After countless applications, I finally nabbed an interview. Seattle, big tech company. I’m fresh out of a coding bootcamp, but I have experience in the workforce already. Bachelor’s degree in biology wasn’t enough so I wanted to try becoming a software developer.
‘The interview loop’ is notorious, especially in the tech industry. Usually it’s around 5 hours with as many people. I don’t know how anyone with more responsibilities than me can manage that kind of time. And even before the loop, you’ve got the filtering call with someone in HR, and then the hiring manager wants to get 30 minutes of your time. In tech, you even get virtually ‘whiteboarded’ as part of the filtering, to make sure you have the minimum coding chops. Brutal. It’s definitely brutal.
So it’s a small victory when they invite you to come in ‘for a loop’.
At reception I’d checked in. My name was in the system. Reception people are always the best dressed. Even in casual techy companies. Perpetual smiles these ones.
An HR person retrieved me and with my guest pass I opened the electronic gate, then followed her into the belly the building. When you think tech company, you think big open spaces, open seating, with games, free food, that kind of thing. That’s what I saw.
The HR girl, fresh from school it seemed like, deposited me in a small white room with frosted glass. My first tech interview loop–wow!
“They’ll be right with you,” she said, giving me a perky smile. Closed the door.
The lights were bright. There was a TV screen in the wall, and a device for the room on the small table. Two chairs, one on either side. Bright flourescent lights–or LED. I can’t tell the difference.
I was still standing, bedazzled, when there was a knock on the door. It startled me because the room seemed to suck up sound.
“Hey yes come in!” I said, a bit too enthusiastically. I really wanted to make a good impression. First of five people. Phew, here we go.
“Hi, Andrew is it?” she said.
“Yes, I’m Andy, call me Andy. It’s my short name.” I said, hitting myself mentally for sounding dumb about it.
“My name’s Aave. Nice to meet you! Are you finding everything alright?”
“Yes, definitely looking forward to those games.” Slow down big guy, they haven’t hired you yet.
Aave also had a perpetual smile, and as she motioned me to sit, she did as well. No papers, no notepad, just a closed Apple laptop.
“So,” she said, leaning over her laptop that she grasped with both hands closely to her chest. “Tell me why you want the job.”
“Oh, well you know I just finished a coding bootcamp?”
Her smiling face nodded twice, swiftly.
“Yeah I just finished that, full stack. I have always liked this company. Everyone knows the company. The position is junior of course so I know I’m probably older than other candidates but I can bring some experience in the workforce, some maturity maybe.”
Aave’s smile didn’t change but something altered in her expression. She was a young woman, clearly younger than me.
“Oh,” she said through her teeth. “So, are we not mature here?”
“No, no I didn’t mean to imply that at all! I just meant that between me and a younger candidate with the same experience in programming, I just have more life experience.”
“Ah ha,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m… I’m sorry I didn’t mean to–”
”–that’s alright! Andy! Ha ha!” her smile grew larger than I thought it could. “Ha! We love old people like you.”
I would’ve responded harshly to the comment but the pressure of the loop having only just beginning stayed my tongue. I really needed this job. It was a foot in the door. If I had to accept some snobbery I could do that. What else is life experience for?
“Well,” I said. “I also think that my final project from the bootcamp would show that… that…”
I trailed off because Aave had let her head fall over, like she’d fallen asleep. I was staring at the top of her head. Silken red hair, almost like a wig the part was so immaculate.
“Aave? Are you alright?” I asked. Her breathing it seemed to me had quickened.
“It’s so hard,” she whispered. I instinctively pushed myself in my chair away from the table. Her voice took on a tone of a girl half her age as she whimpered. “You don’t know, you. You haven’t bled.”
“What?” I said, my chest growing tighter.
“The blood. The chariot of thorns.”
“Alright stop it!” I shouted, suddenly.
Her voice boomed like a crone then, shocking me to my feet.
“Andrew help me get me out of here my God!”
I staggered backward and slammed against the wall. Pain gripped my elbow when I felt it break the drywall.
Aave looked up then. Her eyes were bloodshot, her fingers wrinkled and flaking as they held the computer in a death grip. Her smile was still there, wider than her cheeks it seemed. She panted like a sweating dog and with every exhale I heard her say the word ‘help’ in her breath, again and again. The bloodshot eyes grew darker. The only thought that occured to me was my God, my God…!
I lurched for the door, and swung it open, sprinting out into the corridor, through the atrium, past the games and smiling employees, headed for the exist.
“Andrew!” I heard just then.
Depsite my racing heart at the terrifying experience I just had, I recognized the voice as the hiring manager, and turned to meet them at the moment I was about to pass. I paced in the corridor, looking this person.
“Arif,” he said. “Remember? You’re here for the loop. We’re scheduled to talk now I think?”
“We are?” is all I manage, trying to catch my breath. I think I stopped because everything seemed normal out here.
“Um, yeah. That’s why you’re here, the job?”
“Aave, there’s something wrong with her.”
“It’s alright,” he said. “Just calm down, I know it’s nerve wracking, this loop, but just take a breath, it hasn’t even started. I really liked our conversation on the phone. I’m looking forward to talking and for you to meet the other four on my team.”
“I met Aave, over there. What? It started. Aave. She’s, there’s something wrong, she needs help,” I said.
Arif, I remembered now. Jovial guy. A bit bullish. He stared at me like I was an idiot, his expression having turned from happy to concerned.
“Who’s Aave?”
One moment I was in an existential nightmare, and the next I’m telling myself it didn’t happen. I walked with Arif back to the assigned room. Each step back I was terrified, but buoyed by the relaxed atmosphere of the place.
There was no one in the room. No Aave.
Arif stood in the doorway, and I looked in. The chairs were moved. There was a hole in the far wall. Arif didn’t seem to notice it. It’s like it had never happened.
In fact, I managed to get over the experience, and sat with Arif for an hour for an interview, my back to the wall I’d damaged. After Arif I met two people on his team for another hour. 15 minute lunch. Then another two hour-long interviews. With each interview, I relaxed, and put the experience of Aave out of my mind. Each time I found myself walking out amongst the employees, I looked for her.
A few weeks later I received an offer letter. I was ecstatic. Life-changer. From odd job to tech employee with the salary and RSU vesting schedule to boot. Health care, free food, free gym facilities.
Still, in the back of my mind, subdued petrification.
I accepted.
Two more weeks pass, and I’m back at the office, fresh new Apple laptop at hand, id card dangling from my neck. Part of me felt self-conscious. But the money made up for that.
For all of a minute.
I’ve put in my notice already. First I tried to see if I could work remotely, but I guess after Covid that policy is now what they call ‘hybrid’, which is about as true as ‘unlimited vacation days’.
No one else sees her. No one else has heard her name except from me. But I see her. At a desk, sitting at a table in the atrium. Walking slowly down a corridor. Plastered across her jaw, that impossible smile. Terrifed, bloodshot eyes staring at me no matter where I am, whispering rapidly, calling out for help.
I’ll never do a loop again.