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Always trust your gut. Especially when it comes to people. Don't overthink, never rationalize it. Accept your feeling, it's valid.

If I learned anything from all my past mistakes in life, it's this.

Same.

I left a really good job for a year, to go work for a company CEO'd by a buddy of mine. I had a bad, sinking feeling in my gut from the very beginning when In interviewed with my new boss (not my buddy). Sure enough, I fucking hated working for him, and quit after a year.

When I was leaving my old job, I remember rationalizing it to myself that I would regret not doing it if I didn't try. I have mixed feelings about that job -- not necessarily regret for taking it, but definitely some regrets for how things went down at the end.

With that being said, if I had turned down that job, I don't know if I would regret it now or not. Who's to say?

Anyway, I got my old job back, and lasted there for several more years. It's still the best place I ever worked.

I had to check your profile after reading that first line.

Fortunately 2016 join date, "No AI used in my comments".

But holy cow that was uncanny after months of Claude

Maybe this is the guy they trained the LLMs on?

I had a similar thing where they were going through my code from a takehome.

It was with an architect and a lead developer and the architect was really rubbing me up the wrong way. Stupid nitpicks that were all style preferences. Not at all talking about the actual code. I start pushing back and he starts getting a bit combative, which sets me off a bit too as these were the days jobs were plentiful.

At some point he offhandedly mentioned I didn't need a particular line of code in the startup config. So I say, "Yes, that's required, it initializes the routing". He quips back, "No, that line's not necessary at all, you don't need it". The lead dev is looking completely exasperated at the architect at this point.

I paused, started a screen share. Went to the line. Commented it out. Ran the program and it fell over.

I then said, "I'm not interested in working with you, thanks for your time, bye"

Nothing will take years off your life better than working for people you don't like in a company you don't want to work at.

I guess that is the problem with the current state of the world. Employers hold most of the cards and people are desperate to find and retain employment. As someone who has coupled themselves to the wrong trains more than I'd like to admit, I'd encourage all young engineers to ask themselves, "Is work more important than your mental and physical health?" Don't underestimate the affect of toxic people, management and companies on your brain and body. Over time you may pay the ultimate price; an early death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony should be n our vocabulary.

I remember interviewing once and they told me what they were working on.

I was actually familiar with the product, but it had some glaring shortcomings, and I kind of groaned a little inside.

And I told them that I liked some things about the product, but then I unfiltered sort of pointed out what was wrong. I really wasn't interested in working on it (though I didn't say that outright)

And then they decided they loved and needed me. (and I didn't go there)

Sort of like dating I think. Show a little skepticism and you might unintentionally get more interest than if you were open and sincere.

I think the skepticism was the sincerity they were looking for.

It's basically the confidence and being blunt.

Pretty much like that Office Space scene when main character meets the Bobs.

I had a similar experience with another company. At one point during the interview, the HR department asked me to do a really stupid exercise, despite the fact that I am an engineer with over 20 years of experience.

I wrote an email saying I would not pursue the position, and they wrote back asking me to have another interview with them. I politely declined.

They probably understood that their method was not good.

I have never done what you did, but I am going to take note of the fact that it is something one can do. Because I've certainly had the same moment of realization a few times, and I went through the motions anyway.

I've been on the other side where I decided I didn't want to hire the candidate. I'd ask them some leading questions so they could get out early if they wanted.

Good. and you saved time by doing this. It feels more the right thing.

I left mid interview for a game company too. It was likely due to bad interview skills on behalf of the interviewer.

If it was Blizzard, I can completely understand you.

I had something similar years ago. I applied for a job at a company, size around 150 people. Did two rounds of interviews which were great. They wanted me to offer the role. However, as a third round, I was going to do a meet and greet with the CEO and he was going to yay or nay me. At point I dropped out. If a CEO can't trust his delegate managers to hire the people they see fit for a role, then thanks but no thanks. That's not a company culture I want to spend most of my waking hours in.

I don't know your particular situation, so it might be totally different, but I think this is commonly just a formality and a friendly chat.

It's a chance for you to meet the actual CEO (or VP or whatever in a larger company), and also for them to get to meet you in advance, instead of effectively getting "blindsided" by a new person (to exaggerate a bit).

Usually, by the time you've gotten to that point, the decision to hire you has well and truly been made. I don't know what then would need to happen for the actually rather secondary function of giving the CEO the opportunity to veto to become relevant. I'd be curious hearing about anyone who's ever experienced it (on whatever side). I guess it can be a safeguard against vastly unaligned values, but I suspect it's very rare.

But primarily, and effectively, it's usually just a meet-and-greet. And it's hard for me to blame a CEO (or VP etc.) for at least getting to anyone who's going to enter a mutual contract to effectively become part of their company.

> just a formality and a friendly chat

That was not the case in this scenario. I was told I would be offered the role if I came out favorable with the CEO (did he like me or not? did I jump when the said "jump"?). To me this meant that the CEO doesn't trust the people he hires. He clearly didn't trust the hiring manager's jugement and/or respected their position. The CEO delegated a task and responsibility but then felt to have to authority to override that, which maybe he does. However, that's not a culture in which I want to operate. If I was wrong, so be it, but I saw a red flag and I made a choice.

You know better, as you have all the information and we merely have a shadow of it, but that in itself still sounds like “standard boilerplate” to me.

I remember from my friends who worked at Google at the time, that everyone’s always been told that “every new hire’s contract lands on Larry Page’s desk, he has to sign off on it”, and you can probably bet your bottom dollar that Larry Page didn’t spend a lot of time on each hiring package, if any.

I'd argue I won't work there. "The buck stops here" is never true when shit hits the fan so it's just kabuki theatre in all other situations just to take credit.

I wouldn't work at Google either.

If you can't trust the people you have hired to hire people then you shouldn't have hired them.

it's usually just a meet-and-greet.

Yes, it usually is. But in this case the problem was that the CEO could unilaterally override the decision made by everyone else, so it wasn't just a meet-and-greet.

Yea, it's not a meet-and-greet, as in there can be no impact to the outcome of the interview. You're definitely still interviewing. But, in every case where I got to the point of "You're going to chat with the [Founder|CEO|BigTech VP]," at that point the job was mine to lose. They're not going to waste a VIP's time if they're not serious about making you an offer. You effectively have the offer. Your job when talking to the VIP person at the end is to "sound like a likable, competent person, who VIP would be cool with saying 'yea I hired this person'." That's pretty much all you need to do.

Generally the chat with the VIP means: "You have the job, but I (VIP) want to just double check that my underling hiring managers are not totally useless."

You effectively have the offer.

No, you don't have the offer at all. If you did, you would already have the offer letter in hand and the meeting with the VIP would just be a casual meet-and-greet. When it is part of the interview process, it is very deliberately because the VIP has veto power, and thus the decision to hire has not been finalized.

Your job when talking to the VIP person at the end is to "sound like a likable, competent person, who VIP would be cool with saying 'yea I hired this person'."

As you point out, the VIP is the one making the hiring decision. Everyone before the VIP was just a filter before the actual decision-maker.

(Outside of tech) the only time it's normal for a VIP to be involved in the interview process is when they're interview for executive or other management level positions, or for a role that would be working directly with management on a regular basis. But tech likes to do things backward, and insist that a VIP wasting their time on a lower-level hire is somehow normal. It's not normal in any other industry.

That is exactly the assumption I was operating under, I even called it a "veto". Does not change anything I wrote.

(And of course the CEO can override any hiring decision anyway. The question is if they will.)

The point of my comment (and yours) was that the hiring decision wasn't actually made, because as you point out (again): the CEO's decision was the only one that mattered.

That's a huge red flag for any workplace. The only time you should ever consider taking a job at a company like that is if you're unemployed and you need the job and have no other prospects.

If you got to that point it's just a formality, and unless you somehow blow it the job is (probably) already yours, if you decide you still want it. You seem to have jumped to unwarranted assumptions about the company culture; quite possibly the CEO does want to make sure the culture is good and remains good. It's not necessarily a binary test of whether the CEO can't trust delegating to their managers; it's also your constructive opportunity to use that conversation to get more insight into where the company, strategy, product/service, customers etc. are going. A good question to ask the CEO is about the broader impact of your role: that should get you some useful insight, also you compare the delta between what the CEO says vs what the senior managers said vs what the recruiter said; they don't need to be identical but they should broadly agree, and it shouldn't reveal any fundamental disagreements or ambiguities (e.g. "your role is incremental support of product X" vs "totally rewrite it in language Y in the next 9 months"). Listening to their response should also give you subtle behavioral cues about who in the company does/doesn't have influence, credibility and where the pain points are: you can't generally get that from the previous interviews, and it can be a faux pas to explicitly ask.

(PS: if you find reasons to suspect the CEO isn't delegating effectively to managers, then ask the CEO an open-ended question "How much do you do yourself vs which tasks do you delegate to your managers?" then listen carefully to their answer. And it's still not necessarily a red flag, it may just be a new or inexperienced CEO, or maybe overcompensating for one or two bad hire experiences at current or previous company. Compare to their answer to "How do you assess new hires within the first 90 days?").

The only (minor) negative I'd take from this is that it still behaves like a small startup scaling quickly, and they haven't yet figured out how to to scale interviewing and hiring for when they get larger... but that's overall a good complaint, it shows they're still growing. It's much better that your signoff interview is with the CXO (or VP) than the Director of HR, or an AI bot. Honestly I'd pay more attention to how many days/weeks/months it takes them to make the hiring decision than how many management layers were involved; that's a bigger tell of organizational dysfunction.

Don't overthink.

I don't agree, but I think your perspective is valid so I upvoted you.

I've worked for companies that did this, in fact I'd say this is commonplace at startups and small companies, at least till around 500 employees or so. If I ever start another company, I'd operate the same way as a founder/ceo. While Dunbar's Number probably puts an upper limit on the number of people I can truly know in my organization, I think it's incredibly important as a leader to have the possibility of putting a face to a name inside the one endeavor (company) you are wholly responsible for. That doesn't say anything about my trust or lack there-of in the people below me on the org chart.

I almost feel the opposite. I've turned down jobs because I want to understand the strategic direction and the folks I was interviewing with couldn't adequately explain it and they were unwilling to let me meet the folks high enough up the chain that they could as part of my interview process. If I can't get the time of day out of the founder during one of the most important decisions (hiring) that their company makes, they're certainly not going to give me the time of day once I'm in the door and that means I have effectively no feedback mechanism. Why would I want to work there?

My friend has been contracting at $STARTUP for a couple of years now with a revolving 2 month contract. His managers have not attempted to hide the fact they would likely end his contract once they've managed to hire a full timer into the team.

Sadly, their CEO has veto-ed every single full time hire they've tried to bring on for past 2 years now.

I never understand this dynamic, why not hire the friend after like 6 months of contract or whatever?

The product is old school PHP. They want to convert it to Go but none of the young engineers are interested in touching the codebase. My friend is the reverse instead, uninterested in learning new languages/technologies.

So neither of them want to hire each other.

Because that would be a big pay cut for the friend. Contract day rates are higher than FTE day rates.

You made the right choice.

The only time a CEO should be meeting a hire is if the company is a tiny startup, or the role will be working regularly and directly with the CEO.

Otherwise, it's the worse kind of micromanagement. If the CEO wants to meet the new face they do so after the person starts, and this is the norm outside of tech.

I don't get why people downvote this.