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Convincing engineers to join your team

triplebyte.com

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Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#121

Post by hinkley »

monksy wrote: post #29
ashelmire wrote: post #19

What's with the standard of doing a full day interview? Who does this work for other than fresh graduates? I don't want to spend a whole day (which I have to request off from my current employer) answering probably-silly technical puzzles as the first round interview (the 25 minute phone call doesn't really count since it sounds like just a pitch). Does a full day of whiteboarding really get you better candidates tha…

If you're a serious engineer that is demonstrating consideration: 1-2hr homework doesn't exist. Attention to detail, considering corner cases, test cases, documentation, and polishing takes time. I do agree with you the whole "let's stress him out till he fails one of the tests and then fail him" gauntlet is just annoying.

It's an interrogation, plain and simple.

There's a contingent of very detail oriented people who believe they are introverts because they tire easily at this kind of persistent over-stimulation. These people will wash out of the process before the culture fit interview in the afternoon. All you've done is increased your odds of getting a bunch of coding cowboys.

The fact is that nobody in a real business situation should be put into this sort of pressure cooker situation on a regular basis. That you're selecting for this indicates a pretty gross failure of management to manage. And until people push back the problem won't get solved. Hiring more people that think that's okay? One way to look at it is that it's a public service you're doing for the rest of the industry by keeping people like that out of our hair. Except people do what they know and any junior folk will just think this is normal and okay. It's not okay and I wouldn't even say it's normal.

A pressure cooker interview tells me this place is high drama and they're looking for people with a high tolerance for bullshit. I want to get shit done and do it well (not perfect - well), and that's probably not happening at a place like this.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#122

Post by BookmarkSaver »

chadash wrote: post #3

During the recruiting process, I expect a company to be putting its best foot forward. If things seem disorganized at that stage, then I assume that day-to-day operations at the company are even more disorganized. Additionally, it always makes a big difference to me if people high up in the organization (even if they aren't technical) are involved in the interview process. If a founder or C-level employee spends some…

>If things seem disorganized at that stage, then I assume that day-to-day operations at the company are even more disorganized

I'm not really sure about that. In my experience there can be a pretty big gap between the initial recruiters (who often understand nothing about the actual qualifications necessary) that are just trying to get as many people in the door as possible, and the actual operations of the company. Granted I have a pretty small sample size, but I've had this misalignment go in both directions.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#123

Post by justfor1comment »

throwaway9412 wrote: post #4

Hear that everyone? "As a startup it's hard to compete with Facebook and Google compensation packages, especially for senior engineers" Also, Oracle apparently had a lot of success building out their bare metal (now cloud infrastructure) team by making uncharacteristically (for them) good offers. You can hire good people, if you're willing to pay them. Bullshit doesn't work anymore.

This may be obvious to the candidates but it isn't that obvious to startups. I have seen startups that ask the same interview questions asked at FB. Why would anyone who can solve these questions join your loss making startup? IMO startups should scale the difficulty of their interview process with the liquid compensation they are willing to offer. Also, reduce the number of steps in the interview, especially for experienced candidates. Make the process smooth and effortless for the candidate. That's something FB and Goog cannot do at their scale.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#124

Post by trhway »

jedberg wrote: post #62

> A complaint we hear from Triplebyte candidates is being asked how likely they would be to accept an offer before knowing the actual offer details. The reality is that compensation details are a large factor in where people decide to work and you can't expect someone to know if they want to work for you without giving them that data. The numerical salary shouldn't be the deciding factor. I want to know if you're int…

man, you want the body coming to work, the brain doing the work, and also you want the soul. The soul does cost a significant extra and it seems you're trying to get it on the cheap by catching and exploiting the enthusiasm of those people who feel it for your jobs.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#125

Post by sidlls »

readittwice wrote: post #95
tootie wrote: post #81

My phone screen technique is more old school but I think works well. I pick their top language or domain (web or mobile or whatever) and ask 10 trivia questions. Medium difficulty questions I'd expect a programmer with any experience to answer. I look for maybe 70% correct and I look for quick answers. You know it or you don't. And I set that expectation up front so they can give me a few "I don't know"s with no pena…

I think that's a great way of interviewing! But don't you fear this only works for smaller companies? Imagine some company like Google or Facebook would do that: I would expect people to just start learning answers by heart..

What do you think happens now?

People more or less memorize a subset of leetcode and CTCI solutions and the bullet points from various scalable architecture books and resources, all of which are provided by recruiters in their email conversations with candidates. Fresh grads, the affluent, and people who have few or no social obligations (e.g. family) spend a few weeks (or months) doing what amounts to cramming for a test to prepare for these things.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#126

Post by tropo »

mathgeek wrote: post #119
avip wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the standard because it's a big world and some candidates travel long for an interview. So you squash the process into a day. That makes sense.

Could you elaborate on why it makes sense to have these candidates travel long distances for a full day interview, rather than have them travel nowhere for a shorter interview via video chat?

You can verify their ID. You can show them around the office. You won't discriminate against dial-up modem users. You get the candidate to show that they are serious (flights, hotel, etc.) and you show them that you are serious by paying for it.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#127

Post by humanrebar »

tropo wrote: post #126
mathgeek wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on why it makes sense to have these candidates travel long distances for a full day interview, rather than have them travel nowhere for a shorter interview via video chat?

You can verify their ID. You can show them around the office. You won't discriminate against dial-up modem users. You get the candidate to show that they are serious (flights, hotel, etc.) and you show them that you are serious by paying for it.

Video conference software always stinks for whatever reason.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#128

Post by muzani »

tootie wrote: post #81

My phone screen technique is more old school but I think works well. I pick their top language or domain (web or mobile or whatever) and ask 10 trivia questions. Medium difficulty questions I'd expect a programmer with any experience to answer. I look for maybe 70% correct and I look for quick answers. You know it or you don't. And I set that expectation up front so they can give me a few "I don't know"s with no pena…

I think a lot of companies do this, but it ends up being weird stuff that doesn't happen in the real world like bit shift operators in Java.

It would be excellent if it was all relevant stuff. I took one for a job, about 30 questions. I was really surprised that I got about 93% on it, purely guessing. The person who made the test later told me that if you have enough experience, you'd probably know things like "findViewById" instead of "findViewByID", because it's muscle memory.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#129

Post by JamesBarney »

tptacek wrote: post #118

Broken record, but here's our hiring process: 1. An initial call, handled by a principal ("founder"), with the objective of explaining the role and the company and arming the candidate with as much detail about the hiring process as is practicable. 2. A followup in email shortly thereafter confirming interest and locking down schedule. 3. 1-3 work-sample challenges (our current set, for the role we're hiring now, is…

Whats your target length(in hrs of effort) for a work sample?

And secondly how do you deal with someone farming out the work to someone else?

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