How wft's prospective employer failed at an interview, terribly
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I was offered to complete a test task.
The task was to log in to their workstation (with TeamViewer), and to make a few changes to their real codebase (which consisted of gazillion PHP files. Granted, they were using some ancient sort of Symfony mixed with Zend mixed with some other kind of shit). Those changes requested looked terribly like real features to be developed on working terms, except that it was given as "a test task". In a timeframe of two hours, mind you. Get around the existing codebase on someone else's machine, on their running copy of Netbeans, and write three backend controllers almost from scratch, as well as give them two new forms. And test it all, of course.
I asked why exactly this kind of setup, and why not just give me the codebase and a deadline, and the answer was, because we would like to watch how you work, and that they treat other candidates alike, so why not.
Given that they were unavailable on Skype and replied to emails with an hour lag, asking questions and getting answers turned all my afternoon into waste.
At that point I decided that I don't work for free — that is, I don't do very production-like code that is set up to mimic an unpaid test, — and that I don't fancy being watched, and declined.
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At that point I decided that I don't work for free — that is, I don't do very production-like code that is set up to mimic an unpaid test, — and that I don't fancy being watched, and declined.
Given the rest of the post, I'd say you actually passed with flying colours.
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Sounds to me like you did exactly the right thing ;)
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At that point I decided that I don't work for free — that is, I don't do very production-like code that is set up to mimic an unpaid test, — and that I don't fancy being watched, and declined.
and you call that failing the interview? it wasn't you that failed the interview, but them!
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bet it was unlicensed teamviewer as well.
bastards.
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You win! Yes it was. :-)
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I expected interviewee fail, get interviewer fail. Am disappoint.
Suggested topic title: Why I bailed on a terrible interview.
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I wonder what this would look like in a Tales from the Interview after front paginization.
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Expect long-winded dialogues and shit.
That's why I don't dare submit there.
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Front page? There's a front page?
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I wonder what this would look like in a Tales from the Interview after front paginization.
"It was a dark and stormy night. Hanzo clutched at his trusty katana as he sat down and opened the TeamViewer. 'Free for personal or non-commercial use' flashed within his view. He knew he must turn back, but something beckoned him forth..."
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"It was a dark and stormy night. Hanzo clutched at his trusty katana as he sat down and opened the TeamViewer. 'Free for personal or non-commercial use' flashed within his view. He knew he must turn back, but something beckoned him forth..."
Congratulations, you are now a front page writer for TDWTF!
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Is that a request?
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No he isn't. I speak from experience.
http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/writer-search-algorythmics-sexy-submission/4064
@boomzilla - It shall be done, but probably not today.
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No worries. It'll be fun whenever it arrives.
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The rain had been coming down all morning; Hanzo wasn't going to be able to mow the lawn today after all. "Never mind," he thought to himself as he downed the last of his lukewarm coffee, "at least I can do that remote interview…"
Hanzo moved to his desk, and opened the e-mail invite; he was hesitant to go through with the task when the baleful message 'Free for personal or non-commercial use' glared at him like a stop light in the night, but he continued despite the voices in his head telling him to stop.
The remote session sparked into life. Hanzo re-read the task requirements; create three controllers and two forms. "Shouldn't be too difficult," he muttered.
He found the only tool available to be NetBeans. Warily, he fired up the beast; once the remote hamster had finally got up to speed, Hanzo found his unfortunate self neck-deep in a putrid miasma of PHP, tying together at least three disparate frameworks. Knowing he was on a deadline, he fired of a hopeful e-mail asking for some assistance.
The minutes ticked by; no replies were forthcoming. And his hails on Skype went unheeded.
Inevitably, Hanzo began to question why; for this, he did get an answer. His interviewer was watching the session, monitoring the poor soul to see how he worked. This didn't seem right, yet Hanzo was assured that this was normal.
FInally, sanity prevailed; Hanzo politely declined to complete the interview, shut off TeamViewer, and retired to the den to watch a bad movie.
If you're gonna do it, do it right!
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If you're gonna do it, do it right!
I did. I put in just enough of a teaser to make a hedgehog want to write it for me. I tend to delegate such tasks, and it is always best if people don't know they have been delegated to. You just make them want to show you up and they do it of their own accord. It is like ninja-delegation. ;)
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paging @remy?
:-D
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Yeah but it took too long to come to the right decision.
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and retired to the den to watch a bad movie.
Which one?!?
You can't leave us on a cliffhanger!
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The worst movie is Monster A-Go-Go, so it must have been that.
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Which one?!?
That's left up to reader's imagination. Or you can take @blakeyrat's suggestion. Whichever works for you ;)
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The worst movie is Monster A-Go-Go, so it must have been that.
I thought the worst movie was "Plan 9 from outer space"?
Filed under: Blakeybait
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I'm picking a fun one that I love then.
An no extra points for guessing which one, at least not for you
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Front page? There's a front page?
Sure there is! Just look for threads started by @PaulaBean in the last few days! Oh, wait...
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@thegoryone said:
Edit: Also, never touch another mans' netbeans.
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@thegoryone said:
I know, I know, we're not real developers/programmers/people/retards etc
Only real programmers can write php code that doesn't suck!
There are no real programmers.
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I would like to nominate People From Space for worst film ever.
The first time I saw it I caught it a few minutes in and spent the next hour trying to work out if it was a spoof or sanguinely that crap.
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@Onyx said:
Only real programmers can write
RPG code that doesn't suck!phpFORTRANFTFY
BITCH
MFTFY
COMPLAIN
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and you call that failing the interview? it wasn't you that failed the interview, but them!
This. Remember, an interview goes both ways.
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I used teamviewer peeping during my intern tests. IMO nothing wrong with that.
Everything else, though, is WTF.
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intern tests
Speaking of which, we haven't had any from you for a while... No positions to fill?
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We needed a cleaning lady, but none of the candidates could even get through fizzbuzz, so I didn't bother.
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You're supposed to give cleaners the mopfuzz test though.
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You're supposed to give cleaners the mopfuzz test though.
Never hire a cleaner who has a fuzzy mop.
Filed under: 'mop'.
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Here's a good candidate:
http://www.fresalia.com/fotos/original/774-1.jpg
Funny how much results the term "pornochacha" returns.
chacha is a disparaging term for cleaning ladies and porno is kind of obvious.
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Sweet! I didn't know I could ask a cleaning lady anything:
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I had an interview that some on this site have accused of being like wft's, but wasn't. Let me quote the original version I typed way back when on a pre-Discourse Sidebar thread...
I once went to an interview which lasted all day (including going out to lunch with a couple of the guys), and the assigned programming task was, well, a task. The company made molecular modelling software, and they asked me to write a program (C++, circa 1999, Silicon Graphics workstation running Irix) to read a description of a molecule from a plain-text file and render it on-screen as a stick-figure model.
I'll pause here to observe that the company had been making this sort of software for several years already, and didn't need me to write a poxy stick-figure renderer for their product. It really was to see how I wrote code and whether I could follow specs.I could, as we shall see.
They provided an object framework into which I had to plug my code, and at the beginning they told me not to worry if I didn't get through the whole thing.
So far, so good. Now for the WTF in all this.
About 40% of the way through the allotted time (a total of several hours), I fell into a nasty hole in the framework - bad enough that I could not continue - because, as they said, "nobody's ever got this far before", apparently not even them. Fixing the deficiency in the framework took only five minutes, but that only makes it more WTFy.
In the end, I finished the program, and showed them the display of the molecule, including the bonus feature of being able to swing the view around the molecule. Based on what they said, none of the other candidates they had had before me could even get the molecule read in from the file. For that and other reasons, we both decided it wasn't a good fit...
But the most WTFy interview I ever went to was five hours long, from 10am to 3pm, and all I got in terms of lunch was a vague, "well, there's a sandwich shop up the road that way."
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none of the other candidates they had had before me could even get the molecule read in from the file. For that and other reasons, we both decided it wasn't a good fit...
So you're the best candidate, meaning you're not a good fit? Definitely TR
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So you're the best candidate, meaning you're not a good fit? Definitely TR
The word/phrase we're looking for is "overqualified" or "liable to be destructively bored"...
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"Capable of doing the job duties? Overqualified."
Sucks to be them I guess, lol.