One of the worst interview experience in my life. Have interviewed with companies ranging from top tech companies to hot startups but never had such a bad experience before especially from a company which boasts good culture. Have you had an interview where you are trying to explain stuff to panel interviewers but they rudely talked to you ? I had a Data Science Interview with one company which is known for good culture but has mediocre people and low pay in NYC area. From the start of the interview both the interviewers created an aura of ignorance and started laughing by coordinating with each other while I am answering “tell me about yourself”. Friendly laughter is often appreciated but it was weird grin as if someone is mocking which gave me really bad vibes from the get go. Then they jumped into technical screening and asked questions which I knocked out. Some of them got harder as I progressed throughout the exercise. I tried to keep my calm and tried to have conversations and thought out loud. Meanwhile the lady interviewer kept on interrogating rudely in as if I am murderer and kept on denying different approach/idea in arrogance I explained. She seems to be SQL monkey who wanted perfect answer ready to copy & paste in the console for her questions. Well, No one writes complex queries perfectly under pressure where 2 people are staring at you as if they are there to eat you. People often modify their SQL on the fly while writing it in the Console like AWS Athena if you are querying against data warehouse. I felt those stares and high pitch denials were uncalled for. At the end, they did formality of asking do you have questions for us. I asked about can you tell me more about your projects in high level so that I can understand the kind of work they do so that I would have enough context for the future so that I can make good call on how to which team to select as I had 2 offers at that time. To which they replied, we can’t tell you about it. It felt like interviewer were not interested from the start and had made their mind from the start. It felt like interviewers did formality of conducting screen whereas they had no intention in conducting it properly. This usually happens when : A) you have already rolled out offer to someone B) you have created interview just for showcase purpose and you have already internally filled the role. I felt case (B) is true with me where my interview was a formality which they were doing just that it doesn’t look like they handed out position internally without advertising the job externally. The reason I felt this could be the reason because most of the employees in this team had internally moved into this team and Spotify in general is quite generous in internal transfer in terms of roles which is good for internal employees but bad for external qualified candidates who are denied a fair chance. Just feels bad to see people on high horses and treating people like trash. I have personally taken 50+ interviews and shadowed many in big tech. And we are given strict training on how to conduct ourselves during the interview and make sure to make candidate feel comfortable. Thankfully, I dodged a bullet because all they do is make dashboard on tableau in the name fraud detection from the info I gathered from LI. So from work standpoint I am not interested in that BI work in the name of Data Scientist. Well, this puts me in a weird spot where even if I had gotten the offer. I wouldn’t have accepted it because of teammates being dick although I like company as a whole. It seems that company doesn’t have mandatory training on how to conduct an interview or discriminate just based on skin colour? (I don’t like to say last line usually because most of the organisations are very diverse but by looking at the LinkedIn. I don’t see a decent representation of POC at Spotify especially in engineering positions which is kind of mind numbing because Spotify is a loved company so it’s very unlikely POC aren’t applying for job @ Spotify. It feels like they aren’t hired in engineering positions in the name of cultural fit?? ) P.S team is User Fraud @ Spotify NYC I hope this is an exception and other teams aren’t filled with similar jerks. —— I am not mad at not getting position because I understand it’s a number game and lot of factor goes in it. Also, the moment when I interviewed with Spotify I had already two offers in hand which gave level+1 whereas Spotify was giving entry level position. So, I had to eventually decline it with respect by keeping ties with the team and manager for the future. HR & Manager were nice. But teammates under him especially lady interviewer had questionable personality. I have never shared such experience of any interview before. But this time I shared because it wasn’t rejection but humiliation. In my opinion Interview is like a War. You respect the one who won the war but also respect the warrior who fought the battle with respect. You don’t make fun of warrior who died or you killed. This was one interview where I felt that terrible after the interview that I was almost in tears. Maybe I was filled with lot of emotions as I wanted to make sure interview go as smooth as possible. Perhaps I was under lot of pressure to perform because I like the product and use it daily. But nonetheless, whole experience was so terrible that I won’t apply again to company ever. Because it was not a rejection it was humiliation. Interview is not a one way street. It’s a two way street where you as an interview also get a sneak peek into what kind of people you are going to work with. So, if people are terrible then there is no point in working under the company you love. Life would be hell for sure. Btw, I was not at mailchimp at that time. I am in my new role and absolutely loving here. Culture is awesome and absolutely love it so no regrets. 💛 Just sharing my experience so that if you are interviewing with Spotify. Look out for these things. —— Last suggestion: if you interview with any company and are treated like trash. Even after that you end up getting offer and you are supposed to work with people who interviewed you. Reject the offer and move on! No job is worth tolerating bullying. #spotify
Sounds like maybe you are insecure . I mean at the end of the day you can not 100% confirm their intentions. Just take the interview as normal and deny role and take it as a mock interview if you don’t like them
Look we are interviewing remotely. And especially panel interview is kind of hard on someone already because you are reading their facial expressions. And when 2 people laugh at you or put a weird grin while you are talking. How would you feel?
I'm still not getting how they laughed at you
Which company?
Spotify
Interviewers from good companies are mostly respectful (in my experience). Have I dealt disrespectful interviewers ? yes, while I was in a situation of badly wanting the job. The case is not the same anymore. To your question, just ignore and move on... not worth to spend the time on
Do you give feedback to recruiter?
No I didn't give any feedback then as the recruiter too didn't value candidates.
I’d just don’t let it get to you. There are billions of people in the world and you will meet all kinds of people. In all my interview experiences(20+), I only had one company like that. I am an SDE, interviewer asked a tough DP problem, couldn’t think through the full dp solution, so I said I will start with brute force then improve. As soon as I finished and about to start optimizing, and before I could say anything, interviewer flat out said without emotion, word for word, “I don’t know why you are doing that”, then proceeded to give the perfect dp solution. I didn’t get an offer there and wouldn’t have accepted even if I did. I ended up choosing the best out of other 5 offers I got later. Treat it as a learning experience of what not to do and gain interview experience, but don’t take anything personal.
Yes I have moved on
Idk. Something about your narrative makes me feel this was largely your perception and maybe not reality. It’s not uncommon for interviewers to be unable to discuss their current projects. I usually ask about what have they launched because if it’s live, they can share. Laughing and grins - too little context to say if it was malicious. You could’ve triggered an inside joke for them or made them nervous in some way? Or, you could be right and they could be jerks. I’ve had rude interviewers before. Some intentional, some not. I either just complete the interview professionally knowing I won’t accept the offer. Or, I will address the rudeness in a professional way. Once, a guy walked into a large panel interview 15 minutes late. Sat in the chair beside me, sat close and stared at the side of my face without apologizing or introducing himself. I stopped answering questions about 2 minutes later, turned to him, stuck out my hand for a shake and introduced myself. Everyone else laughed. He introduced himself. They called me when I was five minutes away from the office with a verbal offer. Months later, someone on the panel told me that was the moment they decided to vote for me.
Dang that’s brutal and bullying
One needs to understand that many people are sensitive and one should conduct themselves in a neutral way instead of being a prick.
It is aura, not Ora.
it is a word
Interviewing is like a war??? I’m sorry, are you living inside a Greek myth?
how insensitive. Are you not aware of what is going on in Ukraine? No one is fighting as if it were a game. And interviews are nothing like that.
Just walk out. Tell them you’re not feeling the role and to have a nice life.
I felt something similar last week with amzn. 3 out of 5 weren’t even listening to what I had to say. Felt embarrassed when one person directly jumped to conclusions without even letting me finish. coding round made it worse, i was told I forgot to add i++ in python for i in range(1,10)
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I walked out once saying this role might not be the right one. If this was a virtual one, I would have turned off my WiFi and wrote to the recruiter directly. Remember interview is a two way process.
Makes sense. I should have done that but tried to calm myself down thinking all is fine