<story><title>VP of Engineering - &quot;best of the best&quot; = no more than 12 years experience?</title><url>http://www.jobscore.com/jobs/500friendsinc/vp-of-engineering/cWzS0cMM0r4OrNeJe4egig?detail=HackerNews&amp;remail=&amp;rfirst=&amp;rlast=&amp;sid=161</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>geuis</author><text>This is going to probably bite me in the ass because I&amp;#x27;m looking for work at the moment and occasionally apply to interesting YC companies but since this has come up, I&amp;#x27;m going to share my story here because of the negative experience I had with the company in question.&lt;p&gt;I had a phone screen with 500friends recently. They were late calling me, and the person I was scheduled to talk with wasn&amp;#x27;t even on the call. They had pulled some poor engineer off of whatever he was doing, shoved my resume in front of him, and said &amp;quot;go&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The list of things that our &amp;quot;interview&amp;quot; contained:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    1) Late in calling me at our scheduled time.
    2) Scheduled person was not present on our interview call.
    3) Engineer that was put on the call was ill-prepared for the conversation.
    4) Questions asked of me were a combination of very basic and others being completely unrelated to the nature of the position being interviewed for. 
    5) The scheduled person appeared at the end of the call barely long enough to say his name before hanging up on me.
    6) Hung up on me suddenly.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
#6 was what really got me. It was literally, &amp;quot;Hi this is &amp;lt;x&amp;gt;, we&amp;#x27;re out of time, click.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If you advertise a position as requiring a certain set of skills, then ask prospective employees about those skills! Go through their experiences and see if they&amp;#x27;re a good engineer outside of the narrow scope of &amp;quot;solves logic puzzles well&amp;quot;. You might be surprised that someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t normally write linked lists in javascript or implement 2500 year old prime-solving algorithms on a weekly basis actually has skills and experience to contribute.&lt;p&gt;My personal recommendation for anyone considering 500friends is to skip over them. There&amp;#x27;s much better companies more deserving of your time and consideration, and you&amp;#x27;ll certainly be treated better.&lt;p&gt;## Just to add on, I don&amp;#x27;t have a problem with logic problems. But too many people &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; ask them and don&amp;#x27;t do real interviews. Yes, I can do linked lists in javascript. Does that tell you anything useful about what kind of engineer I am? No, it doesn&amp;#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rdouble</author><text>Not to excuse that sort of behavior, but this is a pretty typical HR experience in the Bay Area. Late calls, no-shows, awkward questions, either too easy or too hard, abrupt endings, obviously haven&amp;#x27;t read the resume, etc. Happens all the time, unfortunately.</text></comment>
<story><title>VP of Engineering - &quot;best of the best&quot; = no more than 12 years experience?</title><url>http://www.jobscore.com/jobs/500friendsinc/vp-of-engineering/cWzS0cMM0r4OrNeJe4egig?detail=HackerNews&amp;remail=&amp;rfirst=&amp;rlast=&amp;sid=161</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>geuis</author><text>This is going to probably bite me in the ass because I&amp;#x27;m looking for work at the moment and occasionally apply to interesting YC companies but since this has come up, I&amp;#x27;m going to share my story here because of the negative experience I had with the company in question.&lt;p&gt;I had a phone screen with 500friends recently. They were late calling me, and the person I was scheduled to talk with wasn&amp;#x27;t even on the call. They had pulled some poor engineer off of whatever he was doing, shoved my resume in front of him, and said &amp;quot;go&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The list of things that our &amp;quot;interview&amp;quot; contained:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    1) Late in calling me at our scheduled time.
    2) Scheduled person was not present on our interview call.
    3) Engineer that was put on the call was ill-prepared for the conversation.
    4) Questions asked of me were a combination of very basic and others being completely unrelated to the nature of the position being interviewed for. 
    5) The scheduled person appeared at the end of the call barely long enough to say his name before hanging up on me.
    6) Hung up on me suddenly.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
#6 was what really got me. It was literally, &amp;quot;Hi this is &amp;lt;x&amp;gt;, we&amp;#x27;re out of time, click.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If you advertise a position as requiring a certain set of skills, then ask prospective employees about those skills! Go through their experiences and see if they&amp;#x27;re a good engineer outside of the narrow scope of &amp;quot;solves logic puzzles well&amp;quot;. You might be surprised that someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t normally write linked lists in javascript or implement 2500 year old prime-solving algorithms on a weekly basis actually has skills and experience to contribute.&lt;p&gt;My personal recommendation for anyone considering 500friends is to skip over them. There&amp;#x27;s much better companies more deserving of your time and consideration, and you&amp;#x27;ll certainly be treated better.&lt;p&gt;## Just to add on, I don&amp;#x27;t have a problem with logic problems. But too many people &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; ask them and don&amp;#x27;t do real interviews. Yes, I can do linked lists in javascript. Does that tell you anything useful about what kind of engineer I am? No, it doesn&amp;#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nugget</author><text>A friend of mine had a very similar experience with this company and their C level team.  Maybe some public feedback will help them reflect and improve.</text></comment>