"An Oversight, Not Lack Of Knowledge": Man Says Missing Comma Led To Job Rejection

A minor punctuation error - a missing comma in a SQL query - cost a job applicant a data engineering role, according to a Reddit post. The applicant, who shared the experience on the platform, described the hiring process as overly strict and questioned whether such rigid evaluations truly measured a candidate's capabilities.

In the post titled, "Got Rejected Over a Missing Comma - This Market Is a Joke," the job seeker said that they successfully cleared the initial interview at "a well-known company", but then things went downhill during the second round.

"Had my second-round interview for a Data Engineer role at a well-known company (The name has a resemblance to 'quantity'). Cleared the first round, and in the second, I answered everything correctly-except I forgot a comma between two column names while writing a SQL query in Notepad," they said.

The user went on to add how the focus then shifted to this small oversight, stating the "interviewer went off on me for 20 minutes about relying on AI tools and IDEs, completely dismissing my experience working with complex analytical queries and building ETL pipelines at a leading CDP."

The applicant ended the post, saying, "It was a simple oversight, not a lack of knowledge, but I still got rejected for it. Frustrating, to say the least. Any advice on navigating my first transition from DA to DE?"

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The post triggered a debate among Reddit users about hiring practices in the tech industry. Many sympathised with the candidate, criticising employers for rigid and unrealistic expectations.

One comment suggested that the company was looking at a "silly reason" to reject the candidate, instead of genuinely assessing their skills.

Another user criticised unrealistic hiring practices, particularly time constraints in technical interviews. The user wrote, "A friend of mine recently interviewed in a company which asked him to solve 20 or so coding questions in 15 minutes. And they were proper questions. Even if they were simple easy questions, typing out a solution definitely takes more than 1 minute. Why even pretend that you're hiring?"

One user mentioned their experience working with an Indonesian company, highlighting an inclusive approach to hiring. "Their approach wasn't about rejecting candidates but about finding reasons to hire them," wrote the user, adding, "If a candidate applied for a higher-level role (e.g., Level 3) but demonstrated skills more suited to a lower level (e.g., Level 2), they were offered that position instead, with a clear explanation of the reasoning."

The initial Reddit post detailing the job rejection has since gone viral, with many more users calling out such hiring practices.

Another Reddit user recently shared a funny story of an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) graduate who resigned within 10 days of joining the company. The user revealed he was asked to train a account executive, an IIM alumnus. The trainee left his job within two weeks despite receiving a package of Rs 21 lakh.