I am also a software developer. The interview process in our industry has become increasingly offensive over the last 30 years. That started out with high-prestige companies who provided exceptional pay and benefits. Some people were willing to put up with that, so they mostly got away with it. Now most companies assume they have all the power and can demand whatever they want from applicants.

Refusing to participate is perfectly legitimate. It may keep you from finding a job, at least in this industry, but that may be better than giving up your self-respect for basic survival. And there are still decent software companies to work for, although they are hard to find. Changing careers is also a viable option.

Our overall economy is so broken in favor of the super rich and their corporations that individuals really do have very little power. Organized actions, of various types, give us some counter-leverage. Collective bargaining, strikes, and political efforts to push for better regulations all have the potential to improve things, at least in the middle- to long-term.

We all need to keep the big picture in mind while we do what we need to get by individually.

I feel this is the one of the after effects of AI is now a common distrust in anyone applying to a new role. With the rampant rise in cheating/faking one’s own skills with the utilization of AI comes with recruiters having to come up with a rather invasive way to ensure recruits aren’t utilizing AI during interviews to test real skills we’ve developed from our own experiences.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yeah, I've had this type of interview lately. Not for software though. You install what probably might as well be a rootkit on your machine. They monitor your eyes through webcam. The slightest detection of your eyes looking away is an instant fail. That's the gist of the process now.

Unfortunately for most people, they aren't technical enough to know what they're getting themselves into. They just follow the instructions.

Nobody is going to read the mountains of terms and conditions of all the services required to jump through along the application process. People are just trying to get a job to they can eat tonight.

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.

That's really well said.

I remember being in the same situation a couple years ago in which I was accepted to an interview through a video chat web application hosted by the company.

To my horror, when I joined the meeting, it was not a video chat interview. It was a series of recorded clips of their HR person reading off questions, the clips pausing, and then a timer showing up on the screen noting "You have 15 seconds to answer".

I was so put off by this that after the first question, I decided to spend the rest of the time I was being recorded explaining to them under no uncertainties that this was one of the most unprofessional interview processes I had ever engaged in, and that they had made it clear that they did not value my time whatsoever, so I had no reason to reciprocate.

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.

Valid

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.

Jesus. That's brutal. I'm not in the software world and have never experienced an process like you just described.

I do remember feeling similarly disgusted years ago applying for a retail job where I had to do an insulting "phone" interview/test where a computer asked me a bunch (like 20-30) of dumb fucking questions like:

• "Have you ever stolen money from your job?"
• "Do you think it's okay to come to work drunk?"
• "If you put money in a vending machine and got two items instead of one, would you put additional money in for the second item?"

That last question very specifically is one I'll always remember because of how incredibly stupid and insulting it is.

I hope you find work at a company that respects you as a human being and as a professional.

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.

I've been in the industry for decades, and perform interviews for entry level up to and including principal level. This form of interviewing is absurd, invasive and useless. It will NOT tell you how good someone is... any monkey can write code, the real question I always try and get a handle on is:

Can they solve complex problems? How do they tear the problems apart? How do they apply technologies to do so?

In person (or video) is the ONLY way to tell how good they are.

Take home tests are useless.

Good on you for telling them no in a very professional way.

I hope you are able to find something soon, it's a really tough market out there!!!

As a rule (at least for me), never never ever accept take home assignments or tasks that either require full control of your pc, or requires you to pull some sketchy repository from GitHub.

That’s one way to get infected with malware and potentially have your data stolen.

If you have to absolutely do this, do it on a VM.

But 99.99999% of the cases, there’s no need to install control software to a pc or having a 3rd party lib installed.

If a recruiting company requires this, then it’s a red flag.

You did well. You’ll find something soon.

Stay strong!

Don't give up. This invasive testing happens with companies that outsource HR....I have always refused these tests and refused anything that requires take home evaluations.

Last time I was job hunting, I rigged my resume to pass AI filters and get to a headhunter. Once a resume is in front of a human, things are different.

Getting through the 1000 resumes and being the one they look at is the key, and crafting a resume that checks all the AI requirements is the key

How it would have gone for me:

"You need to install this Windows software for the assessment."

"I don't have Windows."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Bye bye."

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.

I'm a highly experienced developer staying in a very low-paid job because the work is not for an unethical purpose and there's relatively little employee surveillance or corporate politics. I know developers aren't in a powerful position right now but I admire your reaction. It's no way to treat people, and they won't stop treating candidates disrespectfully until they see that it hurts their ability to hire. I expect the day will come soon when I have to make a decision like you and could be forced to leave this field.

I'm an engineer with ADHD. If an interview tried to get me to use software that requires I not look away, they will be informed that the ADA requires they provide me with reasonable accommodation.

(My current employer does, and they get the high quality of work they deserve.)

@MasterBlaster If the company is in the EU, and they use AI to do facial recignition, that is actually illegal! See https://natlawreview.com/article/use-ai-recruitment-and-hiring-considerations-eu-and-us-companies

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.

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.

I've told recruiters that if they don't allow remote work then they can fly me out for an interview if they want more than a phone call.

Some job advice:

Look at industrial automation companies. DCSs, PLCs, historians, MESs, etc. Those are “old” technologies now. Their world was one of proprietary hardware, networks, and code. But it’s been converging with traditional software and IT for decades. There’s a huge need to connect those “behind the firewall, closed systems” with corporate data so it can be mined, reported on, used in ai applications, linked with corporate ERP systems, e-commerce, you get the idea. Old farts like me can engineer circles and build cool things with panels and power and ladder logic and fancy bus networks and pumps and valves - but we have zero skills to take our closed system data and put it in a webpage, or link it another application. People like you who come from “the outside”, learn a bit about industrial automation to be dangerous, and then help companies do the above tasks - well they are invaluable to me.

The reason I say this is two fold - 1) it’s an unmet talent need and 2) you would never find an insulting interview process like that. In fact, you’d find the opposite- they want to meet you in person and regularly take you to meet with customers.

It’s more traditional work and that’s not for all - but it sure doesn’t have all that intrusive interview bs.

You're career is not over. This is not how interviews work.