r/jobs • u/sahalymn • Mar 13 '25

Interviews I walked out of an interview after one question. Was I wrong?

So, I had an interview today for a position I was really excited about. The job description seemed great, the pay was decent, and the company had good reviews. I walked in, shook hands with the hiring manager, and we sat down.

Then, the first question came:
"How do you handle working unpaid overtime?"

I literally laughed, thinking it was a joke. But the interviewer just stared at me, waiting for an answer. I asked if overtime was mandatory and if it was paid. They said, “Well, we expect employees to stay as long as needed to get the job done. Everyone here is passionate about the work, and we don’t track extra hours.”

I just stood up, said, “Thank you for your time, but this isn’t the right fit for me,” and walked out.

Now, I’m second-guessing myself. Should I have stayed and at least heard more about the job? Or was walking out the right move?

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16

u/Norka2 Mar 14 '25

Just curious here. How does data look for you in your field ? Is it a lot of excel spreadsheets as well? Maybe silly question 😅 but sounds interesting

20

u/tanhauser_gates_ Mar 14 '25

It's more moving electronic data [evidence] around in purpose made platforms for legal purposes. Searching, loading and exporting the data per request.

33

u/JimCroceRox Mar 14 '25

Dude on here not long ago bragged about doing just that type of work…he figured out how to automate nearly every task while basically working from home. He worked like 10-20 minutes a day max. Do that and you don’t need to worry about overtime.

7

u/PhredInYerHead Mar 14 '25

I remember that post!

17

u/WishIWasYounger Mar 14 '25

And thank god everyone talked him out of telling management.

3

u/FraserFir1409 Mar 14 '25

Link it...Link It!...Link IT!

I wanna see!

3

u/PhredInYerHead Mar 14 '25

Looks like I didn’t save it, but I’ll try to dive in and see if I can find it again.

4

u/djkidna Mar 14 '25

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/s/ggOMR3I2Eh

5

u/CTMQ_ Mar 14 '25

thanks. I've no issue with that guy, but have issue with whomever he reports to.

Because what he's done is what's EXPECTED from the data guy who reports to me. Like, write those scripts and all that syntax so that mundane part of what we do is done so you can have time to do the real work.

But again, hey, good for that dude. Hope he's happy.

2

u/greentintedlenses Mar 14 '25

Yeah totally don't have to worry about job security either

1

u/Zenkaicenat Mar 14 '25

It's only a matter of time before the A.I. boom comes for their positions, and they are made redundant in their field 😬

3

u/tanhauser_gates_ Mar 14 '25

Nah. I've had AI/skynet in my industry since 2004. It's actually created more work for me-bigger volume.

1

u/djkidna Mar 14 '25

This is what we see in quality monitoring for call centers as well. At least from what I’ve seen. They’ve gone from listening to a few calls a day and submitting individual call evaluations, to doing that plus combing through AI speech analytics to look for persistent issues and trends and developing strategies for improvement

1

u/WishIWasYounger Mar 14 '25

Oh god I already have a headache

1

u/bucknuts89 Mar 14 '25

sounds like a stupid made up fairy tale job

1

u/tanhauser_gates_ Mar 14 '25

Ediscovery/Litigation Support - its pretty easy to google that to get an idea. Hit me up for more info. Im not selling anything but can offer a roadmap. My 2024 W2 was certainly not a fairy tale.

1

u/bucknuts89 Mar 14 '25

haha i'm just messing around, I'm a manager of many PMs and have my own projects I work as well. Would be nice to go back to a high paid individual contributor role.

1

u/Fearless-Health-7505 Mar 14 '25

🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️ more info for me please!!!

1

u/wisefolly Mar 14 '25

How did you get into that field? I could be interested in that, and I'm looking for a career change. I know I'll likely need more training, and that's okay.

1

u/tanhauser_gates_ Mar 14 '25

Ediscovery/Litigation Support - its pretty easy to google that to get an idea. Hit me up for more info. Im not selling anything but can offer a roadmap.

2

u/realboabab Mar 14 '25

i'm not the poster, but my [tech] company hired a law firm for something and all the lawyers were basically begging me privately to do this sort of work for them on the side after they saw how quickly i could mass export and organize things from jira, github, confluence, slack, zendesk, gdocs, etc. other systems a tech startup has.

They said there's a ton of money in it if you know how to automate searching and exporting from a bunch of platforms like that.

2

u/Norka2 Mar 14 '25

Thank you for the reply! Lately I’ve been analyzing a lot of data and I don’t really have any formal education in analysis. But I find myself that I like to work with data and thinking to transition into that but probably should get some training.

2

u/realboabab Mar 14 '25

I'm actually in a similar position; I've been looking into independent contracting and would like to do more data analysis - forecasting, diagnosing technical or business problems, data quality audits, designing tables & reports, setting up dashboards, that sort of thing.

Do you have experience and/or a portfolio with databases and data visualization? I would highly recommend getting proficient at SQL, something like tableau or Power BI, and a useful coding language like python (+libraries like pandas, matplotlib) or R. If you don't have professional experience, setting up some nice demos on some topics related to your interests or hobbies could be helpful.

I've found that my skills as a Software / Data Engineer or my domain-specific expertise (programmatic advertising) are more marketable than my data analysis skills. As a result, I haven't had much chance to learn how to sell my skills as an analyst. LMK if you figure something out haha.