Would you like some honest interview feedback?
Everyone's saying how they'd like to receive honest feedback from the hiring team. Since that's never going to happen, here's a rough translation of the "we regret to inform" emails.
Hey {name},
I'm relieved to inform you that we won't be considering you for this position now or ever again.
I evaluated your performance during the interview, and frankly you didn't do well at all. Well, you kinda did ok, but I don't know, there's something about how you said things about {tech} that rubbed me the wrong way. I get a feeling you'd be very nasty about it. I mean, I don't know, maybe you wouldn't, but I don't want to be held responsible if you do. I don't want the team pointing fingers at me for bringing you on.
Honestly, though, I didn't understand most of the code you showed us anyway. I see it performs great and it's a third of the size of what most people wrote, but it makes me feel stupid. I wish you used {popular tech} for it so it's easier to follow. All our other candidates used it, so why couldn't you? In fact, why couldn't everyone just write code like I do, so I can just focus on salary?
Speaking of salary... Yeah, I know we say competitive compensation in the job ad, but of course, we want to pay as little as we can. You are frankly a bit over our budget. If you'd said {amount} less, I might have been able to knock {more amount} off your salary and negotiate a deal that works for the management, maybe promise you some bonuses and be done with it... As things stand I didn't feel like going through the possible unpleasantry of offending you with our offer.
Hope we don't meet each other ever again, because I don't want the anxiety of having to deal with your opinion on this feedback in person. I was genuinely thinking of just not sending you a message at all. I wish we had AI for that. In fact, I fucking hate hiring, but salary is good so I still do it. I guess I can't have my cake and eat it too, huh. If possible, please don't reply to this email as it would cause me a lot of stress.
Because of the company policy, I will not delete your information for another six months. If you'd like me to nuke it right away, feel free to get in touch and I'll gladly take care of it. Gladly.
p.s.
If at all possible, I would prefer you to still have a neutral-to-good opinion about this company. I'm afraid that, if you go around saying something bad about us, my ass would be in a pickle.
Bob
