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No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

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Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#631

Post by wpietri »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #158
wpietri wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I give it whenever asked. Last I was interviewed, I got it at about half the places I talked to. It's a very natural thing for people to ask about. And answering questions is also pretty natural. The notion that it happens approximately never strikes me as something that needs a lot more evidence than your personal experience.

The entire premise of the OP is that candidates are “rarely told why they got the outcome that they did”. The author claims to have a survey supporting this, but they didn’t publish any of those details. I did a bit of googling and found this[0] article citing a report that claims: * 69.7% of rejected candidates receive no feedback * Of those that did, 77.3% said the feedback wasn’t useful That leaves 6.8% of rejecte…

I don't understand how you reconcile "It could just as likely demonstrate that very few companies provide feedback to rejected candidates" and "69.7% of rejected candidates receive no feedback".

It doesn't have to be useful feedback for somebody to sue over it. But even if it were, I still don't see how your point makes sense. Let's say there are a million software developers in the US. Let's assume they change jobs every 3 years and do 3 interviews when they do change. That's 68,000 things that people could sue over. Even if one in a thousand actually reaches the lawsuit stage, that's over a thousand lawsuits over the last 20 years.

I agree "never" is too strong, but I think this search puts a plausible upper bound on the rate of lawsuits.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#632

Post by vonseel »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #567
tron27 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently got ambushed with one of these types of interviews. I was going for a senior dev role, in the same industry I've been working on for the last 5+ years. Had done the normal initial phone interview (overview of experience etc), a take home code challenge (only took ~1hr) then I was asked to come in for a final interview that was to be a 15-20min presentation on project I'd worked on (that related to what I w…

> 15-20min presentation on project I'd worked on Are you sure they didn't just try to steal intellectual property of your last employer? ._.

He probably meant the take home coding project that he worked on before the interview.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#633

Post by vonseel »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #450
vonseel wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. I can’t imagine many people enjoy studying for leetcode type interviews, either, unless they are fresh out of a CS program and already practiced with that stuff.

Do people actually accept such interviews? That seems quite disrespectful to me, tbh. > Oh you've been working in a relevant field for 10 years? Here take this written test first, so we can check how well you can memorize hundreds of random irrelevant algorithms... I'd walk out, unless it was maybe some simpler algorithm that you can actually figure out yourself by thinking for a few minutes.

> Do people actually accept such interviews? That seems quite disrespectful to me, tbh.

I was under the impression that pretty much any FAANG interviews will have significant data structures and algorithms components and/or whiteboarding over Leetcode-like problems. Maybe I am wrong on this.

Outside of FAANG, I've found it's hit or miss, but the smaller the company the less likely you'll have to deal with bullshit hiring practices, at least that was my experience.

> Oh you've been working in a relevant field for 10 years? Here take this written test first, so we can check how well you can memorize hundreds of random irrelevant algorithms...

Yeah, and it's even worse if you don't have a formal CS degree. People always say that it's important to know data structures or algorithms or Big O-complexity so you "don't do something horribly inefficient in production", but in retrospect, I haven't had many problems with performance in real life. When I did have problems, it was usually fixed by modifying a SQL or ORM query. Once I fixed someone's major performance issues just by recommending installing a different package to generate PDF's.

I seriously doubt anyone needs a computer-science degree and deep low-level data-structures and algorithms knowledge unless they are going to be writing databases or compilers or designing programming languages. Most of the time, some common-sense and a handful of "good practice" coding/software eng. rules will do the job.

Disclaimer: I work on typical web/server applications. I'd probably have a different opinion if I were working on life or death software, e.g. medical device software, airplane control systems software.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#634

Post by hvidgaard »

perl4ever wrote: post #609
hvidgaard wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply have to disagree. The amount of unqualified candidates that have a decent CV and are reasonable to talk to, but completely unable to correctly write a while loop is too damn high. That is what my whiteboard questions filter out. They're super easy stuff such as "I give you as input a list of integers, return the index of the first consecutive pair of numbers that when added is 42 - you can use any language o…

"You'd be shocked how many people that write years of relevant programming experience and fail that." Do you find people who did well on a preliminary test where they wrote some code fail this? If not, then why do the whiteboard? If people do fail, do you assume it's because they cheated on the previous test? I think your stated explanation is incoherent, because you are claiming that self-taught developers can "get…

> Do you find people who did well on a preliminary test where they wrote some code fail this? If not, then why do the whiteboard? If people do fail, do you assume it's because they cheated on the previous test?

My preliminary test is a phone call if there is more candidates I want to interview than I have time for. No coding.

> you're saying they can't do anything and yet somehow they were hired and do stuff at other places.

I have not stated that they've worked other places. I said that they claim to have worked at other places - that is a very important distinction.

> If they can "get something done", why are they useless?

I don't need people that can "get something done", I need people that can work in a team, do code review on both sides, do pair programming when the situation calls for it.

> It's not just the rock stars that are missing from your pool

I do NOT want a rockstar. They're expensive and not that much more productive. I want a great team and you build that carefully with hard working people that complement each other.

> it's the people who are terrible at interviews and are much more loyal to a job than those who can handle whiteboards and small talk.

We've had our share of people unable to perform a whiteboard "problem" as interns and for one-off things. Commonly for those that was unable to function in teamwork, was that they want a task and be left alone. That is not how you produce great software, and it certainly is not how we do it because of the software we write.

> I think this idea of your hiring pool not being representative and getting wrong ideas of what good and bad people are like has implications for diversity of various types, but I'm not going to flesh that out here.

Again, my goals are people that can work in a team. A whiteboard is representative for both communication and a basic level of competency.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#635

Post by hvidgaard »

perl4ever wrote: post #611
AllegedAlec wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of unqualified candidates that have a decent CV and are reasonable to talk to, but completely unable to correctly write a while loop is too damn high. There was some research into this, and IIRC, only half the programmers, both experienced and junior, got a while loop right (IE: no off by ones etc) the first time.

A long, long time ago, somebody wrote about how most supposedly competent programmers can't write a correct binary search under test conditions.

Unless we simplify it significantly, it's surprisingly hard to do. And completely irrelevant anyway.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#636

Post by bartread »

vector_spaces wrote: post #246

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…

> "There's nothing in it for the company but risk".

The issues I have with this point of view is it's very short-sighted. Word travels. If people have a shitty selection experience when they apply to you they'll tell other people about it. That will impact your ability to hire the best talent. It's to companies' benefit to provide a good experience during the selection process, and that includes giving feedback.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#637

Post by bartread »

nkingsy wrote: post #170
ddelt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: you could hire someone who did absolutely well in the interview, and they could find a few weeks into the job that they loathe everyone, and go on a social media rampage. What I’m getting at is, there will always be bad apples, or people who react in a way that damages your organization. But not providing useful feedback to people who ask for it simply because one person went crazy is punishing a lot more p…

This is a tried and true practice in dating, and it translates well to hiring, which is basically the same thing. Most people, ESPECIALLY people who ask you for feedback, do not want feedback. They want to get in a fight with you. Edit: I don't remember ghosting anyone personally in either setting, but it's happened to me plenty. Getting upset about it just means you're new to the experience.

> Most people, ESPECIALLY people who ask you for feedback, do not want feedback. They want to get in a fight with you.

I'm sorry but that's just ridiculous: we give every applicant we speak to feedback and not once has anybody "got into a fight with us".

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#638

Post by bartread »

kenhwang wrote: post #6

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.

> then went out on a social media rampage.

Fear of the occasional keyboard ninja is not a rational reason for giving every single job applicant a worse experience.

Not to mention that generally they end up looking worse than you do, and you've probably done the rest of us a favour by outing them as an asshole (I'm assuming you were respectful and constructive in the feedback that you gave).

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#640

Post by throwaway345036 »

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I just got rejected by Netlify after a coding assignment, but the last thing in the rejection email was an offer to set up a call to discuss feedback on the assignment and interviews. Other startups, take note. (The rest of their hiring process was equally impressive--no hard feelings at all.)
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