alt Hacker NewsI always wanted to tell the story of my weirdest interview. It's bad in a different way from OP's. This was for a "Machine Learning Engineer" contractor position.
- Hi, I'm gobdovan. How are you? says I.
The interviewer doesn't bite:
- How many prompting techniques do you know? (ok?..)
After a couple confused seconds, I respond with 2-3 techniques and ask if I should explain them, but the interview engine is already running at full speed:
- What is PEFT? How many PEFT techniques do you know?
I say I know LoRA and start to explain it, but the interview had no patience for answers longer than their acronyms. Before I knew it, I heard frantic clicking.
- He starts sharing his screen while I am still talking about LoRA in the background. Puts up an empty car from Google Images and commands: "Model the relationships between cars and people positioned inside the cars over time."
Uncertain of how to satisfy the inquiry, I start foolishly questioning what the task is supposed to be: vision? simulation? dataset labeling? self-driving cars?
But the interviewer doesn't budge. Doesn't give a specific task or context. Simply ignores the questions and stoically refuses to elaborate. The stars speak to me, and I guess he wants a relational mapping of some kind. Turns out I am right. This was supposed to test basic SQL table modeling.
At this point, I decide I'd sit through the interview just so I can collect all the questions. I am not disappointed:
- How many agentic frameworks do you know?
- What is the name of OpenAI's embedding model, and how many dimensions does it have?
- Then, the last ordeal lands: interviewer takes out a piece of cardboard that has "context engineering" written on it and asks: "What does this tell you?". His camera is unfocused, I ask if he could read what it says. Instead he repeats: "What does this tell you? What does this tell you? What does this tell you?".
I ask if he is the ML team lead. Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role.
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I've had an interview like this in the past. At the time, I chalked it up to a power trip and the indignant behavior that comes along with it, as it is especially embedded in the culture of the country that I'm based out of.
Having said that, talking to a relative, I found out that this style of "interviewing" is often done when they already have someone for the position, but need to show (for compliance reasons, or otherwise) that they tried finding candidates, and only their preferred one qualified.
> "What does this tell you?"
Why didn't you answer, that it tells you that his camera is unfocused?
I don't understand how people tolerate this for so long, I'd start trolling the guy after his third question. If he wants to be rude, then I'd retaliate and make sure I have a laugh while he is wasting his time.
I had an experience like this. I showed up and was handed a 50 question pen-and-paper exam on C# trivia, like the result of cursed operator precedence chains. I am not a C# programmer.
No small talk, no discussion of the role, no discussion of my experience or interest in the position. I kept trying to decline and open up a more conceptual conversation on relative importance of things in software, but they really cared about grading my work.
Easily 2 out of 5 interviews I've taken expose spectacular miscommunications between HR / management and future coworkers.
It's also pretty sad that now "ML engineer" means prompting...
I had such an interview once. The recruiting agent explained to me beforehand that this is kind of a "stress-technical" interview, supposed to test my real knowledge as I would have to answer the questions without thinking, almost instinctively.
My interview happened on the phone while I was commuting on a crowded train, and was extremely successful - at the end, we both agreed that we were not looking for each other :)
This was back when leetcode was just coming in full swing (early 2010s), which since then replaced it completely. I think the (startup - coincidence?) company that was trying to hire simply didn't have the money to pay for a leetcode hosting service, a phone call costs nothing after all, only time...
" but the interview engine is already running at full speed:"
I dont know if this is a recent thing, but I had a similar thing where an interviewer was racing forward, and would only accept the answers he had in mind.
In Python, he asked me how to search for substring. I was thinking but he started hurrying me. So I said regex and started writing a regex.
"No, there is an inbuilt method"
I couldnt remember the method. He asked me to google it, but there are dozens of string methods.
"I could use a regex?" I said and tried to show him how.
He ended the call, and 5 min later the agent called me to say my Python was sun-standard so they wouldnt be going forward.
This guy was a permanent employee and supposedly an expert
That is quite funny, I would have certainly left.
> Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role
Those elite frontier mobile devs and their overwhelming power!
I had an interview like this, I got annoyed and just responded with "I don't know" to all of his questions. Then the CEO of the company offered me a position, politely declined ofc
It's a good job I wasn't being interviewed for this job, as I have not one iota of a smidge of a clue what PEFT and LORA are. And I have no idea what varieties of prompting technique there are.
This is the best thing I've read all day thank you. I laughed so hard!
Oh man imagine if they asked the janitor to interview you and he just goes at it like it's the defining moment of his entire career.
Holding up a cardboard board in a video interview? This is so deranged.
I wonder if such companies realize (or care) how much good talent they're losing by keeping bad talent.
Why doesn't stuff like this happen to me, i'd have so much fun with a guy like this >:)
I had one a bit like this, the interviewer was a nontechnical guy who just had a list of questions.
I don't know what I would do, I've never had to hang up on an interview, but I just might have especially after how it ended.
Whenever I'm in an interview (almost) like this, I happily remind myself that interviews work in two directions: they are also for me to evaluate my possible employer.
> Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role.
Until this line I assumed this was a screening by HR.
"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."
I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound like an absolute Chad. That, sir, is a Giga Senior Alpha Chadus Maximus.
I kinda wish that the industry norms changed such that it wasn't so taboo to just name and shame these companies.
You have to respect this guy's patience tho
What the actual F lol
> I ask if he is the ML team lead. Turns out this absolute Chad is a mobile dev the client asked to interview candidates for the MLE role.
Some times I run into companies like this: The people you talk to are so visibly inexperienced that you can't comprehend how the company functions, let alone makes money.
Some times it's a zombie company. They received funding or got a windfall from some early business moves, hired a ton of people, and now they're floating through the industry transferring money from customers to salaries as long as they can while their customers slowly leave for better options.
Some times it's a company with horrible management skills. They promote people who play the game instead of doing the work. The person in charge of the ML initiative only wanted to say that they hired MLE people for a new ML initiative for their resume. They grabbed someone who wouldn't complain or talk back and gave them the job of interviewing MLE engineers. That person ChatGPT-ed some questions and ran through a list in each interview, knowing their job was to go through the motions. The interview filters out everyone who would hate that environment, selecting for more people who know that the name of the game is going through the motions and pretending to do work while avoiding getting fired.