The interview was overly simple.

It consisted entirely of questions from past interviews. The whiteboard question asked how to remove duplicate values from an array.

They had reviewed the candidate's résumé.

They claimed that fully remote work could be requested, but working hours had to be coordinated.

1. HR had absolutely no idea what kind of person they wanted to recruit.

When I asked what abilities they expected in a candidate, she replied that the candidate needed to pass the interview threshold. I followed up by asking whether they preferred someone more experienced or whether a newcomer would be acceptable. She replied that, as long as the candidate could pass the threshold, more experience was of course better.

That made me curious: does Pinkoi really have no budget ceiling for hiring?

2. Since there was supposedly no budget ceiling, I accepted the invitation to interview. The entire interview turned out to feel like merely going through the motions from beginning to end.

The interviewers did not follow up on any questions. Regardless of whether the candidate's answers were good or bad, the engineers simply moved directly to the next question without reacting.

The questions had no depth either. They were basically the kinds of questions you would get by asking ChatGPT what frontend interview questions to ask and listing them out.

Either the engineers at this company are only capable of this much, or they really only want to hire disposable junior employees.

But if the latter is true, then it is clear that HR was lying.

3. The whiteboard question prohibited the use of Map and Set. Although that is not in itself a problem, I cannot understand how this helps them assess the interviewee's ability, or why it had to be tested in an interview. Do they have internal development restrictions that prohibit using Map and Set?

After I solved it instantly, the engineers were stunned. They had absolutely no idea why that solution was correct. They stammered and muttered to themselves for half a day—longer than it took me to write the solution—before finally moving on to the next question. It was obvious that they did not want to admit they did not understand it, nor did they want to ask.

Their abilities and approach to collaboration are deeply concerning.

4. Throughout the interview, the engineers refused to disclose anything about the internal situation. At most, they only mentioned what departments there were.

It was not until one of them let something slip and mentioned that they had no QA and no project manager, and that everyone had to handle everything themselves, including planning, testing, and taking the blame.

5. After HR took over at the end, she began asking strange questions such as how many points I would give the interview overall and how many points I would give myself. She also asked why I wanted to interview even though she herself had invited me.

It was clear that, like the engineers earlier, she was simply reading questions from a script.

When she finally asked about my salary expectations, I gave the median of the salary range they had posted on 104, but she immediately said it was too high and asked why I wanted that amount.

Although the overall impression was already so poor that no one would want to join, they were still unwilling to spend money while trying to poach someone. I truly do not understand why they wanted to waste everyone's time.

It was also very clear that Pinkoi's HR was deceiving people. They apparently wanted to hire junior engineers at low salaries, yet posted a salary range on the job site with an almost twofold spread between the lower and upper limits, then lured candidates into interviews with the misleading claim that the greater their ability and experience, the better. In the end, they would cut the salary to see whether they could find a capable senior employee willing to work for low pay.

Honestly, a company that tricks people into joining cannot retain talent either. It is easy to see why the engineers responsible for interviewing were so incompetent.

There are problems at every level of management.

I urge newcomers: unless you are completely out of options, do not make the mistake of joining.