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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#71

Post by phdelightful »

MattGaiser wrote: post #63
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.

> where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable? Why do people find it so horrible that their labour is a commodity? To me that just tells me I should treat my labour like a merchant treats his goods. Always be checking the market to ensure you have something worth selling and while you might sign long term deal…

The answer to a charitable interpretation of your question: most tech workers don't mind exchanging their labor for money, of course.

The answer to the question as written is...of course people want the entity that has outsize influence on 40 hours of their week to view them as a person instead of a mindless cog in a machine. People get treated better than cogs. Workers want their working hours to be as pleasant as possible, which is much more likely if your employer sees you as a person.

Is that really surprising to you?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#72

Post by shiftpgdn »

MattGaiser wrote: post #63
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.

> where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable? Why do people find it so horrible that their labour is a commodity? To me that just tells me I should treat my labour like a merchant treats his goods. Always be checking the market to ensure you have something worth selling and while you might sign long term deal…

It’s not about humanism but mutual investment. I am investing my (very limited) time into your company to make you profit, you can invest in training me or helping me get up to speed on your specific needs.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#73

Post by andrew_ »

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…

Agree totally. I recently accepted a position where an officer reached out to me, followed by a really great discussion with them. A call with two engineers and a team call later, I was offered, and we were all confident it was a great fit. The interested was consistently maintained on all sides evenly and communication was fluid. Great experience.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#74

Post by jshmrsn »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #33
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.

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.

Is it possible the interviewer was asking this question because they wanted to get a sense of if you were aware of which version was being used? And as follow on, were you part of the decision to update or not update, and your thoughts on the trade offs in that kind of scenario? Just a possibility. Certainly if the recruiter is asking you that, that’s a bad sign (although recruiters are often very detached from the thinking of the teams they’re hiring for).

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#75

Post by XorNot »

MattGaiser wrote: post #63
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.

> where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable? Why do people find it so horrible that their labour is a commodity? To me that just tells me I should treat my labour like a merchant treats his goods. Always be checking the market to ensure you have something worth selling and while you might sign long term deal…

Because the buzzwords are never even coherent. "Puppet or Ansible" - well no, those are not even slightly the same thing, which one are you using? GCP or AWS or Azure - same thing. Which one are you using, not what are you imagining?

This would all be fine, but no one writes ads saying what they actually need or what they're trying to do.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#76

Post by [deleted] »

MattGaiser wrote: post #63
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.

> where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable? Why do people find it so horrible that their labour is a commodity? To me that just tells me I should treat my labour like a merchant treats his goods. Always be checking the market to ensure you have something worth selling and while you might sign long term deal…

[deleted]

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#77

Post by hogFeast »

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.

I was going to say that there are tons of parallels with how some fund managers approach investment. I have met lots of people who have this trait for over-analysis, not one has ever made consistently profitable investments. Over-analysis is a failure to understand what information is important.

This is going to become more and more common though. In fund management, there has been a huge move towards "professionalisation"...which, ofc, means doing lots of pointless exams that select for the wrong thing. MBAs are the same. It is very hard to solve because the system selects for people who will play into this self-image (in my experience, this isn't solvable...you can either handle the risk of being wrong or you can't).

This also overlaps with a lot of the issues that a lot of companies are having with hiring. A company which frames hiring as a risk rather than opportunity and has these very long, negative process of hiring (be real, the point is to uncover "weakness", not learn more about someone) is going to fail to hire people of different backgrounds. The amazing thing about the "candidate shortage" is that it isn't more severe. Companies are so bad at hiring, it is surprising they end up making any decisions at all.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#78

Post by vmception »

bississippi wrote: post #6

> That’s a question Mike Conley, 49, grappled with earlier this year. The software engineer, based in Indiana, US, had been seeking a new role after losing his job during the pandemic This is ageism. I hope he realized this after 10 6 rounds of interviews. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507732

Not to invalidate ageism, there are many threads about younger people's interviewing experience that match this. The competition (other candidates) are doing much more than that, and also studying and practicing leetcode much longer than I am willing to.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#79

Post by phibz »

I interviewed with a company out of SV that did this. They started with 3, added another 3, one hour interviews and finally another 3. 9 interviews over the course of almost a month.

I was being interviewed for a principal engineer. I was very clear and kept saying I wanted a management track position. They kept saying we love your background we can work with you on this. Ninth interview was with the CTO. He said the same. Them ghosted. Wouldn't answer my emails or calls. 9 hours, plus prep time wasted.

The company I ended up getting hired by also did a large number of interviews, 8. And they took even longer. Just over three months from initial contact. They're fantastic to work for, but I do think there comes a point where if you keep digging you're going to find something you don't like.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#80

Post by vmception »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #11
voidfunc wrote: post #3

People are getting less and less willing to deal with bullshit when they're in massive demand and there is a talent shortage in $x industry. And they're finding out they can move around easily now too in this remote-first world. Something is going to have to change - really a lot of things. One of them is going to be that companies need to learn to figure out how to hire people without putting them through a grind-fe…

Nothing's going to change at FAANG until average, non-FAANG companies can compete on TC (never). I doubt things will change outside of FAANG - because most companies are merely emulating the FAANGs and hoping they emulate the success.

> until average, non-FAANG companies can compete on TC (never).

And that's the rub. Not only do they struggle to value my skillset, they also can't compensate it accurately. And sadly, FAANGs don't even have the roles in a lot of niches.

When you can make 3x what a FAANG would offer, annually, but the companies building in your same niche are too immature and pay 1/3rd of what FAANGs do, its tricky to want to tolerate any of it!

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