What's the biggest red flag you've encountered during a hiring process?

When I was 19 and naive, I was interviewed for a desperately-needed summer job selling dictionaries door-to-door. The head interviewer wore a three-piece suit, gold watch, and an expensive haircut. He told me that as a demonstration of my independence and maturity, he wanted a commitment from me right then and there that I would accept the job and sign all the paperwork if he made an offer. If I wanted to go home and think about it or discuss it with my parents, that meant I was "immature" and didn't have the right stuff for the job.

Fortunately I had the presense of mind to see through that and walked out. When I got back to school, I found out that a friend of mine had worked for the same company selling Bibles in rural Tennessee; he hated it so much that he quit after a couple of weeks. He didn't make any money because the contract he had signed required that he stay for the entire summer before seeing a penny.

I was invited into an in-person interview in downtown San Francisco for a role on a digital marketing team at Adobe. One of the two or three potential colleagues (all women) interviewing me one by one, condescendingly asked me if I voted for Trump.

It was very strange, anti-toxic/toxic, and came out of nowhere. It made me consider secretly filming & voice recording interviews, especially in the SF Bay Area where people are a bit more influenced by political trends.

"You're not allowed to work on your own projects when you're not at work"

The biggest red flag ever

The CEO had pictures of his racing Porsches all over his office, but the bathrooms looked like they hadn't been painted in 20 years. Told me all I needed to know about where the priorities were, so I bailed.

In the case above you agree and let them share details than say thanks I'll let you know.

I also don't signs of bureaucracy, lack of flexibility or emotional manipulation generally.

If a company cannot negotiate salary because of some corporate rules, I'm not interested. If a company will not give me any flexibility in working hours I'm not interested. If a company tries to make me feel bad about not immediately accepting their offer I'm very likely to not accept their offer at all.

Rigid companies which have no regard for your emotional wellbeing are not pleasant places to work and I struggle to give my best when I feel I'm not respected.

Years ago I was interviewing for a software engineering role. At the end of one of the interviews I asked how they liked working there. And the interviewer caught me off-guard with "it kind of sucks". She went on to explain that the company recently promoted a bunch of youngsters into VP roles through a combination of nepotism and early start dates, and they didn't know what they were doing. I thanked her and politely bowed out of the process when the hiring manager reached out to me with the next steps.

This was Nvidia in 2006 and their stock is up about 200x since then.

coding interviews

Once, I had an interview where the hiring manager seemed uninterested in my questions about team dynamics and growth opportunities. It made me wonder if they valued open communication.

I believe interviews are a two-way street, and if a company isn't willing to engage in meaningful dialogue, it might signal potential issues down the road.

For those interested, we have open positions! https://www.ratherlabs.com/open-positions

Admitting the company is involved in drug trafficking.

EDIT: illegal drug trafficking

I was once asked “why do you want to work here?” while interviewing at a Hardee’s as a teenager.

I was summoned to a nondescript industrial building, found my way upstairs and wound up in a grubby room posing as a lobby. I was seated on a low futon and had several discussions with my knees nearly level with my ears. The conversations were overly casual but with some oddly specific IT security questions. I seriously contemplated walking out of what was clearly an amateurish, shoestring operation.

Nope... I have worked there 20 years so far.

My first job was to evict the former sysadmin, and within the first 90 days I was relocating the whole company, building out the new IT infrastructure.

So in the spirit of the recent post about Charlie Munger killing a lot of pilots I would suggest not judging the company solely by its lobby. Make a list of real deal-breakers and consider overlooking the rest.

In retrospect: hiring managers having Ayn Rand books at work.

I once was interviewing for an internship at a quant firm in Chicago (I was in my Sophomore year I think at UIUC) and my interview went pretty well up to the point of my second-last interview of the day.

Then, I sat down with the VP of engineering, and he opened the interview with "so, what do you think it is we do here?" And I naturally stuttered through a canned answer about how they use arbitrage opportunities in the market to profit off of mis-priced securities, etc. Then he asked me, "but what benefit do we provide? Why is working here good for society?"

I blanked, and didn't answer for about 15 seconds. Then, I tried to start piecing together an answer until he stopped me, told me he had found my Facebook, and wasn't appreciative of my politics (I was moderately lefty in high school, significantly more so now; maybe this conversation is part of why). He had _printouts_ of some posts I had made criticizing George W. Bush, talking about why I thought we should be raising taxes on higher earners, supporting Obamacare, etc. He told me that he didn't think I had the "cojones to stomach the job" (direct quote), and told the recruiter not to bother with the last interview and that I had failed.

I _sobbed_ on the train home; I think it was the worst I had ever felt about an interview in my entire life, and yet looking back at it, I think this was the best possible outcome. Imagine if I had worked for this asshole.

I've worked for companies I don't personally agree with in the past; it's part of living in a society(TM). I am able to hold my nose to a certain extent to make an income for my family (heck, I am currently having to cross picket lines to come to work, which makes me feel icky). But I can't fathom what hell I would have been living under had I gotten and taken that job.

I should have spotted it but didn't: They took me out skiing one day between interviews (they were courting me pretty hard, and good snow was a selling point for the region) and I met the CEO for the first time on the slopes.

He wore a full motorcycle-style helmet with a mirrored face visor which he refused to open; it was like talking to a member of Daft Punk. It had fake hologram bullet-holes on it.

More importantly, he skied like an asshole: cutting people off, sudden stops or changes in direction without checking if anyone else was coming, cutting ahead in the lift line, stopping to readjust his gloves or whatever directly in the lift exit ramp, shouting at people who he felt were in his way -- just totally self-absorbed and borderline dangerous.

It turned out to match his management style 1000%.

After a 1-hour presentation, "come back tomorrow and we'll tell you the details of the job."

Nope.

She cited herself as a reference and her last three employers were all clearly made up. Another coworker hired her anyways, because of her appearance. It didn't end well.

Circa 2000, I was invited for a lunch interview.

I walk into a completely dark and empty cubicle space, one lit office in the back.

Lunch meant the interviewer ate a Hot Pocket off a paper plate as we talked.

Didn’t even offer me any.

First interview I walked out of.

"You need to send us a handwritten page that we'll send to a graphologer in Switzerland. Nobody is hired without a graphological report."

I did that, got hired, and wouldn't comply again. First job after university.

Nothing bad happened. Years later I could read the report, and it was nothing remarkable.

At one place my boss would have been "VP of Global Technology". I looked up his career history and he had none. Zero tech experience. It turned out that he was the son of the founder, but the hiring manager didn't tell me that until after we had been through several rounds. It became clear that the entire department was a make work project for that guy.

I accepted a gig at one place and a week before it was to start they told me that my start date would need to be pushed back six weeks. I found another gig in that time. They were infuriated - infuriated - that I hadn't waited.

In another, one of the interviewers literally dozed off. In another the CTO - an English guy - continuously trash-talked Finns (my last name is Finnish and the company and interview was in Finland). Another, the interviewer unexpectedly gave me a large coding project abruptly on a Friday evening to be completed Monday morning.

as a CS undergrad i interviewed at PwC or a similar firm one day. The lady hands me one of their 2 page publications on IT and asks me to write a summary. She gets back and I explain that the publication makes no sense and is full of inaccurate bullshit. Needless to say I didn’t go work there.

This isn't quite what they asked about, but much of my work has been freelance contracts from the internet. One of the biggest red flags for a project description is when they mention that the project is "very simple" or "easy for someone who knows what they are doing". That just means they are dirt cheap and looking to rationalize the way they squeeze contractors.

Another red flag is that it's a freelancing site.

Gaslighting/mind games during the interview.

I had an interview for a large well-known bank software internship maybe 15 years ago. One interview was a role-play in which I was attending a meeting in lieu of my boss with someone from another division of the bank to discuss a behind-schedule project.

Role-play starts and this guy storms in, slams the door and starts shouting about how the software department are useless and how are we going to proceed. At one point he yelled that without his department we wouldn't have money to keep the lights on.

In retrospect, I'm sure this was a lot of fun for him and it might have been a good filter but I also am more than happy that I did not proceed to the next round if this is what they wanted to show me about their culture.

Oh here's another one - I was interviewing at Google and got an offer, and I decided to ask for a meeting with the HM because the other job I was considering at the time gave me an interview with the HM that was really enlightening and made me feel good about taking the other job over Google. I figured it would be a good way to directly compare the two jobs since the comp, etc. were similar.

The moment I met the HM I wanted to leave. He was brusque, felt like our entire meeting was a waste of time, and was, quote, surprised that they had finally filled his job req. I tried to brush this off as him having a bad day, and sat down for coffee with him. We started having a stilted conversation in which I mentioned that I had just adopted a dog, and his first response was, "oh god, I _hate_ dogs, please never bring it to work."

That was kind of the end of that. Sure, maybe it's petty, but I was getting bucketfuls of bad vibes from this guy.

Canonical. Their desktop experience had already lost its shine (and, effing snaps), but I made the mistake of believing that they might be cool anyway, without doing my research.

Intelligence test? Story about high school? Reflex test? The actual red flag for me was their final admission that they require an unpaid internship in the form of "community participation."

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/tkc348/my_interview_...

Once I applied to a slightly sketchy indeed posting. The company was named something incredibly generic like WorldProgrammers or GlobalDevs. Within 60 seconds of posting my application, I got a phone call from a very pushy guy with a thick Indian accent, requesting that I fill out a separate application over email. When I didn't immediately respond (because I was at work), I got a series of calls from the 'manager' over and over until I blocked the number.

The listing was on the edge of too good to be true, and the immediate and desperate attempts to reel me in were a huge red flag.

I withdrew my application, did everything I could to block them, and reported the listing to indeed.

I have no idea what the scam was, but I'm absolutely convinced it was a scam. It was honestly pretty scary, and I'm sure that a slightly less vigilant person would get pulled in.

Did a few rounds of interviews with a company which had quoted a pretty massive pay range (companies are required to list salary ranges where I live). The bottom end of the range would have been quite low for my work, but the upper end would have been pretty typical and an improvement from my salary at the time. I asked a couple of times during the multi-round process if they could narrow the range given my educational qualifications and experience, and was told several times that they didn't do that until the final interview.

Lo and behold I get to the final round which is a meeting with the CTO, who's recently been brought on by the PE firm which acquired the company ~6 months prior. He spends about 30 minutes telling me about all the work he's done in his career and how many patents he has. We have a short (<10 minute) conversation about the position itself and what kind of work I'd be doing, and then he gets to the salary question. He asks me what my salary expectations are, and I quote something near but no quite at the top of their range, which is low-median for my job type and area. His only response is ~5 seconds of silence and then "woahhh". He goes on to offer me 30K less than that, because "we're looking for someone in the low-middle skill distribution of the market". I say that's not going to work for me, and he gets very mad. He starts effectively negging me, telling me that the job I was in at the time was dead-end (not entirely wrong), that "the sky is much higher over here", and that he's looking for people who value impact over salary (lol). Long story short I retain my cool as best I can, give him the lowest salary I would be willing to move over for, and he says he's going to have to think it through. I get a one sentence email directly from him the next day that they won't be extending an offer and that's the end of that (I can't believe I took 4 hours PTO for their stupid coding interview).

Anyways 6 months later I got recruited by a much bigger firm at almost twice what they were offering me, and I've seen the same job posting listed on local job boards on-and-off for the last 2 years so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not a specific story here but..

I have NEVER ever ever ever seen a red flag (in an employer or employee) that was not real.

Not every red flag needs to be a deal killer, but it never is just your imagination or just goes away.

They said they liked to start their engineers on the assembly line for a few months so they "know what's going on". Um, no, not for me. Found out later that "no" was definitely the right call.

Back in 2014, I was an intern at a major tech company doing software testing for $13.25/hr. I was about to finish my CS degree and my internship was ending, so I was applying for software engineering jobs.

During a phone screen at one company, they asked my salary expectations, and I said $60K. They asked what I was currently making, and I (naively) answered the $13.25/hr. They said they could do $16/hr, and that I should consider that generous, as I shouldn't expect to get more than 15% more when getting a new job. Also, they would expect 50-55 hrs/week of work.

I noped out. Yeah, I needed work, but I wasn't desperate.

After looking at Glassdoor, I got the impression that this company was preying on desperate new college grads, underpaying the shit out of them while expecting the world so they don't have time to apply for better jobs. One guy, in his review, said that when asked about work-life balance, the manager said "We believe in work-life integration." He noped out just as quick.

Remember that every company, like every interviewer, is trying to put their best foot forward during the interview process.

You can never expect them to be on any better behavior, so expect this as your top bar for your relationship and you'll not have many surprises.

As a corollary, that means anything that looks like a red flag is probably an iceberg.

Very long take-home assignments, I was interviewing with a startup for a backend position. they gave me 5 days to build a Cinema Ticket Reservation API, this by itself was long since it required managing 5 to 6 tables with it corresponding crud and business logic of each one (and also tests) but apart from that they wanted to see complex data structures, design patterns, caches strategies, be able to "scale", a design diagram, and as a bonus if I wanted add a CI/CD pipeline.

I did only the core app, but none of the others stuffs beacase that looked like way to much unpaid work just to "prove" my ablities.

I should have known better becase they rejected me because the project was to simple, wasn't going to "scale", and did'n used any complex design patterns, a day an a half of work wasted.

The glassdoor salaries were the red flag I ignored at least twice. They were about half of what I was asking. In both cases I gave my asking price, and they said something like 'well, it's not out of the question'.

Did all the coding tests and such for both, both claim I 'aced' them. One made me an offer about half of what I was asking, in line with the Glassdoor salaries. The other didn't provide an offer after basically trying to ask how little I'd take.

"So what might have caused this strange new syndrome in our trading system?" "Perhaps one of the market participants was doing something different?" "Nope."

Then literally two hours of me stumbling through possible technical issues to do with the internals of a system I had never seen. Even though I had thought I was being considered for my maths rather than my computer skills.

"Well just so you know, it turned out that one of the guys trading on the platform was doing something different." Laughing politely, "but you told me...". "Oh well no that's not what I would consider a market participant."

I call my laughter polite but I suspect it had an edge to it. Anyway he immediately walked me out saying, "we'll send you feedback." The feedback was that I had asked for too much money. (I hadn't asked for anything.)

Nothing crazy but I interviewed at a startup a few years ago — I use the term startup loosely as the company was around for 10 years already but still calling themselves a startup (eye roll). Anyway the VP said every morning the entire company attends stand up. Mind you that was almost 50 people in the meeting discussing their updates. Yup I bolted. They tried to follow up with me after for additional interviews but I ignored it and moved on with my life.

Interviewed with a defense contractor. I had three “ins” at the company and was basically interviewing to check them out because I was about 90% sure I’d get an offer.

I was about to burn out at my current job at the time. Too much stress, too many hours, too much crazy. At this interview, every one I talked to talked about how “exciting” and “cutting edge” everything they were doing was. “We barely finish a prototype before they’ve changed the design and we have to start over without testing the last one.” “It’s very fast paced, stuff is changing all the time.” “We work over some. Last week, I put in 72 hours, but that’s not typical.” “A dozen companies have tried to solve this problem, but we think we’ve finally figured it out.” And so on. And it was a weapon technology, which I had ethical qualms about.

I called them back and withdrew my application. The HR guy said he was preparing my offer. I told him I didn’t want to see it. My biggest fear was that it would be enough money to tempt me to take the job and I would have been miserable.

Six months later, half of everyone there was laid off. They never got the big problem solved. They lost several contracts. Dodged that bullet (pun intended).

[delayed]

[delayed]

I once interviewed for a financial company. They were looking for an experienced developer who could easily onboard onto a project. During the second meeting with the HR representative, he asked me to meet with the guy I was going to work with, and proceeded to give me context on why they were hiring someone. It turns out the guy I was supposed to meet was the sole person working on a project which managers were piling on pressure to get done in spite of being astonishingly understaffed and overworked. Why were they looking to hire another guy? Well that developer rage-quit on the spot, and left the country without noticein protest because of being systematically overworked and underpaid.

It turned out the company actually couldn't afford to lose him, and started addressing his concerns. He reconsidered staying after they gave him a huge raise and promised to hire someone to help him.

If the soviet-parade-in-red-square number of red flags wasn't enough, the recruiter proceeded to say they were looking for someone who loved the job and wasn't seeking to work for money.

I was relocating from California to NY/NJ and packed in a bunch of interviews over one day. They were all startups, and the first two or three were great. Very professional companies and people.

The last one, the guy was twenty minutes late for an hour interview. I had a hard stop to get to JFK, so I was getting anxious and ready to walk. He finally comes gets me. The place is tiny and everyone is squeezed into two large tables, one being a large round dining room table. No one made a sound, and it seemed like a sweatshop.

Not kidding, we maybe spent about ten minutes talking about my experience, and he took the remaining 20-30 minutes talking about how he was likely going to leave soon to do a Masters in PolySci. Guy was smug as hell. He basically said I should expect an offer, which was great to hear, but seeing the place, and vetting me only after really ten minutes, I thought that was a huge red flag. I withdrew the next day when I got back home.

They sold to a major newspaper about 8 months later. Not sure what the terms were or if it would have been a quick payout for me, but my gut says that would have been a miserable 8 months. The job I took instead turned out to be four years at a great company. It ultimately failed, but I was managed by a sharp boss who I greatly respected, and colleagues who many ended up being great friends.

I was in the final stage for a YC company and met the CEO at the final interview. I had already kind of messed up the technical interview so I wasn’t feeling too great about talking to him to begin with. He opened with an introduction of himself and told me the history of the company which was fine, and asked if I had any questions. I asked him what were some challenges that he faced during the growth of the company. his answer was that “people challenges” were among the hardest of problems that he had. the only example that he gave was having to let go of an engineer that was underperforming.

I didn’t get the offer, but I didn’t want to work for somebody who would say that to an engineer applying for a job. (plus they had the weirdest stack i’ve ever seen)

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.

Why didn't you just agree to see the offer? It's not like you couldn't just ghost them or whatever.

I applied for a company that gave me a "take home test." They wanted me to use my evening free time to create a boilerplate Java backend. I was actually willing to do it (one never should) until I found out they were contracting for ICE. Very quick nope.

I interviewed with a company that kept telling me repeatedoh how “people-focused” they were and how people were the most important thing to them.

Over the course of 3 interviews, I was ghosted by the CEO (had to email to see where they were 10 minutes into the scheduled interview), left with no contact for weeks between interviews and then when I emailed to check in was told, “Sorry for keeping you waiting, we were going to email you today…”, and then they wouldn’t let me read the company handbook before signing the offer letter.

It was a real stark example of telling vs. showing.

Nine years ago, during the interview with the manager of a textile company, he asked what my religion was. I said i didn't had any, and then he said "You know what happens with people who don't follow any religion, right?" and pointed down, indicating that i was 'going to hell'. That made me want to quit right there, but i was so much in need of a job.

I wasn't hired in the end, despite doing well on the tests. But it was for the best as everything worked out in the end.

At a tier-1 hedgefund. I got an offer for its branch in Asia, and I was in the US at the time. It said it would like to make an offer, but it said it can show me the employee contract only in person. I asked I need to see the contract before I fly and move to a different country. I did not take the offer. Also, the compensation happened to be 80% lower than then-current compensation.

I interviewed many years ago at a web agency in Melbourne.

I was coming from contract work for the federal government, preceded by salary work for a state government - both of which allowed me to work flexible hours, eg start at 10, finish at 7 or what have you.

I asked the guy if they supported flexible working hours (this was a year or so before I started working fully remote) - their office was literally the other side of the city to my house so commuting during non peak hours would be a huge benefit for me.

His response: "well we have a standup meeting every day at 8am which you must attend, and we don't allow overtime so you need to finish by 5. But you can take your lunch break any time you want".

They offered me the position a couple of days later and I never bothered to respond.

If your working conditions make government employment look flexible, there's something very wrong with your company.

Treating candidates inconsiderately in any form

This is not one incident but it happens to many times — when the hiring manager or sometimes other interviewers as well start explaining how:

- team/company works like a family

- we even party together on weekends

- then things like: we “love and own” our work we only leave once it’s done

Or a place that’s not clear and don’t want to be specific about availability/timing requirements i.e clarity about hours (which is by the way like 100% of job posts here on the HN!!!)

Mercenaries are willing to give their lives on their job, you’d be crazy if you thought I’d cross a red traffic light for your company

A certain engineering firm recruits college graduates mostly to brainwash them “we are #1 in employee happiness!” (Made up bs for mid tier form smaller than Benesch).

Eventually fired because I’m handicapped and wouldn’t join their softball team and pretend the baby faced bully was cool.

Glad it finally broke me. Social security disability time.

What is a "mercenary?" Someone who wants to make money?

Just a vibe I got from the small company owner. His way of speaking at the final stage: his demeanour, over seriousness and stuffiness etc. All other stages with devs were great.

Ignore my gut and took the job. That was a big regret :-(. Most dysfunctional org I have worked at. As one of many examples I got made a team lead then someone was put on my team to help a tough deadline.

Turns out (hidden from me) this person was someone on their last legs they wanted to test out for a final go before firing. And I was being tested too: blamed for not spotting he was struggling within a couple of weeks of him joining the team.

$_Insert another 10-20 dysfunctional war stories here

I ended up resigning with no onward job. Only time I have done that.

Gut instinct can be good.

Your instincts were accurate.

Everyone's a "mercenary" and you can't compel loyalty by being a control-freak dick. They want compliant slaves who will work for nothing and will never leave the unending crash schedule. The end isn't gonna be either pretty or successful.

One of the biggest red flags I've encountered during a hiring process was a complete lack of interest in my thoughts, ideas, or experiences. During the interview, it felt like they were just going through the motions, asking generic questions without really listening to my answers. There was no engagement or curiosity about what I could bring to the team.

When I asked about the company culture and the team I'd be working with, the answers were vague and dismissive. It gave me the impression that they were more interested in filling a seat than finding the right fit.

That experience taught me the importance of mutual respect and genuine interest in a hiring process. If a company doesn't take the time to get to know you during the interview, it's a strong indication of how they'll treat you as an employee.

The company requested pay slips for the previous three jobs. Also full names and identity card numbers of all relatives, t-shirt size, shoe size, pregnancy status.

This was before the first, codility level interview.

Some years ago I was looking for a change, I was burnt out/tired of my job at that moment and I started looking for new opportunities. At some point, a HR agency contacted me for a role with a startup and it seemed a match for my skills/what they were looking for. It was a 10-20 people company. I passed all the technical challenged and I got to talk with the CEO.

I remember he asked me if I was married and/or if I had kids. According to him, they needed people who are "committed" with the company and people without responsibilities are more likely to leave the company if they don't like it there.

This question caught me off guard and I just answered. By that time I was young and single, but I somehow managed to defend that I was committed and so on... Later, when the interview finished I noticed I should have stopped the process immediately, I wasn't desperate or anything like that I don't know why I continued. I guess they needed people who have no choice but to keep working due to the shit show the company was and I decided to ignore the offer. They tried to call me twice but I didn't answered. I bet I dodged a bullet.

Salary: "Competitive"

I was interviewed once, so I came to their office and they had part of interview by remote key team members, they have never showed up. The local team said not to worry, this happens, come again tomorrow. Thank you but no thank you.