I guess that is the problem with the current state of the world. Employers hold most of the cards and people are desperate to find and retain employment. As someone who has coupled themselves to the wrong trains more than I'd like to admit, I'd encourage all young engineers to ask themselves, "Is work more important than your mental and physical health?" Don't underestimate the affect of toxic people, management and companies on your brain and body. Over time you may pay the ultimate price; an early death.
If I learned anything from all my past mistakes in life, it's this.
I left a really good job for a year, to go work for a company CEO'd by a buddy of mine. I had a bad, sinking feeling in my gut from the very beginning when In interviewed with my new boss (not my buddy). Sure enough, I fucking hated working for him, and quit after a year.
When I was leaving my old job, I remember rationalizing it to myself that I would regret not doing it if I didn't try. I have mixed feelings about that job -- not necessarily regret for taking it, but definitely some regrets for how things went down at the end.
With that being said, if I had turned down that job, I don't know if I would regret it now or not. Who's to say?
Anyway, I got my old job back, and lasted there for several more years. It's still the best place I ever worked.
Fortunately 2016 join date, "No AI used in my comments".
But holy cow that was uncanny after months of Claude
I was actually familiar with the product, but it had some glaring shortcomings, and I kind of groaned a little inside.
And I told them that I liked some things about the product, but then I unfiltered sort of pointed out what was wrong. I really wasn't interested in working on it (though I didn't say that outright)
And then they decided they loved and needed me. (and I didn't go there)
Sort of like dating I think. Show a little skepticism and you might unintentionally get more interest than if you were open and sincere.
I wrote an email saying I would not pursue the position, and they wrote back asking me to have another interview with them. I politely declined.
They probably understood that their method was not good.
It was with an architect and a lead developer and the architect was really rubbing me up the wrong way. Stupid nitpicks that were all style preferences. Not at all talking about the actual code. I start pushing back and he starts getting a bit combative, which sets me off a bit too as these were the days jobs were plentiful.
At some point he offhandedly mentioned I didn't need a particular line of code in the startup config. So I say, "Yes, that's required, it initializes the routing". He quips back, "No, that line's not necessary at all, you don't need it". The lead dev is looking completely exasperated at the architect at this point.
I paused, started a screen share. Went to the line. Commented it out. Ran the program and it fell over.
I then said, "I'm not interested in working with you, thanks for your time, bye"
It's a chance for you to meet the actual CEO (or VP or whatever in a larger company), and also for them to get to meet you in advance, instead of effectively getting "blindsided" by a new person (to exaggerate a bit).
Usually, by the time you've gotten to that point, the decision to hire you has well and truly been made. I don't know what then would need to happen for the actually rather secondary function of giving the CEO the opportunity to veto to become relevant. I'd be curious hearing about anyone who's ever experienced it (on whatever side). I guess it can be a safeguard against vastly unaligned values, but I suspect it's very rare.
But primarily, and effectively, it's usually just a meet-and-greet. And it's hard for me to blame a CEO (or VP etc.) for at least getting to anyone who's going to enter a mutual contract to effectively become part of their company.
That was not the case in this scenario. I was told I would be offered the role if I came out favorable with the CEO (did he like me or not? did I jump when the said "jump"?). To me this meant that the CEO doesn't trust the people he hires. He clearly didn't trust the hiring manager's jugement and/or respected their position. The CEO delegated a task and responsibility but then felt to have to authority to override that, which maybe he does. However, that's not a culture in which I want to operate. If I was wrong, so be it, but I saw a red flag and I made a choice.
I remember from my friends who worked at Google at the time, that everyone’s always been told that “every new hire’s contract lands on Larry Page’s desk, he has to sign off on it”, and you can probably bet your bottom dollar that Larry Page didn’t spend a lot of time on each hiring package, if any.
If you can't trust the people you have hired to hire people then you shouldn't have hired them.
Yes, it usually is. But in this case the problem was that the CEO could unilaterally override the decision made by everyone else, so it wasn't just a meet-and-greet.
Generally the chat with the VIP means: "You have the job, but I (VIP) want to just double check that my underling hiring managers are not totally useless."
(And of course the CEO can override any hiring decision anyway. The question is if they will.)
(PS: if you find reasons to suspect the CEO isn't delegating effectively to managers, then ask the CEO an open-ended question "How much do you do yourself vs which tasks do you delegate to your managers?" then listen carefully to their answer. And it's still not necessarily a red flag, it may just be a new or inexperienced CEO, or maybe overcompensating for one or two bad hire experiences at current or previous company. Compare to their answer to "How do you assess new hires within the first 90 days?").
The only (minor) negative I'd take from this is that it still behaves like a small startup scaling quickly, and they haven't yet figured out how to to scale interviewing and hiring for when they get larger... but that's overall a good complaint, it shows they're still growing. It's much better that your signoff interview is with the CXO (or VP) than the Director of HR, or an AI bot. Honestly I'd pay more attention to how many days/weeks/months it takes them to make the hiring decision than how many management layers were involved; that's a bigger tell of organizational dysfunction.
Don't overthink.
Sadly, their CEO has veto-ed every single full time hire they've tried to bring on for past 2 years now.
The only time a CEO should be meeting a hire is if the company is a tiny startup, or the role will be working regularly and directly with the CEO.
Otherwise, it's the worse kind of micromanagement. If the CEO wants to meet the new face they do so after the person starts, and this is the norm outside of tech.