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Techie claims job interviews in India are far tougher than in US: ‘For half the salary’
A Reddit post by a techie has prompted a series of remarks on social media questioning the interview process in Indian companies.
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A techie’s claim about the interview process in India being tougher than in the US has gained significant traction on Reddit. The candidate argued that US roles focus on system design and core skills, whereas Indian rounds force candidates through endless high-pressure coding traps.
“Interviews in India are way more difficult than they are in the US,” a techie wrote”, adding, “For half the salary.” Explaining their remark, the person claimed that the interviews in the US focus more on actual problem solving and serve as a “gating mechanism”.
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In contrast, the techie claimed that the interviewers in India remain obsessed with taking multiple rounds of interviews, forcing candidates to solve complex technical tasks under pressure.
What did social media say?
An individual claimed, “Was in an interview loop, staff engineer position. In the first 4 rounds, people from Thailand were super helpful, laughed along with the jokes, chit-chatted, and it was great. 5th round, an Indian guy comes, clearly doesn't wanna be here or talk to me. Stonewalled the entire time, cut the call 43 mins into a 1-hour interview. Has happened multiple times across multiple companies.”
Another posted, “Happened with me too. Man, why the hell are Indian interviewers so difficult? Like most of them are not even hospitable.” A fourth commented, “I can’t speak to how interviews work in the US, but the volume of applicants here is a big part of why this happens. A single decent role can get thousands of applications, so companies need a fast, cheap filter that doesn’t require senior engineers to spend time on every candidate. Hard LeetCode problems do that job even if they’re a poor proxy for actual staff-level work.”
A fourth wrote, “I’ve worked in South East Asia and people there always used to say that if the interviewer is Indian, then you better not get your hopes up. Now I’m back in India after job hunting for the past six months, and it’s super depressing. Getting callbacks itself is very hard, and then that materialising into an interview is even harder.”
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This is not the first time that social media users have questioned interviews conducted by different companies in India. There have been other posts claiming that India's job interview culture is extremely “brutal”.
(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. Hindustantimes.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)
