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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#221

Post by peakaboo »

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…

It's so stupid, all of it. They try to come up with random questions that doesn't mean anything if the candidate remembers the answer at that point in time.

I've read about Linux inodes. I know what they do. In fact I even have had Linux systems where I get inode related error messages because the partition had too many small files on it.

But given that question, in that situation, I would likely not know what they even meant with that question. Am i supposed to have all the inode details memoried forever in my mind? It's fucking ridiculous.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#222

Post by CobrastanJorji »

vmception wrote: post #80
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tolerat…

I'm not sure I follow. If FAANG companies would offer you 1x, and non-FAANG companies in your area of specialty would offer you x/3, who's paying 3x?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#223

Post by edoceo »

dilyevsky wrote: post #211
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These numbers are misleading af. Most of those applications are just spam, not really relevant and never get read by any human. I’ve done ~150 interviews for backend roles at google and based on my experience 4 years ago if you make it to onsite you have 5-10% of getting an offer

You've been interviewed 150 times to get in? Or are in and have interviewed 150 candidates?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#224

Post by speedgoose »

dilyevsky wrote: post #211
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These numbers are misleading af. Most of those applications are just spam, not really relevant and never get read by any human. I’ve done ~150 interviews for backend roles at google and based on my experience 4 years ago if you make it to onsite you have 5-10% of getting an offer

That confirms that we shouldn't bother if we value our time and energy.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#225

Post by MattGaiser »

virgilp wrote: post #202
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…

Is HackerRank so bad? If one does "whiteboard problems", HackerRank says, "boo, whiteboard interviews, just let me code and be able to search on Google, whiteboard is unrealistic!". Now if the company starts with a HackerRank test, that's also bad? I don't get it. Look, a lot of people have good-looking CVs and can't code shit. I don't know about you but my experience was that one really can't hire based on CV alone.…

A lot of the issue with HackerRank is just how early it is in the process. I don't object to it. But there companies out there that just have every applicant do it indiscriminately.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#226

Post by ladberg »

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 had a similarly bad Google experience that I've talked about before[0] but will copy here:

I was asked to do a task that eventually boiled down to a topological sort, and I thought the question consisted of recognizing that the answer was a topological sort and moving on because it was over the phone.

However, that was not the case. The interviewer wanted me to code it all out over Google Docs, but I didn't remember the exact algorithm so I basically had to re-figure it out on the fly, which took most of the interview (I even similarly mention "in any real situation I would just look this up", but that didn't help). At the end, I had a bunch of pseudo-C++-code that should do it correctly.

I thought I was done, then the interviewer said she would go go copy my code and compile it after the interview to see if I was right, which blew my mind. It was never mentioned previously that the code would actually be compiled and run, and with no syntax highlighting or ability to compile and test the code myself there is zero chance it was ever going to work.

I never heard back, so I'm assuming my code failed and they left it at that. Anyway, I'm much happier now that I think I would have been at Google.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848556

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#227

Post by MattGaiser »

Dig1t wrote: post #53
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 lee…

Where do you find take home project interviews?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#229

Post by paganel »

whatshisface wrote: post #167
Nition wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet if they ask you for an answer to a quirky question like "why are manhole covers round?", they expect a clever answer like "they can't fall in", rather than a pedestrian answer like "well, probably they just started making them that shape for some simple production reason, and then everyone else just kinda of did the same thing because it worked."

Manhole covers are round because they minimize the circumference per area that must be cut to make the cover fall in.

In my area there are lots of square manhole covers. I have it on my personal to-do list to photograph almost all the older manhole covers from my city and geo-locate them at some point, I think it could be a good indicator of how my city grew and evolved ~100 years ago.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#230

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #135
csa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you (or they) suggesting that the 4th interview meaningfully reduces the number of bad hires? I’m guessing not. It’s poorly designed and/or poorly implemented hiring strategies that lead to bad hires, mostly through a lot of noise being collected during the interview process. This is a very solvable problem. Edit: I will add that this is an ad for Booz hiring, so of course they want more process.

6 interviews increase the chances of a bad hire (or at least decreases the chances of a great one). It restricts your hiring pool to those who are willing to be abused by the company. That's not the top-tier talent.

[deleted]
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