I had a phone screening interview with the hiring manager at Samsara. We were discussing about my current work. I work at AWS load balancer team. The HM kept asking, what kind of request you get? What is the payload? I mentioned it is a multi tenant service for AWS customers. They can use it for any kind of payload. The HM asked again but what is the payload? I gave an example of publicly referenceable customer and explained how they use our product. The HM was not convinced with the example and the interview was over in 20 mins. Recruiter sent a mail that we are not moving forward with my application. I asked for feedback to understand what happened here? No reply. Also, the HM is senior manager with total 5 years of experience. The whole experience makes me feel that Samsara is over valued. Can someone shed light on the engineering culture? Are there enough good senior engineers to take the engineering teams in right direction? #engineering #software #swe #samsara
This points to newbie HMs that are not sufficiently articulate or experienced to phrase their questions optimally. Essentially a disconnect between what they think they're asking and what they actually ask.
I agree to this, they would be meaning to ask something specific but the question will be an open ended generic one. I have learnt to cross question, may not go down well but atleast it puts a point through that you are thinking possibilities
What do u mean by “cross question”?
A lot of new start ups have people that have very very very little experience. Some even don’t have engineering background or product background and are directors and VPs of product. I don’t even know how they get in through the rigorous process.
Could you share the link to the post OP?
The answer he was looking for is JSON
this. He wondered why someone working in aws does not know the most popular payload standard
Lmao if this is what he expected, he would have been pissed for a good 20 mins 😂
Sad to hear that. Was that for a senior eng position?
What did HM say when they wanted to end the interview?
I don't remember how it ended tbh. It was abrupt.
I had a terrible interview experience with Samsara too. You’re not alone
What’s your experience? Please share
Well, experience is a myth my boy !
1 bad manager does not make all of samsara bad. jesus
Had a similar experience, rejected after HM interview. No idea what the HM was trying to gauge.