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

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#441

Post by torginus » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 8:59 AM UTC

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 cruel and inhuman, but if you're Google, there's some cold rationality behind this. I think the process goes for them like this: There's 100 people applying for any given position, 10 of which might be good hires. It's reasonable from their point of view to subject the interviewees to a process that culls 83 bad ones, and 7 good ones so that only 10 people need to be interviewed by expensive on-staff engineers, even though it looks like madness from the outside.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#442

Post by yobbo » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:00 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #416

yobbo wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is disrespectful, but it is a proxy test for how many hours you have spent reading and writing code in that language.

What about it is disrespectful? It seems to me that it’s testing for something relevant and I don’t see it as otherwise bad (abusive, pure trivia, easily Google-able, etc)

It is akin to giving a spelling quiz to an author. There is a level of decorum required when dealing with professionals. A junior verbally pointing out a syntax mistake reveals a naiveté about the competency itself and "the mission" of the field.

In this interview, I would have liked to receive two code examples (that might contain errors) and discuss benefits according various objectives.

If the interviewer makes it clear that pointing out syntax mistake is not rude, I could mention them in passing. This demonstrates not only attention to details but also decorum.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#443

Post by xvector » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

torginus wrote: post #441

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 cruel and inhuman, but if you're Google, there's some cold rationality behind this. I think the process goes for them like this: There's 100 people applying for any given position, 10 of which might be good hires. It's reasonable from their point of view to subject the interviewees to a process that culls 83 bad ones, and 7 good ones so that only 10 people need to be interviewed by expensive on-staff engineers,…

It's definitely questionable whether the process retains many good engineers. That said, I suppose it works as long as it culls more bad engineers than good engineers.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#444

Post by perryizgr8 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

laumars wrote: post #345

peakaboo wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I’ve written a few Linux file systems and I’m not even sure I’d have answered that question correctly. I’ve also failed job interviews where I was told there was no coding expected in the face to face and then got given a piece of paper and asked to solve 3 theoretical problems in SQL on paper while 3 interviewers watched. 10 years prior I’d worked for several years on Oracle middleware so I knew SQL inside and and o…

> hatech

I've never heard 'h' pronounced like that.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#445

Post by atoav » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:02 AM UTC

konschubert wrote: post #325

raffraffraff wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Help the person you're interviewing. You'll both get more out of it, you'll both enjoy it. If you're in a company that is expanding, you'll be interviewing a lot, so it's really important that it doesn't depress the shit out of you.

There is a risk that you accidentally do the thinking for them and give the answers for them without noticing. Doing a collaborative interview requires careful attention by the interviewer, but I agree it’s worth it.

That is the hard part of the job. You need to be able to take yourself out of the equation. If you can't do that, you are simply the wrong person for the job.

Usually it is not hard to notice whether you'd like someone to succeed and then factor that in.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#446

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

lrem wrote: post #434

janoc wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Famously even if you know the answer pretty well, say because you were the original creator of the thing, but answer in a way that they can't link to the answer key, you still fail. Which is the most ridiculous part of it. You are being examined and evaluated over trivia in a subject that the examiner likely has no idea about and where there are only 1-2 possible "correct" answers. That's like sending a janitor to "…

What alternative would be more efficient and acceptable? A typical team of 6-8 replaces two persons per year. The number of resumes per opening is measured in thousands.

Are you saying a company with the resources of Google, which expects all of its employees to answer trivia and whiteboard answers in interviews - all of that brainpower and money can't invent a better process?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#447

Post by planet-and-halo » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

anchpop wrote: post #187

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…

I guess this is how I think of it. I enjoy the fruits of modern society, the airplanes and fast food and nice phones. But to make that happen, you need specialization, you need people know get really good at flying planes then just do that, and people who get good at making fast food and iphones and everything else. And inside that, you need people who specialize at every part of the supply chain, and what you end up…

Dear god, that was beautiful but also depressing to read. I think this is it, exactly. I also think that it explains a large part of why so much software is bad. Specialization is a powerful thing, but without a unifying concept of the end goal, it's easy to become trapped by local maxima.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#448

Post by michaelt » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:05 AM UTC

trinovantes wrote: post #313

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually this one might make sense, depending on the code and the position you applied for.

It was for a junior c# position so I doubt it's applicable considering Visual Studio will point out the problems. But I'm curious what position would this question make sense?

> I'm curious what position would this question make sense?

I was once asked a similar but better posed question: I was given some code and asked what I'd point out if asked to do a code review on it.

And the code had loads of things wrong with it, from bad variable names and incorrect comments, through unit tests that didn't have any assertions and loops that weren't actually loops, all the way to choosing a non-secure random number generator in an application that needed a secure one*

In other words, it was a test of my ability to code review, with some glaring issues to give me some easy marks and set me at ease, and some subtle issues where talented people could really set themselves apart. It was fair and relevant to the job because I was presenting myself as a senior programmer with lots of experience doing code reviews and coaching junior developers.

It's possible trinovantes's interviewer intended to give the same sort of test - but either didn't explain the question clearly enough, or trinovantes misheard or misremembered.

* A bug right out of puzzle 94 in 'Java Puzzlers'

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#449

Post by im_down_w_otp » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

AlexAltea wrote: post #360

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…

Years ago, while applying to some security engineer position at Google, they were testing low-level skills focusing on vulnerability research, C/C++ and x86. At that point having spent 10+ intense years on that arch: having written binary translators for it, reversing/exploiting software and writing a micro-kernel. After rejection, they recommended me to read a "x86 assembly 101" book which was truly infuriating at t…

Because they have a money printing machine called AdWords which affords them the opportunity to be terrible at anything and everything else without any impetus to recognize it or need to care.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#450

Post by postit » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

That's not about selecting the most qualified, the extra "lunch", "coffee", "working habits", "cultural fit" ..., it's a way found by companies to involve the maximum number of people in the hiring process to make people in the team feel confortable with the new hire. It's a very expensive team bounding exercice.