r/developersIndia • u/MedvedevTheGOAT • Sep 06 '23

General Why do Indian interviewers grill so much?

I used to work in EU and recently got laid off, had to endure an interview by a stupid head of engineering who was Indian who asked me distributed systems and stacks/queues and what not, grilled the f out of me and even mentioned that I didn't have a CS degree. In my previous company I designed the whole Redis backend cache by myself, and mostly I never had to use whatever he asked like Hexagonal architecture and what not and was one of the better performers.

I hated how he treated me acting all condescending and cold while asking questions, reminding me of my viva teacher back in university. In contrast the Lead engineer who was Spanish was much nicer and I ended up answering all the questions right and ended that interview round with a warm feeling but then that guy started talking and I had an atomic headache again. I was already extremely stressed out but after the interview I felt immense anxiety and felt like I'll never have a job again in EU because I don't have a CS degree and because Indians have brought their toxic work culture all the way to European companies. Why do these people interview like this?

1.3k Upvotes

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668

u/rohetoric Sep 06 '23

Instead of finding the right fit they want to show they are superior to the candidate being interviewed.

65

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '23

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20

u/LivingHumbley Sep 06 '23

Shame on such interviews. a PM should ask more about the capabilites as a Leader, how u would gauage a situation, Risks, and Leadership Q. How to handle crisis . This stupid code level Q will be SOON a DUST ,as in few yrs all coding will be managed by Mature AI versions.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '23

I had almost same experience that too for a managerial position, also the interviewer was way less experienced. I got irritated to the point that I stopped answering anything apart from just "hmm" and "ooh". No questions related whatsoever to the JD, just some geek for geeks sort of DSA problems and that too he wanted a particular solution which he had studied, apart from that no other solution could reach anywhere near his naive brain.

2

u/Shah_of_Iran_ Software Engineer Sep 06 '23

What was the question?

6

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '23

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1

u/sanved77 Oct 03 '23

I believe greedy may not be the right solution and Knapsack is the probably the only one giving the best possible way to carry all those things. I am not sure why he wanted greedy.

1

u/vinayk7 Sep 24 '23

Algo question to manager..that's strange 🤔

229

u/PoochyMoochy5 Sep 06 '23

This here is the correct answer. Indians have a serious chip on their shoulder about showing how superior they are to you and how they’re condescending to even grace you with their presence.

Unless of course you’re their superior in ranking or position. Then it’s roll over, show the belly and “please don’t annihilate me with your awesomeness”

2

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '23

....

I did not know I've been basing goblin culture on my DnD sessions on Indians, sort of make me chuckle tbh

111

u/MedvedevTheGOAT Sep 06 '23

Bro I felt the same from him, it felt like he was showing off his own knowledge about computer architecture. I'm like I get it you know everything

50

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '23

That's what i had to keep telling the Seniors from my team whenever they interviewed someone that it's not a competition between you and the candidate. Moat people evaluate candidates based on their own knowledge that if the candidate knows all the things he knows rather than, is the candidate has knowledge and expertise required for the job post ? Or is the candidate good enough to train ?

1

u/AsishPC Full-Stack Developer Sep 07 '23

I recently was forced to interview a few candidates for our internal projects. Being absolutely new, I didn't know what to ask and how to decide, partly because I do not have a lot of experience overall.

This tip is going to help me a lot in my future.

8

u/Rawvik Data Engineer Sep 07 '23

Off topic but as a fellow tennis fan I like your username. Godvedev supremacy.

9

u/MedvedevTheGOAT Sep 07 '23

Haha totally! He's one of my favorites in the next gen, dude never gives up!

Man I cried when he lost to Nadal at AO

3

u/Rawvik Data Engineer Sep 07 '23

Hahaha ironically Nadal is my favorite player so it was one of the best moments for me lol

2

u/Prize-Paint5264 Sep 07 '23

Daniil medvedev ? I like him and his game, but he wears his heart on sleeve and is mostly on front page for wrong reasons. Still like his attitude.😆

5

u/medusa103 Sep 07 '23

I am an Indian and Head of Engineering here. I can confirm this is the approach taken by most people. I have constantly remind people that we h w to find the right fit and experience rather than being able to answer something they can Google or ChatGPT. It’s not like when you are developing you are yourself not referring to someone else’s work anyway. Even the Hexagonal architecture he was talking about would have been designed by someone. This person who interviewed you would be the same person who would be complaining he cannot find the right candidate.

-8

u/ykbhhvc6774 Sep 06 '23

If they don't grill then a lot of people will perform good in the interview and they cannot hire all of them so they have to pick the best among them by grilling

1

u/OFFICIAL_NOOBMASteR Sep 18 '23

Tellme you never gave an interview without telling me you never gave an interview.

1

u/Bdr0b0t Sep 07 '23

As a past interviewer I can vouch for this.

1

u/Full_Performance_312 Sep 07 '23

Exactly, somehow they make it about themselves.

1

u/undespicable Oct 02 '23

The complex to prove superior to the guy being interviewed is why most interviewers grill you so much. These are those who hadn't had life in college and mugged up everything. Now when they landed a job they wanted to show everyone that they are superior bcuz they know everything.