/r/askreddit thread got me thinking, what are the worst experiences you guys have had from either side of the interview process?

X-Posting my response to this thread about walking out of a job interview. -- I was interviewin

X-Posting my response to this thread about walking out of a job interview. -- I was interviewing for a senior software developer position with a smaller sized company. First interview was over the phone, some very basic javascript questions to weed out completely unqualified people - pretty standard stuff. I learn at the end of the interview I'm actually a candidate for this guys job. He sounded kind of disconnected, like he was just going through the motions. Thought, "huh, that's kinda weird", but not really much more than that. I get a callback and they want me to come in and talk to the CEO. Good news, I need a job, so it seems things are going well. I show up, and the guy is pretty young and dressed like a fucking clown. Like, wanna-be Gorden Gecko type shit, suspenders, slicked back hair, the works. It was in finance and I had previously worked for a number of hedge funds and investment banks, there are a lot of these types around - usually they're younger guys who think they're hot shit cuz they got their first job in the industry and a decent signing bonus. Anyways, as we're talking, this dude is basically going on and on about how he's fed up with how much time developers are taking doing their work, so the company is operating under a new policy. Apparently this idiot decided coding is easy enough for him to do it. He read an intro book on python and thought that because he could add a couple numbers together, in addition to running the business, he was also the "lead engineer". All code needed to be reviewed by him before being checked in. > Me: Oh you guys are using version control. Perforce or something? > Douchebag: What? No we don't do that shit, we use a share drive. ... At this point I'm really just nodding my head and wondering when I can get going when he drops this bomb: they do group performance reviews every quarter, and the amount of code you wrote is a big factor in that decision. Literally...like the amount of lines of code. For those of you who don't know, if you're trying to measure developer performance, that makes about as much sense as using the quantity of diet cokes consumed over the life of the project. It's fucking absurd. I waited for him to finish this brilliant line of thinking, said "I appreciate your interest, but I don't think your company would be a good fit. I wish you guys the best of luck.", picked up my stuff, and walked out. I'm not sure how they were financed, but he mentioned angels a number of times. I'm guessing the kid was playing out his Wall Street fantasy with daddy's checkbook. This was 6mo ago. If they aren't already way the fuck out of business, I'll eat my keyboard. And it's a nice keyboard. TL; DR: Interviewed with wannabe Gorden Gecko douchebag CEO who decided he could run the company's development team better than actual developers since he read an Intro to Python book.