this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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Nothing boosts your impression on people like making them feel stupid. RIP
Hey man, it's not my fault other people are stupid.
What was that Marge meme? It's true, but he shouldn't say it :P
Yeah, but that’s not what this was.
Interviewer asked about thing then does not get joke about most basic property of thing. Either the interviewer is incredibly incompetent or incapable of getting a joke.
It’s a weird situation even for a job interview. (& I’ve been on job interviews that can only be described as tribunals with 8 judges grilling you simultaneously.)
I mean I think he got it after a few seconds, he did laugh, and then comment how everything was so serious before then and it took him a bit to get it. I don't think that was why I didn't get the job.
Humour is not universal, and cracking jokes in an interview is high risk no reward. I've rejected candidates that made inappropriate jokes before. Intentions don't really matter, there's 10 more candidates.
Why do you keep moving the goal posts? We’re not talking about inappropriate jokes or someone being an ass during an interview. Honestly, if an interviewer wastes my time like this I’m ending the interview. Good luck finding just one more guy matching my talents.
I didn't move to goal post at all. In any interaction, you need to gauge the vibe before moving to the next level. Workplace humour is sensitive, and you should drop a joke you're not confortable not landing.
I wouldn't expect this joke to make someone feel stupid if they know what UDP is, so it feels like it was a safe bet
Interviewing is (ideally) quite a structured type of conversation, when is a job interview. A lot of people have to lock in pretty hard to deal with how unnatural it is, and they might not have the spare bandwidth to catch a joke.
Especially not someone from HR, they're fucking troglodytes.
I completely agree with your first paragraph.
But TheFogan was probably not explaining UDP to an HR person in this scenario.
Oh I've seen some pretty bad interviewing, where HR is sent in with a question sheet and a box to tick for which key words the interviewee mentioned per question.
Obviously a red flag and useless method of interviewing, but it does happen frighteningly often. Especially where the IT team is so understaffed, they can't spare the time to do interviews.
This is done, especially in government work, to limit bias in the interview process. Ideally, though, the people conducting the interviews understand the questions they're asking and can use some judgement and give credit if someone explained a concept but didn't hit the specific keyword.
Oomph, ~~buzzword~~ keyword guessing sounds like great interview indeed
Well sure, but the context for my comment was the unnatural-ness of a structured job interview. If you're not just pantsing it, such interviews follow a script, and that's not how we normally talk to each other.
I mean, you would think most people would be used to that feeling by now.