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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#191

Post by mitsuchen »

yarky wrote: post #154
mitsuchen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made the mistake to assume that we are idiotic enough to be emotional for job interviews. It's harder to deal with people who think they are competent and know it all than emotional kids.

> You made the mistake to assume that we are idiotic enough to be emotional for job interviews. And that's a risk that could potentially be spotted by a competent HR. > It's harder to deal with people who think they are competent and know it all than emotional kids. Maybe, but juniors are (unfortunately) seen as a commodity by the market. Commodities are about uniformity and adherence to some standard, rather than un…

> And that's a risk that could potentially be spotted by a competent HR.

It's a risk that could only be spotted be HR, don't know about the "competent" part. There would be no emotional-kid risks to speak of if it weren't for useless HR.

> Maybe, but juniors are (unfortunately) seen as a commodity by the market. Commodities are about uniformity and adherence to some standard, rather than uniqueness.

It's making even less sense now. If we are commodities and it's all about uniformity and standard, why do we see senior engineers complaining about this, too? It also makes no economic sense to spend so much time and effort on elaborate bullshit on "commodities". I don't mind being a commodity if the standards that you speak of exist, and I don't want to be unique. But guess what? It's the HR that wants us to be the unique commodities.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#192

Post by axaxs »

billytetrud wrote: post #133
Analemma_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is infamous for jerking people around in the interview process. I had a very similar experience, as did several people I know. They do it because they know they can get away with it, but I do wonder if they have a backup plan if the lustre of working for Google ever fades, because it's an open secret that their interview process is a fucking nightmare for no reason.

That lustre has faded already.

Yeah... reminds me of a past coworker. He spent weeks writing weird comments in code, then writing weird code to read comments. From the actual source files. Then when deployments didn't work, he said they worked on his machine the deployment must be broke.

He was hired by FAANG less than a month later.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#193

Post by morpheos137 »

bsder wrote: post #157
kxrm wrote: post #114

I am actually going through the hiring process now. I was a hiring manager at my last shop and I tried to be very respectful of the candidates time. The process was first interview was 30 mins and basically a getting to know you and us session. Second interview was a two hour technical interview with debugging/fix this function type question and a single from scratch example question in the candidates language of cho…

> If it's FAANG And that's really the issue. The FAANG's are throwing around so much money that people are willing to put up with almost any amount of abuse to be on the other side of the line. The FAANGs can deal out any amount of abuse and they will still have a line of applicants around the block--there is no negative feedback in the interview process no matter how bad they make it. > Hiring in Tech is broken and…

Seems like software engineering too often attracts personalities that like creating uncessary complexity. It is deeply ingrained in the culture.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#194

Post by suchislife »

So much time and money is spent interviewing it seems like it would be cheaper to just subcontract the candidate to do a real task as a trial run. That would give a much more meaningful signal. People say it's a risk mitigation strategy to do so much interviewing; but, is it? Are we sure it isn't just making us feel like we are mitigating our risk? Do we have any data that hire quality goes up with each incremental interview?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#195

Post by bryanrasmussen »

silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

https://www.kalibrr.com/sites/default/files/featured_images/...

Every year, Google receives over one million resumes and applications. Only 4,000-6000 applicants will actually be hired — that's less than a 1% hiring rate.

Given those odds it's not worth it.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#196

Post by danjac »

jimbob45 wrote: post #28
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You say that and I’ve seen several companies in practice echo what you’re saying. However, I fail to understand why they don’t simply make better use of contracts and probationary periods to solve that specific problem.

The problem of a probationary period is that it pushes all the risk to the employee.

While I agree interviewing has gotten ridiculous with all the leetcoding and ten rounds of interviews and FAANG cargo-culting and whatnot, one small advantage - assuming I'm not desperate for a paycheck - is that it gives me, as a prospective employee, time to consider and withdraw my application if I see too many red flags or I just prefer the devil I know.

A short interview process with a probation period on the other hand is a big roll of the dice. Maybe I'm not able to ramp up on time, or make a silly mistake due to unfamiliarity with the codebase or underlying business logic. Maybe I don't get on with the team or manager. Maybe I'm going to be dumped into a doomed death march project on day 1. I could find myself unemployed a month later with an embarrassing gap in the resume. Perhaps on the other hand a better interview process (not longer, just have properly trained people and constantly improve the process with feedback) would save us all that pain.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#197

Post by snissn »

silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

i can't imagine a real world scenario where knowing that helps you.. especially when you.. can.. just.. google it

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#199

Post by robin_reala »

stevekemp wrote: post #178
andrew_ wrote: post #66

I recently agreed to go through a 5-round process which totaled to about 6 hours. I'm the first person to bitch about the ineffectiveness of leetcode/hackerrank bullshit for people with 10+ of verifiable experience, but I went through this one because it was a field I had never worked in before, and the personnel I was speaking with were truly interesting. Sans all of those qualifiers, anything more than 3 rounds is…

It's interesting to hear of these experiences because my own job applications have usually taken four steps: * See the advert online, and send an email/fill out a form to apply. * Have a quick phone-chat with a HR-person, where they ask about salary, history, and try to decide if I'm a chancer, or I have some somewhat useful skills. * Have a 30-60 minute interview with some technical people, in-person. * Optionally h…

Yes, same for me. I was going through my past interviews, and the most I’ve had before an offer has been two, both scheduled on the same day. And I’ve worked in agencies and big orgs, in both private and public sector. Maybe we’ve just been lucky?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#200

Post by itsbits »

Here most of them seems to be pointing at number of interviews that's being conducted for a candidate by the companies and how emotionally torment it can be.

I can tell you it's not an easy job to take interviews as well. I have been interviewing candidates for my company for past 4-5 years. It drains your brain a lot than giving interviews IMO. Sometimes I get exhausted and frustrated for the day after taking 4-5 interviews. start to feel, brain stops functionating. And frustrating thing is you have to provide feedback for audit purposes in more than 100 words. Especially rounds like System Design, Hands On coding, Knowledge of Technologies, Resume drilling.

Also interviews been happening continuously at least for past 2 years due to attrition issues linked of pandemic. So never ending process now a days to take interviews in the company.

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