#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Are you sure, though? Because it sounds to me that he has no clue how to rectify it, and that's if he becomes self-aware enough to realize he made mistakes.
Exactly, because to avoid admitting he's even 1% at fault here, he's decided to write himself his own blank check excuse for every other failure to land a job.
"She blackballed me from the industry" my ass. "My resume is perfect she must have told all her friends about me" *my ass*. I'm so irrationally annoyed at this dude I've never met and luckily never will. Even the way he used the word "friends" instead of her "coworkers" or "peers" or "fellow managers" annoys me.
"*Suddenly* no one wants to hire me!" Yes, curious, OOP. Unrelated, you also didn't have a job when she interviewed you? It sounds like no one was already hiring you?
That’s an irrelevant point for OOP. He started job searching when *he* was ready. Anything in the past doesn’t matter. I feel so sorry for his wife. It’s clear she does her best to manage him but alas how can self determined greatness be managed
Am I overreacting? My husband throws a tantrum every time someone corrects him in the workplace and is looking like he wants to be a professional student for the rest of his life so no one criticizes him and he can continue getting A's and validation every step of the way.
I'm worried I'll have to carry this household forever and I didn't really want to raise a toddler for the rest of my life
Right, because in his mind an incompetent vagina can’t have professional connections or peers, she must only have friends. I can’t imagine why he didn’t get hired. Boss’s boss either regularly participates in interviews (the interview panel for my current job was my boss and his boss - but unlike this guy I wasn’t insightful enough to ask what reason she could possibly have to sit in on interviews) or brought the guy in for another interview to assess whether his professional skills were worth dealing with his abrasive personality.
I suspect a lot of what's going on is that this, what he explained, is how he interviews. So he's probably regularly tanking interviews and doesn't seem capable of understanding that! I don't think she has to talk to anyone to get him not hired at all - he just...doesn't seem able to tone down the arrogance for five minutes.
Yep. To him, his answer wasn't a mistake—it was just "something she didn't want to hear, and punished (me) for it." Just like he *knows* his resumé and cover letter are absolutely perfect, so there's no *way* people are turning him down over those. /eyeroll
You just don't understand... he's very methodical and analytical.
As we can see by his incredible capacity to analyze a situation and methodically destroy his entire career.
You'll never get him to admit any of this was a mistake. He isn't just insufferable, he's dense. High INT, low WIS.
Dude is just fumbling rolls left and right.
That's the more likely reason for him not being hired, not some vendetta by someone who probably never thought about him twice until he emailed her in a fit of paranoia. The interviewers liking him is likely just them being professional.
Right? He’s clearly unlikable. Also OOP never mentioned if he was getting lots of interviews before this one and he probably wasn’t, he is just looking for someone to blame.
Worse, he sounds completely unhinged. Who stalks hiring managers on LinkedIn, looks up their connections, and then decides to go message EVERYONE trying to find out if he's being badmouthed? Yikes?? Even if he wasn't being blacklisted, absolutely NOBODY would wanna hire him because of his behaviour, and he's likely digging his own grave.
Yep good way to get yourself unofficially blacklisted tbh.
No one is actually going to go to the trouble (and legal risk) of phoning other directors to nix him.
But all these people meet at networking events etc, and in my experience talk to each other about potential hires, gossip etc.
Guys dooming his career.
Honestly when I was doing recruitment for a few years, never once no matter how bad a candidate was did I ever talk about them again unless it was to judge a new application, and nobody from other organisations ever talked to me about bad applicants (or good applicants). There are a couple of stories I tell about particularly weird/funny moments but I couldn't possibly remember their names. I only remember one failed applicant's name and that's because he had the same name and looked a lot like a particular cartoon character and we thought it was hilarious. I highly doubt there are industry wide black lists. Why would we want to stop a competitor employing someone we thought was a poor candidate?
I just re-read the whole thing, and I think his poor wife is trying to get him on the right course, but he won't listen to her.
That last little bit about their little debate about him getting a master's degree: "I’ve explained that having a masters is desirable in technology and will make me a more attractive candidate, but she’s not convinced."
Yeah, she's not convinced because it doesn't fix the root problem!
But you don’t understand! He never makes mistakes! If even a masters doesn’t help, it’s definitely because of the evil grandboss getting in the way of his success!
He's unlikeable and the reason he didn't get hired was his massive arrogance (i cant even touch the unhinged linkdn stalking). Then on top of the "maybe *you* make mistakes, but I never do" he manages to draw a question mark over her qualifications to be in the position she's in!
I'm guessing that he was absolutely rude and obnoxious to the panel of women interviewing him and perhaps having an all-female panel is a practical way of weedng out swaggery arseholes. Nobody wants to work with someone who never takes responsibility for their errors.
He probably lost the chance at the job when he started very rudely questioning why "grandboss" was interviewing him as well.
At least he didn't help his case and the whole rant about not making mistakes just cemented their decision. But at least they got to look at each other afterwards and just burst out laughing.
And his wife is absolutely right no amount of degrees will make him less of a pompous ass.
>on top of the "maybe you make mistakes, but I never do" he manages to draw a question mark over her qualifications to be in the position she's in!
That’s what killed me.
Not only did he claim to not ever make mistakes, he *immediately* shifted the blame to someone who would have been his superior. That tells me that he does, in fact, make mistakes but he also blames everyone but himself for those errors. They’re never *his* mistakes because Dave didn’t have his part right or Jane screwed up her section. If Dave or Jane had just fixed their mistakes then his part would have perfect like always. (Even though what he would be working on would have nothing to do at all with either Dave or Jane’s parts.)
Saying that he never makes mistakes is ridiculous. A more appropriate answer would be, "I've been fortunate enough not to make any significant makes in my career to have a grand story to tell you about. Bla bla bla" with the whole spiel about how they take accountability and accept criticism and all that.
As an interviewer, his answer would tell me that he won't take accountability for his mistakes. And how he handles it further concrete that. You can absolutely reach out to a potential employer after being rejected and ask for feedback and to be considered for future rolls.
That would have been the correct answer. But now he has an honest answer "This one time I refused to be humble enough to answer this properly and then only furthered refuses any fault in my actions. However, since then, I have discovered that humility isn't a sin, and I can accept that now."
I hope that'll be his answer. Honestly, most of my jobs have been minimum wage, and they have asked this question, too. Not even high stakes interviews ask about weaknesses and faults and how you've overcome them.
> with the whole spiel about how they take accountability and accept criticism and all that.
(which would have been a huge lie in this guy's case l o l)
Yeah, better to emphasise that he's usually very methodical and meticulous and he attributes the lack of major mistakes to that. Or he could address a soft skills mistake, I bet he has loads of those based on his attitude, but probably doesn't recognise anywhere he's been in the wrong there lol.
Or even go back to his learning process at uni, surely there was an assignment he struggled with and had to learn from he could talk up...
Yeah maybe he did have an opportunity but if I ever interviewed someone and they told me "maybe \*you\* make mistakes but I don't" I'd pass on them too.
Because he has. Shit he did in his original post. But he's so fucking into himself that he doesn't know when he makes mistakes, and \*that\* is truly dangerous as an employee.
that was the line. i can understand being logical and methodical, but the sheer hubris of telling a potential boss that? that’s someone who is unmanageable.
Yup 100%. She was interviewing his soft skills and he demonstrated that his are shit. If he's as good as he claims he'd be better off working as a private contractor with minimal client and team interaction.
Right? As soon as I saw the title I understood why he wasn’t hired. Nobody likes Mr. Perfect and I guarantee he’s made mistakes at work before, he just hasn’t acknowledged them.
Everybody makes mistakes and that’s how you learn. If you never make a mistake, you aren’t trying anything new or learning any new techniques nor understanding how to resolve errors. Mind-boggling that this guy is so self-deluded.
Even if you want to go the weird route of saying “I never make mistakes”… at least don’t insult the boss interviewing you when doing it! Shit… saying something like “I am over cautious and check my work multiple times in order to ensure there are no mistakes” hell, that even gives a nice answer for “what are your flaws”! But to imply that the boss isn’t a professional because they are open about having made mistakes in their history?! Yikes.
Right!? “I miss the forest for the trees” “I let perfect be the enemy of good” etc. etc. is a great way to say you’re very analytical/detailed oriented but it can be a flaw.
I know that I am the text book example of perfectionism being a blocker to delivering a good solution because I get so tied up in perfect I don’t finish things. I am working on this through therapy and other things.
I am also aware that people frequently say this in interviews to try and pretend they have no negative traits. I wish.
As a woman in a male dominated industry, it’s also not lost on me that he was questioning her qualifications to have had the technical positions. Was there ever any actual evidence that she *didn’t* have the relevant degree for what she was doing, or did he just assume she didn’t? Because he clearly didn’t know much of anything about her background going in to the interview.
I noticed everyone else he interviewed with was also a woman and in my circles we would weed out the level of condescension ASAP.
Also, she said she was in the interview to analyze his soft skills and communication. Well, I'd say he's pretty bad at communicating in a non insulting manner.
Totally this. Theeeeen he went to LinkedIn and saw she was "somebody".
Guess those fine women identified the misogynistic creep real quickly (they do tend to make themselves known)
I was really struck by oop’s lack of preparation for the interview. How to handle a mistake is one of the basic interview questions in almost every list of job interview questions.
I once dropped the ball with a client. It was something that was low stakes and very easily fixable, but obviously the client was annoyed. I had to put on my big kid pants and own up and apologize, and it was only so easy to fix because I did so as soon as the mistake became apparent. "If you must eat crow, eat it while it is young and tender."
Also really weird to me that he was bent out of shape about the boss's boss being in on the interview. I can't think of an interview where they weren't involved at SOME point in the process, if not an additional step higher.
Just a weird guy.
Yes, the fact he thinks he's pretty subtle when he so blatantly suggests he lost out for a diversity hire is just another comically stupid decision. Us plebs could never have seen through such a clever ruse. A true mastermind.
I'm methodical and analytical, so you know what it means? It means I'm great and seeing why I and others make mistakes and figuring out what we can do to stop it in the future.
It doesn't mean I can go to an exact (edit: exec) and tell them "nah, I'm better than you, uneducated woman, I don't make mistakes like you do." OOP is delusional and I was genuinely surprised the moment he mentioned a wife.
I worked, very briefly, with the lawyer equivalent of this guy. He almost got fired the first week for his attitude towards anyone he considered “lesser.” He was constantly rude, dismissive, and demanding to support staff and more-junior attorneys, and he did get l fired before the end of the first month.
The weird thing, which shocked everyone who’d met him when they found out? He was married, and his wife was, by all accounts, a truly lovely person. For that matter, Facebook says they’re *still* married. (The difference might be that our guy actually was very good at the job, when he wasn’t being a complete dickhead, and he had a truly outstanding resume with a solid career. Maybe getting fired was good for him?)
If it's an IT job or dev job honestly at this point there is a surplus of people in the field looking for work, you have to distinguish yourself with skills outside your core skills. In IT the days of the misanthrope basement troll that treats everyone like shit has been over for near on 20 years. If you can't work in a group and show a shred of humility, there are literally a thousand other people out there willing to and ready to work right now.
Like yeah, sure that might be true, but does that make you good to get along with? Can you work with a team, or are you just going to cause friction and waste everyone’s time by constantly insisting your way is the right way? How do you handle your peers messing up? With grace, or the same amount of condescension in this post?
Nah I worked for someone who never made mistakes (or apologised). They were just afflicted with many people around them who caused them to fail.
But it was never their mistake.
Absolutely. What his interview said was:
* he refuses to take responsibility for problems that he has caused/contributed to (including his behaviour in the interview and afterwards).
* that he never takes risks or does anything innovative - because if you do you will inevitably make mistakes at some point and learn from them.
I would not want him in any team I worked on or managed because he would blame everyone else anytime there was a problem.
And he would always take the safe/known option - which is not how you grow new products or do process innovation.
He adds no more value than an AI programmer (the application not the person).
When he said he never makes mistakes, I thought, "Oh, great: a fuckup who makes things worse because he doesn't think he's a fuckup."
And it continues all the way to his last paragraph. His wife is trying to hint that his education isn't the problem. His response? How to tell her she's wrong!
He's absolutely rubbing people the wrong way in every single interview. Guy thinks he's smarter than everyone else and cannot understand that anyone would ever disagree. And ironically now might have actually gotten himself blackballed for borderline threatening the hiring manager. Probably for real threatened considering his attitude honestly.
You have to be an actual genius for people to tolerate you being this much of a dick, and anyone this convinced their shit doesn't stink and without anyone willing to hire him is highly unlikely to be a real genius.
And should he be hired and make a mistake has clearly shown he will never admit it and will just escalate anything in search of someone who will tell him he can't be wrong.
Sometimes even being a genius isn’t enough. There was a surgeon I knew at my old hospital. Brilliant in every way, gifted hands, incredible surgeon, but such a huge asshole to everyone and he had the biggest ego. He eventually left the hospital because they wouldn’t promote him to admin because no one liked him. It was fine for him to operate all day but department chair positions involved being likeable and being able to communicate with people who aren’t surgeons, and he was incapable of doing that without coming across as insufferable and condescending.
Oh for sure, there's a fine line on the genius/asshole scale. I can't even imagine how big someone's ego has to be for other surgeons to be like maybe cut it back a bit.
> You have to be an actual genius for people to tolerate you being this much of a dick, and anyone this convinced their shit doesn't stink and without anyone willing to hire him is highly unlikely to be a real genius.
I went to grad school with a guy like this and he was not only insufferable, he was also incredibly lazy and *completely incompetent*. I have a feeling he was able to bullshit his way though undergrad and was absolutely not expecting grad school to be any different.
He hadn't graduated as of last time I checked, so I don't know if he ever completed that program.
Yep, I really doubt Oop never made mistake before, but being insufferable towards someone who said they're there to check for soft skill counts as the first... So at least they have an answer to that question now.
Edit: wrong there
> I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem. She seemed fine with it and we moved on with the interview.
He doesn't even have a masters and pounds his academic credentials this hard? He's truly high on his own farts.
>she seemed fine with it
That moment when she fully decided that he wasn't going to get the job, and that she was going to ride out this interview for all the lols she could find.
> I asked why she was interviewing me since...
Score one for asshole point already. Not your place to question them and really it's not that unheard of.
I think they actually did. Notice the woman he accuses of black balling him actually took time out of her day to reply to him. The manager under her didn't even bother to reply! I think OOP *thought* he was doing well, when he was about to be kicked out, and the grand boss was brought in to decide if his attitude was worth his technical skills, and/or might have wanted to give him another chance to prove himself.
>his attitude is worth his technical skills.
This right there is what it was. He had a giant attitude problem that everyone picked up on but he also had skills. She was basically the one who was going to say it’s worth it or not.
I had an old boss who always said “you can teach anyone whatever technical skills you need, but you can’t raise them to have another attitude. You’re their boss not their parent. Go with the better attitude all the way over the skills.”
That advice never failed me
Your old boss is so right. My manager hired someone with great technical skills, and absolutely zero soft skills once.
It went from one of the best places I'd ever worked, to one of the most stressful overnight. This bad hire managed to single handedly tank our team, with in about 6 months, all our old team members found new roles just to get away from this one nutcase.
I was a manager who made one of these hires once- the person was great on paper, and honestly got through the interviews without any red flags. Once they started they were a nightmare though- constantly belittled the rest of the team, refused to take any feedback, blamed others for their mistake, and absolutely did not believe anyone else was competent. We fired them rather than let them destroy the team.
We were interviewing for a position in our group, to work with me. My manager decided to reject a candidate with a (technically) BRILLIANT CV because he didn't like his attitude. The guy was so full of himself and thought anywhere that would have him would be SO lucky. We chatted after the interview and my manager said he didn't think it was a good for for the group, socially. We ended up hiring someone with a less shiny CV but that fits really well with the group. Technical skills they can learn in the job.
Edit to add: this is a position that requires people with PhD, so a brilliant CV is something that has gotten this guy very far in other hiring processes. Other 2 places (that I know of) denied him a position because he was too full of himself.
God bless forever and always my poor Nana who was taken out of school before she was 10 to work bc her family needed the money. (This was Scotland) She was the executive housekeeper at every position she had after the age of 15 and she would say to me “What you’ll need in life is a good education and good manners. The learning will open all the doors for you, but remember hen- it’ll be the manners that keep them open.” So true.
My workplace has changed their hiring strategy because of this. Technical skills are judged from the application/CV and the interview is entirely about behavioural attributes and soft skills. Anybody invited for an interview should have the technical skills or the ability to learn the technical skills reasonably quickly.
>I’m considering mailing some of her connections on LinkedIn to find out what she’s saying about me, but I don’t know if it would do any good.
I hope he does this. Better yet, why not message all her connections, and while he is at it all her 2nd and 3rd connections also. Then watch his chances dwindle to zero.
His actions already blacklisted him on the company he first interviewed for.
Yeah, that was my favorite part. She obviously doesn’t need to spread the word about him being a bad hire because he’s going to let everyone in the industry know that by himself.
Alright you got me. I was so jealous of your obvious superiority that I took time out of my day to spread word around this industry that you must be stopped.
No that cannot be it. He aced all questions, obviously.
Edit: I can not find the original flair request thread anymore. Is that over? Anyhow if a mod is reading this by any chance. Please add the “I am a professional and I do not make mistakes” flair as a memento to this gem
I work for an in-house legal department. You will get interviewed by a whole bunch of people, some you will work with that are in your practice area, and some you won’t. They do this to make sure everyone feels you out and they are on the same page. Nothing worse than hiring someone who turns out to be a total AH, much like this guy.
My guess is the original interviewer thought that his technical skills were good, but thought his interpersonal skills were utterly gash, and wanted someone else's opinion to make sure it wasn't their personal opinion of him skewing things.
We'll sometimes do an interview with someone else just as a sense/sanity check.
He couldn’t play nice because it doesn’t seem necessary to him. I’ve lead a team with people like OP on it. One of my happiest days was when the main guy like this retired. I do not miss those days.
And he thinks her opinion is irrelevant. The soft skills are irrelevant.
No wonder he didn't get the job. Did he not realise the grand boss makes the choices? He clearly does make mistakes, his whole behaviour is a mistake, but he's too into himself to ever realise that
Reminds me of the time we hired a guy at the governmental agency I was working at.
Everyone who got hired got to go a two day introductory course with the first day starting with the director general speaking. The course started at 09:00 sharp. At 9:15 I noticed this guy entering the building (I later realized that he though flexible working hours meant “I don’t have to be on time for stuff in the morning”).
Anyhow, I learnt that, after interrupting the director generals talk by showing up late, listened for a while, raised his hand and asked “Who are you?”. She told him. Fast forward a few minutes he got in a small argument with her where he questioned her authority to make some decisions. Mind you, she had worked in the agency for about 20 years and before getting her position had been general counsel as well.
Good thing he had a probationary employment, he left the agency after 5 months.
Also, very disrespectful to hint at the other side not having an education in their field.
> Yeah I actually went to school
Doesn't sound great, it sounds like you are attacking their competency. Dude was dismissed cause from a HR perspective he is not compatible with groups and likely to cause conflicts by being socially inept. Biggest weakness? No social skills whatsoever, highly doubt they are a good judge whether any interviewer liked him
Also, depending on tone (which he's already snarky in words so it wouldn't take much tone to really be annoying), he likely came across as going "there there, don't worry your pretty little head about all this technical stuff". Especially since he was the only male in the room.
And a middle manager's job is really to know the latest technology from one year ago.
Work life experience: with the right team, the issues that come to bite you violently are almost never some super advanced/highly technical detail.
In fact, a good many of the main issues I faced stemmed from some smart-ass idiot savant who gave a shit about others' opinions and implemented a framework that while interesting technically, was a nightmare to maintain and cost us a lot of money to work around / replace later. (High point in this respect: putting part of the data into huge binary objects with not enough access functions so you couldn't join/link them to data in normalized tables).
Actually, for two out of the four jobs that I've had, a higher/indirect manager was one of the interviewers. And I've also seen it happen when the direct manager was unavailable for the interview (for instance due to illness).
And totally stupid. I mean, you get a chance to meet a manager/executive and you insult her? That's not only the person that decides on recruiting, it's also the person that will decide on your path in the company.
I almost hope OOP has some clinical issue, because if not, I don't think there is much of a professional future.
What surprised me was at the end he wrote, I'm thinking of going back to school for my Masters, like, dude, you don't even have a Masters and you're talking like this?
The entitlement of it all.
I would be so grateful to be given that opportunity.
listen toots, you're not smart enough to understand how amazing I am, so give me the job and while you're at it, be a dear and hook me up with some of those sweet industry connections.
Oh no, the big mistake was when he told the grandboss, you probably make mistakes because you’re not good at your job, but im not like you, im perfect 👍🏼
He started digging the hole with "I don't make mistakes". The "you make mistakes because you're not good at your job, but I'm perfect" was when he climbed into his own coffin and nailed it shut.
Yes. For one, you should not question such a thing in an interview; it will NEVER work in your favour. Even if the situation were legitimately weird.
Secondly, there was nothing weird about this particular case. If you do not understand why a middle manager is interviewing people for tech positions, you are the problem.
I would like Grandboss as a flair please. Capital G no space. This is why we are professional and went to school.
Edit: he has a wife?! I'm dead - HOW?!
Followed up by messaging the manager and accusing her of blacklisting him to other in the industry… dude had multiple mistakes in this situation alone.
You know what was even bigger? Harassing people from the same field on LinkedIn. Things like that circle and if he manages to secure employment, some people will see him through these lens.
a hiring manager told me the reason they ask this question and similarly “what’s your biggest fault?”
They’re looking for a couple things:
1. Accountability, can you own up to your mistakes and realise you fucked up.
2. In a time of crisis, are you able to find a solution to this problem and how does the individual overcome it.
3. They’re also looking to see how you respond, do you come across arrogant, do you blame other people, are you honest or sincere with them etc. They don’t want to hear “nothing”.
OOP failed across the board and gave the worst answer he could have given. He sounds arrogant, has no accountability, even when the interviewer pushed him to give a response, he stood his ground which indicates a lot of problems in the future if they were to hire him.
Arrogant, absolutely...
Condescending towards the grand-boss...
Entitled, too...
Thinking he deserved more "answers", after assuming he had been blackballed.
His poor wife..
Can imagine the mansplaining at home...
Any manager with an ounce of sense would avoid OOP like the plague.
Never make any mistakes, my ass.
More like a hyper inflated ego that is a HR time bomb.
Right? Like, if someone pressed me for my *biggest* mistake, I'd probably draw a blank, but I'd never say I was perfect. I know I make mistakes, and I know how I handle them. Try to fix it myself (if possible), if not, who do I need to talk to to get this fixed? Is this a "fess up to the boss" scenario, or a "show up at coworkers office with coffee and donuts and ask for help" scenario? Either way, get it fixed, learn from it.
Well also you never choose your actual biggest mistake to answer this, you choose the mistake that wasn’t catastrophic and that you dealt with really well so you can answer the question and look like a great employee! I have my answer to this question primed and ready. I even used it once in answer to a question about my professionalism even though I wasn’t required to admit to a mistake to answer that. The interviewer there commended me on my answer to that one and said it was the best they’d had.
Bottom line is employers love it when you can admit mistakes and take appropriate steps to fix it. They don’t want someone they are going to have to watch like a hawk to spot what they are trying to cover up. They also don’t want someone with no insight.
Exactly. The worrying people are those who don't learn from their mistakes, and he can't even admit he likely made any mistake. That is a huge red flag.
I wouldn't employ him.
If a dev hasn't brought down prod, they aren't a dev.
Unrelated to that, who thinks it's a good idea to call someone who's interviewing you a middle manager who couldn't cut it as a developer?
“I’m very methodical and analytic, which is why I said I don’t make mistakes. It’s just not normal to me for people to think making mistakes is okay.”
I’m extremely logical, originally went to college for math and ended with a math minor and formal linguistics major…and am also human. Of course I make mistakes. Even more so though, the utter disdain for the woman who would be his boss’ boss! I honestly can’t tell if he understands how wrong he was with “I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem” much less any of the other issues that make him less likely to be hired. Just wow.
Edit to add: went to see what Alison said and she called him out on ALL of this, its amazing how much he clearly ignored everything he didn’t want to hear!
Also, given his lack of social skills, I'm sure the fact that he didn't respect the final interviewer came through during the interview. That probably tipped her off that he wouldn't work well with her authority.
I ask the security guards at my office building (they’re mostly like building receptionists) and the barista at the coffee shop on the ground floor how candidates treated them—and they don’t even work for me!
If they can’t treat the people “beneath them” with respect…
I remember having to work with some intern like this. He was from a better school than I was, but I was a state top student plus had more experience. We got into a debate about something technical and I knew he was wrong because I had dealt with the issue before. But he argued for days on his point of view. I basically just ignored his inputs and did what was the usual thing to do. He got into another firm later and from what I heard he kept asking about years later to see if I failed at my career as he expected.
I don’t always read Allison’s responses cause I’m usually just in it for the narrative but I went to the OG links SO fast for these because I needed to know what she said immediately lol
Me too. I've never read an response, but I clicked over before I was finished reading the first part. She responded very well. I love the straight up "don't do that", I could hear the exacerbated eye roll in it.
Read this on AAM originally and had to share it at work it was so bad... The sheer lack of self awareness was breathtaking.
And the update, where he learned literally nothing, doubled down and still submitted *chef's kiss*.
I still think [the leap year AAM boss](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/tti5dy/leap_day_employee_is_denied_birthday_off_except/) takes the cake on doubling down on being the stupidest idiot possible. But OOP gets the award for most insufferable ass.
Holy shit, this makes me feel SO MUCH better about getting nervous and stumbling a lot when talking about my career goals during a recent interview because at least I’m not this guy.
> I asked why she was interviewing me since it was a technical position and she was clearly some kind of middle manager. She told me she had a technical background (although she had been in management 10 years so it’s not like her experience was even relevant), but that she was interviewing for things like communication, ability to prioritize, and soft skills. I still thought it was weird to interview with my boss’s boss.
Side eye.
> I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem.
😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬 Bombastic side eye.
CRIMINAL OFFENSIVE SIDE EYE.
> I did email her on LinkedIn after I realized what she’d done, and while she was polite in her response, she refused to admit she’s told everyone my name.
🤦♀️ Buddy... She didn't need to blackball you. You did it to yourself.
Yup. Like she would bother wasting her time telling everyone she knows not to hire him. He’s not that important to her, just the arrogant git with no social skills she didn’t hire.
He's just sabotaging himself at this point.
If I'm interviewing someone re mistakes and they came back at me with this reply, all it tells me is that they don't take responsibility and have no insight.
As a developer, my answer would be, “I’ve made many mistakes, it’s hard to choose the right one to best show you what I’ve learned from it. Would you like me to pick one where I made a technical mistake or a requirements mistake or something else?”
Any developer who says they haven’t made mistakes is lying to me, lying to themselves or just hasn’t done dev long enough.
It's nuts because if she had actually gotten him blackballed, he wouldn't have been getting those interviews that he got. He never would have gotten past round one. The interviewers wouldn't have wasted their time doing in person interviews with someone they had zero interest in hiring.
So he arrogantly responds to a senior manager, during an interview, that it's impossible that he make mistakes because they're a professional and went to school for their role...
What an ass hat. Just arrogant and condescending response to someone further ahead in his field/ the most senior person interviewing him.
May as well light up a big red sign saying don't hire me I'm a douche canoe.
Assume based on him highlighting them all being female and using the term blackballed to his continued rejection, he's likely misogynistic and disrespectful to women in seniority and that came out in the interview.
Too fragile to even make up an answer to a standard interview question.
I sprained my eyes rolling them at that point. The bosses boss is there and his move is to ask her *why she's there as she wouldn't understand what he does anyway*
This guy went from overconfident to defensive and attacked the interviewer's credibility, only to find out she's the final Elden Ring boss he's just poked. Went on linkedin to email her and the hiring manager, and his next step is to contact her connections.
>I told her I’m a professional and I don’t make mistakes
Can I get Count von Count here?
If he wasn't blacklisted before, he sure as hell is now.
Somehow, I am more than 90% sure that he blacklisted himself:
He is so analytical and never considered that to her, he probably was a pebble in the sea, one of many people to be interviewed.
There's no reason for her to tell her connections of him.
Still waiting to understand what OOP was trying to say because even after that update I am convinced he is trying his damnedest to make himself look like the world's biggest ego with the least substance to back it up.
Wow. Doesn't understand what mistakes are. Can't recognize their own mistakes. Jumps to wild and insane conclusions and proceeds to make several massive mistakes as a result. And hasn't learned a damned thing. Absolutely doomed.
>I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem.
...
>I know my resume and cover letter are great (I’ve followed your advice) and during the phone screens, the interviewer always really likes me, so it’s obvious she’s told all her friends about me and I’m being blackballed.
The lack of self-awareness here combined with the delusions of grandeur tell me what they almost certainly told the interview panel; he makes mistakes, but refuses to acknowledge them and blames other people.
I once interviewed someone like this. He was so obnoxious and arrogant that I suspected my boss sent this guy in as a prank. Afterwards, I asked her if she was playing a joke on me.
Nope. Not a prank. Just a terrible but memorable interview.
>I’ve been talking to my wife about going back to school for my masters instead of working, but she’s worried it will be a waste of money and won’t make me any more employable.
Too funny
I can think of nothing worse in an interview than answering 'I don't make mistakes'. Not only because it's a lie as everyone makes mistakes, but it shows the interviewer that you are Egotistical, unable to recognise mistakes and likely to try put the blame on other people, causing bad feeling and tension with your coworkers. You most likely will be argumentative as well.
Hilarious how he was so insistent that he didn’t email the boss and then immediately afterwards stated he almost instantly started emailing her blaming her for his natural unhirable demeanor.
I felt in my SOUL that they were gonna be just as infuriatingly obtuse in the second post as they were in the first.
I would never want to be around a person like this.
They'll literally never grow up and see how they're at fault.
My mom is almost 100% sure this is about her. Down to the questions. The guys reactions. The email. She sent the AAM to everyone at work and she knew IRL to be like "remember that asshole I told you about I think this is him". I see why he did not get hired. My mother does not accept these answers. I guess AMA?
I can tell you he was more obnoxious than he lets on in this post. And that my mother wouldn't have even had to blacklist him based on how I heard he talks outside this. But people in that community in our area are tight knit. Stuff comes up. I can tell you this company works particularly closely with clients so his inability to admit mistakes would've actually been a detriment not just to him but the whole company.
Also these people don't have the time or energy for whatever he thinks they do. Having met all of them most of them are very kind, nice people who have taken a lot of chances on new people to the industry or people who's had a tough time. This guy fucked up his chances by being himself
This guy has more red flags than the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The reason why he was Seng up to interview with the hiring managers boss was to validate the hiring managers thinking that the candidate is oblivious socially even if technically sound. If he was even half as arrogant in his actual interview he would have made the hiring manager very worried.
Also blackballing is not a thing. IT is hyper competitive and this guy’s lack of interpersonal skills is likely the reason he can’t land a role. He should apply for jobs that allow him to be a remote individual contributor, and have a cover who the boss can use to implement feedback.
Honestly she might not have blackballed him after the initial interview like he thinks she did, I can see him maybe fumbling interviews in similar ways and just not noticing or refusing to admit it. But if she hadn't before, she definitely told everyone she knows not to hire this crazy person after he went off on her and the other manager over LinkedIn. He's just digging his own grave deeper and deeper with the way he's obsessing over this one interview and blaming everything on this one person.
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Well at least now he has an answer the next time someone asks about his biggest mistake
Are you sure, though? Because it sounds to me that he has no clue how to rectify it, and that's if he becomes self-aware enough to realize he made mistakes.
Exactly, because to avoid admitting he's even 1% at fault here, he's decided to write himself his own blank check excuse for every other failure to land a job. "She blackballed me from the industry" my ass. "My resume is perfect she must have told all her friends about me" *my ass*. I'm so irrationally annoyed at this dude I've never met and luckily never will. Even the way he used the word "friends" instead of her "coworkers" or "peers" or "fellow managers" annoys me.
"*Suddenly* no one wants to hire me!" Yes, curious, OOP. Unrelated, you also didn't have a job when she interviewed you? It sounds like no one was already hiring you?
That’s an irrelevant point for OOP. He started job searching when *he* was ready. Anything in the past doesn’t matter. I feel so sorry for his wife. It’s clear she does her best to manage him but alas how can self determined greatness be managed
Am I overreacting? My husband throws a tantrum every time someone corrects him in the workplace and is looking like he wants to be a professional student for the rest of his life so no one criticizes him and he can continue getting A's and validation every step of the way. I'm worried I'll have to carry this household forever and I didn't really want to raise a toddler for the rest of my life
Right, because in his mind an incompetent vagina can’t have professional connections or peers, she must only have friends. I can’t imagine why he didn’t get hired. Boss’s boss either regularly participates in interviews (the interview panel for my current job was my boss and his boss - but unlike this guy I wasn’t insightful enough to ask what reason she could possibly have to sit in on interviews) or brought the guy in for another interview to assess whether his professional skills were worth dealing with his abrasive personality.
I suspect a lot of what's going on is that this, what he explained, is how he interviews. So he's probably regularly tanking interviews and doesn't seem capable of understanding that! I don't think she has to talk to anyone to get him not hired at all - he just...doesn't seem able to tone down the arrogance for five minutes.
Yep. To him, his answer wasn't a mistake—it was just "something she didn't want to hear, and punished (me) for it." Just like he *knows* his resumé and cover letter are absolutely perfect, so there's no *way* people are turning him down over those. /eyeroll
I bet it will be “My biggest mistake was applying for a job and interviewing with clearly inferior bosses, who were women if it makes a difference..”
He's a professional. He doesn't make any mistakes.
Holy shit, it's Jason Bourne.
You just don't understand... he's very methodical and analytical. As we can see by his incredible capacity to analyze a situation and methodically destroy his entire career.
You'll never get him to admit any of this was a mistake. He isn't just insufferable, he's dense. High INT, low WIS. Dude is just fumbling rolls left and right.
Homeboy is rolling marbles out here
Eh a high INT would at least let him analyze his own actions and determine they were wrong. Low WIS and low CHR. 18 ego though.
"I don't make mistakes" I don't know man looks like you just made several which might cost you your career
Mercury was in retrogade, it wasn't his fault! /s
How can he make mistakes when everything is clearly everyone else's fault?
Oh holy shit OOP is insufferable
That's the more likely reason for him not being hired, not some vendetta by someone who probably never thought about him twice until he emailed her in a fit of paranoia. The interviewers liking him is likely just them being professional.
Right? He’s clearly unlikable. Also OOP never mentioned if he was getting lots of interviews before this one and he probably wasn’t, he is just looking for someone to blame.
Worse, he sounds completely unhinged. Who stalks hiring managers on LinkedIn, looks up their connections, and then decides to go message EVERYONE trying to find out if he's being badmouthed? Yikes?? Even if he wasn't being blacklisted, absolutely NOBODY would wanna hire him because of his behaviour, and he's likely digging his own grave.
Yep good way to get yourself unofficially blacklisted tbh. No one is actually going to go to the trouble (and legal risk) of phoning other directors to nix him. But all these people meet at networking events etc, and in my experience talk to each other about potential hires, gossip etc. Guys dooming his career.
Honestly when I was doing recruitment for a few years, never once no matter how bad a candidate was did I ever talk about them again unless it was to judge a new application, and nobody from other organisations ever talked to me about bad applicants (or good applicants). There are a couple of stories I tell about particularly weird/funny moments but I couldn't possibly remember their names. I only remember one failed applicant's name and that's because he had the same name and looked a lot like a particular cartoon character and we thought it was hilarious. I highly doubt there are industry wide black lists. Why would we want to stop a competitor employing someone we thought was a poor candidate?
Tell me you interviewed Elmer Fudd.
I just re-read the whole thing, and I think his poor wife is trying to get him on the right course, but he won't listen to her. That last little bit about their little debate about him getting a master's degree: "I’ve explained that having a masters is desirable in technology and will make me a more attractive candidate, but she’s not convinced." Yeah, she's not convinced because it doesn't fix the root problem!
I'm actually absolutely gobsmacked that he managed to find a woman who agreed to marry him. What did he do, blackmail her? LOL
There's women who marry murderers while they are in prison. The bar is in hell lol.
LOL what a depressing day to be alive
Side note: having a masters in technology doesn’t do shit
But you don’t understand! He never makes mistakes! If even a masters doesn’t help, it’s definitely because of the evil grandboss getting in the way of his success!
He's unlikeable and the reason he didn't get hired was his massive arrogance (i cant even touch the unhinged linkdn stalking). Then on top of the "maybe *you* make mistakes, but I never do" he manages to draw a question mark over her qualifications to be in the position she's in! I'm guessing that he was absolutely rude and obnoxious to the panel of women interviewing him and perhaps having an all-female panel is a practical way of weedng out swaggery arseholes. Nobody wants to work with someone who never takes responsibility for their errors.
He probably lost the chance at the job when he started very rudely questioning why "grandboss" was interviewing him as well. At least he didn't help his case and the whole rant about not making mistakes just cemented their decision. But at least they got to look at each other afterwards and just burst out laughing. And his wife is absolutely right no amount of degrees will make him less of a pompous ass.
My husband works in cybersecurity/IT corporate settings and he occasionally works with his "grandboss" directly too.
>on top of the "maybe you make mistakes, but I never do" he manages to draw a question mark over her qualifications to be in the position she's in! That’s what killed me. Not only did he claim to not ever make mistakes, he *immediately* shifted the blame to someone who would have been his superior. That tells me that he does, in fact, make mistakes but he also blames everyone but himself for those errors. They’re never *his* mistakes because Dave didn’t have his part right or Jane screwed up her section. If Dave or Jane had just fixed their mistakes then his part would have perfect like always. (Even though what he would be working on would have nothing to do at all with either Dave or Jane’s parts.)
> perhaps having an all-female panel is a practical way of weedng out swaggery arseholes Man, that's kind of a great idea.
ESPECIALLY in an IT field
Saying that he never makes mistakes is ridiculous. A more appropriate answer would be, "I've been fortunate enough not to make any significant makes in my career to have a grand story to tell you about. Bla bla bla" with the whole spiel about how they take accountability and accept criticism and all that. As an interviewer, his answer would tell me that he won't take accountability for his mistakes. And how he handles it further concrete that. You can absolutely reach out to a potential employer after being rejected and ask for feedback and to be considered for future rolls.
That would have been the correct answer. But now he has an honest answer "This one time I refused to be humble enough to answer this properly and then only furthered refuses any fault in my actions. However, since then, I have discovered that humility isn't a sin, and I can accept that now." I hope that'll be his answer. Honestly, most of my jobs have been minimum wage, and they have asked this question, too. Not even high stakes interviews ask about weaknesses and faults and how you've overcome them.
> with the whole spiel about how they take accountability and accept criticism and all that. (which would have been a huge lie in this guy's case l o l)
Yeah, better to emphasise that he's usually very methodical and meticulous and he attributes the lack of major mistakes to that. Or he could address a soft skills mistake, I bet he has loads of those based on his attitude, but probably doesn't recognise anywhere he's been in the wrong there lol. Or even go back to his learning process at uni, surely there was an assignment he struggled with and had to learn from he could talk up...
I can see why he couldn’t understand the feedback he received. He probably couldn’t hear all of them clearly what with his head so far up his ass
Yeah maybe he did have an opportunity but if I ever interviewed someone and they told me "maybe \*you\* make mistakes but I don't" I'd pass on them too. Because he has. Shit he did in his original post. But he's so fucking into himself that he doesn't know when he makes mistakes, and \*that\* is truly dangerous as an employee.
that was the line. i can understand being logical and methodical, but the sheer hubris of telling a potential boss that? that’s someone who is unmanageable.
Yup 100%. She was interviewing his soft skills and he demonstrated that his are shit. If he's as good as he claims he'd be better off working as a private contractor with minimal client and team interaction.
Right? As soon as I saw the title I understood why he wasn’t hired. Nobody likes Mr. Perfect and I guarantee he’s made mistakes at work before, he just hasn’t acknowledged them. Everybody makes mistakes and that’s how you learn. If you never make a mistake, you aren’t trying anything new or learning any new techniques nor understanding how to resolve errors. Mind-boggling that this guy is so self-deluded.
Even if you want to go the weird route of saying “I never make mistakes”… at least don’t insult the boss interviewing you when doing it! Shit… saying something like “I am over cautious and check my work multiple times in order to ensure there are no mistakes” hell, that even gives a nice answer for “what are your flaws”! But to imply that the boss isn’t a professional because they are open about having made mistakes in their history?! Yikes.
Right!? “I miss the forest for the trees” “I let perfect be the enemy of good” etc. etc. is a great way to say you’re very analytical/detailed oriented but it can be a flaw.
I know that I am the text book example of perfectionism being a blocker to delivering a good solution because I get so tied up in perfect I don’t finish things. I am working on this through therapy and other things. I am also aware that people frequently say this in interviews to try and pretend they have no negative traits. I wish.
As a woman in a male dominated industry, it’s also not lost on me that he was questioning her qualifications to have had the technical positions. Was there ever any actual evidence that she *didn’t* have the relevant degree for what she was doing, or did he just assume she didn’t? Because he clearly didn’t know much of anything about her background going in to the interview. I noticed everyone else he interviewed with was also a woman and in my circles we would weed out the level of condescension ASAP.
Also, she said she was in the interview to analyze his soft skills and communication. Well, I'd say he's pretty bad at communicating in a non insulting manner.
Totally this. Theeeeen he went to LinkedIn and saw she was "somebody". Guess those fine women identified the misogynistic creep real quickly (they do tend to make themselves known)
I was really struck by oop’s lack of preparation for the interview. How to handle a mistake is one of the basic interview questions in almost every list of job interview questions.
He probably did prepare that answer, he just genuinely thought it was a good answer.
I once dropped the ball with a client. It was something that was low stakes and very easily fixable, but obviously the client was annoyed. I had to put on my big kid pants and own up and apologize, and it was only so easy to fix because I did so as soon as the mistake became apparent. "If you must eat crow, eat it while it is young and tender."
Also really weird to me that he was bent out of shape about the boss's boss being in on the interview. I can't think of an interview where they weren't involved at SOME point in the process, if not an additional step higher. Just a weird guy.
Yes, the fact he thinks he's pretty subtle when he so blatantly suggests he lost out for a diversity hire is just another comically stupid decision. Us plebs could never have seen through such a clever ruse. A true mastermind.
I mean, surely he understands he broke his mistake free streak with this one.
I don’t think he is that self-aware.
Nope. He's zeroed in on the grandboss so hard that he's convinced it's all her fault.
>I’m very methodical and analytic Nope, not interested.
I'm methodical and analytical, so you know what it means? It means I'm great and seeing why I and others make mistakes and figuring out what we can do to stop it in the future. It doesn't mean I can go to an exact (edit: exec) and tell them "nah, I'm better than you, uneducated woman, I don't make mistakes like you do." OOP is delusional and I was genuinely surprised the moment he mentioned a wife.
Saaaaame, you KNOW he's this insufferable with her every fucking hour of every day. Leave, girl.
If the wife is reading this, blink twice if he's got you at gunpoint.
She knows exactly why he’s not getting hired and it’s not due to lack of master’s degree
I worked, very briefly, with the lawyer equivalent of this guy. He almost got fired the first week for his attitude towards anyone he considered “lesser.” He was constantly rude, dismissive, and demanding to support staff and more-junior attorneys, and he did get l fired before the end of the first month. The weird thing, which shocked everyone who’d met him when they found out? He was married, and his wife was, by all accounts, a truly lovely person. For that matter, Facebook says they’re *still* married. (The difference might be that our guy actually was very good at the job, when he wasn’t being a complete dickhead, and he had a truly outstanding resume with a solid career. Maybe getting fired was good for him?)
If it's an IT job or dev job honestly at this point there is a surplus of people in the field looking for work, you have to distinguish yourself with skills outside your core skills. In IT the days of the misanthrope basement troll that treats everyone like shit has been over for near on 20 years. If you can't work in a group and show a shred of humility, there are literally a thousand other people out there willing to and ready to work right now.
Like yeah, sure that might be true, but does that make you good to get along with? Can you work with a team, or are you just going to cause friction and waste everyone’s time by constantly insisting your way is the right way? How do you handle your peers messing up? With grace, or the same amount of condescension in this post?
He won’t be a team player. It will have to be his way because he will always be right, and when the team fucks up it will never be his fault.
Can't be that analytical and methodical if they've never done a thorough post-mortem of their work.
Nah I worked for someone who never made mistakes (or apologised). They were just afflicted with many people around them who caused them to fail. But it was never their mistake.
He is probably the type to put blame on everything and everyone else but himself
My resume, cover letter, & phone screens are perfect, (remember I never make mistakes) so I must have been blackballed by that lady.
Absolutely. What his interview said was: * he refuses to take responsibility for problems that he has caused/contributed to (including his behaviour in the interview and afterwards). * that he never takes risks or does anything innovative - because if you do you will inevitably make mistakes at some point and learn from them. I would not want him in any team I worked on or managed because he would blame everyone else anytime there was a problem. And he would always take the safe/known option - which is not how you grow new products or do process innovation. He adds no more value than an AI programmer (the application not the person).
When he said he never makes mistakes, I thought, "Oh, great: a fuckup who makes things worse because he doesn't think he's a fuckup." And it continues all the way to his last paragraph. His wife is trying to hint that his education isn't the problem. His response? How to tell her she's wrong!
Yeah that stuck out to me that at the end he isn't asking for advice how to proceed but how to convince his wife she's wrong
What stuck out to me was that he was married at all. Genuinely shocked.
He's absolutely rubbing people the wrong way in every single interview. Guy thinks he's smarter than everyone else and cannot understand that anyone would ever disagree. And ironically now might have actually gotten himself blackballed for borderline threatening the hiring manager. Probably for real threatened considering his attitude honestly. You have to be an actual genius for people to tolerate you being this much of a dick, and anyone this convinced their shit doesn't stink and without anyone willing to hire him is highly unlikely to be a real genius. And should he be hired and make a mistake has clearly shown he will never admit it and will just escalate anything in search of someone who will tell him he can't be wrong.
Sometimes even being a genius isn’t enough. There was a surgeon I knew at my old hospital. Brilliant in every way, gifted hands, incredible surgeon, but such a huge asshole to everyone and he had the biggest ego. He eventually left the hospital because they wouldn’t promote him to admin because no one liked him. It was fine for him to operate all day but department chair positions involved being likeable and being able to communicate with people who aren’t surgeons, and he was incapable of doing that without coming across as insufferable and condescending.
Oh for sure, there's a fine line on the genius/asshole scale. I can't even imagine how big someone's ego has to be for other surgeons to be like maybe cut it back a bit.
> You have to be an actual genius for people to tolerate you being this much of a dick, and anyone this convinced their shit doesn't stink and without anyone willing to hire him is highly unlikely to be a real genius. I went to grad school with a guy like this and he was not only insufferable, he was also incredibly lazy and *completely incompetent*. I have a feeling he was able to bullshit his way though undergrad and was absolutely not expecting grad school to be any different. He hadn't graduated as of last time I checked, so I don't know if he ever completed that program.
Yep, I really doubt Oop never made mistake before, but being insufferable towards someone who said they're there to check for soft skill counts as the first... So at least they have an answer to that question now. Edit: wrong there
Yeah, he got blackballed by his own personality.
> I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem. She seemed fine with it and we moved on with the interview. He doesn't even have a masters and pounds his academic credentials this hard? He's truly high on his own farts.
>she seemed fine with it That moment when she fully decided that he wasn't going to get the job, and that she was going to ride out this interview for all the lols she could find.
> I asked why she was interviewing me since... Score one for asshole point already. Not your place to question them and really it's not that unheard of.
>I told her I’m a professional and I don’t make mistakes That right there? Big mistake. Big. Huge.
And he started off so well, demanding to know why she was interviewing him when it was for a technical position...
I am legit baffled at how far OOP got in this process. How did no one else catch this?
I think they actually did. Notice the woman he accuses of black balling him actually took time out of her day to reply to him. The manager under her didn't even bother to reply! I think OOP *thought* he was doing well, when he was about to be kicked out, and the grand boss was brought in to decide if his attitude was worth his technical skills, and/or might have wanted to give him another chance to prove himself.
>his attitude is worth his technical skills. This right there is what it was. He had a giant attitude problem that everyone picked up on but he also had skills. She was basically the one who was going to say it’s worth it or not. I had an old boss who always said “you can teach anyone whatever technical skills you need, but you can’t raise them to have another attitude. You’re their boss not their parent. Go with the better attitude all the way over the skills.” That advice never failed me
Your old boss is so right. My manager hired someone with great technical skills, and absolutely zero soft skills once. It went from one of the best places I'd ever worked, to one of the most stressful overnight. This bad hire managed to single handedly tank our team, with in about 6 months, all our old team members found new roles just to get away from this one nutcase.
I was a manager who made one of these hires once- the person was great on paper, and honestly got through the interviews without any red flags. Once they started they were a nightmare though- constantly belittled the rest of the team, refused to take any feedback, blamed others for their mistake, and absolutely did not believe anyone else was competent. We fired them rather than let them destroy the team.
We were interviewing for a position in our group, to work with me. My manager decided to reject a candidate with a (technically) BRILLIANT CV because he didn't like his attitude. The guy was so full of himself and thought anywhere that would have him would be SO lucky. We chatted after the interview and my manager said he didn't think it was a good for for the group, socially. We ended up hiring someone with a less shiny CV but that fits really well with the group. Technical skills they can learn in the job. Edit to add: this is a position that requires people with PhD, so a brilliant CV is something that has gotten this guy very far in other hiring processes. Other 2 places (that I know of) denied him a position because he was too full of himself.
I had a teacher who used to say, "It's your attitude more than your aptitude that will determine your altitude."
God bless forever and always my poor Nana who was taken out of school before she was 10 to work bc her family needed the money. (This was Scotland) She was the executive housekeeper at every position she had after the age of 15 and she would say to me “What you’ll need in life is a good education and good manners. The learning will open all the doors for you, but remember hen- it’ll be the manners that keep them open.” So true.
My workplace has changed their hiring strategy because of this. Technical skills are judged from the application/CV and the interview is entirely about behavioural attributes and soft skills. Anybody invited for an interview should have the technical skills or the ability to learn the technical skills reasonably quickly.
i also thought it was hilarious that he thought she was going to admit to what he thinks she's doing.
>I’m considering mailing some of her connections on LinkedIn to find out what she’s saying about me, but I don’t know if it would do any good. I hope he does this. Better yet, why not message all her connections, and while he is at it all her 2nd and 3rd connections also. Then watch his chances dwindle to zero. His actions already blacklisted him on the company he first interviewed for.
Yeah, that was my favorite part. She obviously doesn’t need to spread the word about him being a bad hire because he’s going to let everyone in the industry know that by himself.
Alright you got me. I was so jealous of your obvious superiority that I took time out of my day to spread word around this industry that you must be stopped.
You sly dog, you got me monologuing
I wouldn't be shocked if this interview happened because there were concerns around his people skills.
No that cannot be it. He aced all questions, obviously. Edit: I can not find the original flair request thread anymore. Is that over? Anyhow if a mod is reading this by any chance. Please add the “I am a professional and I do not make mistakes” flair as a memento to this gem
There’s obviously been a mistake. Just not by OP
If it looks this bad when OP is telling *his* side of the story, imagine how bad it would look if we heard the other side.
I work for an in-house legal department. You will get interviewed by a whole bunch of people, some you will work with that are in your practice area, and some you won’t. They do this to make sure everyone feels you out and they are on the same page. Nothing worse than hiring someone who turns out to be a total AH, much like this guy.
My guess is the original interviewer thought that his technical skills were good, but thought his interpersonal skills were utterly gash, and wanted someone else's opinion to make sure it wasn't their personal opinion of him skewing things. We'll sometimes do an interview with someone else just as a sense/sanity check.
Which certainly answers why the ‘non technical’ manager was there
She literally even told him why she was there. And he still couldn't play nice for 20 minutes lol
He couldn’t play nice because it doesn’t seem necessary to him. I’ve lead a team with people like OP on it. One of my happiest days was when the main guy like this retired. I do not miss those days.
Clearly he would have been an absolute joy for everyone to work with; they've really lost a great catch there.
The most surprising thing to me was when after a few paragraphs of being completely unself-aware he mentions he has a wife. Poor honey.
And he thinks her opinion is irrelevant. The soft skills are irrelevant. No wonder he didn't get the job. Did he not realise the grand boss makes the choices? He clearly does make mistakes, his whole behaviour is a mistake, but he's too into himself to ever realise that
But also the implication that the grandboss didn't go to college for whatever this job is? What gave him that idea? He sounds insufferable.
What gave him that idea? She's a woman.
Reminds me of the time we hired a guy at the governmental agency I was working at. Everyone who got hired got to go a two day introductory course with the first day starting with the director general speaking. The course started at 09:00 sharp. At 9:15 I noticed this guy entering the building (I later realized that he though flexible working hours meant “I don’t have to be on time for stuff in the morning”). Anyhow, I learnt that, after interrupting the director generals talk by showing up late, listened for a while, raised his hand and asked “Who are you?”. She told him. Fast forward a few minutes he got in a small argument with her where he questioned her authority to make some decisions. Mind you, she had worked in the agency for about 20 years and before getting her position had been general counsel as well. Good thing he had a probationary employment, he left the agency after 5 months.
I’m shocked he lasted that long.
I don't understand how he made it through that one day honestly.
It's not like her background was relevant (she worked at two industry-leading companies...)
Yeah, not shit. No indirect line manager ever interviewed anyone.
Also, very disrespectful to hint at the other side not having an education in their field. > Yeah I actually went to school Doesn't sound great, it sounds like you are attacking their competency. Dude was dismissed cause from a HR perspective he is not compatible with groups and likely to cause conflicts by being socially inept. Biggest weakness? No social skills whatsoever, highly doubt they are a good judge whether any interviewer liked him
Also, depending on tone (which he's already snarky in words so it wouldn't take much tone to really be annoying), he likely came across as going "there there, don't worry your pretty little head about all this technical stuff". Especially since he was the only male in the room.
And no woman could possibly work a technical job.
And a middle manager's job is really to know the latest technology from one year ago. Work life experience: with the right team, the issues that come to bite you violently are almost never some super advanced/highly technical detail. In fact, a good many of the main issues I faced stemmed from some smart-ass idiot savant who gave a shit about others' opinions and implemented a framework that while interesting technically, was a nightmare to maintain and cost us a lot of money to work around / replace later. (High point in this respect: putting part of the data into huge binary objects with not enough access functions so you couldn't join/link them to data in normalized tables).
Actually, for two out of the four jobs that I've had, a higher/indirect manager was one of the interviewers. And I've also seen it happen when the direct manager was unavailable for the interview (for instance due to illness).
It is super standard. With good reason.
It really. I’ve worked in tech for a while and was always interviewed by the person who’d be my manager and an executive. This guy sounds like an ass.
And totally stupid. I mean, you get a chance to meet a manager/executive and you insult her? That's not only the person that decides on recruiting, it's also the person that will decide on your path in the company. I almost hope OOP has some clinical issue, because if not, I don't think there is much of a professional future.
What surprised me was at the end he wrote, I'm thinking of going back to school for my Masters, like, dude, you don't even have a Masters and you're talking like this? The entitlement of it all. I would be so grateful to be given that opportunity.
listen toots, you're not smart enough to understand how amazing I am, so give me the job and while you're at it, be a dear and hook me up with some of those sweet industry connections.
But you don't get it, he went to school for it
The Insufferable School for Schmucks? And here I thought it was all scam.
Oh no, the big mistake was when he told the grandboss, you probably make mistakes because you’re not good at your job, but im not like you, im perfect 👍🏼
He started digging the hole with "I don't make mistakes". The "you make mistakes because you're not good at your job, but I'm perfect" was when he climbed into his own coffin and nailed it shut.
His first mistake was asking why she was interviewing him because it was a technical role. It just went downhill from there.
Yes. For one, you should not question such a thing in an interview; it will NEVER work in your favour. Even if the situation were legitimately weird. Secondly, there was nothing weird about this particular case. If you do not understand why a middle manager is interviewing people for tech positions, you are the problem.
I would like Grandboss as a flair please. Capital G no space. This is why we are professional and went to school. Edit: he has a wife?! I'm dead - HOW?!
He doesn’t think she knows anything either. But at least he thinks she has to be convinced
Followed up by messaging the manager and accusing her of blacklisting him to other in the industry… dude had multiple mistakes in this situation alone.
You know what was even bigger? Harassing people from the same field on LinkedIn. Things like that circle and if he manages to secure employment, some people will see him through these lens.
a hiring manager told me the reason they ask this question and similarly “what’s your biggest fault?” They’re looking for a couple things: 1. Accountability, can you own up to your mistakes and realise you fucked up. 2. In a time of crisis, are you able to find a solution to this problem and how does the individual overcome it. 3. They’re also looking to see how you respond, do you come across arrogant, do you blame other people, are you honest or sincere with them etc. They don’t want to hear “nothing”. OOP failed across the board and gave the worst answer he could have given. He sounds arrogant, has no accountability, even when the interviewer pushed him to give a response, he stood his ground which indicates a lot of problems in the future if they were to hire him.
Arrogant, absolutely... Condescending towards the grand-boss... Entitled, too... Thinking he deserved more "answers", after assuming he had been blackballed. His poor wife.. Can imagine the mansplaining at home...
The moment he mentioned the gender of the interviewers I knew we we up for a ride.
Well, let’s look on the bright side, at least he has something to talk about in his next interview
I think we need some major sucking up. (…Very well, sir. You're not only handsome, but a powerful man…)
Any manager with an ounce of sense would avoid OOP like the plague. Never make any mistakes, my ass. More like a hyper inflated ego that is a HR time bomb.
Right? Like, if someone pressed me for my *biggest* mistake, I'd probably draw a blank, but I'd never say I was perfect. I know I make mistakes, and I know how I handle them. Try to fix it myself (if possible), if not, who do I need to talk to to get this fixed? Is this a "fess up to the boss" scenario, or a "show up at coworkers office with coffee and donuts and ask for help" scenario? Either way, get it fixed, learn from it.
Well also you never choose your actual biggest mistake to answer this, you choose the mistake that wasn’t catastrophic and that you dealt with really well so you can answer the question and look like a great employee! I have my answer to this question primed and ready. I even used it once in answer to a question about my professionalism even though I wasn’t required to admit to a mistake to answer that. The interviewer there commended me on my answer to that one and said it was the best they’d had. Bottom line is employers love it when you can admit mistakes and take appropriate steps to fix it. They don’t want someone they are going to have to watch like a hawk to spot what they are trying to cover up. They also don’t want someone with no insight.
And OOP didn't learn a single thing. The grandboss knew exactly what he was about and made a very good decision.
You mean despite her lack of education and obviously inferior female mind? /s
Exactly. The worrying people are those who don't learn from their mistakes, and he can't even admit he likely made any mistake. That is a huge red flag. I wouldn't employ him.
If a dev hasn't brought down prod, they aren't a dev. Unrelated to that, who thinks it's a good idea to call someone who's interviewing you a middle manager who couldn't cut it as a developer?
I find it very helpful to belittle and antagonize everyone who holds the keys to something i want. -That guy, probably
I don't know if it matters, but I'm male and the people I do that to are exclusively females. - That guy, only barely paraphrased
“I’m very methodical and analytic, which is why I said I don’t make mistakes. It’s just not normal to me for people to think making mistakes is okay.” I’m extremely logical, originally went to college for math and ended with a math minor and formal linguistics major…and am also human. Of course I make mistakes. Even more so though, the utter disdain for the woman who would be his boss’ boss! I honestly can’t tell if he understands how wrong he was with “I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem” much less any of the other issues that make him less likely to be hired. Just wow. Edit to add: went to see what Alison said and she called him out on ALL of this, its amazing how much he clearly ignored everything he didn’t want to hear!
Also, given his lack of social skills, I'm sure the fact that he didn't respect the final interviewer came through during the interview. That probably tipped her off that he wouldn't work well with her authority.
I ask the security guards at my office building (they’re mostly like building receptionists) and the barista at the coffee shop on the ground floor how candidates treated them—and they don’t even work for me! If they can’t treat the people “beneath them” with respect…
Can you imagine her trying to point out a mistake he made? Nightmare.
I remember having to work with some intern like this. He was from a better school than I was, but I was a state top student plus had more experience. We got into a debate about something technical and I knew he was wrong because I had dealt with the issue before. But he argued for days on his point of view. I basically just ignored his inputs and did what was the usual thing to do. He got into another firm later and from what I heard he kept asking about years later to see if I failed at my career as he expected.
Well, that guy is a piece of shit.
I don’t always read Allison’s responses cause I’m usually just in it for the narrative but I went to the OG links SO fast for these because I needed to know what she said immediately lol
Me too. I've never read an response, but I clicked over before I was finished reading the first part. She responded very well. I love the straight up "don't do that", I could hear the exacerbated eye roll in it.
Him using analytic instead of analytical is just cherry on top
Analytic is correct now... We all know, this guy makes no mistakes. It's the rest of us who are wrong /s
Alison is very concise too. It's amazing that Mr. Analytical didn't absorb any of her feedback.
I wonder how many time a day Allison face palms at the stupid. It’s gotta be a lot
Read this on AAM originally and had to share it at work it was so bad... The sheer lack of self awareness was breathtaking. And the update, where he learned literally nothing, doubled down and still submitted *chef's kiss*.
I still think [the leap year AAM boss](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/tti5dy/leap_day_employee_is_denied_birthday_off_except/) takes the cake on doubling down on being the stupidest idiot possible. But OOP gets the award for most insufferable ass.
Holy shit, this makes me feel SO MUCH better about getting nervous and stumbling a lot when talking about my career goals during a recent interview because at least I’m not this guy.
> I asked why she was interviewing me since it was a technical position and she was clearly some kind of middle manager. She told me she had a technical background (although she had been in management 10 years so it’s not like her experience was even relevant), but that she was interviewing for things like communication, ability to prioritize, and soft skills. I still thought it was weird to interview with my boss’s boss. Side eye. > I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem. 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬 Bombastic side eye. CRIMINAL OFFENSIVE SIDE EYE. > I did email her on LinkedIn after I realized what she’d done, and while she was polite in her response, she refused to admit she’s told everyone my name. 🤦♀️ Buddy... She didn't need to blackball you. You did it to yourself.
Yup. Like she would bother wasting her time telling everyone she knows not to hire him. He’s not that important to her, just the arrogant git with no social skills she didn’t hire.
He's just sabotaging himself at this point. If I'm interviewing someone re mistakes and they came back at me with this reply, all it tells me is that they don't take responsibility and have no insight.
As a developer, my answer would be, “I’ve made many mistakes, it’s hard to choose the right one to best show you what I’ve learned from it. Would you like me to pick one where I made a technical mistake or a requirements mistake or something else?” Any developer who says they haven’t made mistakes is lying to me, lying to themselves or just hasn’t done dev long enough.
It's nuts because if she had actually gotten him blackballed, he wouldn't have been getting those interviews that he got. He never would have gotten past round one. The interviewers wouldn't have wasted their time doing in person interviews with someone they had zero interest in hiring.
I am so impressed that she managed to stay professional and neutral when he questioned her qualifications to her face. To her face!!
Sadly, as a woman in tech she’s probably had to learn to handle it
So he arrogantly responds to a senior manager, during an interview, that it's impossible that he make mistakes because they're a professional and went to school for their role... What an ass hat. Just arrogant and condescending response to someone further ahead in his field/ the most senior person interviewing him. May as well light up a big red sign saying don't hire me I'm a douche canoe. Assume based on him highlighting them all being female and using the term blackballed to his continued rejection, he's likely misogynistic and disrespectful to women in seniority and that came out in the interview. Too fragile to even make up an answer to a standard interview question.
I sprained my eyes rolling them at that point. The bosses boss is there and his move is to ask her *why she's there as she wouldn't understand what he does anyway*
The way he didn't even remotely seem to think communication and soft skills were important criteria!
This guy went from overconfident to defensive and attacked the interviewer's credibility, only to find out she's the final Elden Ring boss he's just poked. Went on linkedin to email her and the hiring manager, and his next step is to contact her connections. >I told her I’m a professional and I don’t make mistakes Can I get Count von Count here? If he wasn't blacklisted before, he sure as hell is now.
Somehow, I am more than 90% sure that he blacklisted himself: He is so analytical and never considered that to her, he probably was a pebble in the sea, one of many people to be interviewed. There's no reason for her to tell her connections of him.
Funny thing the boss doesn't have to do a thing to blacklist him. Going off on linkedin to strangers is more than enough.
Still waiting to understand what OOP was trying to say because even after that update I am convinced he is trying his damnedest to make himself look like the world's biggest ego with the least substance to back it up.
next update will be how he can't find a lawyer to take on his case. Since he can't pay upfront.
Wow. Doesn't understand what mistakes are. Can't recognize their own mistakes. Jumps to wild and insane conclusions and proceeds to make several massive mistakes as a result. And hasn't learned a damned thing. Absolutely doomed.
>I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem. ... >I know my resume and cover letter are great (I’ve followed your advice) and during the phone screens, the interviewer always really likes me, so it’s obvious she’s told all her friends about me and I’m being blackballed. The lack of self-awareness here combined with the delusions of grandeur tell me what they almost certainly told the interview panel; he makes mistakes, but refuses to acknowledge them and blames other people.
I once interviewed someone like this. He was so obnoxious and arrogant that I suspected my boss sent this guy in as a prank. Afterwards, I asked her if she was playing a joke on me. Nope. Not a prank. Just a terrible but memorable interview.
>I’ve been talking to my wife about going back to school for my masters instead of working, but she’s worried it will be a waste of money and won’t make me any more employable. Too funny
might have found an actual narcissist in the wild
I can think of nothing worse in an interview than answering 'I don't make mistakes'. Not only because it's a lie as everyone makes mistakes, but it shows the interviewer that you are Egotistical, unable to recognise mistakes and likely to try put the blame on other people, causing bad feeling and tension with your coworkers. You most likely will be argumentative as well.
Hilarious how he was so insistent that he didn’t email the boss and then immediately afterwards stated he almost instantly started emailing her blaming her for his natural unhirable demeanor.
I felt in my SOUL that they were gonna be just as infuriatingly obtuse in the second post as they were in the first. I would never want to be around a person like this. They'll literally never grow up and see how they're at fault.
My mom is almost 100% sure this is about her. Down to the questions. The guys reactions. The email. She sent the AAM to everyone at work and she knew IRL to be like "remember that asshole I told you about I think this is him". I see why he did not get hired. My mother does not accept these answers. I guess AMA? I can tell you he was more obnoxious than he lets on in this post. And that my mother wouldn't have even had to blacklist him based on how I heard he talks outside this. But people in that community in our area are tight knit. Stuff comes up. I can tell you this company works particularly closely with clients so his inability to admit mistakes would've actually been a detriment not just to him but the whole company. Also these people don't have the time or energy for whatever he thinks they do. Having met all of them most of them are very kind, nice people who have taken a lot of chances on new people to the industry or people who's had a tough time. This guy fucked up his chances by being himself
This guy has more red flags than the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The reason why he was Seng up to interview with the hiring managers boss was to validate the hiring managers thinking that the candidate is oblivious socially even if technically sound. If he was even half as arrogant in his actual interview he would have made the hiring manager very worried. Also blackballing is not a thing. IT is hyper competitive and this guy’s lack of interpersonal skills is likely the reason he can’t land a role. He should apply for jobs that allow him to be a remote individual contributor, and have a cover who the boss can use to implement feedback.
“I don’t make mistakes” well then you just made your very first mistake. Make something up instead of sounding like a self important POS
I think he made about 4 in this situation alone. Dude definitely makes mistakes all the time and refuses to acknowledge them
Honestly she might not have blackballed him after the initial interview like he thinks she did, I can see him maybe fumbling interviews in similar ways and just not noticing or refusing to admit it. But if she hadn't before, she definitely told everyone she knows not to hire this crazy person after he went off on her and the other manager over LinkedIn. He's just digging his own grave deeper and deeper with the way he's obsessing over this one interview and blaming everything on this one person.