Inspired by the post " Interview in Yandex: Theater of the Absurd " I want to share my funny stories.
It's not that I rarely interview for work - I usually don't do it at all. I don't even have a resume, by and large. My main occupation is CTO and co-founder in IT startups.
I do not write the names of the companies on purpose, but if you wish, you can guess. Certain details have also been specially modified so as not to reveal corporate secrets.
First story
Back in 2011, I became a co-founder and CTO of a startup in the field of “new financial technologies”. The startup grew and developed organically, but then, let's say, the potential legal costs became too high and the founders decided to close the company. And my old friend Frank offered to buy all the technical developments of the startup and invited me to work as CTO in his company in Stockholm. I happily agreed, they had a small team and a huge field for improvement in development processes.
But the story is not about that. My friend's Swedish company (and then partly mine) was working on a merger with a very, very large and reputable company. And this company said - we want to interview your key employees.
We didn't have a lot of employees, and they wanted to talk to everyone except the support. We talked with the programmers, gave them tasks to solve (I haven't specified which ones, but not all of them were algorithmic). We talked with lawyers, everything is fine.
And then Frank writes to me that they want to talk to me. I am always glad to meet new people, but let me remind you that I am the technical director and co-owner of the company.
Schedule two Skype interviews, one after the other. First technical, then with a certain manager.
At the appointed hour, I’m in touch, I call, there is a polite guy on the video with a Slavic name and surname. I say - hello, how are you, he replies - good, but “ I prefer English for essential things ”. Then it seemed to me that someone else was listening to our interview out of sight of the camera, but I was not told about it.
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