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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

I interviewed with Goodreads in 2012. If there's one thing I learned it's that when you give people weird gimmick problems ("How many Starbucks are there in Manhattan?") in an 8 hour interview that was supposed to be 2 hours, you're going to produce an awful lot of ill will when you reject people because they're "too technical". The whole thing was the most bizarre interview experience of my life.

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I'm sorry you went through that. I had an interview recently that asked no technical questions, only logic puzzles like "princess is behind door number 1, monster is behind door number 2" scenario shit. I mentioned I'm extremely bad at these, but I have ten years of experience that I can speak to. I went ahead and did the quiz and got ghosted anyways. The silver lining is we get to watch companies like this become landfills. Cheers.

Next time just refuse to dance and end the interview on the spot. I do that and it feels great to see the light dying in their eyes when they realize you're the one "dumping" them.

Feels good for 15 minutes while you burn a bridge and don't proceed at the interview. Presumably they have other candidates, they probably don't even remember you a couple of days later.

It's a matter of not wasting each other's time and energy on futile things. If it's not going well for one reason or another, better to politely end it and let each other do something else with their day.

If terminating an interview early 'burns a bridge', then I've 'dodged a bullet'.

Yeah, the way I see it it's the stupid company using brain teasers like these that just burnt a bridge.

Presumably you have other interviews.

I for one think that logic puzzles are a reasonable filter for many positions.

I used to be very good at logic puzzles and have steadily been getting worse. Yes I have wider perspective now, but my raw problem solving ability has deteriorated. I can understand if a company wants to maximize problem solving for certain roles.

I had a 1 hour interview go for 3 hours because they couldn't get the HR, hiring manager, and engineer at the same time.

Ended up telling the sameish stories 3 times.

They offered me a job, then covid happened, then they offered me it at a 10% decrease, then they canceled the contract, then they called me 6 months later. I already had a job at that point and they were begging me to leave.

> because they couldn't get the HR, hiring manager, and engineer at the same time.

I think you dodged a bullet. If a company doesn't have their act together enough to actually gather the people they need for a meeting that they themselves set up, it hints that there are deep management-level problems there.

For sure, the company was a Zombie company, but the title was somewhat impressive for my age. I even worked at that company 8 years before, they were so petty when I didn't take a pay cut to be a direct hire, and they got rid of me. (Got a 30% raise at my next job, doh!)

Ended up getting my dream job to be a programmer instead of a (real) engineer. Now I make more money than ever, as you can imagine.

Amazon bought Goodreads in 2013 - if you had interviewed after the acquisition, you'd have encountered Amazon's style of interviews, which is much more professional and better than the experience you describe.

I wouldn't have minded getting some equity before the purchase, though!

I'd love to hear a bit more about the interview, if you're willing to share. Weird interviews are always fun to listen to! :)

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