581–590 of 646 posts
I suppose it is like getting turned down for a date. The other person will rarely be honest about why, and the reasons given (if any) are worthless.
> While researching this piece, I spoke to a few labor lawyers and ran some Lexis Nexis searches to see just how often a company’s constructive feedback (i.e. not “durrrr we didn’t hire you because you’re a woman”) to a rejected eng candidate has resulted in litigation. This is confirmation bias at its finest. 1. "speaking to a few labor lawyers and ran some Lexis Nexis searches" is hardly what I would call conclusiv…
Let's see some Taleb-esque "skin in the game": Not just the author's toothless footnote, but a cash bounty.
The industry is too small to treat people like you will never run into them again. There are many reasons why someone might not be right for the role today, but will be a rockstar tomorrow.
I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…
You should. Does it look like they give a fuck about you? Who are they?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You probably wouldn't like the feedback. Most interviews these days are random because our field is obsessed with finding 10x megarockstar GTD superprogrammers. I can't think of a single field where interviews are such awful experiences. All interviews could be simple Q&A sessions to make sure the person isn't a charlatan and then sell them on the position. HR isn't a science, and it never will be. The FAANGs spend g…
>The FAANGs spend god knows how much time and money on it, and they admit that their interviews aren't better than a coin flip. I'm curious what this means. Whiteboard style interviews aren't perfect, but at the very least they demonstrate 1. You can communicate with another engineer on a technical problem (simply writing the code with no explanation isn't sufficient), and 2. You have the determination to study CS to…
One time we gave feedback on request and the candidate contested the feedback, then went out on a social media rampage. So yeah, we stopped after that. It only takes one bad candidate to make it not worth the effort.
I've only been turned down once after interviewing so I don't have a lot of data on who does and who does not provide feedback. The time that I was turned down, I spent a day working on a programming assessment and 6 hours on-site interviewing with 4-5 different groups of people. I felt like everything went really well. I left and heard in a week or so that they were "pursuing other candidates". I asked about feedback, they said they don't give it.
Cool, then where's the ~$600 for my time? It's a Fortune 500 company (in the top 50). I'll never interview there again and I'll recommend to everyone that I know to vote with their talent and stay away from big, soulless companies that have forgone basic respect.
I suppose it is like getting turned down for a date. The other person will rarely be honest about why, and the reasons given (if any) are worthless.
What you can get out of an interview is a lot of information about the competence and culture of the company. Did the interview feel like a real attempt by good people to hire someone like you into a company you'd like to work for? If not, put them on your ban list and never look back.
Because it would take time to write up the feedback and it would have to be reviewed by HR to ensure it is not phrased in a way that in violation of local laws. This is a large investment for a candidate that is not going to work for your company and from a business point of view, this time is better spend else where.
I was once asked in a web development interview how to asynchronously fetch a resource. I answered something to the effect of "you just add a `true` parameter in the xhr.open() call somewhere, probably the second or third parameter" without being too specific about it since I did not have it memorized. The interviewer did not accept this response and after every rebuttal of mine he just responded with "no" each time…