I have published here before an interview experience in Eko that happened a few years ago. This is a kind of a follow-up I feel it's important to write, and I hope Glassdoor will publish. That experience was the most toxic I've ever experienced in my adult life. It has left me emotionally scarred and eventually I had to take a break as a hired emploee in the industry to recuperate (still doing freelance and private projects). I have been processing this emotionally every single day since then (tomorrow it will be 6 years). I am now referring to it as: professional bullying, abuse of authority and epistemic violence. As a reminder, the persons involved where the one with the title of "VP R&D and CTO" (he is still on the same place/role I think), and another person, a "silent observer" - who was his emploee. I divide what happened into 3 "parts" - and part 3 is the most extreme example/demonstration of the toxicity that was evident through out that interaction. That section was the "interviewer" asking to explain about NodeJS Internals - and where I gave probably the most comprehensive and detailed presentation about the Event Loop and Javascript runtime I ever gave. He has never heard of those things. Even though the size of that ignorance is horrifying for anyone where JS/NodeJS/Browser internals is their domain - I can put it aside as a subject/domain he knows absolutely nothing about (even though he asked - it was obviously a completely improvised question from his side). It's the reaction that followed minutes after - he just completely and utterly could not accept that he didn't know something - he started aggressively shooting questions phrased as "What is X???" - where X was a very trivial and basic technical concept that was brought up as part of the explanation - he did not wait for an answer to be finished before aggressively firing another one with the same phrasing ("WHAT I X?", "X is ... [mentioning Y]..." "WHAT IS Y?", "Y is ... [mentioning Z]" - "what is Z???"
he picked up a completely unrelated subject from his mind, stood-up, aggressively and physically pushed to stand near the whiteboard and gave that unrelated subject a full lecture. Trying to remark in the middle led to him signaling with his hands: "Shhhh. be quiet and let me finish" (not saying it, but signaling it) - as he finished - a silent 3rd observer (his emploee) cheered and praised him as they exchanged looks. Even though today I can realize this was not a "job interview" in any way, but a weird scenario of some weird dynamics between that guy and his employee - where he was constantly trying to "show-off" to his emploee at the expanse of just dismissing the "interviewed" in an agressive, humiliating, bullying, toxic, violent way - even though at this point I "understand" it rationally - I still feel the emotional grip and influence occasionaly creep in, even years after. This actually led me to being forced to go through emotional rehabilitation including therapy counseling, and I've had years of anxiety and chronic stress. Fortuneately I can say I am much better (especially since I took that break), but the emotional struggle is still evident sometimes. I am never doing "shamings" and I am against it - but I feel it's important to emphasis what happened as a warning. To show the dangers of authority and titles being abused without actual experience/knowledge to support it - and how "easy" it is. There are no laws protecting against it - even though it caused me severe emotional distress, and affected personal and professional areas of my life - there is no "legal case". So I can only write about it. I can also mention that back then a few months after I emailed that person an email saying: "I felt that interaction did not reflect" - thinking it will open a window for a civil discussion, he replied with the most humiliating, dismissing, dehumanizing sentences I have ever read - and when I had the courage to actually describe in detail section 3 (and others) to emphasis my perspective and how I experienced it - he denied. It is completely obvious that in his mind/perspective it was experienced differently - so of-course at some point I realized there is no point in trying to make him somehow see/understand his wrongdoings (because for him it was just "normal", nothing out of the ordinary) - it only made things harder of-course. It is one of those experiences which happened in "close quarters" - and you just have to process and eventually move on. It is very very hard and emotionally demanding to do so, but I feel I am making huge progresses. I hope Glassdoor will publish this.