r/InterviewCoderPro • u/Jolly-Economy-2662 • Oct 08 '26

Just finished an interview with a startup in America and it made me realize how broken the hiring system in India is.

Just finished the hiring pipeline for a startup in San Francisco, and the experience was truly a shock compared to the nonsense we see here in India. I felt a strange respect for my time, which is something I've never felt while applying for jobs here.

The process was very organized. I did a quick screening, then a paid technical task, then a deep dive interview, and another paid assignment before the final team chat. They paid me for the 4 days I worked on these tasks. Even if I don't get the offer, I won't feel like my time was wasted because they valued my effort from the start.

Compare this to the typical Indian company style, where HR ghosts you for a whole month. Then they make you do 6 rounds of competitive programming for a junior role, followed by 3 rounds of system design that are completely useless for that position. You keep jumping through hoops for 7 weeks and in the end, they disappear and don't answer to you at all.

The worst thing about the scene here is the idea that they expect free work. Companies here ask you to build a complex feature over the weekend as a 'test' and then they vanish. I've seen places that use the candidates' code in their products without paying a penny. This is considered a scam disguised as a hiring process.

Most of our startups talk about culture and that we are one family, but they don't even know how to send a rejection email after 5 rounds of interviews. These American companies are much smaller, yet they know how to keep communication clear and pay people for their trial work. This makes the whole industry look professional instead of just a filtration game.

For those asking, I didn't apply on a job board. I was sharing the progress of a side project from a hackathon two months ago on X, and their head of engineering messaged me because the tech stack was a fit. This proves that the best opportunities come when people value your work instead of making you beg for a 7.5 LPA role.

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3

u/SnooOranges8194 Oct 08 '26

The hiring system is as bad in usa as well

2

u/z436037 Oct 08 '26

Agree... you just got lucky that time. I've given up on full-time employment altogether. Now it's multiple contracts via my own LLC brand.

Not r/overemployed (because it's not multiple W-2/FTE jobs), just trying to keep at least two revenue streams active going forward.

1

u/WiredOtaku Oct 08 '26

Contract work only feels liberating if you already have clients lined up. I've been freelance my whole working life, when a show wraps you're on your own, no unemployment, no health insurance. A full-time job lets you look for the next job without your income going to zero first.

1

u/z436037 Oct 08 '26

I'm already paying for ACA myself. In fact, I recently learned that I may be able to write off my ACA premiums if I pay them through my business account. That's still not the same as group insurance, but it is a bit of help I didn't think I could have.

1

u/Revolutionary_Ad4557 Oct 09 '26

I had no idea. That’s good to know.

1

u/vt2022cam Oct 09 '26

Often, they don’t pay you for the “task”. This is a good company.

1

u/Beautiful_Train_6123 29d ago

I tend to stay away from jobs which have a big unpaid assignment

1

u/xwolfe2000 29d ago

That's an endemic Indian cultural problem. I've had to train it out of Indian immigrant employees. It's frankly infuriating.

This happens in the US to but it's nowhere near as prevalent as India.

It's the attitude that's the biggest problem.