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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”?

#771

Post by thirdwhrldPzz »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #614
thirdwhrldPzz wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research into who brings value, what technologies improve efficiency, has been inconclusive. The models end up with so many variables the conclusions are meaningless; any one parameter is insufficient, all the parameters needed mean no one parameter is greater than another. How can a value assessment being useful given all the required context that also has to exist? Is it a measure of value or traditional human bias…

I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding in what interviewers are testing for. Interviewers at most companies aren't trying to evaluate or quantify a candidate's inherent value or general technical prowess. They're trying to determine whether or not the candidate can help solve immediate and real problems that the company has, while also trying to get a sense of whether the candidate has the potential to grow with…

There is no misunderstanding on my part.

I never consented to this culture. I see little different here than a church, meat based tape recorders thinking the noises they emit are “the way” with little proof except “feudal capitalism” continues to “work”.

We don’t owe deference and agency to CEOs, VCs, and founders. The syntax is different but the LARP of being sheep for “wise men” is the same.

Only 13% of the country has an advanced degree (mine is MSc in math earned in the 90s; I’m old) and knowledge is not locked away in those heads. Education does not make people infallible and omniscient.

This is a result of traditional political memes; owners rule, everyone else drools. The filtering and sorting inside that cognitive bubble is just the proles making proles dance like jesters. No scientific theory makes this the one true way of organizing effort.

Memorizing semantics is not proof they’re correct. If GME can be shorted to the extent it is despite that being illegal, our institutions are built on deference to BS, since that system is the bedrock used to prop up tech VCs.

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

#772

Post by mylons »

ngc248 wrote: post #747
mylons wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the in-depth reply that illustrates my flippant comment. there can be an inherent competitiveness in white-boarding interviews. the interviewer can implicitly want to show their superiority over the candidate. i think that's the core reason behind a lot of overly difficult problems being offered that have no analogous presence in the day to day work. how many times have you written a graph traversal algorithm…

>>> there can be an inherent competitiveness in white-boarding interviews. the interviewer can implicitly want to show their superiority over the candidate This can be present even in non-FAANG interviews. Early in my career, I had an interview at a financial company and for a question about how do you style html pages, my answer was CSS and the interviewer expected something about ASP.NET webstyles. He was't ready t…

right — it’s certainly not FAANG specific but seems to arise from these styles of interviews. maybe it’s lack of interviewing training or standards? i think the standard now is, “pick your favorite hard problem and have a candidate do it on the whiteboard.” which presents this opportunity for an interview lacking compassion.

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

#773

Post by mylons »

graderjs wrote: post #731
mylons wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the in-depth reply that illustrates my flippant comment. there can be an inherent competitiveness in white-boarding interviews. the interviewer can implicitly want to show their superiority over the candidate. i think that's the core reason behind a lot of overly difficult problems being offered that have no analogous presence in the day to day work. how many times have you written a graph traversal algorithm…

agree, now let's you and me apply to YC with our disruptive, upending-the-traditional-inefficiencies in tech hiring startup idea. Ho ho ho! :)

haha — my email is in my profile page if you really want to talk about it. i have interjected at previous companies where it was possible to influence the process a little bit. my biggest question would be “how could you do it differently than triplebyte when they first start?” they started by interviewing people themselves which is hard to scale.

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

#775

Post by lawwantsin17 »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#777

Post by sgtnoodle »

Retric wrote: post #754
shagie wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still fixing up the code of a developer from five years ago who was there for two years prior to me. He had ideas about how things should work and completely disagreed with the conventions of every framework. And so, every time I go in a section of code to fix a bug or adjust a feature and I see his name in git blame... I spend another few hours to make sure that I'm not breaking some of the twisted framework co…

The question is how likely a longer interview process with avoid such employees not that they have a cost. In your case code reviews could have caught the issue early before it became such a problem. Though obviously they also have a cost.

I don't think a longer interview process is strictly necessary to avoid hiring unqualified people. Rather, a longer interview process helps to hire more people while maintaining high standards. Individual interview sessions go poorly all the time for silly reasons. If a candidate only had one interview session and botched it, they're probably done. If they had several sessions and botched one but showed excellence in another, they would still have a good chance of getting an offer.

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

#778

Post by shaman1 »

I applied to a company for two positions and they came back to me saying that I'm suitable for both but if I want to interview for both of them there will be 10 interviews and 2 take home tasks.

The current interview paradigm makes it difficult for engineers to interview at many companies at the same time and get the best offer.

Some companies send you upfront a 2-3h coding test without even talking to you to see if there is a fit.

Interviewing can mean a lot of wasted time and frustration due to lack of feedback and transparency.

I was thinking to create a site to allow rating of interview experiences to prepare people for what's ahead and allow them to assess if their time is well spent. If this sounds something of interest, pm me.

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

#779

Post by sgtnoodle »

thirdwhrldPzz wrote: post #771
sgtnoodle wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding in what interviewers are testing for. Interviewers at most companies aren't trying to evaluate or quantify a candidate's inherent value or general technical prowess. They're trying to determine whether or not the candidate can help solve immediate and real problems that the company has, while also trying to get a sense of whether the candidate has the potential to grow with…

There is no misunderstanding on my part. I never consented to this culture. I see little different here than a church, meat based tape recorders thinking the noises they emit are “the way” with little proof except “feudal capitalism” continues to “work”. We don’t owe deference and agency to CEOs, VCs, and founders. The syntax is different but the LARP of being sheep for “wise men” is the same. Only 13% of the country…

You seem extremely jaded, and the way you speak about religion is rather boorish in my opinion.

I enjoy living in and participating in a society. Thanks to the productivity gains of specialization and free trade, technology has been developed to the point that I spend my days designing embedded software to fly autonomous aircraft. Those aircraft deliver medical supplies, primarily in developing countries with poor road infrastructure. At least a few people a week don't die specifically because a UAV I helped make was able to deliver them a blood transfusion. The company is for-profit, and in exchange for my work I am compensated in salary and in equity. The better the company does, the more people have access to life saving medical care, and the more money I personally make. The UAV system also requires people to operate them, and so the company employs hundreds of people in those developing countries. One of the earliest and most tenacious in-country employees quit a couple years ago because they got accepted to a robotics program at Stanford.

The last employee I personally managed the hiring of only had a couple years of community college experience and self-proclaimed ADHD. Despite my intent for them to only spend 6 hours or so on the interview process, they spent probably 16 hours because they found the interview process itself personally rewarding.

The company CEO drives a crappier car than everyone else at the office. By coincidence, I had a serious problem last week that required intervention, and I quite literally made the CEO dance like a jester for me in order to make a point. There was no scientific theory involved.

I'm right there with you regarding the corruption of most financial and government institutions. I don't think it's as black and white as "capitalism bad", though.

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

#780

Post by codatory »

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 feel like 7+ interviews is selecting for desperation more than any specific skill or fit. That's still likely to yield decent short/mid-term hires, and if the promotion structure keeps those hires around might be a successful strategy (we will leave the candidate's experience out of value judgement entirely) but it will eliminate an entire class of hires who aren't willing to submit to that amount of free time, energy and expertise for the possibility of future opportunities.
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