I don’t usually have sufficient motivation to post much on any social media platform. This is rare for me. I am putting this out in the world in part hoping for some validation, in part hoping it sparks some kind of social action to save some semblance of privacy and dignity in this modern world.
Warning: this is long.
I just wrote an email to a recruiter withdrawing my interest in pursuing a job (it’s a recruiter hired by the hiring company). I am a software engineer with decades of experience who has been unemployed for almost a year with almost no interviews. I’m hungry for paying work. Yet. I did this. Below is the email I wrote, and it is hopefully self explanatory.
I think my career might be over - especially if the kind of process I experienced is now the standard for hiring. I want nothing to do with it.
I wrote this after multiple days of trying to set up my system for the “assessment”. I ended up having to install Windows 11 (I’m a Linux guy) because the assessment environment simply didn’t work. I tried FireFox, disabled plugins, tried two versions of Chrome - neither would work. It apparently had to be the Google version.
I upgraded an old version of Win 10 (because Microsoft pretty much forced it). Got it to work on Firefox for Windows.
Twice, mid-way through the assessment, it reset itself to square one. I didn’t try a third time. This assessment software monitored my face and would raise an alarm if I looked away. It controlled my microphone. It required full access to every aspect of the browser and had me do an alt-tab partway through this “test” in order to ensure I wasn’t using any other software. Insulting. Invasive. My equipment. My home.
---- the email ----8<----
First, I appreciate your understanding and that you gave me what information you have on how this software works. Now, the hard part. My disappointment will show in the text, and it is not directed at you or your company.
I’m inclined to cease pursuing this. I feel insulted by the process in the first place, but went through it understanding that we, as job seekers, have to accept compromises we would not otherwise accept because having a job is a fundamental requirement to literally survive and provide for our children.
However, the more I’m expected to change my personal, owned equipment and software in an invasive fashion just so some stranger can have 100% surveillance on my activities in my home in order to be considered for a job interview, the more insulted I become.
Granted, I’m unusual. I’ve dedicated myself to protecting my electronic privacy by installing malware and advertisement blockers on my phones, computers, tablets. I use VPN. I built my own home NAS because I am uncomfortable with placing all my personal, financial, and health records into “the cloud” (and being charged for the privilege). I am teaching myself how to use AI by downloading and running models in my home lab because I don’t want to give out my privacy and income to strangers.
I stopped using Windows at home years ago because I could not stand the way it was dictating to me how to run my computer and constantly seeking to part me from my money with distracting advertisements while siphoning everything about me back to their servers to better market to me. Worse, it was forcing me to buy new hardware in order to simply run the system after upgrades.
Here I am, faced with a stark choice. Debase my values for the sake of the possibility of a job with a company that apparently doesn’t consider applicants worthy of dignity, or remain unemployed - possibly forced to exit the career I love if everybody is doing this - and potentially fall into poverty.
If they’re doing this before they even talk to me, it tells me that as an employee I will have at minimum this same level of surveillance. Knowing this in the back of my mind will burn me out in under six months.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I could live with myself if I chose the first option, so I respectfully withdraw myself from this process. I’m a professional. I expect to be treated like one. If there are companies who are serious about hiring a professional, I’m all in. Please engage me.
Last year I was trying to get a new job and I wish I’d had your convictions to end the process when it was clear things weren’t going well. Instead I let them string me along for a total of 6 onsite interviews (on 6 different days) with around 20 different people. When I had an interview with the CIO I was certain that the job was mine… only to be told the next day they were going with someone else.
After the 3rd interview I was already thinking that it was excessive and when they asked me at the last minute to come in for the last interview a voice in my head told me that I need to tell them to either make me an offer or fuck off. Instead I showed just exactly how desperate I was, and ended up hating myself for it.
Pride doesn’t feed a family, but you should hold your head high for this decision.
Thank you, and I’m sorry you went through that. I had a similar experience some years back.
You did the right thing, and you did it gracefully. I would have told them to fuck the fuck off, and probably would have reported them to the department of consumer affairs and to the fair work commission (aus)
I’m a professional. I expect to be treated like one. If there are companies who are serious about hiring a professional, I’m all in. Please engage me.
That’s really well said.
I remember being in the same situation a couple years ago in which I was accepted to an interview through a video chat web application hosted by the company.
To my horror, when I joined the meeting, it was not a video chat interview. It was a series of recorded clips of their HR person reading off questions, the clips pausing, and then a timer showing up on the screen noting “You have 15 seconds to answer”.
I was so put off by this that after the first question, I decided to spend the rest of the time I was being recorded explaining to them under no uncertainties that this was one of the most unprofessional interview processes I had ever engaged in, and that they had made it clear that they did not value my time whatsoever, so I had no reason to reciprocate.
Yeah. I half expect that if I went to the next step, I’d be in an AI Zoom interview next.
Unfortunately I’m inclined to believe this is on purpose to filter out people with self-respect such as yourself.
It’s not just a cost-saving thing (though I’m sure that’s also a factor), it’s a way to make sure the only people who go through with such interviews are those who are very desperate. Because people who are desperate are more willing to subject themselves to poorer work conditions.
Companies will only stop doing this when it actually stops working, which is unlikely given the massive inequality in our world today.
I went through the exact same thing with Dyson back in ~2018 worst interview process I’ve ever experienced.
You made the right choice. I was treated with more respect when I was flipping burgers in college.
Playing devil’s advocate: The reason companies feel the need to put these systems in place is most likely because many candidates cheat using chatbots.
In my company, until very recently, engineers were running the first and second stages of interviews (right after CV vetting) and I’ve heard many times in the last couple of years that my colleagues suspected candidates of using LLMs. There would be unnatural pauses, typing after every asked question etc.
Granted, I don’t think any have slipped through to being hired, as it’s still pretty obvious, but I can understand why companies may want to put safeguards in place.
Are they going too far here? Absolutely.
For us, we actually sit with the candidate in a pair-programming kind of setup to gauge their vibes, way of thinking and confidence as they solve coding problems that closely match what they would do on the job. That usually eliminates “seniors” that haven’t coded for 5 years or that got there by nepotism or sheer passage of time.
Most serious tech companies have just straight-up stopped all remote interviews. It’s simply too fraught with cheating, fake people, and foreign operatives. Interviews are in person and include hand-written code, because we’re back to high school trust issues baybeeeeee
Then the solution is to do an on site Interview, not to ask a candidate which they’ll later reject to install spyware on their personal computer.
Many of our candidates are from abroad, and we pay their VISAs and help them move here if they are hired.
You can offer in-person as an option, but I’m not sure most of our applicants would want to travel hours for an interview. Especially if there is more than one stage with deliberation needed in between.
Most of our applicants seem to be people currently in employment but who don’t like their job. They are likely doing interviews on the sly during work hours and likely don’t want to take a full day off or signal to their employer they are looking for a job.
All this to say I doubt forcing employees to do in-person interviews is a good option for most people, but I do agree it should be an option the interviewee can ask for.
Fair enough, but in that case please don’t ask them to install spyware on their personal computer. A video call for a face to face interview is OK, but what this post described is understandably infuriating.
We let people use chatbots in our technical interview and don’t even mark down for it, since they’re a tool that exists.
I have yet to see a candidate who uses chatbots be anywhere near as good at producing good solutions quickly as the ones who don’t.
Here’s the interesting thing. I found out any kind of computer use during an interview was “cheeting” during my prior job search. For years, I’d been taking notes during interviews, like names, key points about the job, answers to my questions. Somewhere along the way, that became a problem. I also used to search for things occasionally.
Silly me, I thought searching, researching, taking notes, etc., was part of the job and an indication of smart working. Now, we are expected to recall the smallest syntax detail from memory - On the spot, while being watched and timed, in a high stakes interaction.
This is less like someone looking for paid help for a business and more like a sadistic exercise in prisoner torture.
Now, imagine having ADHD and going through that.
That’s a fair point. I think some of our interviewers have said that they don’t mind the candidate using a LLM, as long as they are up-front that they are doing so.
I’d say the kind of use is important. If they are using it as a form of advanced auto-complete, that’s fine. If they are using it uncritically, or to avoid thinking about the problem, I doubt I’d hire them.
We need engineers who can solve problems, not a salaried middle-man to an LLM.
The hiring company failed the interview. It happens, and IMO you’ve exercised good judgement here.
My personal suspicion is that this sort of inhumane, inhuman, hiring process filters for people who are either desperate for work, or who don’t see anything wrong with this sort of thing.
I totally agree. It’s a test of submission. I bet my life savings that job would have increasingly creeping amounts of unpaid work and extended working hours, with the implicit threat that saying no means you’re fired.
You mean like my last job. Yes, it was the insulting treatment at my most recent employer that gave me an extra bit of self respect that pushed me to make that decision. The proverbial last straw.
Why would you feel bad, the interview is a 2 way process. They are evaluating you but YOU are also evaluating them. It’s actually VERY costly to you too if you start working for the wrong company. If you realize after a week or a month that truly the culture, the tooling, etc basically anything but the pay does not match YOUR needs, whatever they may be, they you HAVE to pull out.
You can be polite about removing your application, as you were, but you should not feel bad. It is precisely WHY there are interview. Candidate think about it as only them being evaluated and that’s very wrong. As your title says clearly it is about self respect but not just during the interview, the whole time. If you are not a match sure it does suck, for both, but that’s again better than a forced match that will bring both down over time.
Finally regarding your last part, I recommend you edit your post to put your precise skillset and experience there. Hopefully someone can refer you to the right place.
top part of monitor: “genuine” windows qube in HVM -->sys-residentialproxy —> sys-vpn ----> sys-net
bottom part of monitor: tor browser chatting w/ ai ----->sys-whonix--------------> sys-vpn ----> sys-net
but it’s easier said than done, and more than that, it’s fucking infuriating having to do any of this shit.
i fucked up an interview because it took me an extra 30 minutes to find out chromium wouldn’t work, firefox wouldn’t work, and only plain vanilla chrome would work. you’re not the only one who has been fucked by this. the interview platform demanded chrome but won’t tell you; you have to trial and error find out. corporations want grateful docile slaves. it’s time consuming to figure out what normie bullshit each asshole corp wants.
it’s really fucked. when i use privacy preserving techniques, often company anti-fraud systems flag me as “fraud.” but if i actually use “white hat” tactics that “ethical pen testers” use, suddenly i’m allowed to have privacy and use my own system and they think i’m a normie.
sometimes i don’t even care any more and use systems that obviously seem like fraud, because it’s just me and not fraud and i hate them, and then if they think it’s fraud who gives a fuck. if they flag me as fraud, i’ll go with another company. none of their shit stops anyone good and these anti-privacy companies get a false sense of security from all the “amazing” cloudflare blocking and anti-fraud protection… they are getting charged blocking real users and then one day someone brutal and sophisticated comes, someone not like me who doesn’t know shit, and just destroys their servers.
You are channeling my feelings. In this case, the instructions said Firefox or Chrome, but it had to be Google chrome, since that’s the most invasive and Firefox was not working. It’s when he said try Chrome that I finally said to myself, “what the fuck am I doing?” And ended it.
I hate cloudfare. I use vpn so about 30% of the time I’m banned because some asshole use that IP for bad behavior. Usually fixed with a reconnect. However, the other 70% of the time I have to “prove I am human”. It’s exhausting.
I was eager to try Qubes a few years ago, and toyed with it. At the time it was not playing well with windows and setting up the is templates looked a bit annoying, so I dropped it with intent to revisit after a major version or two. I think now is a good time to pick it up.
This process pretty much summarizes why I’m scared to try changing companies lately. Presumably these measures are to make sure you’re not cheating with AI, but then if you get the job they expect you to use AI.
I like in-person interviews most, they totally resolve the trust concerns. And to other engineers interviewing you using fewer MS products is typically viewed as a good thing. But getting to the in-person part is difficult in this market even if you’re willing to put up with all their spyware from what I hear.
Instead of declining the role, you should have told them their assessment platform is so broken that it’s undoubtedly costing them good applicants, and that you’d be happy to make that your first project as a staff engineer.
It’s a product they use, not their own. If I were talking to the actual company rep, I might have given it a try.
Still they chose the platform and pay for it. They actively decided to use it.
I’ve worked in large corporations. Many times such decisions are made without knowing important gotchas. It’s often a result of sleazy marketing by vendors.
What if the intent is to filter out people who won’t put up with this sort of shit? It might be working very well indeed from the perspective of the hiring managers.
You were overqualified for the position if they’re making you go through that amount of bullshit.
The only software assessments I’ve done allowed me to use the internet, just like how I would in a job. The difficulty comes from being timed and having bizarre edge cases.
I hope this is not becoming normal.
I would absolutely have emailed them and asked for another way to do an assessment. You did the right thing, even though you’re not really in a position to be denying work.
Good on you. I turned down an interview at the first level because they asked me to download one program, I said I’d be happy to download anything they want if they bought the hardware and paid for my internet.
Haha I love that response you gave them
I do the same when people want me to download whatsapp. This is why we need unions.
Let me give you a slightly different perspective.
I have senior dev friends who are PETRIFIED of doing those types of screens, leetcodes, and coding exercises. They’re stuck in awful jobs that barely use their skills because they don’t want to sit through those tests again.
Then I read someone who said they just treated the whole process as a grind level in a videogame. You have to get past it to get to the next, fun stage!
I’ve conducted a lot of interviews, sometimes as a hiring manager. Every single person ever turned down was because of culture mismatch or lack of experience in a specific domain, not because of those silly assessments.
Next time you encounter a similar situation, just think of it as a stupid game level you have to finish before getting to the boss fight.
Day by day, year by year, people put up with more bullshit, more bullshit gets normalized. Let me give you a slightly different perspective. If you convince yourself to think and do as you’ve explained, the next generation will convince themselves that even more degrading treatment is acceptable for the sake of employment. We will all be stripped of any dignity we have left. We’ll all be slaves in everything but name.
I was unemployed for a year before I went back to hospitality, before this I’d worked 5 years within a state government
Look after yourself mate, it’s rough
