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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#51

Post by encryptluks2 »

Rapzid wrote: post #17

I interviewed with four companies back in May for staff engineer roles(or staff equiv). Based on that experience and my current employers process a somewhat baseline expectation can be: * Phone screen with recruiter that reached out to you * Screen with the hiring manager * Behavioral interview with multiple peeps * Code pairing session with multiple peeps * System design session with multiple peeps So AT LEAST 5 hou…

Most likely a 20 hour interview is required to be paid, especially if it isn't just a test and similar to the work you'd be doing.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#52

Post by hiyer »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #2

What’s happening is that companies want to completely remove risk from the hiring process. In the real world, you cannot remove risk. You can manage it, but you cannot remove it. Asking candidates to go through 6 interviews before making a decision and not telling them when a decision will be made signals a risk adverse culture that cannot make decisions.

Almost every single tech company I've interviewed at (ranging from medium-sized startups to FAANG), I've given at least 5 interviews, going up to 7. The only exceptions were very small startups and a couple of large Chinese organizations, where they stopped at 3.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#53

Post by Dig1t »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #10

If your application process starts with a human being—even better a technical human being—reaching out to me, followed by 2-3 interviews, followed by an offer, I am already on your side. If your application process starts with a HackerRank, followed by 2 phone interviews followed by on-site, followed by team matching, I will not be on your side. Oh and if there's random month long gaps in between stages, I will espec…

I agree actually, I've had a similar experience except in the mobile engineering space.

Currently I'm going through the interview process with a ton of companies (because my company is really dumb and is forcing everyone to move back to a certain bay area city post-covid), and I have been happily surprised to find that most of my interviews are very practical, project based, ones instead of straight whiteboarding leetcode problems. I've received several take-home projects that are followed up with a simple add-on interview to sit down and explain the choices made during the take-home. They have all been specifically focused on domain knowledge to the mobile platform that I'm interviewing for. Its really nice! I hope this trend continues.

That said, I am still reviewing leetcode problems for the stupid faang interviews I have coming up as well.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#54

Post by LAC-Tech »

purplecats wrote: post #43
LAC-Tech wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a hundred times over. I still remember in 2020 multiple places asking me "I see you've used .NET core, what *version* have you used?". I had a kind of career crisis/breakdown, where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. Accepting that it wasn't working for me was one of the best things I've done for my career.

did you expect others to have empathy for you?

It's not that I wanted them to love me for who I am as a human or anything.

It's that I firmly believe that there's more to software dev than just knowing a 'stack'. And even then, fair enough if they were curious about my .NET skills. But them asking about specific versions of .NET core really woke me up into how much of a commodity labourer they were trying to turn me into.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#55

Post by dredmorbius »

2001lodyssee wrote: post #32
DSingularity wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason they want to remove the risk is because it takes years to prune bad talent.

In my long and storied career, well long at least, every single truly heinous, project-killin', crazy person actually interviewed pretty well. Honestly, I don't have a good solution to the problem.

It's a bit like the good-books/bad-movies phenomenon.

There's a quality-distribution of both books and films.

There are only so many good books. And a percentage of films end up poorly made.

Sufficiently low-quality books tend not to get made into films. The ones that succeed are notable --- there's nothing but upside.

A good book can be made into either a good or a bad film. If it's a good film, then yay, but if it's a bad film, people are aware of it (through the book's quality and popularity). This is a perception illusion called Berkson's Paradox. It's an illusion because what awareness fails to account for are all the bad films made from bad books.

Hannah Fry of Numberphile does a much better job than I of explaining this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FUD8h9JpEVQ

In the interviewing / performance case, you have good vs. bad interviewees, and good vs. bad performers.

Someonehone who interviews poorly but performs well is a positive exception. Someon who interviews well and performs well meets expectations. It's the good interviewer/bad performer who stands out. But it's the poor-interviewer/poor-performer who is missed by this assessment.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#56

Post by bb88 »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #40
xyst wrote: post #19

Interviewing these days is not a technical challenge. It’s a fraternity/sorority rushing week. Technically I was qualified and able to answer their questions. But ultimately was turned down after 6 rounds of interviewing. I think I was heavily dinged because I wasn’t entirely familiar with their product in the wild, and was never given any hint as to what product I would be working on.

I'm surprised good programmers have the time/patience for 6 interviews. I think 3, maybe 4 is my max. If you can't figure out my skills in that amount of time, your process is broken. I also disagree that interviewing is not a technical challenge. For most programmers it is. There are very few who can breeze through FAANG-level technical interviews.

2 total interviews. Maybe 3 if they have questions. But if they have questions, they should have figured it out between the first and second interview.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#57

Post by nathanaldensr »

uglygoblin wrote: post #39
Rapzid wrote: post #17

I interviewed with four companies back in May for staff engineer roles(or staff equiv). Based on that experience and my current employers process a somewhat baseline expectation can be: * Phone screen with recruiter that reached out to you * Screen with the hiring manager * Behavioral interview with multiple peeps * Code pairing session with multiple peeps * System design session with multiple peeps So AT LEAST 5 hou…

I had the same experience earlier in the year and ended up bailing out/declining offers because the process was giving me bad feelings about the work cultures at said companies. I did actually tell one that the schedule of phone interviews (2) and video call rounds (4) was too much commitment without more details about the role and salary range. They responded with "if that's too much commitment the position is too".…

Isn't it fun when they make you feel like you're at fault? Nice try, assholes.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#58

Post by coffeefirst »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #23
sp332 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't want to do job training anymore. Instead of a general background and attitude check, they need to know if the candidate has all of the individual skills that will be used on the job.

Job training is not as much worth it for companies when employees can switch jobs at the drop of a hat.

I have no idea why people think this. I've trained all sorts of people on all sorts of new things and it was always worth it.

Sometimes they leave. By that time they've used what they've learned and passed some of it on to the next person.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#59

Post by LAC-Tech »

agarren wrote: post #47
LAC-Tech wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a hundred times over. I still remember in 2020 multiple places asking me "I see you've used .NET core, what *version* have you used?". I had a kind of career crisis/breakdown, where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. Accepting that it wasn't working for me was one of the best things I've done for my career.

Could you elaborate on how accepting it improved your career? Did it change the way you interview or the kinds of jobs you accept?

It made me realise my normal process of:

- going on $JOB_BOARD

- sending out CV & Cover letter

- talking to recruiter

- going to 3 interviews

- rinse and repeat

Wasn't working. I was not in demand. I had to constantly reach out to people, just to get interviews at places I didn't really want to work for. And even then they'd usually reject me.

It was a wake up call that I was on the fast track to nowhere, and something had to change.

Ended up specialising in an industry and doing contract work. I'm not super successful yet, but there's a lot more interest in me. My work days are much less frustrating and I'm earning more.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#60

Post by zhte415 »

DSingularity wrote: post #5
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #2

What’s happening is that companies want to completely remove risk from the hiring process. In the real world, you cannot remove risk. You can manage it, but you cannot remove it. Asking candidates to go through 6 interviews before making a decision and not telling them when a decision will be made signals a risk adverse culture that cannot make decisions.

The reason they want to remove the risk is because it takes years to prune bad talent.

Do you have probation period where you work? i.e. if an employee doesn't live up to expectation, release with short notice? Where I am, a 3 year contract typically carries a 3 month probation period, and a 1 year contract carries a 1 month probation period.

The problem is management are often too busy or overwhelmed with other stuff to observe and provide feedback until someone's passed the probation period then releasing them becomes a bureaucratic nightmare - and when the new hire's not getting feedback, you can be sure not a lot of the rest of the team are.

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