Comment by shaftway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shaftway | Hacker News Reader

I went through the full deal with an algorithmic trading firm. I blazed through the interviews and given the history I have in finance was able to finish a large on-site assignment with an hour to spare. I was told that I was the first to ever finish it. Second to last step was submitting an official college transcript as part of their background check process. Last step was talking to the CEO.

Now, I flunked out of college, but I spent 7 years on Wall St., and 12 years with MAGMA firms. College was over 20 years ago. I made this clear up front and the recruiter told me it wasn't a problem.

The call with the CEO was two hours of "why did you get a C in Martian and Lunar Geology?" and "Why did you get an F in Intro to Viticulture and Enology?" After that I get the offer (it was all cash and about $150k more than my current role even with equity factored in). I refused and told the recruiter that it was because I was drug through the coals like that. The recruiter's response was "yeah, I know, we keep asking him not to do that."

They called every couple years asking me to reconsider. Always a new recruiter. And every time I told them exactly why I refused and asked if that policy had changed. Every time I was told it hadn't and the call ended.

That CEO and Mark Shuttleworth must be trading notes.

It is okay to bring up something like flunking out of school 20 years ago but why drill someone on it?

It may be a way of filtering out older workers without having a policy as such.

That is totally possible, but I recognize this as an interrogation tactic.

Your resume is a showcase of your best accomplishments. Short of clearance-level interviews with your family and friends, people in C-level positions ask for transcripts from 20 years ago because it's the only intelligence concerning your failures they can get their hands on (your previous employers won't ever attest on-record that you sucked).

So with that in hand, think about how you're going to feel when the only things they want to talk about are topics you were struggling to understand while your brain was still underdeveloped. He's big-dicking you to ensure your submission in any ongoing business relationship, and probably lowball you on salary just because he likes taking things from people after humiliating them.

Asking about failures in past jobs is fair game-- you are free to disclose that much at your discretion. Asking for a transcript itself isn't even that weird either, just to verify you went to the school you said you did. But grilling you about failures from 20 years ago is someone engaging in emotional abuse; they're desperate to have something to hold over you.

I like to assume that people have the best (if sometimes misguided) intentions, and I have an alternate theory.

This firm clearly put a huge amount of stock in education. They were 4 blocks from a major CS university, and a significant number of staff were recent grads. I suspect the CEO had a masters which only adds credence to their belief in the education system.

On top of that, they knew how much I was making ($x), how much I was asking for ($x + $50,000), and ended up offering me more ($x + $150,000). That's not the kind of thing you do when you're trying to dissuade someone from taking a job with you. Especially when the offer is 100% cash (company was private and they offered no equity).

I strongly suspect that this person came from a bubble of education, and just didn't understand how you could be a poor student and then successful outside of academia.

I've had similar red flags when interviewed by management with masters or PhD's. They seem to think they would be tainting themselves by hiring someone obviously dumb, in their view.

I don't understand why the way you cared manifested in that way

My dad was overly sensitive about not having a degree too, I wonder if its a generational thing

From what I can tell, this nonstandard question would have no bearing on the work experience and never come up again, but you are acting like it would

Given that the info we have is that the CEO's interview involved a silly amount of questioning about college grades that were two decades old, I think that what anyone could tell is not that it's never going to come up again, but that it was way more important to that workplace than most others. You could reasonably be concerned that it would affect how you'd be viewed by the management, and affect your opportunities there.

Doubt. I looked at this post and all the other top level posts in this thread and cant reasonably assume any of these reindeer games would be predictive of anything on the job.

The policy of asking why you flunked college?

Should a company not ask you that? Why are you hung up on flunking martian geology?

I don't understand

Not the OP, but it's extremely rude and unprofessional. Nitpicking a guy's college transcripts from 20 years ago? Come the fuck on. His experience and skills should have been enough, asking those dumbass questions is an insult, one that he didn't have to take.

you're right, I totally missed that detail, i didn't realise it was from 20 years ago.

That is totally bizarre.

And to be fair, yes, asking why I flunked out is a perfectly valid question, even after 20 years.

The reason I give is that I had some family issues that required me take a break. During that time I started working in tech, and after a few years I never saw the need to go back. The real reason was the grades, which was caused by an undiagnosed neural-divergent issue.

But this was different. It was an hour and half of going course by course down the list, and asking exactly why I got that specific grade for that specific class if it was less than an A (including a few that were A-). I didn't flunk Martial Geology, but still was asked to explain that grade. Do you remember what grade you got in a freshman physics class 20 years ago, much less why it was that grade and not higher?

In the end I'm glad that I got an offer, glad it was higher than I was making, and glad I rejected it. It was proof to myself that I have morals that can't be bought. Not for that price at least.

if someone wanted to see my university grades after this time i'd confusedly ask: excuse me, i thought this was a senior position not a student internship.

just as frustrating as wanting code samples. none of my work of the past decade is public, and it's not mine to share. all i can show is ancient stuff

I remember i had an interesting project on a resume, and one guy really drilled down into the details of it. (I think this is an interviewing technique)

At some point, really deep down the rabbit hole, I remember saying, "I don't actually recall, it WAS over 15 years ago"

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