't know how it works at Bitwarden, but interview notes are only supposed to be used by you to later synthesize, so it shouldn't matter if you write "the candidate", "the dude", or whatever else is the most efficient when taking notes.

Lastly, it wouldn't even come to my mind to ask a candidate's pronouns in an interview, so it's already unreasonable expectations for me to even know them.

3 comments

Have you ever shared interview notes with anyone? I type mine up... and 'TC' is just as useful in my shorthand as he/she would be.

I agree with you that if these were his personal notes from which he then composed his evaluation of the candidate it wouldn't matter - but I bet you that's not what this was, and I would further bet you that he was informed of the candidates pronouns and did know them.

Hey what do you know, I found the lawsuit: "That same week, Bitwarden tasked Mr. Scharf with interviewing a potential employee whose “preferred pronouns” were in contradiction to Mr. Scharf’s religious beliefs. Mr. Scharf conducted the interview in a professional and respectful manner, avoiding the use of pronouns all together. Mr. Scharf assessed the interviewee favorably and recommended that the interviewee advance to the next stage of the interview process. Because of Mr. Scharf’s religious beliefs, in his notes regarding the interview, which were shared internally and not with the interviewee, Mr. Scharf did not use the interviewee’s requested pronouns."
Using “they” & “the candidate” or “TC” has been standard practice for interviews at my employers.