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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#281

Post by selcuka »

izgzhen wrote: post #268
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…

There is no need to "respect" the process, but just to be more thoughtful: > What's not in a Linux inode? > My answer was: Lots of things...dinosaurs, the moon... You can answer that you want more clarification, or even answer that "we can google this". The "dinosaurs" thing might make the interviewer feel that you are being unprofessional since the interview is to test one's ability to perform in a professional envi…

While technically true, that's irrelevant here. The point is, the answer was going to be wrong unless they said "filename" anyway.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#282

Post by bb88 »

XorNot wrote: post #264
ladberg wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 remembe…

At this point I'm pretty sure FAANG hiring is just a random walk. Every now again someone happens to have looked at all the questions they ask recently for that particular interview cycle (or avoid the trap ones like that) and that person gets hired (and then put on the ad targeting team or whatever).

What's funny is that I specifically remember a conference where some library that a google employee wrote was terrible. The one google developer talking about it, disavowed any responsibility of it.

Whatever metrics that google is using in their interviews have probably become worthless in the past decade as people game the system.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#283

Post by onion2k »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #265
onion2k wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applied to a company recently whose first interview was a tech test. I turned them down before I even spoke to a human. I don't want to work for any company that puts so little value on people.

Honestly, I understand the whole send the tech test first. Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren't able to do the job I would rather waste their time than mines. For me, it's when I talk to their developers and it's clear they know I know what I'm talking about and they then try to tech test me. At that point, no. I just impressed the hell out of some of the people you consider to be your best and…

Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren't able to do the job I would rather waste their time than mines.

Of course. But consider how that attitude looks from the perspective of a candidate - you'd rather waste my time that yours is a really good reason for me to drop out of the interview process.

This is essentially what's wrong with hiring right now. Companies don't want to have anyone "waste their time", so they have many levels of filtering to reject candidates as early as possible while doing as little work as possible to make hiring good for candidates. In other words, companies have largely forgotten that candidates are people, and wasting anyone's time is a pretty bad idea.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#284

Post by GistNoesis »

Nition wrote: post #150
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…

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."

It's just an invitation to discuss curves of constant width, like the Reuleaux triangle, that has indeed been made into a man-hole cover.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#285

Post by code_duck »

bfung wrote: post #183
billytetrud wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, every bad hire is really bad. However, companies generally don't put in any effort into seriously evaluating your publicly available work. I have reams and reams of open source code companies can take a look at, and I've never seen any evidence that any company I've ever interviewed at has looked at that work. That's a result of companies being completely incompetent at evaluation and disrespecting their candida…

Being on the hiring end, it’s less out of incompetence and more of not enough time, and open source code is low signal that the candidate can actually solve problems. If I submit some “open source” code as some proof that I can code, how do you know I didn’t copy the code from somewhere? Also, writing code for the sake of writing code doesn’t tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and translate tha…

> Writing code can be a hobby, sure,

> writing code for the sake of writing code

> It just say that person isn’t that busy and can, excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive.

It sounds like you have a serious misunderstanding of open source at a basic level. It would have been questionable enough in 2000 but I’m not sure why anyone in 2021 would think that way.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#286

Post by Scarblac »

izgzhen wrote: post #268
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…

There is no need to "respect" the process, but just to be more thoughtful: > What's not in a Linux inode? > My answer was: Lots of things...dinosaurs, the moon... You can answer that you want more clarification, or even answer that "we can google this". The "dinosaurs" thing might make the interviewer feel that you are being unprofessional since the interview is to test one's ability to perform in a professional envi…

That kind of question is never asked in a work situation,that's why it invites an absurd answer.

What is in an inode, sure. Or why is the filename not in an inode. But what isn't in an inode is just a useless trivia question.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#287

Post by tome »

ExitPlatosCave wrote: post #219
stevekemp wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hey Steve, Thought your comment was interesting, so went to check out your profile. That was also clean and well made, so followed through to your website. Found this: "I published a simple tool to all your repository details from Github, self-hosted Github Enterprise installations, and other compatible systems." Do you mean: ...to [pull] all your repository details Since you have such a nice profile and everything I…

Hey ExitPlatosCave,

Thought the beginning of your comment was interesting, so went to check out the middle of your comment.

That was also clean and well written, so followed through to the end.

Found this: "If it's in an appropriate comment for this threat then please remove it."

Do you mean: If it's in an inappropriate comment for this thread then please remove it.

Since you have such a nice comment and everything I thought maybe you intended not to make these typos.

Hope this is helpful.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#288

Post by marto1 »

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…

Consider we've had a labor shortage since BEFORE the pandemic. The gotcha here is companies have a shortage of people they can lowball into a sweatshop "startup" environment.

Nothing changed regarding that one as far as I can see so interview processes getting longer isn't all that surprising. After all that's one surefire way to optimize for getting desperate people.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#289

Post by nicky0 »

izgzhen wrote: post #268
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…

There is no need to "respect" the process, but just to be more thoughtful: > What's not in a Linux inode? > My answer was: Lots of things...dinosaurs, the moon... You can answer that you want more clarification, or even answer that "we can google this". The "dinosaurs" thing might make the interviewer feel that you are being unprofessional since the interview is to test one's ability to perform in a professional envi…

To me the dinosaurs answer demonstrates a sharp mind, the kind of person I would want to work with. Can you see why?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#290

Post by hasa »

I developed software professionally over 20 years and I get impression that I would not have survived any of these interviews. I remember the times in 90's when I had most of the Java classes & methods in my "working memory", but after that came syntax helpers and search engines. That ruined whole concept of programming with just text editor. I don't know if anyone else has similar experiences.
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