I don’t usually have sufficient motivation to post much on any social media platform. This is rare for me. I am putting this out in the world in part hoping for some validation, in part hoping it sparks some kind of social action to save some semblance of privacy and dignity in this modern world.
Warning: this is long.
I just wrote an email to a recruiter withdrawing my interest in pursuing a job (it’s a recruiter hired by the hiring company). I am a software engineer with decades of experience who has been unemployed for almost a year with almost no interviews. I’m hungry for paying work. Yet. I did this. Below is the email I wrote, and it is hopefully self explanatory.
I think my career might be over - especially if the kind of process I experienced is now the standard for hiring. I want nothing to do with it.
I wrote this after multiple days of trying to set up my system for the “assessment”. I ended up having to install Windows 11 (I’m a Linux guy) because the assessment environment simply didn’t work. I tried FireFox, disabled plugins, tried two versions of Chrome - neither would work. It apparently had to be the Google version.
I upgraded an old version of Win 10 (because Microsoft pretty much forced it). Got it to work on Firefox for Windows.
Twice, mid-way through the assessment, it reset itself to square one. I didn’t try a third time. This assessment software monitored my face and would raise an alarm if I looked away. It controlled my microphone. It required full access to every aspect of the browser and had me do an alt-tab partway through this “test” in order to ensure I wasn’t using any other software. Insulting. Invasive. My equipment. My home.
---- the email ----8<----
First, I appreciate your understanding and that you gave me what information you have on how this software works. Now, the hard part. My disappointment will show in the text, and it is not directed at you or your company.
I’m inclined to cease pursuing this. I feel insulted by the process in the first place, but went through it understanding that we, as job seekers, have to accept compromises we would not otherwise accept because having a job is a fundamental requirement to literally survive and provide for our children.
However, the more I’m expected to change my personal, owned equipment and software in an invasive fashion just so some stranger can have 100% surveillance on my activities in my home in order to be considered for a job interview, the more insulted I become.
Granted, I’m unusual. I’ve dedicated myself to protecting my electronic privacy by installing malware and advertisement blockers on my phones, computers, tablets. I use VPN. I built my own home NAS because I am uncomfortable with placing all my personal, financial, and health records into “the cloud” (and being charged for the privilege). I am teaching myself how to use AI by downloading and running models in my home lab because I don’t want to give out my privacy and income to strangers.
I stopped using Windows at home years ago because I could not stand the way it was dictating to me how to run my computer and constantly seeking to part me from my money with distracting advertisements while siphoning everything about me back to their servers to better market to me. Worse, it was forcing me to buy new hardware in order to simply run the system after upgrades.
Here I am, faced with a stark choice. Debase my values for the sake of the possibility of a job with a company that apparently doesn’t consider applicants worthy of dignity, or remain unemployed - possibly forced to exit the career I love if everybody is doing this - and potentially fall into poverty.
If they’re doing this before they even talk to me, it tells me that as an employee I will have at minimum this same level of surveillance. Knowing this in the back of my mind will burn me out in under six months.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I could live with myself if I chose the first option, so I respectfully withdraw myself from this process. I’m a professional. I expect to be treated like one. If there are companies who are serious about hiring a professional, I’m all in. Please engage me.
IMHO, the response is a bit wordy, but I agree with where you’re coming from. You should consider trying to work for yourself, it may be very rewarding for you.
Yes, I do tend to over explain and it does annoy people, especially my son. I have a near pathological need to make sure others understand the why. I’m working on it.
Been looking into Stoicism lately, and not explaining yourself (to people who don’t care or can’t comprehend) is one of the tenents - not wasting precious energy.
If the company goes to those lengths to try to catch assessment cheaters, it’s not going to get better if you get hired. If they suspect you without having a reason, then they will always suspect you. You made the right choice.
No, we want you on our equipment because we can’t trust you to stay secure, virus and malware free. When you crack the screen or have a fan die, we want to leverage our warranties and parts to repair the equipment. We don’t want to give you the keys to our repos and kingdoms to have them delivered to the nearest person adding a keylogger to a fitgirl repack.
People have actually been found off-shoring their own work to China by installing remote access clients on their work machines.
Don’t get me wrong, there are asshole companies out there that want to use activity trackers to see what you’re doing, most don’t give a shit and track you by what you do. We don’t need monitoring software to tell if you’re working or that you’re not vibecoding, we can tell by your actual work.
If your corporation is running windows 11, you can’t be trusted to keep things malware free. If you’re a corporation, you should also respect true capitalist behaviour, and if they can make a profit offshoring, what difference does it make. If, however, you provide robust, *nix based equipment, follow a disciplined SDLC, and are not a corporation, then I might a couple of highly disciplined, experienced systems analysts with a GRC and privacy focus who would love to learn more about you.
Although you do open with the fact you don’t trust your people, so, probably not.
You cannot trust your employees to be security and IT conscious. They’re not trained in it. I’ve been in the field for over 30 years and that’s one the few things you can bet on.
As much as I generally agree with you on principles, you sound utterly insufferable
This is not what constructive criticism or dialogue looks like. You’re just insulting OP and offering nothing else.
I was afraid that might be the collective response. Fortunately, that was not the case.
I am saddened so many had similar experiences, but glad I am not alone in my disgust and dismay at the state of affairs.
What in my writing gave you that sense? Perhaps I can improve my communication for the future.
For me it was that all you did in your email was talk about how you didn’t want to compromise your ideals. All that stuff your told us about how hard you tried, how much you compromised, how many times you were blocked then reset aren’t there. Those are the things that make your experience actually meaningful and relatable.
It would have been a lot better to send your preamble and wrap up with, “if you are able to provide a functional setup with the required environment for me to continue my application, I am happy to continue, otherwise I am afraid I must withdraw.”
Aha, okay. It would have been redundant to put that in there since we had just gone through that process together. I’d also mentioned my reservations in earlier emails.
Thanks for explaining it, it didn’t occur to me. You are right though about alternatives. He’d actually offered to seek another way, but I was emotionally unable to accept that at the time due to all the effort already sunk. For me it was cutting my losses, and I might have done myself a disservice there.
You set and communicated a healthy boundary. I think your email clearly communicates your reasoning and expectations and hopefully the recruiter passes it along to the company itself so they can receive the feedback, or at the very least uses it to tailor what sort of opportunities they send your way.
You were part of an unpaid behavioral study.
I see jobs with interview requirements like this occasionally. I don’t bother with them. I doubt I even would have spent the time writing an email, except to convey briefly that the web page didn’t work.
Honestly I have no idea why any country outside of the USA allows that spyware they call an OS.
The hiring company failed the interview. It happens, and IMO you’ve exercised good judgement here.
My personal suspicion is that this sort of inhumane, inhuman, hiring process filters for people who are either desperate for work, or who don’t see anything wrong with this sort of thing.
I totally agree. It’s a test of submission. I bet my life savings that job would have increasingly creeping amounts of unpaid work and extended working hours, with the implicit threat that saying no means you’re fired.
You mean like my last job. Yes, it was the insulting treatment at my most recent employer that gave me an extra bit of self respect that pushed me to make that decision. The proverbial last straw.
I experienced a similar thing a few years ago, applying for a management position with a nonprofit. (A nonprofit!)
My reply …
Hi $PERSON,
Your application was strong and we’re really pleased to advise you that you’ve progressed to the next stage.
Great! Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
We’d like you to answer a few quick questions using our online video platform, SparkHire. This will help us get to know more about you and what skills and experience you can bring to the role, the team and $NONPROFIT.
…
A set of questions will appear on the screen (some filmed, others just text) and you’ll have the opportunity to create video recordings of your answers, within a specified time limit. You can review and re-record your answers as many times as you need.
I’d love to catch up either face to face, in a video chat, or even a phone call to discuss how I could use my skills and experience to help out the $NONPROFIT team. To be honest though I’m not at all keen on recording a one-way video interview.
I do have several concerns with SparkHire (no data retention policy that I could find; and enhanced privacy protection for EU customers only; email instructions years old that referenced Flash).
But my main concern is that the idea of one-sided video interview feels … well, one-sided and dehumanising. To be honest it’s quite the opposite of what I’d have expected from the employee experience of an organisation like $NONPROFIT.
Even if I were placed in the role, I’d be reluctant to refer friends if they were also required to participate in a one-sided video interview.
Please drop me an email at $EMAIL or give me a call on $PHONE if you’d like to chat further, either virtually or in person.
This was a spot on response. Tells em you are in charge of your own morals while still keeping the door open. A wise recruiter would see the error of their ways and apologize and skip the one sided bullshit.
So you won’t be getting that job lol
Very nice reply, and I’m rather stunned a nonprofit did this… unless it’s one of those giant, well funded ones like NFL or Red Cross.
Playing devil’s advocate: The reason companies feel the need to put these systems in place is most likely because many candidates cheat using chatbots.
In my company, until very recently, engineers were running the first and second stages of interviews (right after CV vetting) and I’ve heard many times in the last couple of years that my colleagues suspected candidates of using LLMs. There would be unnatural pauses, typing after every asked question etc.
Granted, I don’t think any have slipped through to being hired, as it’s still pretty obvious, but I can understand why companies may want to put safeguards in place.
Are they going too far here? Absolutely.
For us, we actually sit with the candidate in a pair-programming kind of setup to gauge their vibes, way of thinking and confidence as they solve coding problems that closely match what they would do on the job. That usually eliminates “seniors” that haven’t coded for 5 years or that got there by nepotism or sheer passage of time.
Most serious tech companies have just straight-up stopped all remote interviews. It’s simply too fraught with cheating, fake people, and foreign operatives. Interviews are in person and include hand-written code, because we’re back to high school trust issues baybeeeeee
Then the solution is to do an on site Interview, not to ask a candidate which they’ll later reject to install spyware on their personal computer.
Many of our candidates are from abroad, and we pay their VISAs and help them move here if they are hired.
You can offer in-person as an option, but I’m not sure most of our applicants would want to travel hours for an interview. Especially if there is more than one stage with deliberation needed in between.
Most of our applicants seem to be people currently in employment but who don’t like their job. They are likely doing interviews on the sly during work hours and likely don’t want to take a full day off or signal to their employer they are looking for a job.
All this to say I doubt forcing employees to do in-person interviews is a good option for most people, but I do agree it should be an option the interviewee can ask for.
We let people use chatbots in our technical interview and don’t even mark down for it, since they’re a tool that exists.
I have yet to see a candidate who uses chatbots be anywhere near as good at producing good solutions quickly as the ones who don’t.
Here’s the interesting thing. I found out any kind of computer use during an interview was “cheeting” during my prior job search. For years, I’d been taking notes during interviews, like names, key points about the job, answers to my questions. Somewhere along the way, that became a problem. I also used to search for things occasionally.
Silly me, I thought searching, researching, taking notes, etc., was part of the job and an indication of smart working. Now, we are expected to recall the smallest syntax detail from memory - On the spot, while being watched and timed, in a high stakes interaction.
This is less like someone looking for paid help for a business and more like a sadistic exercise in prisoner torture.
Now, imagine having ADHD and going through that.
Oh well that’s depressing. I last interviewed about 3 years ago and I guess it might well have changed overall. OTOH I get to run the interviews where I’m at now and I can assure you that ‘actually using your available resources’ would never be a problem :)
That’s a fair point. I think some of our interviewers have said that they don’t mind the candidate using a LLM, as long as they are up-front that they are doing so.
I’d say the kind of use is important. If they are using it as a form of advanced auto-complete, that’s fine. If they are using it uncritically, or to avoid thinking about the problem, I doubt I’d hire them.
We need engineers who can solve problems, not a salaried middle-man to an LLM.
Why would you feel bad, the interview is a 2 way process. They are evaluating you but YOU are also evaluating them. It’s actually VERY costly to you too if you start working for the wrong company. If you realize after a week or a month that truly the culture, the tooling, etc basically anything but the pay does not match YOUR needs, whatever they may be, they you HAVE to pull out.
You can be polite about removing your application, as you were, but you should not feel bad. It is precisely WHY there are interview. Candidate think about it as only them being evaluated and that’s very wrong. As your title says clearly it is about self respect but not just during the interview, the whole time. If you are not a match sure it does suck, for both, but that’s again better than a forced match that will bring both down over time.
Finally regarding your last part, I recommend you edit your post to put your precise skillset and experience there. Hopefully someone can refer you to the right place.
Instead of declining the role, you should have told them their assessment platform is so broken that it’s undoubtedly costing them good applicants, and that you’d be happy to make that your first project as a staff engineer.
What if the intent is to filter out people who won’t put up with this sort of shit? It might be working very well indeed from the perspective of the hiring managers.
It’s a product they use, not their own. If I were talking to the actual company rep, I might have given it a try.
Still they chose the platform and pay for it. They actively decided to use it.
I’ve worked in large corporations. Many times such decisions are made without knowing important gotchas. It’s often a result of sleazy marketing by vendors.
top part of monitor: “genuine” windows qube in HVM -->sys-residentialproxy —> sys-vpn ----> sys-net
bottom part of monitor: tor browser chatting w/ ai ----->sys-whonix--------------> sys-vpn ----> sys-net
but it’s easier said than done, and more than that, it’s fucking infuriating having to do any of this shit.
i fucked up an interview because it took me an extra 30 minutes to find out chromium wouldn’t work, firefox wouldn’t work, and only plain vanilla chrome would work. you’re not the only one who has been fucked by this. the interview platform demanded chrome but won’t tell you; you have to trial and error find out. corporations want grateful docile slaves. it’s time consuming to figure out what normie bullshit each asshole corp wants.
it’s really fucked. when i use privacy preserving techniques, often company anti-fraud systems flag me as “fraud.” but if i actually use “white hat” tactics that “ethical pen testers” use, suddenly i’m allowed to have privacy and use my own system and they think i’m a normie.
sometimes i don’t even care any more and use systems that obviously seem like fraud, because it’s just me and not fraud and i hate them, and then if they think it’s fraud who gives a fuck. if they flag me as fraud, i’ll go with another company. none of their shit stops anyone good and these anti-privacy companies get a false sense of security from all the “amazing” cloudflare blocking and anti-fraud protection… they are getting charged blocking real users and then one day someone brutal and sophisticated comes, someone not like me who doesn’t know shit, and just destroys their servers.
You are channeling my feelings. In this case, the instructions said Firefox or Chrome, but it had to be Google chrome, since that’s the most invasive and Firefox was not working. It’s when he said try Chrome that I finally said to myself, “what the fuck am I doing?” And ended it.
I hate cloudfare. I use vpn so about 30% of the time I’m banned because some asshole use that IP for bad behavior. Usually fixed with a reconnect. However, the other 70% of the time I have to “prove I am human”. It’s exhausting.
I was eager to try Qubes a few years ago, and toyed with it. At the time it was not playing well with windows and setting up the is templates looked a bit annoying, so I dropped it with intent to revisit after a major version or two. I think now is a good time to pick it up.
Good on you. I turned down an interview at the first level because they asked me to download one program, I said I’d be happy to download anything they want if they bought the hardware and paid for my internet.
Haha I love that response you gave them
I do the same when people want me to download whatsapp. This is why we need unions.
