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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”?

#551

Post by nsxwolf »

lukeschlather wrote: post #255
boisenberrier wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’ve been close to one person getting fired? How do you have an opinion on the PIP process or firing at all if you have next to no experience with it? I knew a guy at a FAANG who earned himself and his report a PIP for the grave sin of choosing the wrong deputy to send upstairs while he was on vacation. The deputized person went to one meeting and ran his mouth (arguably, told the truth). Both are no longer at t…

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.

This sounds awful. Disrespectful. Glad I never worked for a FAANG.

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

#552

Post by ergocoder »

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…

Interviews for other occupations are way way worse.

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

#553

Post by anyfoo »

tartoran wrote: post #297
novok wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PIPing and firing is a huge time and emotional energy suck, and it sucks for people on both sides. To reduce the amount it happens is worthy. You can’t in practice just say, “this guy sucks, lets fire him next week” And it shows, barely anyone in my entire career has ever been fired. I only personally have been close to one.

> PIPing and firing is a huge time and emotional energy suck, and it sucks So is the 7 interview gauntlet. But I guess it just shifts the burden on the candidates and externalizes cost.

Compared to PIPing and firing? Interviewing is probably way, way less of a time and emotional energy suck.

Granted, I've only ever taken and given interviews, never given (or, fortunately, been under) a PIP or firing. But interviewing is just a few weeks or so of preparation and then a day or two, and the preparation is often fun, and so are some of the interviews. Nobody thinks PIPs and firings are fun.

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

#554

Post by paganel »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #272
StupidUser123 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is another thing - if you want to work at a FAANG, presumably you want to be there a while. Anyone who can't put up with a little bit of nonsense and headache for something meaningful is likely to struggle with any nonsense and headache generally. Working on any large scale project at a FAANG is going to involve a decent amount of nonsense and headache, and you gotta roll with it. And then on the flip side - if…

Maybe it's an age thing, because I've already hit 40, but doing 5-7 interviews seems like time lost for all the people involved. If a company cannot decide after 1-2 interviews if the person they're trying to hire it's worth the effort or not then it means it has lost its golden touch, especially in this industry. And vice-versa, if, as a potential employee, you don't "sense" your employer after 1-2 meetings then it means it's not meant to be.

Case in point, all these FAANG companies which pride themselves in doing 6-7 interviews, they all are spitting out shitty product after shitty product (that is when they're launching any new products at all). Exceptions do exist, I know of that, and when do they show up everyone is so surprised (see Apple and M1 recently). The pay at these companies is also very good, that is correct, but it's not correlated with the quality of the people who work for them or to how their talents are put to work. More exactly, a company so immersed in bureaucracy that it needs this amount of work to hire just one person is sure to waste the talent that it already has at its disposal.

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

#555

Post by II2II »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #420
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another thing - if you want to work at a FAANG, presumably you want to be there a while. Anyone who can't put up with a little bit of nonsense and headache for something meaningful is likely to struggle with any nonsense and headache generally. Working on any large scale project at a FAANG is going to involve a decent amount of nonsense and headache, and you gotta roll with it. And then on the flip side - if…

I agree with this. Honestly, as a candidate, I don't mind the longer interview loop. What I do mind is if it's very spread out. I'm willing to invest an hour up front + a full day round, but I don't want that longer round spread out over the course of multiple days. I'll give you 6 hours in a day, but not 2-3 days of 2-3 hours each. My expectation at this point is: Pre-onsite: - 15 minute with a recruiter, tell me a…

> Honestly, as a candidate, I don't mind the longer interview loop. What I do mind is if it's very spread out.

As a candidate, I would also be wondering what it would be like to work for a company with a spread out interview process. I have been through multistage interviews, but decisions were always made quickly. Made it to the end of the phone screening, at the end of the conversation there is an offer to be flown out for a panel interview. Made it past an interview with the IT manager, then head straight down to someone else to discuss software development. Made it past the interview with the lead scientist, then head straight down to the lab to see the lab and meet the research team. Even though I was in my prime, I was by no means special and I only secured some of the positions I applied for. Yet I always knew one way or another within days. I was happy to work for those who I did get hired by and I would have been proud to be hired by those who declined.

Thankfully, I have never had to endure a strung out interview process. Because of that, I don't know how I would feel in such a situation. Yet looking at the prospect from afar, it leads me to believe that it would be difficult to work in such an environment: it would involve dealing with people who are more concerned about process than decisions, and with people who are not available when decisions need to be made (or even for process to be followed).

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

#556

Post by starchild_3001 »

Let me provide some color for you. Hiring is changing. It's shifting from "oh this person went to good schools, worked for a top company" (self perpetuating loop) to "can you answer this difficult question in 45 mins?" (more noisy, but less biased estimate).

Now, your question is I feel completely wrong. Meaning ever since I joined the work force (2004), I always had 5-7 interviews.

But that aside, the real deal these days is an effort to unbias the hiring process. Meaning put less weight on the resume. Put more weight on the 0.5-1 day you spend with the candidate during the interview process.

Obviously, you need to ask the right kind of questions to measure technical competence. So the Q&A is also heavily skewed towards job-required skills & knowledge (vs puzzles and such).

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

#558

Post by anyfoo »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #507
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every alternative you can imagine has been tried. Lots of interviews, few interviews, take home projects, pair programming, hire fast fire fast, trial periods and on and on and on.

Hire fast fire fast is by far the best one, should you really need it. A 20 minute technical conversation and then firing within 2-3 weeks if they do not seem self-directed has worked in my experience. If you can't get someone up to speed with your internal processes fast enough to at least gauge if they're following along that indicates an internal problem. The problem is, I think, that HR does not want technical st…

> Hire fast fire fast is by far the best one, should you really need it.

I can only say that: Oh my gosh do I not want to work for a company that "hires fast and fires fast". For many different reasons.

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

#559

Post by mr_toad »

Retric wrote: post #411
sgtnoodle wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it seems to take a company about 1-1.5 years to fire someone that's well intended but ineffective in their role. 15 or so "wasted" person-hours up front is well worth avoiding thousands of wasted person-hours, especially considering maybe 1 in 5 candidates that make it to a full interview are a good fit.

15 extra hours * N candidates per opening * M people onboarded per additional marginal employee discovered. Picking numbers from a hat say 15 * 7 * 20 = 2,100 unproductive hours to avoid a subpar employee that still actually gets something done in the ~3,000 hours before being fired. That could easily be a net loss depending on how much onboarding time is needed and how unproductive they are on average. Honestly, I t…

> 2,100 unproductive hours to avoid a subpar employee

You also need to factor in the odds of this whole process working.

There’s not a whole lot of empirical research that measures the correlation between the interview process and employee performance.

And of course, employee performance measurement is as dubiously effective as ever.

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

#560

Post by mr_toad »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #531
thirdwhrldPzz wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know this isn’t blind faith and the numbers are “made up”? Other than fiat wealth generation, what gains are there to treating each other like this?

I'm not sure what you mean? Are you suggesting that companies shouldn't avoid hiring unqualified people that generate less value than their cost on average?

I’m dubious that companies can accurately measure ability or performance, either in the interview process or on the job.
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