Job Applicant Says Startup CEO Made Him Work 6 Hours For Free, Then Ghosted

In yet another troubling tale from the world of job hunting, a software engineer has alleged that a Hong Kong-based startup CEO tricked him into completing nearly six hours of unpaid work, all under the guise of a job interview.

The incident came to light after the frustrated candidate shared his experience on the popular Reddit community r/recruitinghell, where users often post about unprofessional recruitment practices.

According to the post, the applicant had applied for a software engineering role, only to be drawn into a series of interviews led directly by the startup's founder. During their interaction, the CEO reportedly became interested in the candidate's experience with a particular design software, unrelated to the actual job description, and scheduled another call to "assess" those skills.

What followed, however, was far from a routine interview. During the next session, the CEO allegedly shared production-level files and insisted the candidate edit them, even though he didn't have the required software. The applicant says he was urged to download a trial version, wasting close to an hour on setup.

"I ended up explaining how I would do the task and shared my past projects," he wrote. Despite this, the CEO requested another meeting - this one scheduled late at night - where he pushed the candidate to finish the task urgently. Repeated software crashes made things worse, and the applicant had to attempt the task multiple times.

What raised further suspicion was the CEO eagerly downloading the completed files - a move the applicant said felt unusual, as companies typically use dummy files for skill assessments.

But what happened next sealed his doubts - complete silence. The candidate claimed the CEO ghosted him after receiving the files.

Startup tricked me into 6 hours of unpaid work disguised as an interview
byu/Kautious17 inHongKong

The post triggered outrage online, with fellow users slamming the startup for what they called exploitative behaviour. "That is horrible to hear of this scummy founder. That is just outright wrong. I'm sure you are not the first person he has done that to so I hope someone outs this guy's unprofessional behaviour. Maybe beyond contacting his HR (likely just as unprofessional) leave some anonymous review on Glassdoor or similar HR review sites." 

Another user wrote, "That's terrible treatment and I'm sorry this happened to you. Please don't paint the entire startup scene as being the same though."