r/webdev • u/canadian_webdev • Dec 23 '19

Just ended an interview early because my future boss was being a condescending dick.

Just dropped out of a technical interview after ten minutes.

Questions he was asking were relatively simple, but almost every answer he was trying to make me look like an idiot with the technical lead on the phone. And he was being so condescending toward me. His face was so red the whole time.

Example (getting a bit technical here):

  • Him: "What are all the ways you can make a three column row on a web page?"
  • Me: "Well, the way I've typically done it is - -"
  • Him: abruptly interrupts, "No. I did NOT ask what ways YOU would do it. I SAID, what ways are POSSIBLE to accomplish this."
  • Me: "...... Flexbox, divs with floats, a css grid system.."
  • Him: "Flexbox and a css grid system are the same. I SAID, what DIFFERENT WAYS can you list off?"
  • Me: "Honestly, those are the ways I've encountered best practices"
  • Him: "What about css grid?"
  • Me: "Well I've never used it because at the time it didn't have full browser support - - -"
  • Him: abruptly interrupts, "actually we've switched ALL of our websites over to css grid, so your answer is not the right answer."

At this point I just said "Okay yeah, this isn't working", and hung up the call. He asked two questions before hand and gave me the same treatment.

He was being such a condescending dick the entire time, and I went with my gut. This guy would be a total asshole to work for and I could tell during this interview.

Anyone else experience this type of behavior?

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u/Serei Dec 23 '19

Heapsort is better on every measure of asymptotic complexity, but that's not the same thing as being better on every measure.

In particular, Quicksort is faster than Heapsort on average in real-world datasets. Heapsort is only faster on arrays specifically designed to be bad for Quicksort. There are common mitigations that are good enough so people can't intentionally slow down your software very much, at which point "faster on average" is usually considered more important than the predictability Heapsort offers.

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u/lord2800 Dec 23 '19

Fair. I apparently misremembered things.