Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#71

Post by jrockway » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

incognito_limey wrote: post #58

twic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not total package, but actual base salary ranges Why base salary rather than total comp?

Because I've experienced a lot of number fiddling to describe total comp. For example we offer you X equity at Y valuation, when the valuation is something they have made up internally etc. I want to know how much cash in hand I can expect. Also, offering private health insurance, when you live in a country with a decent public health care system is not much of benefit and generally not worth what the company says it…

Startups are going to be like that, but you said you were interviewing at AWS. You can buy and sell their equity on the open market, so it's not really a mystery what you're getting. If they say they give you 50 shares a year, that's $137,941 a year in cash money. Probably more next year. You can sell it or hold it, but turning it into cash is very easy. Sure, Amazon could go out of business while you're holding stock grants and then you get $0... but that's exceedingly unlikely. A lot would have to go wrong for Amazon to lose all its value.

When I was new to the FAANG world I pretty much valued the stock at $0. I quickly learned that that was not correct; stock ended up being half my pay. (Probably more than half as you move further up the ladder!) The base salary is good, but another 100% on top of that was also pretty okay. I guess until you've seen it, it all seems mysterious. But I can assure it's almost as good as cash, minus whatever you pay someone to fill out all the tax forms.

As for why these companies give you stock instead of bumping up your base salary to be what you'd get by selling the stock right when it vests... apparently it's cheaper for them. It's not quite the same as printing money, but I guess it's close.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#72

Post by warent » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #61

warent wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be what you'd think intuitively. I've conducted ~500 technical interviews, and in my experience candidates who are obvious DNP (do not pursue) often times really do not want your feedback or do not care about it, either because they think they're smarter than the whole process, or they're too busy turning inward to deal with an emotional breakdown. But those very candidates are the ones who are likely to l…

> An interviewer should be ready and willing to provide feedback if the candidate signals that it would be welcome. And at which point would this happen, I wonder? All the interviews I went through during the last 4 months didn't have one person sound inviting along the lines of "we won't take you but if you think we can improve our process do let us know". Not one even hinted at that. It's all very... impersonal, co…

Sorry to hear about your experiences. It sounds frustrating.

I think there's some miscommunication happening here. The line you quoted is specifically regarding the person conducting the interview looking for signals to provide feedback to the person being interviewed, not the other way around.

I would not recommend providing feedback to your interviewer unless they explicitly ask for it. It's likely to just become a clash of egos, and if the company is larger then it's likely the interviewer doesn't even have much power over the process anyway. If you're being interviewed and hate their process and/or the way they communicate, the best thing you can do is politely inform them it is not a good fit, remove them from your list, and move on.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#73

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #27

barbegal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence to suggest that more than 3 hours of interviews is actually beneficial? 7 hours of interview seems like overkill. I've never had more than a couple of hours of interview: an hour with the department head and another hour with my future line manager and/or another senior employee.

Afaik, research suggests that interviewers know after 20 seconds whether they'll hire someone. I don't have references and don't know if this would translate well to tech interviewing, but I'd wager that the vast majority of a 7h interview day is totally pointless.

> "...interviewers know after 20 seconds whether they'll hire someone..."

Without even seeing a single like of code from the candidate? That definitely doesn't translate to tech interviewing. It takes at least 30 minutes to get enough code out of the candidate to form even a first impression.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#74

Post by awithrow » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #24

My general thought is that your compensation scale should be proportional to the complexity of the interview process. If you're going to be copying the FAANG interview process, then the candidate should expect an offer similar to what they'd get from FAANG. In general, I haven't been disappointed on this front, but I fear that many people are. If you want to be super transparent about the interview process, you shoul…

This is a big reason why I talk compensation up front during initial conversations. I'm not sinking hours of time into an interview process only to find out they're only offering less than half of what I'm expecting. Plenty of recruiters say no they don't discuss this up front at which point I'm fine not continuing the conversation.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#75

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #32

hardwaregeek wrote: post #4

Also get feedback from candidates, especially rejected ones. The people who get offers will assume that the process works, since it validates their self-worth. Even if the process is very stupid. I've had processes that were so so bad from top companies. Like "here's a repo, clone it, write a program that will be judged by automated tests that you can't see". I had to basically guess what the tests were going to do,…

I think it's instructive to look at this from the other side to see why these processes exist. At my last job, I wanted to hire a frontend engineer with some experience beyond tweaking HTML and CSS (we used gRPC/Web and Typescript, so some actual programming experience was going to make them pretty productive, and that's what I was looking for). Anyway, I wrote up a req and posted it to the usual career sites, and wi…

> That is why online coding tests exist.

Actually, it's why other high-salary professions have professional licensing and advanced degree requirements.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#76

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 3:42 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #19

denzil_correa wrote: post #9

> We will do our best to provide a 15 minute break and/or lunch/coffee break during your interviews, especially if you'll be interviewing for more than 3 hours. That said, we are happy to accommodate additional breaks or fewer breaks, depending on your preferences, just let your recruiter or recruiting coordinator know! I have seen this w/o breaks 5-7 interviews a day, too often. Some candidates suffer from low energ…

>"If you can't go without breaks in a 7h day, you are not good enough to work here" even worse when you think it's really saying "if you can't go without breaks in a 7h day of meetings"

> in a 7h day of meetings

While still being expected to produce 10+ hours/day worth of software development.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#77

Post by bradlys » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #73

brailsafe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik, research suggests that interviewers know after 20 seconds whether they'll hire someone. I don't have references and don't know if this would translate well to tech interviewing, but I'd wager that the vast majority of a 7h interview day is totally pointless.

> " ...interviewers know after 20 seconds whether they'll hire someone... " Without even seeing a single like of code from the candidate? That definitely doesn't translate to tech interviewing. It takes at least 30 minutes to get enough code out of the candidate to form even a first impression.

> It takes at least 30 minutes to get enough code out of the candidate to form even a first impression.

Yeah, gonna stop you there. It takes less than 30 seconds to get a first impression. That's the whole point of first impressions. As soon as you see a person, you have a first impression.

I've talked to many interviewers - they all agree that they basically have an impression formed within the first few minutes and then use the interview to solidify that impression. It is wildly uncommon for them to come in, have a very negative first impression, and then have it completely turned around by the end.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#78

Post by bradlys » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #53

brailsafe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik, research suggests that interviewers know after 20 seconds whether they'll hire someone. I don't have references and don't know if this would translate well to tech interviewing, but I'd wager that the vast majority of a 7h interview day is totally pointless.

I wonder how much of that is like-me bias with the risk that 3 short interviews might get us (even) more homogenous employee populations?

I rarely have encountered an employer that is truly - actively - trying to avoid like-me bias. If they were even remotely successful, your interviews wouldn't almost always be constructed of 3 races... and various teams at orgs wouldn't have such wildly lopsided demographics.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#79

Post by anjc » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

> We used to apply a ‘Sunday Test’: “If this person were alone at the office on a Sunday, would that make us want to come in just to hang out with them?”. However, this was the wrong phrasing for the idea we really cared about (we don’t encourage people to work Sundays, and we want people who would make excellent coworkers rather than be our personal friends). Instead, we now ask: “Is this someone we’d actively seek to work with”

I'd love if this requirement were explicable and quantifiable. Two people can each be nice and kind, but not get along for whatever reason. When a hiring process can include face to face meetings with 10+ people, the chances of a suitable candidate being excluded for an arbitrary 'personal' reason seem high.

What's the point in many stringent evaluation criteria if, at the end of it, all interviewers then have to agree that they can be besties with a random person. It's too fuzzy.

Re: Tell candidates what to expect from your job interviews

#80

Post by odshoifsdhfs » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

Huggernaut wrote: post #70

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I honestly ask what is the point of this question: > Why do you want to be at Obvious? I never understood this. Unless you are Apple or Google or some other big brand, most likely people found your job through a job forum or even HN and never heard of you before. Then most likely the answer is money. So what is the point? I just stopped filling up job applications that have this. Seems so counter productive. Heck…

No, it's not hard to understand, but that doesn't do you any favours. I'm not saying that someone needs to be so desperate to work somewhere (that would probably be bad), but if a candidate can't express why they have an interest in a particular role then that's of note, especially if I'm comparing to someone who can. Pretty much everyone wants to exchange their time and knowledge for money, but they could do that an…

I'm not sure what to reply. I was going to be snarky but prefer not to.

From their website 'We help people create digital experiences their customers love.'

Has anyone been 6, day dreaming in school, 'when I grow up, I want to help people create digital experiences their customers love.'?

My interest in the role is it matches my experience and I want money. Again, if you are a FAANG, fine, if you are a startup no one really knows but pretend you are changing the world, you are making yourself a disservice by asking these questions. You can ask 'What are you looking in a new position/What excites you/etc', but to ask specifically why this company is tacky and I know I am not alone with this as I regularly talk with friends that feel the same.

Maybe I am jaded as a software developer with more than 20 years professional experience, but job=money so I can money=things/time I want. 99.9% of companies aren't changing the world. They are trying to make money for the owners/shareholders/investors, and employees should think exactly the same, and that is motivation enough.

If you paid a million dollars a month for people to dig holes for 8 hours a day, you would see the fastest shortage of shovels ever.