But lets start from the beginning. I've been and interviewer on the other side. Working for social networking company, where someone would get similar first impression as your friend had. Again, looks can be misleading, there were quite a few people over 30, and even some over 40. I'm 36, but your friend probably would classify me as "20-something wearing jeans and sneakers". Just because the don't dress like retirement home residents doesn't mean that they're 20. But I'm digressing...

Anyway, on few occasions I've interviewed people with "professional background" in banking or big (non-software) corpos, which meant tons of certificates with buzzwords overload, alleged experience in enterprise environment, "profound" knowledge of J2EE and some enterprisy DB (Oracle, DB/2, Sybase). During interview it resulted that the candidates would:

Your friend is probably right, assuming that he wouldn't fit in. There are clearly to poles in software development. On one side you have consulting companies like Accenture or IBM, with their waterfall methodologies, with development cycles counted in years, with COBOL and J2EE. And of course with dark suits, white shirts and blue ties. 80%+ of time in meetings and working on design documents, and less than 20% working with the code.

On the opposite side you have companies like Google, Facebook and gazillion startups, where general culture is that of hackers, instead of waterfall you have various kinds of Agile, development cycles are counted in weeks, 80%+ percent of the time is spent working with actual code, etc. That's the world of dynamic languages, NoSQL, high-scalability etc. And yeah, jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers (sorry, didn't see so many dev wearing sandals). And what's important, meeting and interviews are perceived as disruption, which takes you away from coding and problem solving.

And yes, the big corpo has fetish of certificates, while hackers have a fetish for side projects. In neither case they are required. I've worked in the investment banking, having no certificate besides my M.Sc. in Computer Science. I've worked in social network without having any significant side projects.

Generally speaking, I'd say it's not. Quite the opposite, it would be rude to waste interviewers time knowing that you're not interested. Seems more like the issue in that particular case was how it was communicated. From what you describe, it was more like a public outburst with no clear reason given (until confronted). What would be professional, would be to voice these concerns to the interviewers during the interview, perhaps at the end of first round, or even better earlier on.

Why would people be angry about it? Well, ego shock as Karl suggests might be it. But I suspect it's more anger about wasting interviewers time. Your friend probably knew that he wouldn't fit very early, yet continued. Meaning that he wasted time not only of people who interviewed him, but people who were to interview him later as well (they had to change their regular schedule, read his CV etc.).

But lets start from the beginning. I've been and interviewer on the other side, working for a social networking company where someone would get a similar first impression as your friend had. Again, looks can be misleading. There were quite a few people over 30, and even some over 40. I'm 36, but your friend probably would classify me as "20-something wearing jeans and sneakers". Just because they don't dress like retirement home residents doesn't mean that they're 20. But I'm digressing...

Anyway, on a few occasions I've interviewed people with "professional backgrounds" in banking or big (non-software) corporations, which meant tons of certificates with buzzwords overload, alleged experience in enterprise environment, "profound" knowledge of J2EE and some enterprisy DB (Oracle, DB/2, Sybase). During interview it resulted that the candidates would:

Your friend is probably right in assuming that he wouldn't fit in. There are clearly two poles in software development. On one side you have consulting companies like Accenture or IBM, with their waterfall methodologies, with development cycles counted in years, with COBOL and J2EE. And of course with dark suits, white shirts and blue ties. 80%+ of time in meetings and working on design documents, and less than 20% working with the code.

On the opposite side you have companies like Google, Facebook and gazillion startups, where general culture is that of hackers. Instead of waterfall you have various kinds of Agile; development cycles are counted in weeks, 80%+ percent of the time is spent working with actual code, etc. That's the world of dynamic languages, NoSQL, high-scalability etc. And yeah, jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers (sorry, didn't see so many dev wearing sandals). And what's important, meeting and interviews are perceived as disruption, which takes you away from coding and problem solving.

And yes, the big corporation has a fetish for certificates, while hackers have a fetish for side projects. In neither case they are required. I've worked in the investment banking industry, having no certificate besides my M.Sc. in Computer Science. I've worked in social networking without having any significant side projects.

Generally speaking, I'd say it's not. Quite the opposite, it would be rude to waste interviewers time knowing that you're not interested. Seems more like the issue in that particular case was how it was communicated. From what you describe, it was more like a public outburst with no clear reason given (until confronted). What would be professional, would be to voice these concerns to the interviewers during the interview, perhaps at the end of first round.

Why would people be angry about it? Well, ego shock as Karl suggests might be it. But I suspect it's more anger about wasting interviewers time. Your friend probably knew that he wouldn't fit very early, yet continued. Meaning that he wasted time not only of people who interviewed him, but people who were to interview him later as well (they had to change their regular schedule, read his CV etc.)

On the opposite side you have companies like Google, Facebook and gazillion startups, where general culture is that of hackers, instead of waterfall you have various kinds of Agile, development cycles are counted in weeks, 80%+ percent of the time is spent working with actual code, etc. That's the world of dynamic languages, NoSQL, high-scalability etc. And yeah, jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers (sorry, didn't see so many dev wearing sandals).

Generally speaking, I'd say it's not. Quite the opposite, it would be rude to waste interviewers time knowing that you're not interested. Seems more like the issue in that particular case was how it was communicated.

On the opposite side you have companies like Google, Facebook and gazillion startups, where general culture is that of hackers, instead of waterfall you have various kinds of Agile, development cycles are counted in weeks, 80%+ percent of the time is spent working with actual code, etc. That's the world of dynamic languages, NoSQL, high-scalability etc. And yeah, jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers (sorry, didn't see so many dev wearing sandals). And what's important, meeting and interviews are perceived as disruption, which takes you away from coding and problem solving.

Generally speaking, I'd say it's not. Quite the opposite, it would be rude to waste interviewers time knowing that you're not interested. Seems more like the issue in that particular case was how it was communicated. From what you describe, it was more like a public outburst with no clear reason given (until confronted). What would be professional, would be to voice these concerns to the interviewers during the interview, perhaps at the end of first round, or even better earlier on.

Why would people be angry about it? Well, ego shock as Karl suggests might be it. But I suspect it's more anger about wasting interviewers time. Your friend probably knew that he wouldn't fit very early, yet continued. Meaning that he wasted time not only of people who interviewed him, but people who were to interview him later as well (they had to change their regular schedule, read his CV etc.).