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Comment by parseint | Hacker News Reader

I'm amazed to see all the positivity and comments about what a great guy he is.

I (phone) interviewed with Scribd 2 years ago with Jared and he left a notably bad impression on me. He seemed arrogant and distant and very displeased to be talking to me. He put me on hold a few times and was talking in the background while asking me questions.

I understand that he probably wasn't pleased having to phonescreen a lowly engineer, I was just taken aback at the rudeness and it's stuck with me.

Anyway. I'm taking it as opportunity to recalibrate my initial judgement filter.

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I'm truly sorry to hear that. I actually did 100% of all phone screens with engineers for the first seven years of Scribd.

That had good aspects in that I was able to talk to every single person who was interested in working with us, but it also had bad aspects where towards the end there were days when I let my schedule get too crowded and I ended up having to attempt to do phone screens and other things at the same time.

While I certainly wasn't trying to be rude, I can see how it could come off that way. After a while, I corrected for it and we trained a set of other people who helped with interviews, and it no longer happened. But clearly the damage was done, and really there's no excuse for coming across as rude to anyone, ever.

Sam has a quote about this: "Don’t screw people and don’t burn bridges. Pick your battles carefully."

Sam is right. The industry we work in is very small and people have long memories. It's incredibly important to treat every single person you meet with the utmost respect. I'm not sure who you are since you posted anonymously, but I'd love to make amends over a beer if you're up for it.

Well, as soon as I saw parent, I thought like he's telling my story!

I had the exact same experience, and I've done maybe 50-60 interviews so far, and I interviewed at least that many people, your interview was the worst.

Our interview took about 60 mins, and after asking a string DP question, basically you returned your daily job, no feedback, no questions, and took at least couple of phone calls during the interview.

I understand you now acknowledge that was a bad thing, and I appreciate that, but again, it was beyond rude IMHO.

I'm not sure how I feel about anonymous throwaway accounts posting unflattering anecdotes about someone. None of us spectators have any way of judging what happened for ourselves, and without a name or at least a posting history attached it's hard to take these grievances too seriously.

Most organizations past a certain size will provide for anonymous feedback internally both among peers and up the org chart. Why do you think this is? Why do you think most organizations also have policies providing for penalties, including dismissal, for retaliation against people who provide honest feedback?

It's because sometimes people can be vindictive, petty assholes, and it's a small world. FWIW it does seem like Jared just had too much on his plate at the time - no big deal. But shame on you for calling someone out for providing honest feedback (which was well-received, at that), just because it was anonymous.

> It's because sometimes people can be vindictive, petty assholes, and it's a small world.

Yes, and posting anonymous untrue grievances in a public forum is exactly the kind of thing that a vindictive person might do. Which is why I don't support that when there is no way for anyone to evaluate the truth of what is being said. I agree with you that the original complaints seems likely to be truthful given Jared's response, but the fact that Jared validated one also opens up the possibility that other people would pile on untruthfully. I don't like it personally.

Anonymous feedback within an organization is a very different thing than posting something like this publicly. I don't even care specifically whether it has a name attached; if it was an anonymous account that had some other posting history, a person could at least look at the other comments posted by this person and decide for themselves whether this person comes off as someone with an axe to grind or not.

> But shame on you

Please don't post uncivil comments to Hacker News.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How would I express that sentiment civilly, then? The only intent of that statement was to convey "I think you should feel some shame for what you've done with your post." It seems like a perfectly civil statement to me - I am not insulting anyone here - so I'm honestly wondering. I disagree that I've stepped outside the guidelines here.

e: I've noticed you usually ignore responses like this. I hope you don't ignore this one.

You would express it civilly by making your comment be about the subject, not the person you're talking to. It's fine to say "I don't think it's right to do X", and explain why. It's not fine to say "Shame on you for X". That's an attempt to punish somebody. Shame is a social truncheon, and in civil discussion we don't pull weapons on one another.

Huh, I previously interviewed with Scribd for an engineering role and had a very positive experience.

Jared and I met in person for coffee and chatted for an hour, he told me the story behind Scribd.

Him, and everyone I met at Scribd was very nice and down to earth. It's possible that there was just a lot going on the day you interviewed, and it was unfortunate timing.

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