
Ask HN: What's your funniest hiring interview story? - mlejva
Funny might be interpreted in both good and bad way.
======
jpdb
I was applying for my first real tech job as a help desk/sysadmin/LAMP stack
admin role at a webhosting company. I had some experience doing a bit of this
type of work on my own, but by no means was I an expert.

During the interview I was asked something like, "Can you explain what the
LAMP stack is and what each piece does?" I gave my answer but when I got to
MySQL I prounced it "My-Sqwill." The interviewer kind of gave me a funny look,
chuckled a bit, and said, "Do you mean, 'My-Sequel'?", I gave the excuse I
didn't know what the word was because I never heard anyone say it.

I walked out of the interview pretty defeated, but a few days later I heard
back and got the job.

A month or so in I was speaking with the interviewer and he said, "Do you know
why I hired you? Because you mispronounced 'MySQL' and said you didn't hear
anybody say it out loud, but you could still tell me how it worked, what it
did, and how to use it. To me that says you were mostly self-taught."

He was right and huge props to the interviewer for recognizing that.

~~~
dragonsngoblins
Oh man I once made a huge ass of myself by hearing someone call SQL "Sequel"
for the first time and saying I had never heard of it while talking about
database design. Everyone else I had ever heard say it out loud had used the
"Ess-Cue-Ell" version of pronouncing it.

Weeks later I heard someone else call SQL "Sequel" and I had enough context
there to know they were talking about an SQL database and put it together. I
think the person from that first conversation just thought I was a complete
fucking moron though.

------
sethammons
Funny "strange/tragic" rather than "haha." Two stories. Heck, a bonus third.

My teammate was calling a candidate who had submitted their resume. Teammate
got their voicemail where the candidate drops the N-Word. To top it off,
Teammate was African. Non-plused. Candidate frantically called back
apologizing saying it was a joke voice message. A big nope from our side.

A candidate comes in, brings their laptop for the shared screen coding
section. Frantically clears all the Asian porn tabs while sharing. When we get
to the questions for us part, he asks about the open travel policy and if that
can be used to go to Thailand (no, open travel was to our other offices, all
in the US). A bit cringy.

Bonus round. Early in my interview experience. Candidate comes in and two of
us are going through coding questions with her. Simple stuff. She is woefully
not qualified. We reach out to our in-house recruiter (much more experienced
than either of us) for help on ending the interview early. Co-interviewer and
I step out and go to the kitchen to commiserate on the negative experience.
After letting the candidate go, In-House-Recruiter comes over. "Man, I've
never seen someone cry so hard at being told it wasn't going to work out."
Queue us interviewers feeling gut punched and like total jerks, totally gap
faced. In-House-Recruiter laughs and says just kidding, Candidate knew she
wasn't qualified and was just interested in trying a dev interview as she was
normally a project manager and was perfectly fine and smiling as she left.
Man, got us good.

~~~
gammateam
Was candidate culturally authorized to use the N-word? Whether it was
appropriate or not in a work environment I can see that paragraph reading
completely differently with more context.

I actually had to re-read it 5 times at the “non-plussed” part, I just assumed
the candidate was of African descent before reading the teammate was too. In
which case the voicemail recording wouldnt have been a “flag” just not prepped
for professional settings. Many people’s voicemail arent whether its a
competitive or not.

The combination would have resulted in smiles and nods for that almost
distinctly American experience. But I guess it was just some suburban kid of
non-African descent that really wanted to use the N-word.

~~~
sethammons
It was a white kid with the hard "r" at the end, and not a jovial "ah" ending.
My bad for being unclear, had just woken up and was typing from mobile.

~~~
gammateam
The real question is whether the EOCC would consider the candidate to have
said something hateful in a work environment or whether they would consider
the candidate disqualified on basis of race

I should be a lawyer what am I doing

------
karmakaze
My first car, an Alfa Romeo 75 (aka Milano) broke down on the highway. Engine
siezed--the car had a timing belt issue earlier from lack of maintenance.
Found a clean Volvo 850 being sold privately. Met the guy who was very pleased
to deal with me. He threw in a set of nice Nokian (yeah they made those too)
winter tires and sold it to me when there was a better offer because he didn't
like negotiating with the other buyer. The car was clean--he and his wife
would hand wash it every weekend for the life of the car.

So as we're finishing the transaction, he sees my engineering ring and asks
about it. Yes, I do software. Hmm, he asks if I could help him out of a jam.
He needed someone to add a print function to a Windows NT app. I say sure,
I'll take a crack at it. He shows up that weekend with a laptop all set up
with a dev env and source code. Figure out how to do GDI printing stuff and
get it done. When he picks it up and sees what I did, asks me if I want a job.
Worked as Director at that telco spin-off consulting place for years.

Another fun story is how when roommate of mine was interviewing for a company
I interned at, I joined them for the interview because it was done over lunch
due to scheduling issues. At the end of the day, I drop by their interview
room to see who else is around to say hello to. The VP of R&D is there with a
job offer in an envelope. I don't know how they expected to be seeing me that
day. Good thing though, I was dragging my feet applying for grad job
interviews.

In general, I haven't looked for jobs, they find me one way or another (pre
LinkedIn). I did once submit an updated resume--after I was hired.

~~~
stonecharioteer
Wait what is an engineering ring. I don't have one of those.

~~~
detaro
In Canada, the title "engineer" is taken more seriously and restricted to
people graduating from specific engineering programmes. The ring is a symbol
of that:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring)
(in the US, a similar thing exists for certified engineers:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring))

~~~
tabtab
My Batman Decoder Ring™ didn't help with my interviews.

------
loandigger
Hiring for a programmer position, It's January and it's the coldest day of
winter, down in the low single digits.

The candidate is a 40-something man with a pretty good resume for the slot.

I start off with small talk.. "Wow, can you believe this weather? I can't
remember the last time it was this cold."

He replies, "Is nothing. In Russia is where cold grabs hold of you, deep in
bones. Only one thing help."

He reaches into his bag and pulls out an half empty pint bottle of vodka,
opens it, takes a pretty decent swig and offers it to me.

"Is that from today??? I ask.

"Yes, very cold this morning."

End of interview.

~~~
xenihn
You missed out.

------
calabin
I applied as an intern to a prop trading firm during my junior year of
college. After the phone interview, I was invited in for an on-site. I get
there and it's your standard electronic trading firm setup. Open office, desks
grouped somewhat by the team you were on or what product you traded, so on and
so forth.

They take me into this small conference room off of the main floor. It really
could only seat two people comfortably but had seats for four. We started to
talk about a pairs trading project that I'd done in my spare time when I hear
a yelp come off of the floor and then the ear-splitting noise of Bawitdaba by
Kid Rock blaring from the desk immediately outside of the conference room.

I can't emphasize enough just how little of a reaction the interviewer had. I
paused momentarily and he gave a look to encourage me to continue talking,
only now I had to yell. I answered the rest of the question as though we were
communicating at a construction site. He then asked a follow-up, only this
time he yelled as well. This continued for the approximately four minutes that
the song lasted from start to finish, and when it was over we went back to our
normal speaking voices. Neither of us ever acknowledged the impromptu Kid Rock
concert.

I got the internship and was later offered a full-time position but turned it
down to do startup-esque things.

------
eithed
Not something I witnessed personally, but at one of my previous places (a web
agency) my boss interviewed a guy that showcased a porn website as one of his
projects. Apparently the interviewee was pretty pleased with himself on the
how he tackled technical aspects of the work - handling favourites, tags,
account part etc. while going through the live site with all the videos
without a hint of reflection.

~~~
tabtab
Reminds me. After the dot-com crash I couldn't be picky, and thus interviewed
at a porn company. One of the interviewers was clearly a porn star or ex porn
star and had huuuge breasts for her otherwise skinny frame.

She was watching my eyes the entire time. I realized if I looked down to
examine her uniquely proportioned features, I'd fail the interview. It took a
lot of will-power to never even glance. She was probably there to test my
will-power, since she didn't ask technical questions. (I didn't get the job
for reasons not related to anatomy.)

------
mohaps
Interviewer: What are your strengths? Me: Cache Invalidation and Naming
Things.

We paused and looked at each other for a minute and then we burst out
laughing.

~~~
ArrayList
That is fantastic.

"There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation, and
naming things." \-- Phil Karlton

~~~
grkvlt
> There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation,
> naming things, and off-by-one errors.

I think this version is better, sadly no idea who to attribute it to ... ?

------
tabtab
I was trying to break into web programming from desktop programming, so I was
willing to start with a relatively low salary to get my foot in the door.

The interviewer asked what I expected as salary. I replied, "I'll accept
peanuts to get started in web". A voice then rang out from a random cubicle:
"Well that's exactly what they pay here!"

Another time an interviewer asked, "can you work well with difficult people?"
Of course that set off a yellow alert in the back of my mind. Unfortunately,
it was just after the dot-com crash and I couldn't be picky, so took the job.
There was indeed a very good reason they asked that question.

~~~
dawidw
Could you write some more about "difficult people" you worked with?

~~~
tabtab
I worked in a small room with 3 IT employees. They all 3 had big quirks.
(They'd probably count me as #4.) One guy, my de-facto supervisor, was from
the military and brought military culture with him. He strictly dictated my
tool-set and work-practice conventions without debate, which was the main
reason I left. I could live with the other quirks. (My actual supervisor was
in a different building and knew almost nothing about IT.)

The other two people liked library-style quiet and rarely talked unless
necessary for work, and were not sociable. I had a habit of talking to myself,
such as grumbling about Microsoft. But, I had to quickly quel that habit. The
least annoying guy liked classical music, which was something we had in common
and the only non-IT chit-chat I did there. A toast to classical music! (clink
clink)

------
jerok
I was applying to a developer position and the recruiter sent me a url to a
web application for online tests, this was very long time ago when they
weren't so popular, and this was the first time I was sent one.

The mail with the link arrived while I was at work. They told me that it is
time-limited so I wanted to wait until I got home to be be free of
distractions, but I was getting curious.

I though I can log in with another email and take a look at what kind of
questions would I get, so being still in the office I logged in using a very
old email address I had: 'crazybastard@hotmail.com'. I went through the
questions without thinking too much, and finished very quickly.

10 minutes after that I got a call from the recruiter:

\- Hey, have you finished the test?

\- (What a pain! I though.) No, I'm waiting until I get home after work to do
it.

\- OK! (hang up)

5 minutes after he called me again:

\- Are you lying to me?

\- Why would I do that?

\- The client told me that some guy called 'crazy bastard' has finished it
already, but it wasn't you. Did you give the test to someone else to solve it
for you?

\- Actually I tested the website, logging in with a different email just to
get familiar with it, but I expected to do 'the right one' later when I get
home.

\- That was a single use link, you only had one chance to do the test!

\- Ups! I didn't know that.

\- Now the client believes that you were trying to cheat. Sorry I think you
fucked up!

\- Why would I give it to someone else to do it on my behalf but pretending to
be someone called 'crazy bastard' instead of myself? That is the opposite of
cheating. Please tell them that I'm sorry for the confusion, tell them the
story and that my intention was to prepare as best as I could for the task.
Pleeeeease!

\- I'll see what I can do...

Later in the day he called me again to tell me that the client though the
story was to stupid to consider it cheating, and since I got 90% of the
questions correct in half of the time, they wanted to proceed to the next
interview round.

------
justaguyhere
Less than a year into the industry - we were a bunch of kids handling a not-
so-easy project, and we were told to hire some experienced people. So we
started interviewing. One of the candidates was very experienced and she got
annoyed because we asked her "very simple, beginner, kid level" questions. And
she cut the interview short and left.

We felt bad for her (we were never disrespectful, we just asked questions to
the best of our ability. It didn't help that we were just fresh college grads
with no real world experience). It is kinda funny if I think about it now.

Edit: Another one, not personal, but happened in a place I worked

The sysadmin team was hiring. The candidate walks in, lists the names of all
the servers we had and a whole bunch of other details that only our sysadmins
were supposed to know. The candidate had hacked into our network and had
leisurely browsed around and made detailed notes. He was hired on the spot and
his first task was to plug all the holes that he had used to get into our
network.

------
stephen82
A few years ago, I was on my way for an interview. An asshole cut my way in
the most dangerous way you can imagine that I nearly kill a pedestrian,
because both the pedestrian and I did not know where to do, thanks to this F1
driver and his expensive car, so I hit brakes and the poor pedestrian jumped
onto my car to avoid getting hit by that moron.

I swore the shit out of this bastard. He was looking at me like the devil...

15 minutes later, I was outside the reception of the company I was about to
get interviewed.

The lady told me to go to the conference room.

Guess who came for the interview? The ASSHOLE!

"oh, you! Hi, bye!"

------
thedevindevops
At the time I was a firmly entrenched back-end dev and was put onto this job
by a recruiter and it was just up the road from the house, blissful commute
through a park, not the best salary offer but that was negotiable, in short -
great potential.

In the nitty gritty of the interview I found they asked me a lot of javascript
questions (okay I thought, maybe they were testing my limits - they were
confident in my 'advertised' back end skillset from just reading my CV?).

Turns out the recruiter had put me up for the wrong position, it was front-end
and to my credit they were willing to hire me as front-end but I had other
interviews for positions I'd prefer.

------
bsvalley
back in the days, I was interviewing over the phone with the hiring manager of
a large startup in SF. Basically doing live coding on a shared note pad. The
guy started chatting with his colleagues and completely forgot about me. 10
minutes in the exercise I had a bunch of clarifying questions to ask. I kept
yelling and calling him over the phone, he did not hear me and kept talking
with people around.

15 minutes into the interview I hung up. 15 minutes later he tried to call me
back on my phone (apparently he took him 30 minutes total to remember I was
interviewing). Got an email from the recruiter mentioning a "connection
problem during the interview". Then the day after I got another email from
that recruiter saying "I wasn't a great fit for the role:.

I think startups really win the #1 spot when it comes to horrible candidate
experiences.

------
JoeAltmaier
Leaving church one day, guy in a nearby parking lot having trouble starting
their motorcycle. Had a balloon tied to the seat, there'd been some goofy
balloon ceremony after service so I said Hi! want a lift?

In the car we talked, I said I worked remote in CA but would like to try a
local job. He said they'd been looking for a Project Lead at their startup,
I'd be a shoo-in. I went over, they talked a bit and made an offer.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Was at a gaming convention in Milwaukee, in the hotel room, phone rings and
Mark an old client of mine was calling. "Hey we got bought, won't be doing any
more contract engineering, can you take over support of one of our customers?"
Thinking fast I said "Yes!"

Turns out it was Mark's biggest customer, they'd been designing their products
for 25 years, and its become a multi-year contract for us for a year now and
several years to come.

Glad Mark still had my phone number!

------
gumby
We had one guy who completely flubbed the his whiteboard question, something
like "sort a deck of cards"; his routine totally didn't do what we asked. I
gently asked something like, "umm, is that going to solve the problem?" He
said, "Oh I'm a total fucking idiot", laughed, and fixed it. Great hire.

BTW I've been using whiteboard interviews for years. I know a lot of people
hate them but if you don't use trick questions, let the candidate use whatever
language they like, and treat them more as a collaborative effort you can get
a good feel for a candidate (i.e. see through nervousness) and give _them_ a
chance to see if we are a-holes or not. Think of the whiteboard more like
scratch paper. If somebody gets wrapped around the axle on some part you can
gently guide them out of the problem and then usually they can find their
balance.

------
nmc
At my previous job, I would start screening interviews with "What is the
difference between a bit and a byte?"

A candidate actually replied: "One bit is 0.12 byte"

~~~
zbyszek
And since you had asked for the difference and not the ratio, the candidate
immediately failed, right?

~~~
nmc
Funny :) I would have hired the candidate who would have told me the
difference is 7 bits!

Still a failure because the ratio is actually 0.125, but I kept going for a
few questions, I stopped when they could not explain the difference between a
thread and a process...

------
Xoroxoxoxoxoso
I was applying for a junior dev position. I already had some experience so I
wasn't completely junior, I liked the company though and they only had a
junior position available. So I thought what the heck I might try it.

I had been already waiting about 20 minutes in a boardroom when two guys came.
We all introduced and sat down. One guy looked at my resume and after a while
said

> "Well, if I had time before this meeting and looked at your resume I'd
> prepare myself because you're clearly not a junior level developer."

It's worth noting that they had my resume about a week in advance.

~~~
mcguire
Oh, if I had a nickel for everytime somebody dropped by my cubicle and said,
"Can you sit in on this interview?" while throwing a resume at me.

"When is it?"

"Now."

------
kremdela
I walk into the office of the VP of Business Development, interviewing for a
role to lead their ecommerce team. And I sit down and notice a fidget spinner,
a couple of fidget cubes and a scrambled Rubik's cube on his desk. As we are
sitting down I casually ask if he's into puzzles, he says no, he spends a lot
of time of the phone and is always looking to do something with his hands.

Anyway, 10 minutes later, his cell phone rings, presumably a family member, as
he looks concerned and very politely asks if he can step out to take it, in
case its an emergency. I say, "of course" and I'm just sitting there with
nothing to do but stare at the wall.

I didn't want to take out my phone, so I grab the cube and start solving it.

He steps back into the office thanking me just as I'm putting his solved cube
back on his desk.

Not the main reason, but I did get offered the job.

------
dawidw
In our company there was a candidate. Always, at the end of interview there is
possibility for employee to ask whatever he/she wants:

\- We've got all the answers from you, thank you. Maybe you have some
questions for us? Is there anything you'd like to know?

\- Yes. How can I get to railway station...

------
p0d
After an absolutely terrible interview the interviewee asked about
opportunities for promotion as their any other question. I had to bite my
tongue and not say I wouldn’t worry about it.

------
Raed667
I was looking for my first job out of college, I went for an advertised junior
developer position, all the questions where about electronics (yes even a
whiteboard).

~~~
Humdeee
I've had this recently as well, even with a few years of software dev
experience. It was for a software dev role. I graduated with electrical
however, and was met with whiteboarding random hardware questions. Circuit
theory, bit fiddling questions, op-amps, even using a spectrum analyzer. I had
to dig deep on the spot from my school years. I managed an offer for the
software position but I was so confused. I waited a week and took an offer for
a more exciting position. It was very strange.

~~~
fatnoah
I graduated with an MSEE (originally started with CS, but changed majors late
in my Junior year) and my first job was a SW job at a defense contractor. My
favorite meeting was one where the HW teams and SW teams sat around blaming
each other for something not working. I floored them all when I pulled out
printouts from a logic analyzer and let them know that neither the hardware
nor software were performing exactly to spec.

