A combination of the following drove me away:
- Automated coding platform to assess candidate skills, I doubt this was suggested by any engineering department in the company, you can already imagine where budget is spent.
- When asked whether I was willing to work extended hours or not I was told they are not compensated but that I would not be the only one doing them (I wonder how that makes it sound better...). By the way it was explained by the recruiter they seem to think it is a necessary evil related to the job rather the result of bad planification or lack of resources.
- When asked about current salary, my reply that I can't disclose this information because of NDA did not seem to convince the recruiter, who tried to convince me that my NDA, who she has never read, does not apply to this information. I was told I would need to provide my full salary history at some point although I kept insisting on the NDA part, she mentioned they would need proof of the NDA part, when I asked in which state is the company based in the United States (in some states this is straight illegal to ask for this information) there was a short silence followed by the recruiter stating that everyone in the company provided this information, when I finally stated that I did not feel comfortable sharing my salary history the recruiter suddenly lost interest in my application.
It became very clear that they need your current salary for some reason, probably to offer you as less as possible to make the change or to give you as little raises as possible once you get in as you already got a good one when joining, although the recruiter kept denying this.
At some point, the interview turned into a guessing contest on part of the recruiter about how much I make now, which I found disrespectful.