
Former Valve initiative CastAR shuts down - stesch
https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/26/15877804/castar-shut-down
======
dmitrygr
No surprise.

I interviewed there a while ago, it was one of the most surreal experiences
ever:

First the HR lady refused to proceed unless I told her what my current salary
was. I refused, as I always do. She said they cannot proceed if I do not, and
I said that that is fine and I am happy to leave. She said no, we can go on.
She then tried to get me to sign a very large NDA. I refused, as I always do.
She said that without that they cannot demo their technology to me. I said OK,
i do not need a demo, if, after interview, both the company and I feel like we
match, we can do that then. Ok… she brought her boss, same story with him –
salary, NDA, etc… Eventually he said we can proceed to interview.

Two guys walk into the room – #1: Asian, 50s, #2: White, 30s.

#2 did not say a single word the entire time at all.

#1 looked at my resume, and asked why I thought I was a fit. I said that they
called me and spent weeks convincing me to come interview, so that is not a
question for me. He asked if I had done any embedded work. I said yes, and a
list of my cooler projects was on my resume and website. He looked and said:
“this is all crap.” I asked “excuse me?” He said that none of my projects were
interesting or useful. I pointed out that my world’s smallest JVM has actually
been licensed by a number of companies, indicating that it is useful, and
that, uARM, my modular ARM emulator was being used in a few universities to
teach courses on architecture. Se said that he doubts this, and even if true
it proves nothing.

#1 asked if I was familiar with running linux on very limited hardware. I said
that yes, and I had in fact run it on an AVR a while ago. “That is all crap”
was his reply.

At this point I was a bit stupefied. Instead of asking me questions, he was
just insulting. But ok, perhaps it was a cultural difference, so I persevered.

#1 asks if I had had any experience porting android to any devices. I pointed
out that yes, I had ported new versions of android to a number of old devices,
and once to a watch that had had no android support previously at all, and
besides that I worked in Android at Google. He told me none of that is what
they are looking for.

I asked what it is they are looking for, and he said: people who have
experience with android porting. I re-explained carefully that what I had just
told him is that I had ported android to a number of devices and was quite
familiar with the process. He again said that “no, that is not what we need,
this is worthless”

#1 asked me if I had ever made changes to android graphics stack. I said that
yes, I had, including writing my own implementation of gralloc and HWComposer
on a weird 2D accelerator on a weird MIPS chip. He said that yet again no,
that is all “crap”

At this point, I had had enough. So when he asked me again (for some reason)
why I thought I was a fit, i replied: “well, I clearly see now that I am not.
Sorry for wasting your time.”

I got up and left.

Given this sort of interviewing process, I am not at all surprised of the
outcome of this company.

~~~
mickronome
That sounds beyond bizarre! It would have been really interesting to know if
management was on board with that interview style. Not that it would change
the fact that walking out probably was the correct choice.

~~~
dmitrygr
I considered writing this up publicly after, but did not do it. Hopefully they
did find a good linux / graphics / embedded wizard whose work was not "crap"

