I was told by a recruiter that I would be joining another writer. Great! In the initial HR interview, I discovered that they expected me to report to this writer... I basically either trained the people who trained him or was their peer, as a senior mentor in the "seed" company that set the standard for technical writing in Israel... This made me leery, but I decided to continue in case he was just that great a guy and hoping that, in the process, I might see the possibility of good future developments.
I was asked to provide writing samples. I provided PDF files from my last three positions and links to the two support websites I currently own. One is completely my creation, and there is a really amazing story behind how it was built and structured that I would have told in an interview. The other site is 95% my work, so I indicated the two areas in which a reviewer should take note of the possibility of encountering content that is not wholly original work.
The guy slated to manage the technical writing team (me) then wrote back and asked me if that site is 100% my original work. So I explained for a second time that there are two areas where there is a mix. All the hundreds of other articles are mine.
So he wrote back and said he would like samples of my original work (!!!). My friend, I sent you over 1000 pages of my original work in three files: a website with dozens of articles and an entire set of API references that are my own work, and another site with ~350 articles that are my own work and 20 that aren't.
It's hard to know if this is just sheer stupidity or if there was something else going on, but I was NOT going to report to this person no matter what, so I removed my candidacy.
