So I had an onsite with Zoom today. The recruiter and hiring manager I talked with previous to this were super cool. Then I talked to 2 people from the company. Both positive experiences and they seemed impressed by me. Then it all turned very bizarre. The last 2 interviews were with 2 Asians who barely spoke English (not trying to be racist but I think it is relevant here). The first lady especially was extremely condescending. She asked me random domain trivia including things like what are the difference between a hash table and concurrenrhashmap (like I'm gonna know that off the top of my head since they are both concurrent which I do know) and what random Linux commands I should use to do X task even though I explained I usually reference a resource if I have to do anything in the command line. Finally after this was done she asked to write an SQL query. I had to take a second to process and then I was making sure I formatted it correctly as I haven't wrote SQL in a while. After less than 2 mins she starts telling me I should know how to do this and it should already be done and my answer doesn't count now. I literally finished typing it out perfectly 10 secs later which she didn't even acknowledge. At this point the next interviewer came on and she rudely said bye and left. This guy wasn't as condescending but lacked any sort of social skills and barely responded to me. Asked me trivia questions again and barely clarified anything even when I asked. Will never consider working for this company after this.
I'm no liberal SJW psycho (nor am I a Trumptard), but why exactly was it relevant to call out their races? Couldn't you have just said two "people" who barely spoke English? Genuinely curious - not offended or anything.
Because I think Asian culture had something to play here. By no means am I saying all Asians are like this but I don't think it's any secret that a lot of Chinese specifically culture is very rude and anti social. I work with tons of Indians and never had a sort of experience with an Indian like this. I think it's a cultural thing tbh.
Yikes, this kind of moral qualification on what you acknowledge to be culture is alarming.
I disagree this has anything to do with race nor company. I had exactly same experience with Uber and LinkedIn by interviewers with different races. One of them is white. Don't want to be racist. But this really depends on interviewers and there are just random interviewers who are less capable and less experienced in interviewing. I did have several good rounds with Chinese interviewers (and pretty much all races too).
Im sure there are rude interviewers of all races. I wasn't trying to imply it was only because they were Chinese or all Chinese are like this. Rather that these two in particular seemed to reflect a lot of what you expect from Chinese culture which I don't have a problem saying is very backwards. I've worked with Asians who have been great, but unfortunately the ones at Zoom seem like they haven't left the Chinese work/culture mentality at least from my experience.
@OP you are being racist with this comment. And because you are not getting it, I am putting the defination of racism here for your reference. "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalize" In your case " prejudice" is the key word. :-)
I don’t want to appear any racist here and I have friends who are chines. But boy I have a policy not to interview at any “Chinese CEO” company. No matter Eric has spent quite a number of years in US, he is still a Chinese at heart The problem with that is those companies end up hiring lot of Chinese. And man I would never work in such a team. There is no diversity, most Chinese even in my current team talk in their mandarin with each other. I don’t say it’s wrong but it kind of shows you the “pride” of their language and culture is very strong even in a global workplace environment. And they do suck at social conversations. Don’t join a company led by Chinese founder. The culture would be very much reflective of Chinese work culture. It is very different from Indian born CEO. If the startup is cool I have found smart Indians are quite good at conversation and politeness. Few who aren’t that smart might appear condescending but those startup you anyway don’t want to work for. But it’s totally different for Chinese companies. The “pride” of their culture, their language is very high amongst them. I once interviewed at LinkedIn. 5 rounds. Not a single non Chinese interviewed me. That moment I decided I won’t join that team. Shows you how much diversity is there in the team. Zero.
It’s important to distinguish between (a) public display of strong cultural attributes and (b) negative impact such can have on an outsider working in that environment. Speaking in Mandarin is (a) and IMO hardly a trigger for (b) unless you are part of that conversation or otherwise getting marginalized. Having worked in an all Chinese team with a d**k boss, I have to say how touched and impressed I was by my team mates siding with me over their Chinese boss and helping me assimilate and settle down in the team even at the cost of their own relation with their Chinese boss . Thus while there was a lot of (a) I don’t believe there was any (b) for me. Hence the adage about not generalizing. Given a chance in life, I would love to fight for and give back to my fellow team mates who stood by me in a very dark period of my life.
Is your negative reaction to their race, their lack of social skills, or the type of questions they asked? Or some combination? Personally, I like to ask trivia-type questions in interviews instead of LC's as well. I find they are more predictive of someone with a width breadth of knowledge who can do productive work on day 1. I obviously don't expect you get them all right but if you know more than about 80% of the dozen or so I ask and can handle an LC easy, things are looking good. For all of the hate blind heaps on LCs, I'm surprised there isn't a more positive response to a company that asks whether you have some practical computing knowledge rather than memorizing a compendium of algorithms you will never actually use.
My negative reaction isn't at all to their race so don't be confused. I guess I should have left that out. It was to the utter rudeness and also the terrible interview style. I should also note I did answer a lot right but some were just ridiculous and I got a condescending tone for not getting them completely right. I wrote out some rest APIs, demonstrated how to use various annotations, wrote sql, and drafted table design so I definitely demonstrated real world knowledge beyond the LC stuff I was asked. I probably answered over 80% of the trivia perfectly but I got scoffed at for messing up a few things. One key thing said was "you went to a good school, didn't they teach you anything". Mind you, beyond that comment being inappropriate period I'm over 5 years out of school.
Most of zoom employees are based in china
i'm sorry you dealt with this mliw! unfortunately many of the developers do speak/write in mandarin/chinese (even within group message with non-chinese teammates). i believe your story 100% because it happened to me as well
i wouldn't be surprised if you got the job anyway tbh
Sigh
Well.. at least you are not alone in this experience! I dint have any problem with my interviewer during the interview, he in fact mentioned that “i did ver well, solved the coding challenges and answered follow up questions in satisfying manner” His words not mine. And still the recruiter comes back saying they dint think that my technical expertise is good enough. Not sure what to believe!
did he ask "which bear is best?"
and if so, what was your response?
That tracks with my experience at Zoom. Zoom's entire engineering department seems to have zero official guidance on how to conduct an interview. Management doesn't provide tools either. I know devs with less than 2 months at the company who've had to conduct multiple interviews already.
OP, keep this post and have the balls to not delete it, let people know. I have had such interviewers with zero EQ at some companies which are well known for having a majority of the population you’re talking about. I literally wanted to punch their faces and leave!
Argh, these people with low EQ! They turn me to violence!
@BigOwl LOL