HR Horror Show
Dystopian Dispatches from the frontlines of Israeli tech interviews.
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Today’s Agenda:
HR Horror Stories: Hiring, or Hazing?
Overheard in the Ecosystem—who said what.
News: What’s Up With Israel’s Iron Beam?; Tech Report Hype; eBay Ships Out After 20 Years
Who’s building cool stuff? A “Tinder for Maternity Leave”; AI for Meta’s Ray Bans
Reach out with your feedback/opinions/clarifications/gripes/slurs/threats at amir@israeltechinsider.com
Horror Stories From The Frontlines of Israeli Tech Interviews
TL:DR: From surprise English tests and ghosted follow-ups to sexual innuendos by HR rookies, this is what passes for candidate experience in Israel’s startup nation.
“Listen, what’s going on here? You're not allowed to make a mistake or show the slightest hesitation, otherwise they disqualify you on the spot! Do companies really want to hire? Or are they just wasting time? The situation out there is really horrible - on one hand it seems like there are job openings, on the other hand, they don't really want to hire...”—ElegantLion (pseudonym), posting on the Hebrew Facebook group “Troubles in Hi-Tech”.
Israel’s tech sector prides itself on agility and excellence. But these days getting through the hiring process can often feel like a dystopia of HR rigidity and incompetence. Ghosting, inappropriate conduct, gender bias, bait-and-switch roles, ineptitude, humiliation, candidates left waiting, no-shows, scheduling chaos, and discriminatory behavior are a daily experience here.
After sifting through hundreds (!) of anonymous testimonies recently shared on this popular FB group and another called “Tech Companies You Shouldn’t Work At”, I can tell you these aren’t just random anecdotes. This shit’s structural. “Troubles in Tech” has 167,300 members. “Tech Companies You Shouldn’t Work” at has 16,400 members. Together that’s ~180K members, around 35-40% of the entire Israeli tech workforce. Even if you shave off 10-20% of those as statistical anomalies, fake users, multiple anonymous accounts, made up stories, and so on, you would still get a representative sample of Israeli tech workers trash-talking their companies at the largest virtual water-cooler in Startup Nation.
It’s clear there’s a pattern of HR horror and internal chaos that spans companies, sectors, and roles—and I’ve only scratched the surface. Many of these aren’t about random, early stage startups either—we’re talking about big names like Check Point, GE Healthcare, Percepto, Papaya Gaming, Intel, Verint, Wix, Monday.com, and many others.
Applying for many of these roles required hours of unpaid assignments, psychometric testing, travel, and multi-stage interviews—only to end in silence, insults, or worse. Companies signal disrespect by wasting time — from ignored interviews to radio silence after demanding rounds. Candidates are interviewed for one role, evaluated for another. A theme that comes up again and again: junior HR staff with lizard brains and zero accountability wield outsized power. An HR person calling the wrong candidate and saying: “Hey congrats you got the job! Oh, hold on, not you, sorry — David got the job. Bye.” As one commenter put it: “It’s a disgrace that kids fresh out of college are handed this much control over people’s futures.”
There are too many examples just from this past week alone (!) to list them all, but here’s a little taste of the dumpster fire that’s startup nation’s HR departments.
Let’s start with Monday.com—one of Israel’s flagship unicorns. Anonymous: “A recruiter called me after we scheduled a phone interview via email. At no point was it mentioned that the interview would be partly in English. When the interviewer heard a bit of hesitation in my voice (not because my English is bad—it’s not—but because I like to be prepared), she snapped: “If English scares you, maybe this isn’t the right place for you.” I was shocked, but quickly switched to English. The recruiter was floored—“Are you American?” (I’m not). Meanwhile she was speaking in broken English herself. It was honestly pretty funny, mainly because she belittled me and ended up making a fool of herself. Two weeks later, I got a generic rejection email.”
Transit app Moovit? 60’s style micromanagement. Phone hacking company NSO? High salaries, toxic management, and lots of trips to Third World countries. Natural Intelligence? “Getting a security clearance in the army was faster than the four interviews, homework assignment, meeting with the hiring manager and VP who thought the sun shone out his ass.”
Others chimed in with variations of the same dysfunction: HR reps not showing up to interviews, technical interviews with no relevance to the role, CEOs ghosting mid-Zoom to trash-talk their staff (while forgetting to mute), companies admitting they hadn’t read the CV, and interviews ending with lines like: “You’re too nice. I’m looking for a thug.” A Nova massacre survivor being interrogated about their trauma during the interview. “‘Did you see real blood?’ ‘Did he stab you with the knife?’”
And then there’s the petty and the unethical. One candidate was on the verge of an offer when a manager at his current workplace caught wind—thanks to his buddy, the VP at the hiring firm. The job disappeared. So did his current one. A talent leak turned personal.
Candidates are told outright that the environment is harsh, abusive, or indifferent. “The Founder said: ‘A lot of our employees cry. We’re not good at giving praise. Do you cry easily?’”
Often, home assignments are used as unpaid consulting. “Spent 5 hours on a home task. Two months later: 'We're going with someone else.’” There’s the startup VP who asked for ideas, then said ‘great, we’ll try that,’ and ghosted. I regret not sending an invoice.”
Data scientist Roy Talman says of an unnamed company: “Showed up to an interview in a nice button-down, back when I was at my physical peak—lean and fit. The HR rep looked me up and down and said, “Wow, you don’t look like someone interviewing for an algorithms position.” Awkward.
Anonymous 230 says of an unnamed company (it’s too recent): “Came in for a second visit after phone screening and technical test. HR leads me to the team lead—and it’s someone I had a one-night stand with back in my bartending student days. Awkward silence. Two days later: “We’ve decided not to proceed.”
These are just the most recent posts. Like I said, I’ve just scratched the surface. There are just too many (recent!) examples of discrimination, poor logistics, manipulative and inappropriate behavior to list here. It does all add up to an unescapable conclusion: we’re in an employers market. If we were living in better times—it’s Day 600 of the October 7 War—companies wouldn’t be treating potential employees with such disdain.
I’ll be coming back to this theme again because why not.
“Overheard in the Ecosystem”
"The whole world sees Israel fighting an existential war with the world against it, but precisely during this period Israel has become more than ever the object of envy for the world, especially in defense. When everyone saw what Iron Dome does, the Arrow system or how the Iranian attack was repelled in April, no one said 'they were lucky', but rather 'I want that too'." Josh Wolf, co-founder, LUX Capital.(CTech) Lux is considering establishing a permanent presence in Israel due to increasing investment activity and frequent visits, Wolf said.
“This wasn't the case two, three years ago, but in the last six months, we've met dozens of companies out of Israel that are three to ten employees and have multimillion ARR already being generated. In some cases, they're profitable from their first contract.” Daniel Aronovitz, Managing Director, Insight Partners. Said at a fireside chat with Uri Eliabayev at the Machine & Deep Learning Israel Invest AI event.
“Overall the situation in Israeli tech is excellent. I see amazing entrepreneurs. Our ambition is at its peak. Every big success drives others to reach even higher. On the other hand, the internal situation is unstable. It affects a lot of people. I really, really hope that we’ll have a stable, quiet country where it will be possible to think about the long term.” Adam Fisher, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, also at the Invest AI event.
“Even in dictatorships there is successful hi-tech.” Nir Zuk, founder of Palo Alto Networks, speaking at TheMarker Tech conference Tuesday at The Technion. Premature doom-saying by Israeli tech leaders about the judicial reforms damaged investor confidence and killed funding before any actual changes occurred, Zuk said, arguing that political turmoil doesn't automatically end innovation.
“When Amazon acquired us, we were just 89 people. Today, we're more than a thousand. Instead of trying to reinvent how to scale, we sat down with Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy and said, ‘These are some of the most successful operators in the world. Let’s learn from them. Let’s try to become like them—because we didn’t know how to do it ourselves. We made a conscious decision: we want to be Amazon, not Annapurna. Billy Hrvoje, co-founder, Annapurna Labs. (TheMarker). “If and when they go back and tell the story of AWS, our acquisition of Annapurna was one of the most important moments.” Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO. (WSJ)
“In the U.S., if startups stall, giants like Nvidia and Meta keep AI momentum going—and the economy has other pillars like manufacturing and finance to lean on.
In Israel, we can’t say the same. High-tech isn’t just a sector here—it’s our only globally competitive one. We can’t coast on cyber for another decade. If we want to lead in AI, we need to build new ecosystems, take real risks beyond our comfort zones, and government must lead the way.” Michael Kagan, NVIDIA CTO.
News Hits
Tech Reports Galore. Details? Not So Much. Two recent studies paint a rosy picture of Israeli tech: one claiming Israel leads the world in "stealth" founders building secret startups, and another tallying $1.34 billion in Gulf investment in Israeli tech since the Abraham Accords. These reports suggest a booming, secretive startup scene and strengthening financial ties with the Gulf. However, a deeper dive into their methodologies reveals significant flaws. The "stealth" report relies on self-tagged public profiles, missing truly covert operations and not defining what stealth actually is (no product launch, no funding announcement), while the Gulf investment data only captures public deals without detailing sources or specific investments, ultimately making both reports compelling but unreliable for serious decision-making.
LASERS, BUT NOT YET BEAMS: Israel wants to shoot rockets with lasers. It’s been working on it for over a decade, and according to a new report (Hebrew) by the INSS think tank, the Iron Beam project—the country’s flagship high-energy laser interceptor—is making progress. Just not the kind you’d notice if you looked up. The system has pulled off successful live-fire tests. The vision is clear: Iron Beam would supplement Iron Dome, frying cheap rockets and drones with light instead of launching $50,000 interceptors at $500 threats. In theory, it’s brilliant. In practice? Still stuck in testing. The INSS paper lays out the bottlenecks:
Power: Lasers strong enough to kill need massive, mobile energy sources.
Weather: Fog, dust, and humidity can scatter beams like a disco ball.
Heat: Sustained firing melts your own optics if you don’t cool it fast enough.
Dwell time: A laser has to stay locked on target for seconds. That’s not great against swarms.
The U.S. has rescinded its broader AI Diffusion Rule—once set to cap chip exports globally—but the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has issued a targeted policy statement and guidance focusing squarely on China. Israel Tech Insider subscriber Scott Cohen of AGP Ventures updates that under the new regime, any Israeli company that transfers or “diverts” advanced computing integrated circuits to China risks U.S. export-control enforcement under a strengthened “know your customer” rule that treats knowledge of end-use as a trigger for licensing or penalties. Scott keeps a close eye on this space as part of his work at the CET Sandbox, a U.S.-Israel innovation hub on Critical and Emerging Technologies, based in Washington, D.C., and Tel Aviv.
eBay announced the closure of its development center in Netanya, Israel, by early 2026, marking the end of two decades of technological presence in the country that began with the 2005 acquisition of Shopping.com for $620 million. The closure will result in the termination of approximately 200 employees who currently work at the center, following a series of gradual layoffs since 2023 as part of eBay's global efficiency initiatives. This decision raises questions about international companies' commitment to technological operations in Israel amid economic changes, recruitment costs, and geopolitical uncertainty.
Y Combinator-backed Traceloop has raised over $6 million to solve a critical problem: as companies increasingly deploy AI like ChatGPT, they lack proper tools to monitor, test, and debug these systems in real-world use—which Traceloop provides through engineering-grade reliability tools already used by IBM and Cisco.
Wanna Bet? Two years ago, Israeli VC and repeat founder Liad Agmon sounded the alarm: an “economic-employment catastrophe” was inevitable—thanks to AI. Alon Oring, a machine learning researcher at Reichman University, pushed back. “Wanna bet?” he asked. Agmon said yes. 1,000 shekels. Fast forward to 2025. The stakes have tripled, and the tension’s real. Agmon doubled down this week, calling the collapse “already here.” He even offered Oring a way out of the bet—“no hard feelings.” Oring is holding the line: yes, junior devs are feeling the squeeze, but AI is a force multiplier, not a job killer. “Demand for senior engineers is higher than ever,” he wrote. Is this the beginning of mass white-collar obsolescence—or just another hype cycle? One bet. Two worldviews. Three times the original wager.
Who’s building cool stuff?
FlightsRefund: In just one month, a fourth-time founding team turned a simple regulatory question—if there’s a law guaranteeing compensation for flight cancellations, why does no one claim it?—into a live AI-powered platform. A pilot app on no-code platform Base 44 yielded the first claim in 23 minutes, dozens in days, hundreds in weeks. By month’s end the team, led by Yonatan Attias, secured six major travel and credit partnerships and joined Meta’s AI accelerator in Tel Aviv. Remarkably, zero shekels were spent on marketing. Growth sprang from radical transparency and the courage to share progress publicly.
Eliana Barbel is building a new app named aimed at connecting new mothers locally to combat isolation. Barbel who is herself expecting, is "building in public"—meaning she is openly sharing the development journey, including progress and challenges, with her online audience. She reported that around 900 women have pre-registered for the app, which she likens to a "Tinder for mothers on maternity leave." The app is being developed in collaboration with Base 44, a conversational “vibe coding” platform that I featured here.
Couple of weeks ago I told you about Apple’s Israel CEO revealing that Israeli engineers developed key Vision Pro headset technologies, highlighting the local team’s importance to Apple's post-iPhone strategy. Well now it’s Meta’s turn. According to Limor Zellermeyer, head of Meta’s development center in Israel, local teams are leading on core technologies behind Meta’s AI-integrated wearables like the company’s Ray Ban smart glasses. This includes computer vision systems that allow the glasses to recognize objects, environments, and even suggest contextual actions—like recipe ideas based on what’s visible on your kitchen counter. “The whole issue of visual awareness, understanding places, is developed here in Israel,” Zellermeyer told the audience at TheMarker’s Tech conference at the Technion. The glasses have a camera, speakers, and AI integration. Wearers can listen to music, make phone calls, and interact with Meta AI in a natural way. For example, users can look at the world and ask questions like, “What do I see?” and get real-time feedback.
Opportunities
Israel's Government Procurement Administration has issued an Request for Information (Hebrew) for establishing an Applied Research and Development Institute in the “Tehkumah Region” (Gaza envelope communities destroyed in the Oct 7 attacks), as part of the national effort to rehabilitate and develop the local communities impacted by conflict. The proposed institute aims to become a scientific-technological anchor for regional recovery, leveraging the area's unique attributes to create a globally competitive innovation hub.
Israel is a vicious monster. Worse than Pol Pot.
It has used tech to target, kill, stalk, torture, and starve people. While at the same time destroying democracy, creating havoc and propaganda so vile that the Nazis would have been proud.
Israel is not for Jews - I see that made apparent daily.
From the constant harassment of other Jews who are not 'the right kind of Jews', to the physical murder of anyone who opposes them, anywhere in the world.
This isn't bravery, it's authoritarian insanity.
It's hydrophobia.
It's the disease of cruelty and spite, bourne of decades of propaganda about 'god's chosen people' and delusional beliefs about ethno-religious superiority.
And now, as I sit, a Jew, intentionally infected by Mossad with a bacteria that will claim my life in a matter of weeks, I still see the future - It is a global Shoah, created by Palantir and a million others who think they are superior. Israel is not a Jewish state, it is a rabid dog, a demon which crawled from the minds of paranoid dictators.
The hell you have made for everyone is unforgivable.