My favorite: "We adhere to the highest ethical principles" - as they give you a 500 page ethics doc that no one reads or follows.
But I've actually found it's a good / reliable tell. You just stay away from companies like this that can't talk straight and you end up a LOT happier. I don't mean they need to be nice - but just clear relatively honest normal English language communication.
ie, "we're cutting back to reduce our burn rate." vs "we are doubling down on engineering talent." Some PR people actually get it I think and can basically be honest while adding some things you may not have thought of. Not in this case though!
I'm interviewing with a company that's taken a month so far with 8 different calls and still 3 phone calls to go. I keep doing it because they have never been less than honest with me. Everytime I ask a hard question, like what's the burn rate or how's the code base, they tell me the good and bad stuff, and how they're trying to fix it or if they don't even have time to fix it.
When I wasn't sure I wanted to continue, the hiring manager called me for 45 minutes to discuss why, and convinced me that I should continue without making any promises and without lying about the fact that my concerns were real and that it wasn't garaunteed that my concerns would be fixed, but I felt better because he told me about how they're trying to fix them. Contrast that with my last company which blew smoke up my ass for the whole interview process and later I found it was a very badly run company on top of badly designed tech and bad financial modeling and that anything to fix it was impossible because of the politics.
Further, I've been talking to the interviewers like they're real people rather than some god sent down to flummox me with dumb programming exercises and show off how cool they are.
I'll never do another interview the "old way" again, I like being treated as a human in a two way process rather than a one way information extraction exercise.
When I was less responsible (younger) I would do that sometimes.
Someone does a BS bunch of lines, stand up and thank them from the staff for committing to the additional resources for staff.
Follow-up with third parties unironically echoing the message with outcomes the business does not want (ie, please send in your proposals as we are doubling down on our engineering).
I make too much money to do anything like this (and have more control anyways) plus if you are more senior you are expected to understand the game.
> My favorite: "We adhere to the highest ethical principles" - as they give you a 500 page ethics doc that no one reads or follows.
That's just a translation error. "To adhere" means "to stick"; while the formalized version sounds like they stick to high ethical princilples, what they meant is they stick it to them.
My favorite: "We adhere to the highest ethical principles" - as they give you a 500 page ethics doc that no one reads or follows.
But I've actually found it's a good / reliable tell. You just stay away from companies like this that can't talk straight and you end up a LOT happier. I don't mean they need to be nice - but just clear relatively honest normal English language communication.
ie, "we're cutting back to reduce our burn rate." vs "we are doubling down on engineering talent." Some PR people actually get it I think and can basically be honest while adding some things you may not have thought of. Not in this case though!