I can’t speak to how they are now now, as this was about ten years ago, and I don’t want to be too specific as they are extremely litigious lol, but…
I applied for a jr position, something I was not overly qualified for but could have easily done at the time with some training. I am now a Sr in that position, so the capacity was there. Anyway, round one interviews are fine, nothing stands out there, but like I said it was ten years ago, at least.
Then for the next interview I had a call with the director of the department I was applying for. He was short with me from the start, and I remember being incredibly taken back by his attitude before we’d even gotten into the interview. I have extreme social anxiety and am admittedly terrible in job interviews, so being thrown off right at the beginning of the call didn’t help things. Then there seemed to be a misunderstanding on his part about which level of job I was applying for. He clearly thought I was underqualified either way. He asked me what I now can confirm were insanely technical and architecturally specific questions and then when he’d finally managed to trip me up on an answer he completely unloaded on me. For several minutes he berated me for wasting his and Nintendo’s time and then told me I was being blacklisted and to never apply for a position anywhere at Nintendo ever again. Which, no problem. Even though I understand he was just a jackass, I’m still recovering from it to be honest. But extrapolating how he must run his department and what that must mean for the culture over there, I have not been surprised by the downfall of Nintendo in the least. Shit is as shit does, my friend.
Wow, that’s very bad, I don’t think I’ve had one that bad. Outright insulting you in the interview is simply uncalled for. Cutting the interview short is fine for both sides, hey it’s not a match, any questions? Then goodbye.
In tech we have some thing like that called the “Bar Raiser” interview. Typically it’s the second to last interview, last one being with people/culture/HR. The bar raiser is to “See if the candidate raises the bar”. It’s a horseshit way to justify “Belittle them and make them question themselves so much to see if they crumple under pressure”. Amazon did it to me, after 3 hours of straight interviews the 4th hour was the bar raiser. At that point I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, I had shakey hands, and was asked to implement binary search from memory on a white board. The “manager” then berated my implementation for 30 minutes and questioned every detail. I was very close to just passing out because I was so hungry. I remember literally stumbling nextdoor to mcdonalds and eating 3 cheeseburgers in under 5 minutes. No one offered me coffee, water, or a snack.
I bring this up now because maybe they were trying to do that, but they did it very poorly. The one credit I give that shite manager was that he didn’t belittle me, only everything I did. He never raised his voice either, only interrupted me constantly and rudely brushed off my answers. Granted, I hear that’s standard at Amazon.
In both of our cases, they do a great job at showing their place is toxic as fuck, and it was good we moved on. (Fun thing, I was laid off a few years ago and had the opportunity to reapply at Amazon, but luckily got another offer last minute. I ended up turning down Amazon, and man they do not like when people do that. You can tell they have just reports on reports to figure out why someone wouldn’t want to work there!)
alekwithak@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I can’t speak to how they are now now, as this was about ten years ago, and I don’t want to be too specific as they are extremely litigious lol, but…
I applied for a jr position, something I was not overly qualified for but could have easily done at the time with some training. I am now a Sr in that position, so the capacity was there. Anyway, round one interviews are fine, nothing stands out there, but like I said it was ten years ago, at least. Then for the next interview I had a call with the director of the department I was applying for. He was short with me from the start, and I remember being incredibly taken back by his attitude before we’d even gotten into the interview. I have extreme social anxiety and am admittedly terrible in job interviews, so being thrown off right at the beginning of the call didn’t help things. Then there seemed to be a misunderstanding on his part about which level of job I was applying for. He clearly thought I was underqualified either way. He asked me what I now can confirm were insanely technical and architecturally specific questions and then when he’d finally managed to trip me up on an answer he completely unloaded on me. For several minutes he berated me for wasting his and Nintendo’s time and then told me I was being blacklisted and to never apply for a position anywhere at Nintendo ever again. Which, no problem. Even though I understand he was just a jackass, I’m still recovering from it to be honest. But extrapolating how he must run his department and what that must mean for the culture over there, I have not been surprised by the downfall of Nintendo in the least. Shit is as shit does, my friend.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 18 hours ago
Wow, that’s very bad, I don’t think I’ve had one that bad. Outright insulting you in the interview is simply uncalled for. Cutting the interview short is fine for both sides, hey it’s not a match, any questions? Then goodbye.
In tech we have some thing like that called the “Bar Raiser” interview. Typically it’s the second to last interview, last one being with people/culture/HR. The bar raiser is to “See if the candidate raises the bar”. It’s a horseshit way to justify “Belittle them and make them question themselves so much to see if they crumple under pressure”. Amazon did it to me, after 3 hours of straight interviews the 4th hour was the bar raiser. At that point I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, I had shakey hands, and was asked to implement binary search from memory on a white board. The “manager” then berated my implementation for 30 minutes and questioned every detail. I was very close to just passing out because I was so hungry. I remember literally stumbling nextdoor to mcdonalds and eating 3 cheeseburgers in under 5 minutes. No one offered me coffee, water, or a snack.
I bring this up now because maybe they were trying to do that, but they did it very poorly. The one credit I give that shite manager was that he didn’t belittle me, only everything I did. He never raised his voice either, only interrupted me constantly and rudely brushed off my answers. Granted, I hear that’s standard at Amazon.
In both of our cases, they do a great job at showing their place is toxic as fuck, and it was good we moved on. (Fun thing, I was laid off a few years ago and had the opportunity to reapply at Amazon, but luckily got another offer last minute. I ended up turning down Amazon, and man they do not like when people do that. You can tell they have just reports on reports to figure out why someone wouldn’t want to work there!)