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Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

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Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#471

Post by kube-system »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #346

Hiring manager here. IMO the current tech hiring norms are gross and not sustainable. It feels like a weird hazing ritual and with the current market, is the single biggest reason you can't hire. Why on earth would someone burn a weekend on a take-home test for your startup when they have 15 other irons in the fire? At my current employer we got rid of all that ridiculousness. No take home test. No live coding. We've…

> You don't see accountants balancing books before they get hired.

You sure do, and not just by a hiring manager's whim, but by law. Accountants have occupational licensing.

> I think it's time we accept that the person we are talking to is who they say they are on their resume.

This is a straw man, I have never "caught a liar" on an a coding exam. What they are helpful for doing is judging the quality of what it means to be "proficient in [x]".

If there's anything I have learned from giving coding exams to candidates, it's that the ability of a candidate to verbally sell themselves in an interview has a weak correlation to their ability to produce quality work.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#472

Post by GeneralMayhem »

dleslie wrote: post #432
kjeetgill wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don't think 2 phone calls and 5-6 hr onsite is that complex. Maybe the onsite could be 3 instead: 2 code + behavioral, but I can't imagine wanting to do less than that.

5-6 hr onsite is a strong filter against folks who are presently employed; particularly those who cannot spare personal days or unpaid days for every interview.

I don't think that argument is particularly relevant in the tech industry. It's not that hard to find a "sick" day, even if you don't have unlimited PTO. And especially during COVID, where going missing for a day might go unnoticed for a lot of people.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#473

Post by andrewcarter »

cookiecaper wrote: post #350
arroz wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is PIP?

"(Personal|Professional|Performance) Improvement Plan". It's the first formal stage in the firing process at most companies with HR depts, which would almost certainly include any publicly-listed company. If you're at the PIP stage, it generally means your boss and your superboss have decided that it's time for you to go, but for legal purposes, they need to look like they tried to give you a chance, so they work wit…

At the company I work for PiPs _usually_ lead to issues being solved. There are several developers I've worked with on PiPs (we do specific mentoring and follow ups on the areas of concern) that were able to improve and are now doing great. It isn't always a terrible thing, certainly not comfortable for the person on the PiP but it can be a positive thing in the long run!

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#474

Post by PragmaticPulp »

StupidUser123 wrote: post #106
mabbo wrote: post #44

Having been an interviewer at a FAANG for many years, I can explain some of the logic behind it. I'm not saying this logic is valid , but it's how we got here, imho. First: we no longer trust the hiring manager alone, because probably they aren't a strong developer. We instead trust strong developers that are well trained at evaluating good devs. At the same time, we don't want to thrust a dev onto a hiring manager,…

I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. It’s great getting data points on several programming interviews, system design, etc. That makes my sell interview so much easier because I can trust the process to assess their technical skills. You need multiple people because you’re consta…

> I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it.

The truth is that nobody likes being interviewed. Getting tested and judged by strangers isn’t fun.

But developers also really don’t like being surrounded by unqualified developers who slipped through a weak interview process. They also don’t like having significant numbers of their teammates fired and replaced all the time because the company had “hire fast, fire fast” interview styles. It’s miserable and slightly terrifying to work at a company where nobody really wants to invest much time into building relationships with new hires because many of them are going to be PIPed out before the year is over.

So while the interviews may not be fun, the reality is that strong developers really appreciate the outcome of such a rigorous process. It also helps protect people from becoming false negatives because they didn’t mesh with a single interviewer or struggled with a single interview problem.

So now we’re at this weird equilibrium where devs simultaneously hate the interview process for themselves but appreciate it being applied to everyone around they (even if it’s not immediately obvious).

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#475

Post by ceeplusplus »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #442
anderber wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds very forward thinking and I like it. Would you be willing to share a bit more on the process? What does it entail? In the past I was hired on just 2 interviews, and all we did was talk as peers. It felt comfortable and honest. It's the reason I said yes to switching positions.

Thanks! So, I'll say that we are still tweaking and trying to get things just right but, as of the time of me writing this, here is the process: - HR call 30 min. - Talk to hiring manager (me) 30 min. Get to know each other and feel out if there is a mutual fit. - Technical panel 1hr. Speak with several engineers on the team who share your discipline (front end or back end for example). Again no live coding. We just…

Sorry, but this just sounds very easy to bullshit. Unless you're doing real in depth quizzing of stuff people wouldn't know if they didn't work with it (e.g. in HFT, explaining what a potential implementation of std::string could be and what the tradeoffs of each design choice would be), generic backend principles are very easy to spew correct answers for without actually knowing how to code. How are you going to filter out people that just memorize the concepts for their chosen language and are good at talking but can't code for their life?

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#476

Post by nickjj »

renewiltord wrote: post #341
nickjj wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody with options is going to accept multiple weeks of limbo in exchange for maybe having a job. Let's say it does take 2 weeks to do 20 hours (2 hours a day), you would be compensated $4,000 for working 2 hours a day. Or if you're in between jobs you would have the time to do 20-30 hours in about 1 week and get paid $200 / hour. I guess I'm just picky. I did freelance work for ~20 years and worked on 1 contract…

Dude, no Bay Area engineer will take this deal. $200/hr is $100/hr in real post tax income. This is competitive with bartending on a Friday night. If you’re not at $500/hr you’re not even competitive. You can be at $300/hr if you’re guaranteeing the job for a year but if it’s a one off you have to start way higher than that. But free time is more precious. I’d target $1k/hr to play. I think break even is probably sli…

> For $200/hr I’d rather spend the time on my own life.

The alternative is spending 7-12 hours doing 5-7 technical interviews for $0.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#477

Post by madamelic »

igetspam wrote: post #224
alexashka wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it perfect? No, but it does work. How do you know it works? > I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. There we are. It is all about you. No need to say anything else - your life is all about you, so of course if it works for you, 'it works'.

No, it's all about everyone. If I hire a person and fire them in less than a year, that's almost always because of a performance problem that's impacting the team or the org. If you're the one being fired, you probably left a job or didn't take some other job to work with us and now you're going to be unemployed. Additionally, as a hiring manager, I too am a human who wants to enjoy my job and have positive experienc…

> Filtering early is best for everyone.

This is a lie that everyone tells themselves to make them feel secure and safe.

The best interview is working with the person. Do a few basic interviews for competency, give them a 2 week - month long 1099 contract and put them on guard rails for the contract duration.

Their daily work isn't just about whether they can jump through time-based hoops or answer basic questions. No one is going to know whether it is a mutual match until the person gets into the codebase and start working.

Plenty of great engineers have "performance problems" not because they are bad engineers but because of problems an interview will never expose or detect like a bad teammate or lead match causing disagreements, a bad codebase, poor planning that only builds tech debt, bad business plan, disagreement on business direction, etc.

The idea that an interview can filter good or bad engineers is laughable. The most you can determine from an interview, regardless of how many flaming hoops and balls the candidate bounces off their nose, is whether they know how to code and _probably_ know what you need them to know.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#478

Post by asveikau »

doktorhladnjak wrote: post #335
lukeschlather wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a FAANG for 3 years and I'm pretty sure no one I worked with was on a PIP. A PIP is extreme. It's sufficient to simply not give people raises, most people can and will easily find another job earning 10% more.

How would you really know? People don't usually talk publicly about their PIP. I went from long time IC to manager at a faang adjacent company. It was eye opening to see who was on a PIP and go through calibrations. There were well liked, competent people who others on the team got along with but they just were not delivering at the expected level. Sometimes the problem was lack of motivation or bad role fit.

> but they just were not delivering at the expected level. Sometimes the problem was lack of motivation or bad role fit.

Another i think is when management doesn't understand that someone is, in your wording, a "well liked, competent person", doesn't adequately understand what they bring to the team. Performance reviews, especially of ICs but not exclusively, have a bias towards perceived individual contribution and against teamwork.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#479

Post by ethanwillis »

igetspam wrote: post #441
ethanwillis wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it sure isn't because I never said months or multiple months.

Fine. I'm mixing replies. A single month is still unreasonable. That's a bad candidate experience. That changes nothing about the number of people who interview you though, just how quickly.

Well due to real world constraints of scheduling even with people who's sole job is to interview candidates the speed at which you interview is most likely going to be a function of how many people need to interview you.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#480

Post by PragmaticPulp »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #237
mylons wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get PIP’ed and fired routinely that make it through this process. I think there’s a lot of bias in your response. The process worked for you, you work at a large tech company and it gives you validation. It also makes you feel good to lord over the process and boosts your ego, reinforcing your priors.

YMMV, but it's actually quite difficult to get a PIP in many tech companies, and it's rarely if ever for lack of tech skills. The ones I've seen usually involve either motivation, output, or both plummeting to zero for extended periods of time due to burnout or a similar extended personal crisis.

> YMMV, but it's actually quite difficult to get a PIP in many tech companies

Generally, the more the company practices “hire fast, fire fast” the easier and more common it will be to PIP people.

The companies with 4+ stage interviews and entire departments devoted to recruiting and candidate evaluation tend to not have as many PIPs because they’ve studied their interviewing processes and prevented most of the underperformers from getting hired in the first place.

The most quick-to-fire company I ever worked for had barely a 1-hour interview process. They’d hire anyone who seemed remotely qualified and then they’d fire everyone who didn’t work out. It was terrible and now I’m actually suspicious of companies that don’t do much technical screening for applicants.

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