The rise of never-ending job interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#81

Post by sgerenser » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:01 AM UTC

zhte415 wrote: post #60

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.

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 rele…

Probation periods in the US are rare, especially for white collar positions like software engineers. Of course, that’s mostly because of at will employment where either side can choose to part ways at any time.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#82

Post by wittyusername » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:02 AM UTC

phibz wrote: post #79

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…

I think it's time to name and shame not sure why you are being coy when they jerked you around so much.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#83

Post by gumby » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:03 AM UTC

I talked to a company for three weeks — I went over and would talk to a couple of people, a couple of times a week — and then decided they wouldn’t get their act together.

I didn’t mind the way it unfolded — people were busy, I wasn’t working, and it was only a couple of minutes away from me, so really it was only perhaps 8 hours. But after three weeks I felt I wasn’t getting the answers I needed and they didn’t seem to be making progress on the hire. So I said no thanks.

This was a company with 50 or so people — I have no idea how they managed to hire them.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#84

Post by hogFeast » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

hiyer wrote: post #52

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.

I remember interviewing for some grad roles. No hackerrank, no bullshit, very straightforward companies with "easy processes". Both had one "interview day", and five/six interviews total.

I read your comment and I was thinking in my head...wow, five seems like a lot, and then I realised that even these places I liked went pretty hard...I think they call this conditioning.

I didn't get either job btw, the work was trivial but I get terrible interview nerves so tanked both of them...in both cases, I also had a 6-hour take home...the results of which were largely ignored. Neither company is ever fully staffed...ofc.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#85

Post by 100-xyz » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:07 AM UTC

I have recently been through this.

Google took 3 months. 1 month was from the virtual onsite final interviews to the Hiring Committee decision. It was a miserable month and even my wife hated Google by the end.

Second was for a Director of Engg position at a mid sized company. It took 2 months and finally I had to force them to answer. It was a company with weak leadership and it showed in their inability to make a decision.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#86

Post by MattGaiser » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:09 AM UTC

shiftpgdn wrote: post #72

MattGaiser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But that is just trade and you can negotiate for those things. The employer benefits from getting you up to speed in the same way that someone might offer to send a truck to a store to get something delivered faster.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#87

Post by vagrantJin » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:10 AM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #14

> The National Business Research Institute study shows that a bad hire can have significant costs to an organization – between $25,000 and $300,000 5 . Asking a candidate to partake in four interviews may seem like overkill, but it seems trivial compared to the cost of a “bad hire.” Organizations that hire the best data science talent ensure they spend the time to use the best hiring practices.[0] It's a risk mitigat…

No one is doubting the risk mitigation, which is why the process exists in first place. But the BS of wasting someones time also needs to be addressed. The reason most companies waste peoples time is because they are too busy with abstract concepts tangentally related to the actual job, and theoretical models by some "expert" of HR management. Software engineering has become a psuedo-religious exercise in computing witchcraft.

If you want a backend engineer - book a few hours, even on a weekend, set up an IDE and get on a real world project. No bullshit. Build a small API to these requirements, using these technologies but take care of edge cases and deploy that bad boy.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#88

Post by pts_ » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

Interviewees should demand payment by the hour at their going rate.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#89

Post by worker767424 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

hiyer wrote: post #52

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.

Interviews or rounds? Phone screen and 4-5 on-site is pretty reasonable, but that's only two rounds.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#90

Post by mitsuchen » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

For everyone saying that it's risk mitigation, I recently asked about something similar[0] for a junior position, and the process still hasn't finished. For context, the company is a medium-size tech company with presence mostly in Europe and Asia.

I don't know these things well enough but it makes no sense to me. For starters, in the tech sector in my country the salary for fresh grads like me actually come mostly from the government. Moreover, these companies are all secretive about compensation, and they probably think they can get away with it by dangling their "reputation" in front of you like a carrot. In most cases the salary is about the same as a small startup because, again, they get the money from the government.

People can argue about spending time and resources on training and what not but basically every job ad, from "top" companies to the web dev garage down the road, expects us to learn by ourselves anyway?

It's frustrating for early career starters that most of my friends and I are going through. It's such a huge waste of everyone's time and people are just churning because of this crap. Please get rid of non-technical HR and interviewers.

Sorry for the emotional rant. I would really like to know what risks (other than useless non-technical HR keeping their jobs) there are after candidates have past a certain threshold for quality, particularly for junior positions.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27881668