This person thinks that they have a great interview process designed to get them great candidates but each step is a massive red flag.
They are basically telling us that they don’t care about the candidate’s life or existing commitments, such companies will expect you to be in office or working from home 24/7 for no good reason other than it is expected. From personal experience I have seen that such companies don’t hire enough resources because they expect the work of 10 to be done by 5 people as they are putting in double the hours.
Putting in a ton of hours for a deadline or in an emergency is fine and you should absolutely be willing to do so when required. However, that shouldn’t become a standard thing that you are consistently putting in insane hours. It is not sustainable and can cause serious health issues and burnout. It is not cool and it doesn’t show commitment if you are in the office constantly.
It is better to step away for a while when stuck on a problem. To give an example, I was trying to get some data from a system at work yesterday and spent a few hours trying to get my program to work but it just refused to work. So I decided to take a break and after a good nights sleep again looked at the code, within 15 minutes I figured out the problem and got the program working.
I tend to be on the workaholic side and can get caught up in work to the point where I don’t realize that I have been working for hours without a break. This is not a healthy habit and I have had some great managers who would scold me for being up late night when I didn’t need to. In one of my previous companies we actually implemented a policy in our team to counter this habit, where if a person was on vacation and they replied to a non-critical email or sent any emails they had to put $10 in the Jar. Once enough money was collected it was used to sponsor a treat for the team.
“Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, and integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.” —Gary Keller, Real Estate Entrepreneur
No one lies at their deathbed and remembers all the long hours they worked. They remember the time they spent with friends and family and if they didn’t spend enough time they regret it. No one regrets not spending more hours at work.
As Dolly Parton said ““Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”.
– Suramya