So there was one company I was being interviewed at for position of product role. They told me to make a mobile app, not an actual one just on paper but it was a lengthy assignment and took me 5 da...

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

So there was one company I was being interviewed at for position of product role. They told me to make a mobile app, not an actual one just on paper but it was a lengthy assignment and took me 5 days to complete it. (Day and night with minimal sleep)
Now in the deep assignment discussion round the interviewer asked me why I built an app. 
In my head the answer was you guys only told me to build it😂😂 but I managed to fake something for sophisticated. 
Mention below if you have some funny interview stories.

Funny interview story

Operations Manager

Funny interview story- Grapevine

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Hello Grapeviners. Few of us must have had to do some naughty stuff in order to pass an online or face to face interview. Could be second screen during online interview, a mobile used, using a proxy, having another person attend on another call going in parallel...And so on.
Be frank and share it here😊

Things I did when desperately wanting to pass interview

Program Manager

I have a job interview coming up and want to get everything right this time. Would appreciate any suggestions.  I usually start by telling where I've done my college from and then talk about the work I've done at my current firm. Anything more that I should add?

What do you say when interviewer asks "Tell me about yourself"

Business Analyst

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

Unexpected in salary, you thinking the job is out of your reach or the way you got it.
Please thread here. We could all use pick-me ups!

What's the most unexpected job offer you got?

Account Manager

Life has become so dry and meaningless nowadays. Struggle connects us on some level. I’d love to hear your stories of struggle and how you overcame it.

Here’s my story.
I studied B.E for 7 years because of backlogs. Every year was a new batch, no friends. Extreme depression, humiliation everywhere. Isolated myself from an extremely judgmental society. 
Confidence had no meaning in my life. 
Somehow struggled and cleared all the backlogs. Studied programming and web design. Started working for free.
After 1 year, first salary was 2k per month.
Then 18k. Then 30k.
I always felt dumb because of the backlogs. Want to rectify it. So went to the US with the only admit I got. Studied my ass off. GPA 3.95. But I was broke again. Cried my eyes out multiple times because I had no money for food. Couldn’t tell this to parents.

Found a job later after many many applications. 
Happiest moment of achievement was when I bought my first 43 inch LED TV. With my own money.

Current pay: over 2L / mo.

Tell me your story of hard work and difficulty

Product Designer

I once interviewed for an internship at this startup that made stuff for pets. I had researched the company inside and out.

I wore this funky shirt with a bird pattern to fit in 'context'. 
Turns out, the CEO was wearing the exact. same. shirt. 
We both just froze for a second, then she started laughing and said, "Okay, you've got the right vibe for this place!"

Weirdly enough, accidentally matching outfits with the boss helped me get the internship. 
I guess sometimes the most awkward moments can actually work in your favour!

Do you have funny/weird internship stories?

Has anyone applied to YC? If yes what was your experience, what all have you done before applying to YC? What was your market segment? Any other stories and gyaan related to applying and working with YC please!

Experience with Y Combinator

Software Engineer

Recently had a chance to interview at a pretty mature startup(moengage), a recruiter called me up, we set up a time and date for a machine coding round. I was pretty excited to be honest and looking forward to the interview.
Fast forward to the day of reckoning , I join the interview with my intellij set up, my pen and paper to draw the ERD ready and my mind full of design patterns, only to be confronted with two DS & Algo questions(i legit gave up the moment i heard ds), the questions were interesting and the interviewer chill but it blindsided me by a whole lot and I couldn’t solve anything.
It’s pretty weird that startups with so many resources at their disposal could be so out of sync internally.

Weirdest(worst?) interview experience

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

Had a weird job interview experience a few days ago, for a pretty senior-ish PM position. This was the first round interview with the team after a basic recruiter round.

Hiring manager joins the call on his phone with camera off. Sure no problem. 

He was presumably on AirPods with terrible sound quality, and his internet connection was terrible too. I could hear 2 out of 5 words.

I pointed it out immediately, thinking that he would change his internet connection or something. But it continued throughout the interview. 

I kept telling him that I can't hear him to either repeat himself or point out that its his internet connection. 

This ended up breaking the flow of the conversation.

He turned on video during the interview, I even told him to switch off his video to improve the quality. Barely improved even then. 

Still told him that I can't hear him. He even changed his room to see if it helped. Didn’t. He should've been embarrassed by now? 

He didn’t suggest an alternative — to move to a phone call or reschedule later, wondering whether I should have. I've never faced this before, so didn’t know what was appropriate.

Then towards the end, puts on his video again and I see that he is eating something. 💀 

I don’t know if this is normal???

If he was so busy, he could've possibly rescheduled instead of wasting both our time. He chose the time. 

I know it's an employer's market, but how bad is it?

Weirdest interview experience at a startup for a senior PM role

What's this obsession of startups ghosting after taking assignments from you. It's so irritating and they just can't value your time and efforts

Ghosting after assignments

Content Strategist

Which company did you have the worst interview experience with?

Interview experiences

Founder

I will start:
1. Having low hit rate with junior PMs than with leadership level folks (Dir & above) 

Rant - these PM interviewers with fewer years than me and just 1 org haven't seen enough failures to learn humility or not trained to understand experiences and approach not like theirs.

2. Accidently interviewed with a startup with product leader coming from service IT background - who didn't understand impact, outcome pointers in my resume and was asking if I had PRDs I have made in my personal laptop. 

Rant - Jesus H Christ. This person thought I didnt understand tech, mocked me for making lofi wireframes in a case submission. Only interview where I told back to the person in their face and in email feedback later - seriously, I have no interest in working in a delivery IT team like theirs. Tata, goodbye and thanks for wasting my day.

3. Product leader being critical that I'm only attracted by shiny projects and keep jumping because of my career break and short stints at startups (macro stuff, startup low hit rate at early stage reasons) - because they worked in a b2b org for 10 years and is in a new place to do the same.

Rant - this is after they were poaching me for my prior experience with 2 verticals of products they were trying to build out and me being cleared by their Director, senior PM and HRPB.

And have more, but over to you guys to share yours and red flags to lookout for.

Share your weird PM interview experiences?

Product Manager

I recently got an offer from a seed stage startup for a SDE2 role. They shared the offer in a 2 liner mail. Weirdly enough they have a probation period of 3 months which could also be extended to 6 months during which there'll be no paid leaves, nothing, and you cannot be late to the office any day.
I asked them to share the detailed offer letter with all these verbal probation clauses penned down and they've not replied for a week.
After getting the offer, they asked me to submit my adhar card, pan card, 10th, 12th marksheet, graduation certificate, passport, birth certificate, payslips, previous offer letter, resignation mail, proof of bonuses and all sorts of documents. 

It's funny how they think trust only works one way. I've withdrawn the application as there were too many red flags during the entire process. I really wish the Indian corporate system had an open culture where trust is bidirectional and not act like we're at the mercy of their job.

Funny interview at a startup

Recently interviewed with Uber Bangalore through a referral.
Made it through 3 rounds before being rejected. This was my first interview at a big tech firm.

The process was as follows - 

Round one - Online Assessment on Code Signal platform. Completion of the OA was necessary and contained 8 questions to be completed in 30 mins. There was 1 easy level leetcode question(in my case it was the leetcode two sum problem) along with 7 MCQ which were based on Android situations / scenarios. 

Round two - 1 hour long Zoom Interview call with an existing senior SDE working for the HCV team. Question asked was a variation of the leetcode 17 Problem (Letter combination of phone number). Test was conducted Code Signal platform with screen sharing enabled. 

Round three - Now this is where I was thrown off. This round was also supposed to be conducted on Code Signal as per the email from the HR but went in a different direction. The interviewer this time was a senior SDE from the rider app team. The interviewer seemed like he was not in the mood to conduct the interview and kept a poker face throughout. The task given was to download a simple project of a note making app. Open ended questions were asked as to how would you make this code base better and also you need to add an edit functionality. The app was so damn simple and without any standard architecture or tooling so I started giving suggestions but that is not what the interviewer wanted for some reason. Then he just directed me by saying that just add the edit functionality. Which was again a rather open ended question as the existing functionality to save and retrieve was being done very poorly. Finally finished the interview by adding a few lines to the existing implementation to edit an existing note.

Software Engineer 2 - Android Interview at Uber

Android Engineer

I replied directly no because 
-Failure from your end in the managing the task with certain specific time line that is the core thing needs to be focused.
-No proper discipline in managing the task
-No compensation/recognition will be rewarded 
His face got completely changed after hearing this as he was expecting sugar coated answer.I have said this From my experience initially days of my careeer I thought as a Indian it's normal i worked ass of during Weeknds as well there is no time off in my first company and I was subjected to too much burnout and even after doing this the companies there is no result in Numbers.

Just gave an interview in a startup and the Founder is shamelessly asking will you work on the weekend?

Welcome to Confessions's Private Community

What's the most ridiculous task you've been given as an intern?

Despite hiring being really shitty in general, I've found PM interviews to be quite random, particularly SMB segment, which is kind of expected as well but sometimes the lack of self-awareness and about the candidate is surprising. Some of them want to keep questions deliberately ambiguous and if you ask for clarity they'll judge you as someone who can't handle ambiguity. And the others will judge you if you don't ask the right questions. As someone with experience in PM I can't believe how bookish the hiring managers are sometimes. Everything is a "pain point " , "problem statement " or a " persona " . So pigeonholed in frameworks and data that they've lost the ability to think without those.

Random PM Interviews

A mobile based browser company gave an assignment to build a youtube video to mp3 converter. One thing I noticed is that they didn't have this feature already in their app. 

Do you guys think it's a genuine assignment or just a way to get work done taking advantage of the current market scenario?

Interview Assignment scam?

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

Hi All,
I gave my first round of interviews.  Answered all the questions and also completed the app which was half built... Was asked to show data in the recycler view. The only no was from me for a question that I know Jetpack compose or not. So has Jetpack Compose become a mandatory skill nowadays ? 

Seeking for feedback and open for suggestions. 

Thanks in advance.

Funny interview story

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