Welcome Mispronounced First and Last Name! Is this a good time to talk?

I loved your resume and wondered if I could ask you a few questions? Then we’ll get into more details about the position.

Hm, your resume says you were Head of the Engineering at Very Important Company. Is that true? That you built the Golden Gate Bridge out of fortune cookies? That you invented the Go Language?

Yes

How many people did you manage?

(Should I say too many or too little? Neither answer works!) 7 teams of 3, or, sometimes 100! I love people. And managing them. But I can fire them, too. Engineering Happiness! Constructive management! Whatever you need. I have no soul.

Great. Now let me tell you about our amazing company that is doing incredible things in the interstitial AI podcast healthcare environmental insurance market hedge funds for the next 40 minutes. Then we can talk next steps.

Do you have a home? Do you have children? Do you drive? Do you live in California? Do you care about podcasts healthcare institutional investing small cap funds…. Do you really care? Does it keep you up at night? Did you research this before the call? Do you really care, as much as the CEO who grew up wanting this with every breath in his body?

Yes, I’ve heard of Acme Finance Works forever and love its product. I have a home, drive, walk my son to school in California, have a cat and a partner. What else will it take to get this job? I have it.

Great. Then you know what I’m talking about. And how many years were you doing Python TypeScript Swift Rails React Native HAML GenAI AI, wait, what is AI?

(Did you read my resume? Take off 20 years because of their discomfort.) 10 years

Fabulous. Alright I’m going to run your resume up the flagpole for our Hiring Manager His Excellency Aidan Evan Xander Seth Dan to see if this is at all interesting to his schedule that is… wait now, wow, he’s BUSY. So busy. Far busier than us. Just. Extremely. Busy. I can’t find a time.

Can I schedule you from 5 AM to 9 PM for a call by anyone on your interview panel? We have 7 interviews to schedule. If they give you a pass at 5 AM, we will jump on a call at 6 AM. They will ask you to write an algorithm to avoid minefields, a card strategy game called Canasta, then, decrypt live-streaming LLM mega repository while standing on your head and juggling oranges, which you will be expected to do in this role while also mentoring 10 junior engineers, documenting all of our tech debt, managing disagreements between executives, delivering value! And improving key metrics, which are numbers we care about but don’t really understand.

Yes.

Great. In the mean time, study all the coding in those languages and make a few portfolio pieces that will tantalize the palate of His Excellence Evan Xander Seth Dan John Justin. Read up on our company and memorize our 16 values. Write engaging anecdotes that relate to all of our principles and use data. (We don’t care what, just numbers.)

A jury of your disgruntled junior engineers that you lost patience with on multiple occasions will judge you.

Wait, the position closed.

THANKYOUVERYMUCHGOODBYE.