I had recently interviewed at Scale AI for Sr research position and boy was it a sad experience. Total 5 onsites, tech difficulty was on the easier side, 3 tech rounds and 2 behavior type of rounds with 2 engg directors. Tech rounds went well, two of the interviewers were smart and humble, one guy was just trying to act albert einstein-ish but my slow brain solved his problem too. The sad part was the rounds with the engg. directors. They were young people no doubt and couldn’t stop boasting off their achievements. First guy: I was this and that. I am smart. (He wasn’t) I did this for my previous company and made them X $. I’m looking for motivated people and motivated people only. Uttered a few cuss words to sound cool. etc. etc. I was pretty bored of him bragging about himself and lost interest in the conversation. Second guy: This honcho pissed me off big time. Brother came in with an attitude that was a bit daunting at first. He mentioned how he worked on XYZ secret Google project and was a lead in XYZ startup, I thought must be some sort of genius with a CS theory PhD from MIT. Little did I know he used a prototype of XYZ fancy Google project for his class project in XYZ school. He kept talking to someone over chat continuously (like from start to end), was absent in the conversation, said “mmhmm” like every other second, asked me to repeat everything I said. At times I got so pissed I felt like asking him to end the conversation so that we both stopped wasting our time. Update: Please don’t try to conclude too quickly. I don’t have an update from them yet. And I have a few offers from Waymo, Snap, Fb reality labs etc. etc., so not much bothered about the results in this case. But in any case this is individual opinion and just an interview experience. Hope this helps! Also this is not just a rant. After my interview I did a quick search about the interviewers on linkedin. Only the two engineers I liked talking to had scholar profiles, went to Stanford and Carnegie and did a bunch of shit. And it’s through linkedin through which I know sir Honcho didn’t invent XYZ project at Google. I guess these are great examples of empty vessels sound much type of thing. TC: 300k+ YOE: 2.5+ #scale #scaleai
They are lame. Heard multiple accounts from my circle. I withdrew at phone screen after talking to recruiter and enquiring around.
Ever since the media posted the ceo as the “one of the youngest and smartest ceos” I’ve heard that culture has trickled down to the whole company.
Just ask them what are the company core values (called credos) and you can see that they don’t give a sh!t about their employees
I agree. My experience was equally as disappointing
It's strange to me to brag about making someone else money. Isn't that the epitome of the pimp-hoe relationship?
There are no arrogant douchebags at snap, waymo, or reality labs, so you’re in the clear! Kind of sounds like deep down you want to be in their shoes?
Again not trying to generalize much here, this is just an individual experience. Like I said I really liked 2/5 people I spoke to.
Welcome to the world of self driving computer vision celebrity ;). I’m not meaning to antagonize — I had a similar experience at other AV co’s and am not discounting your experience.
Not reflective of scale at all tbh. Yoy for C3 ai was 17% and doesn’t have as many product offerings as Scale. Scale tackles harder problems in general. Scale’s customers as listed on their website seem more interesting as well, and grabs larger deals
Amazon and eBay both do e-commerce, but are very different companies
Sure, interviewer not paying attention is rude and deserves to be called out. That’s not a good experience. The rest of your commentary make you sound pretentious af and kind of a dickhead. How did you determine the first director guy “was not smart”? And wtf is the problem with literally anything you mentioned he said?!
When someone explicitly mentions they are smart without citing much technical depth they generally aren’t per se.
I’m not sure what is the definition of “smart” here. I somehow doubt that a person walked into your interview and said “i am smart” because that’s a really weird thing to say. So what exactly was the context? The “without much technical depth” irks me however, are you saying that a PhD in maths is required to be considered “smart”?
I’m sorry to hear about your experience OP. It’s really unfortunate. We definitely have an ambitious culture, but such arrogance is annoying and not cool. I’m glad you got to meet some quality people because Scale definitely has some bright and talented employees that are great to work with. If you haven’t already, you should share this feedback with your recruiter
This is probably the most sensible reply by Scale here
Oh boy! Something to remember for a loong time.