It is at this point that she contacted me and described what happened, and I asked her to reply back saying that this is extremely unfair to make her go through all several interview rounds, then reject her on irrelevant stuff, and go back on their word w.r.t salary, and that it was a huge waste of time. It seems like they replied back saying admitting that it was indeed unfair on their part, and offered her an Amazon gift voucher worth AUD $40 for all the trouble (which is laughable!) 😂 I saw the company website, they in-fact have some "Employee Assistance offering" that they market and sell to other companies - which reeks of hypocrisy to say the least. I know it was a bit too long to read (and thank you for bearing with me so far!), but wanted to provide you a context of what transpired. Now this is just 1 such experience - she has applied to exactly 2 companies here, and both experiences have been extremely demoralizing, just like I described above. I've had better luck in this area but I myself have experienced these things in the past - and I've noticed that such tactics like asking for previous payslip information are often used mostly by Indian companies, and sometimes rarely even by non-Indian companies (so that they can get leverage during negotiations). I don't why her luck turned out to be so bad, maybe is it because she is a woman or something, I don't know - but I do know she isn't the only one, and I know several others who have shared similar horror stories of horrendous hiring tactics, designed to lower the confidence of really smart and talented engineers and make them feel worthless, and goad them into accepting poor offers. Folks, don't you agree that this is super unfair that companies make a candidate go through several hiring rounds (after already agreeing about salary expectations), and then go back on their word? Any thoughts on how we can do something to discourage such dirty and shady practices? I actually found this repository here https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards that have a list of companies that don't have a broken hiring process. Maybe remote-indian should consider creating something similar, a list of companies that have broken and shady hiring practices. Or at the very least, encourage people who've had similar experiences to come forward and share their story anonymously (and perhaps publish it in remote-indian blog or podcast). Might seem a bit extreme I know, but unless these companies are called out and shamed, they will continue to get away with this behaviour and underpay engineers and won't change their practices. Eager to hear your thoughts on this.

Thank you for sharing this.

Could you please find the name of the other company as well?

Hey @narrow-judge-33018 Thanks for sharing this. I am so sorry for your friend, I agree these things are disgusting. Unfortunately when you are starting out or are in earlier days of your career, it is difficult to detect and stay away from such shady companies. Mainly due to lack of experience (of having to go through these exact experiences) or maybe out of desperation. Sharing of salary slips is always a red flag and doing a test that takes more than 30m is another one. While our first reaction is to always name and shame or blacklist (I am part of another group of startup founders who are sick of people ditching them after accepting the offer letter on the last day. They want to create a public blacklist of such people.), it can be a double edged sword. How do we verify accounts / remove biases / etc? While a company can blacklist a person and ruin their career due to spite, a similar thing can happen the other way. A candidate can post a story ruining the company’s chances of hiring.

Hey Ashwin, I am really sorry that your friend had to go through this ordeal. Can I setup a call with you and your friend in the evening to make sure I have all the details. Saurabh has some really good ideas up in this thread. And I agree with him. But before we get into the solution mindset, I'd like to process this first. Right now I am a little shocked 🤯

I draw some of my biases on this topic from here: https://medium.com/@ryanestrada/why-dont-i-name-and-shame-35e9597dbcfb which points to the twitter account: https://twitter.com/forexposure_txt/

@loud-glass-33663 Yes I agree that it could be a double-edged sword. That being said I do feel some shady practices are readily obvious. Maybe one way to eliminate biases and stay objective would be to only publish/document the stories where it is obvious what's transpiring - such as asking for previous salary slips, or going back on mutually agreed salary expectations etc. I do feel that not by naming companies, they tend to get away with it all the time. I think calling out companies have worked very well in introducing changes in organizations like facebook, amazon etc. Although I do admit it would seem somewhat extreme. And yes, by no means am I suggesting that we hurry and do something right away 🙂 .

Please add the company here https://github.com/frag-o-matic/TheLalaList Cc : @fierce-france-36958 Edit : My bad, this is a internal thing so probably can't add it here.

Man @narrow-judge-33018 that sucks. I wish your friend had a much smoother experience. I firmly think the onus is on companies to do better. Why? Because the equation is heavily balanced in their favour. This is one of the reasons I never share my salary or even expectations and recommend others to do the same. Companies wrestle with candidates to gain all advantages, in a match they already have a better hold. They then expect candidates to be on model behaviour. There's bad behaviour on both sides but institutes have a significantly better chance at improving the status quo than the masses.

@victorious-energy-56764 Yes, I've stopped sharing my previous salary as well. Although it largely because its only now that I am lucky to be in a position to say NO during the interview. Whereas previously, I didn't have much of a choice and had to reluctantly provide salary and any other information that the companies would ask of me, because otherwise they wouldn't proceed with the interview at all.

Hey @narrow-judge-33018 sorry for your friend, Even i don't share my salaries to HR, whenever HR connects me through any medium i use this gist to tell them how should we start, this is not written by me but i found this on linkdin or twitter and kept it for myself on git, but i really felt this is useful.

I will start a different thread on salary negotiations. I think a lot of people think it's hard or not possible, I want teach how it can be better.

@straight-evening-13756 This is actually pretty neat, thanks for sharing

Hey swanand it will be really helpful.

@victorious-energy-56764 Good idea, I'd like to share some tips on it as well. Probably best if we can document it somewhere later so that it's not lost on Slack.

@narrow-judge-33018 Doesn't Glassdoor solve the problem of publicly sharing experiences in the interview process?

@tall-advantage-5586 A big NO. Glassdoor interview experiences are extremely biased and the data is skewed to the level you can’t imagine. I have seen companies (HRs to be precise), asking their employees to do Glassdoor reviews. And you can imagine what they were told to write. PS: Not for big organizations.

I am not surprised but feel terrible for her. A lot of remote companies (yeap, including the fancy names that you all know and used their products) have terrible hiring and a worse company culture. I will be more than happy to help her. Is she still looking for remote dev roles? Could you pls ask her to dm me? @narrow-judge-33018

Thanks @better-telephone-38720, I've asked her to ping you

@narrow-judge-33018 thank you for sharing. Because if you didn’t we wouldn’t know and we wouldn’t be cautious at the very least. I’ve been asked to do assignments that would be recorded on video that sound nothing less than creepy, asked for an assignment which was very similar to what the company was looking to work on in the near future and would have required more than the 8 hours that they claimed (unpaid) etc. And I’ve said No to these but I honestly think these need to be shared. The companies do get away. I don’t think people will stop applying at a company because of a single hiring incident and if anything this should be enough cause to make a positive change. Your friend’s experience has been quite prolonged and the dishonesty of the entire situation is just downright horrible. I’ve had recruiters and folks tell me annoying stuff to make me feel inferior, or shame me about my maternal break and accept a lower salary. The challenge is real. Wishing your friend good luck for her next endeavours and hope she doesn’t have a repeat experience. Btw I was under the impression that sharing of payslips around pay negotiation was the norm though I’ve done it once with the startup that I last worked with and the founders had worked at my previous company.

Thanks @many-minister-78351. My friend now has worked on a plethora of side projects until now, some of them are her own, but most of them were interview assignments from Indian companies. Every company here wants to give their own side projects and coding assignments, without even looking at the candidate's GitHub profile which has several side projects already. And when you ask them if you could submit an already done assignment that you have on GitHub, they deny that, and say that you need to work on this one because it's part of their "process". They want to feel that they are very "clever" and think that somehow their evaluation criteria is unique. And then what? All to no avail. The reasons for rejections have often been so bizaare, it's like you could be rejected for even breathing in the wrong direction. Speaking from personal experience! And say despite all this nonsense the candidate still manages to impress the company and awaiting an offer, then what? In my own experience a lot of companies talk big during interviews When push comes to shove, they don't want to put their money where their mouth is. But they want to probe into your past life and pull out every bit of information from you, just so that they may find something to pay you less. I myself have been asked for Aadhar card, bank statement, passport, PAN card and salary slips from few really well-funded companies, before even a VERBAL offer! At-least now I'm in a really good company and position where I don't have to worry about this and I can tell them to get lost, but it took me a lot to get here. I have suffered severe burnout few years back, to the extent where I didn't work at for 2 whole years, during which I also got diagnosed with clinical depression. Maybe I will share my story someday, should the occasion arise. My friend has been seriously considering career alternatives other than tech, due to these experiences. And I have nothing more to say except tell her that this is how it is, she needs to stick it out, and hopefully her luck might change. Doesn't sound exactly reassuring, and I don't blame her one bit. It's becoming such a cliche - be it on Twitter or anywhere, everybody keeps saying the same motivational bs - "try harder, do this, do that, keep learning, keep pushing code on GitHub, write blog posts, etc, you'll make it" - the expectations from a "full-stack developer" is just sky-rocketing. After all, a full-stack developer needs to be good at EVERYTHING there is, isn't it? It is hard not to feel bitter when looking back you mostly have only negative experiences. Anyway, thanks a lot for your response, and I hope more people will speak up.

Very disconcerting @narrow-judge-33018 to hear both your experiences. I can totally attest to how demotivating these experiences can be. I can’t deny there are times when I think that perhaps this has become the norm and that’s not a great place to be in. None of these individuals or companies realize what a strain it is on the applicants and how it affects them. Glad to know you’re in a better place now. Is your friend a part of communities like Tech Ladies ( on FB) or others? It helps to have a community to share such experiences, learn from others or generally vent.

She is part of a few like girl-who-js and freeCodeCamp. Yes I agree that community can certainly help to learn from other people's experiences :)

You’re welcome @narrow-judge-33018. I should thank you for sharing this because even today there is very less discussion of this and possibly that is a factor that helps to keep such practices thrive. She’s not alone. I’m a product manager and I’ve seen this across roles -design, engineering etc. And there are so many other terrible tales not related to hiring too. No company should ask for past salaries and in many states in the US it is illegal to ask for past salaries. Unfortunately no such law here. Initially I fought it back. These days I tell them this is my past salary and this is what I’m expecting. It’s been easier that way. Else every conversation with a recruiter would be a massive pain. I can’t say I’m in a better situation. Job hunting has been difficult. Most of the startups are either looking for someone with lesser experience or some experience with scaling which I don’t have. It’s even harder to break into the bigger enterprises. But am hanging on 🤞

@many-minister-78351 Likewise, I know exactly what you mean! Might as well share with them whatever they want just to move the conversation forward. I used to do the same like you because I felt powerless. But I don't know what's gotten into me these days but I'm never ever disclosing my salary information at all. The hiring managers / interviewers have even gotten into arguments with me on several occasions in the last 3-4 months, when they saw that I wouldn't budge! 😂 Some of them were so funny, I wish I could share them here! Let me know if you'd like to continue this conversation privately.

Good to know that you’re holding your own 🙂. Will reach out to take pointers from you 1-1 a bit later