Q2 Hiring Retrospective — wins and learnings
The committee invested 140 engineer-hours interviewing 31 candidates across 7 rounds each, achieving 100% rejection accuracy.
Office of the Hiring Committee, Cromulent AI (Series B)
Read the memo →⚠ Everything on this page is fiction. Clearly labelled. No real companies. Ever.
The Satire Desk
Internal documents we made up from companies that don't exist, about a hiring process that absolutely does. If a memo on this page feels familiar, that's not a coincidence — it's a diagnosis.
Senior Engineer (10+ yrs) — must pass graduate assessment, four times
Senior engineer with 10+ years must pass graduate-level CS assessment — four separate times — during the interview process.
Careers at Cromulent AI
Read the memo →Minutes: final-round deliberation, Candidate A vs Candidate B
Candidate A built our competitor's core product. Candidate B solved Two Sum in 4 minutes. We went with B.
Hiring Committee · Gormless Systems Ltd
Read the memo →Incident report: candidate accepted competing offer during our round 8
Candidate was lost to a competing offer during round 8. Root cause: competitor's process was too fast.
Talent Ops · Cromulent AI (Series B)
Read the memo →RE: Why the take-home is now "a weekend, max"
Following feedback, the take-home is now "a weekend, max." We respect work-life balance and will be assessing it.
Engineering Excellence Guild · Gormless Systems Ltd
Read the memo →Hiring: someone to fix the hiring process (12 rounds)
Company hiring someone to radically simplify the interview process — assessed through 12 rounds including a "meta-round."
Careers at Cromulent AI
Read the memo →Q2 Hiring Retrospective — wins and learnings
140 engineer-hours, 31 candidates, 7 rounds each. Best-ever rejection accuracy: 100%. Headcount filled: 0.
Office of the Hiring Committee, Cromulent AI (Series B)
Read the memo →Reality writes better satire than we do.
The true stories are over here — and they're worse. Named, tagged, and on the record.
Read the true stories →NOTE: Satire never names real companies.
The real stories do that on their own.
The real stories do that on their own.