[wkcheng]

The attitude of the blog writer in their interactions also feels off. Just reading this blog post makes me think that this person is difficult to work with, requires extremely clear guidelines and instructions, and has a hard time making their own decisions. Maybe this is a good fit for a large, established company, but startups have their own needs.

"Create a terminal inspired email client so we can do an alpha test with some customers" is a reasonable ask for an engineer at an early stage startup. Of course, there would be a bit more specification, but a lot of the details would still be up to the engineer. This applicant wants more certainty than they can get.

This is illustrated by the line: "I would like to know what kind of response I could expect from Kagi if I drive it to completion." This is not a great request to make. There's no way they can answer that question, because there is no certainty available. They're probably getting a few hundred or a few thousand more submissions to evaluate.

[snowstormsun]

In your comments history someone replied to a job posting "Just an FYI, if you do a takehome project for William, he won't respond to you (not even with an auto reject)."

[david38]

Seriously? A candidate puts in a week of work and he can’t be guaranteed a 30 minute discussion?

Nobody is getting a few hundred or few thousand submissions to evaluate. Nobody. If you are getting 1k applicants, at best 50 are asked to do a take-home and even then, not all at once.

If by some miracle 100 people did this to completion at the same time, there should be a notice to the effect that due to high volume, blah blah blah.

[saagarjha]

I don't really think it was intended to take a week of work.

[user_7832]

…which is totally understandable… if the hiring manager had communicated that. They could’ve easily mailed back “Hi this proposal seems much more detailed than what we need for evaluation, please save yourself some time and energy.”

The author may have had issues (I personally don’t count “need clear instructions” as an issue - edit - I see they didn’t adhere to the TUI prompt), but the hiring manager definitely did.

[jorams]

> …which is totally understandable… if the hiring manager had communicated that.

I agree that the hiring manager could have handled it much better, but as a rule: If at any point during any hiring process you feel like you need to spend even close to a full time week of work on anything without being very explicitly told so, you are wrong.

[dallbee]

I am a hiring manager and we do take home homeworks. I fully agree that this is a key piece of communication. I always take the time to tell candidates that although they have as much time as they want, we expect 2-3 hours of effort at most, to be respectful of their time. Without that, take home problems would seem predatory.

[barrenko]

Interviews check for fit first of all, and especially in a buyers market the point is not to solve the assignment, it's to blow it out of the water.

It's meant for the person for whom it's ideally an afterthought. Tough reality.

[dclowd9901]

Yes on this: It reminds me of when candidates ask me how they did at the end of the interview. It shows an extreme lack of decorum and empathy. What if you did terribly and I wouldn't hire you in a million years? Do you really want me to tell you that?

There's no good answer and asking a question like that shows real narcissism imo.

[thaumaturgy]

Conversely, if you can't handle some straightforward feedback to a candidate that took the time to interview you without violating decorum or hurting their feelings, then how can I expect you to be a good manager or supervisor? How are you possibly going to be able to handle minor personnel conflicts or provide guidance during the training period? It comes across as a complete lack of basic managerial skills.

[theamk]

Supervisors/manages don't usually do coding interviews though, especially in bigger orgs.

There is usually a separate interview stage with some sort of manager, and those usually have no coding.

[thaumaturgy]

Okay, but basic interpersonal skills are a prerequisite for anybody in a senior or team lead position, or any position that will involve code reviews.

I'm sympathetic to how awkward it can feel to provide honest feedback to a candidate, but look: we're all people here. I think we forget that sometimes when we're assembling hiring processes. As a candidate, you need some kind of feedback mechanism that allows you to improve even if you're not a good fit for a particular organization. And if you're involved in the hiring process in any way, you ought to be equipped to handle that.

[throwaway2037]

    > you need some kind of feedback mechanism that allows you to improve even if you're not a good fit for a particular organization

"Need". That is a strong term. I disagree. It would be nice, but it is not a need.

This topic has been discussed ad nauseam on HN. In most companies, there is specific company policy that prohibits providing feedback to candidates. There is literally no upside for these companies to provide feedback to candidates that they reject (except Fake/Feel-Good Internet Points, only redeemable on HN forums). Really: There is no way around it, no matter how many tears are spilled about it on HN.

[thaumaturgy]

This is simply a defense of bad policy couched in unnecessarily dehumanizing language.

There is widespread resentment of this and many other common hiring practices in the tech sector, and that is further impacting both the quality of candidates as well as employee motivation and satisfaction. The upside for companies is higher quality candidates whose first experience with the company is a hiring process that makes the candidate want to work there.

[silisili]

> In most companies, there is specific company policy that prohibits providing feedback to candidates. There is literally no upside for these companies to provide feedback to candidates that they reject

This is the long and short of it.

In the US at least, discrimination laws are expansive. You can -very- easily end up saying something that violates this and putting your company at risk, no matter how good hearted you were attempting to be.

[dogleash]

Who are you trusting as a technical interviewer if you don't already trust them to give negative feedback internally?

Do you not code review? Are you a rubber stamp "LGTM" shop that should just be pushing to main but cargo culted the ceremony because github has it built in?

[etchalon]

I always tell people how they did. What went right, what went wrong, whether I think they're a good fit and if not, why not.

Because I see what happens to my wife when she interviews, and goddamn its brutal.

[FireBeyond]

I had someone email me after being rejected at the final round of an interview. "Everything seemed to mesh just perfectly, and I'm at a loss to understand."

I broke it down for them. "This was nothing to do with you, and we would have had no objection to hiring you. However, the candidate who beat you out simply had more domain experience in XYZ area" and went on to say "For what it's worth, we had 500+ applications, of which we in-depth reviewed 100 resumes, had 40 first-round interviews, 15 second-round, and three final round."

They emailed me back to express appreciation and that though this didn't work out, it renewed their confidence to know they didn't "mess something up".

Since then, if we're at that point in a process and I'm rejecting you, I'll at least give you something to work with.

[etchalon]

This is so important for people to understand, and its why I give people feedback.

People, being humans and prone to pattern seeking, assume that if they didn't get the job, it's something specific they did, or failed to do.

And sometimes, that's true. But for a lot of candidates, it just came down to another candidate being slightly better, or slightly cheaper, or some combination of value markers.

A lot of my interview feedback comes down to "I don't see any reason you wouldn't be a good fit, but we have other interviews and it's going to come down to value."

Some people will take this as me saying "Don't ask for what you're worth," or "we're gonna low-ball your salary." The reality is, we're a business, and if I can produce the same widget with person X or person Y and person X costs 10K less a year, I'm going with person X. Every time.

[Bluescreenbuddy]

Yes we want to know. Framing this as an empathy issue when in reality you're just to afraid to be honest or afraid of any kind of conflict IS an empathy issue. At that point they're not a person. They're an annoyance that you want gone immediately.

[strken]

Don't take this the wrong way, but I deliberately ask how I did because it helps me weed out interviewers who think like this. Not so much "how did I do?" as "now we're close to the end of the interview, do you think we're a good fit for each other?" I give my own feedback and talk honestly about points of friction.

I interview pretty well, but if I go into an interview with a company that wants hungry hustlers and I've spent the whole interview talking about kindness and team spirit, or if you think I don't know enough pl/pgsql to deal with your gnarly legacy backend, or I'm getting the vibe that none of the engineers seem to like working here, then we need to speak honestly about that.

[throwaway2037]

    > we need to speak honestly about that

No need. Just walk away. Remember: You are interviewing them, just as they are interviewing you. Any company worth its weight will not allow red flags to leak into the interview process, e.g., "getting the vibe that none of the engineers seem to like working here". So many times, I have reached the final round of an interview process, met the senior manager... and thought: "Barf, I don't want to work for that person. What a waste of my time."

[strken]

I know I'm interviewing them. That's why we need to talk.

If they wanted to hire me enough to interview me, but at the end of a half-day of interviewing I'm going to walk away without a job, then they need to rewrite their position description so I know not to apply, deal with their morale problem, or directly ask me how much PL/pgSQL I've done. We both stand to benefit from talking about how the interview went.

[whatevertrevor]

But you also need to factor in their position in the situation right?

Like suppose they do hate their job. Do you expect them to speak that plainly and honestly to every candidate who asks "So how do you like working here?" and risk getting that posted to the front page of HN?

You're asking them to risk their own livelihood so you get a better signal for your own job search, that doesn't seem like a proportional trade to me.

Obviously I'm not advocating for complete opaqueness, but your interviewer is hardly ever in a good position to part with their true feelings towards questions like "How did I do compared to other candidates? How is it truly working here?"

I've basically almost always given direct and obvious non-answer to the first question: "I cannot tell you right now, because I'll need to write down and collate my thoughts. And I'm not allowed to share feedback directly, so your recruiter will be in touch with the feedback afterwards."

[LPisGood]

> What if you did terribly and I wouldn't hire you in a million years? Do you really want me to tell you that?

Yes, that sounds like extremely valuable feedback.

Why do you suppose asking a question like that shows narcissism? To me it shows a willingness to infest feedback to improve.

I will add the caveat that if someone asked me that in an interview I would likely give a non-answer because I’m not totally sure what all I’m even allowed to say.

[charcircuit]

Not everyone will take feedback the same. It's not worth the reputational risk.

[matheusmoreira]

A simple request for feedback is not evidence of narcissism or lack of empathy. Could be anxiety. Could be curiosity. Could be zeal. Could be any number of things. It's certainly not an "extreme lack of decorum" though.

It's okay to avoid giving feedback if you don't want to. I can think of a few ways to answer that question in a neutral or positive fashion to defuse the situation and legally protect the company.

[roncesvalles]

Not to mention there are legal liabilities with sharing interview performance with candidates. "Oh but the interviewers told me I did extremely well on their interviews. Therefore it must be the case that I was rejected because of ${protected attribute X}."

[mock-possum]

Really?? I always appreciated candidates that would ask that at the end - being willing to step aside from the pretense of professionalism to ask a real question and listen to my answer is a signal to me that this is someone who is willing to be real with me, not pretentious or perfunctory.

I do get what you’re saying, but I disagree, there is a good answer; and as is often the case, it’s an honest one.

[thebruce87m]

> Yes on this: It reminds me of when candidates ask me how they did at the end of the interview. It shows an extreme lack of decorum and empathy.

If my interviewer stumbled over this it would be a red flag.

[Cypher]

I would because accept honest, authentic feedback that would support my efforts.

[dns_snek]

> asking a question like that shows real narcissism imo.

Precisely the opposite. Asking for criticism and genuinely being interested in what others think of you with the goal of taking the feedback on board and improving is the polar opposite of typical narcissistic behavior. As far as I'm aware that sort of self-reflection is inherently incompatible with NPD.