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Comment by harshalizee | Hacker News Reader

Yep, been burned by this quite a bit couple of years ago. Since then, I've refused to do any asymmetric interview processes. Surprisingly, a lot of companies are willing to skip that part and go straight to the "on-site" interviews.

If more engineers start to refuse these kinds of "dance, monkey, dance" processes, they'll start phasing them out.

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I once rage quitted a process. We had a few interviews, and then difficult take home test à la leet code (I spent 4-5 hours on them).

Then the hiring manager came back, "all looks good! I need you to interview with the team, the CEO, the other team" and what not.

I declined and said that I'm not spending 10 hrs in a process you asked me for (as in I didn't apply, they reached out to me). I got an angry email saying "what do you mean? We have only met with you for two hours?". I pointed out that it takes time to do the tests, then nothing more than crickets from the company. Not even a thanks for your time.

How do you phrase the rejection to maximize the chance of proceeding to the next interview stage?

You don’t try to. You just say are not doing take home in a firm and polite way expecting things to end there and sometimes they think it’s still worth interviewing you.

I explain about the asymmetric risk part and just say it's an option if they pay for the time. Many companies are fine with this as hiring is expensive.

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