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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#551

Post by agumonkey »

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…

Happy to see that many recruiters have lost touch with reality..

Is there a curated list of simpler, more human, more efficient for both parties, companies ?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#552

Post by hasa »

solumos wrote: post #310
hasa wrote: post #290

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.

> That ruined whole concept of programming with just text editor. What "ruined" it for you, "made" it for me :) I absolutely hated my CS courses in undergrad and dropped the major after 2 classes. Didn't get back around to programming until a few years later - using Google makes it way more doable.

Actually I agree with you as I would not be able to program much without Google today. But many reported here about interview situations where they had like white paper and task to develop something. It is something they never face in real work.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#553

Post by TeMPOraL »

arthurcolle wrote: post #526
perryizgr8 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

hay'tch

There are moments in life when I wish everyone was forced to learn NATO phonetic alphabet early in school.

"Charlie Hotel Mike Oscar Delta Seven Seven Seven".

The reason to cram into people a standard spelling alphabet is that it minimizes confusion over the usual "see as in $random-first-name". The reason to standardize on the NATO one is that it's already an international standard, and a subset of the population that goes to work with anything resembling a radio transceiver will have to learn it anyway.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#554

Post by CogitoCogito »

DSingularity wrote: post #5
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.

The reason they want to remove the risk is because it takes years to prune bad talent.

> The reason they want to remove the risk is because it takes years to prune bad talent.

I've never understood this given that the hiring is so often at will.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#555

Post by DebtDeflation »

I remember over a decade ago interviewing at a bank and being asked how much experience I had with [insert list of systems] and integrating data specifically between two of those systems. I had never even heard of any of the systems on the list. Got home and Googled them, nothing. Called up a friend who worked there and he told me those were internal names for their systems, no one who did not work there would have any idea what they were, and he was shocked they were asking about them using their internal names during interviews. Oddly enough, one was just an Oracle data warehouse fed by Informatica ETL and generating Cognos reports, and I had experience with all of that technology, but answered "no" when asked if I had experience with "the Pulsar system".

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#556

Post by TeMPOraL »

janoc wrote: post #380
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…

Google is notorious for this. I have been headhunted by them multiple times in the past. The last time their recruiter called me and explained me that after the usual screening and HR calls I would need to pass multiple increasingly complex technical interview rounds - and then THEY will decide on the role and project I am best suited for (if at all). I have flatly asked the guy whether they are being serious and tur…

> even the HR guy on the phone recognized it makes no sense to call me over it ...

Well, he had a quota to fill so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

There are situations where the market can be spectacularly efficient. Outsourcing hiring to third parties is definitely not one of them.

In this case, big companies can afford broken interview process, because it's not their time that's being wasted, and the inertia of a big corporation can hide a lot of inefficiency.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#557

Post by keyb0ardninja »

AJRF wrote: post #469
XorNot wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Geohotz had a good rant about this once - the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass these interviews. Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the intent of the process. Obviously it doesn't always work like that.

> Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the intent of the process.

You could solve all these questions as long as you are good at problem solving, *given enough time*.

However, with tight time constraints and perfomance pressure, the only way you could solve all these questions is memorizing and practicing all these algorithms.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#558

Post by read_if_gay_ »

dspillett wrote: post #545
trinovantes wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had an in-person interview where they gave me a sheet of printed code and asked me to point out the syntax errors. Some interviewers are absolutely insane.

Done right there will be a lot more in there than syntax errors. A good example of this sort of test will separate those who have revised syntax without really thinking (they'll get the syntax errors but little or nothing else, great if you want to employ a human linter) from those who actually think about what they are looking at will spot much more (a logical error that would cause an infinite loop, a point where a…

Does this kind of trick question work well in practice? If they explicitly ask for syntax errors it would be a waste of time to also check the code for other errors. I can’t imagine many people opting to do that unless they know it’s a trick question.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#559

Post by someelephant »

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.…

HaackerRank is now 3 hard problems in 1.5 hours. That's not testing anything other than a thousand hours memorizing leetcode.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#560

Post by [deleted] »

sokoloff wrote: post #356
hiyer wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where the distinction lies - both seem same to me :-)

To me, rounds imply a decision point (and delay) in between. If I talk to HR on Monday, take a phone screen with an engineer on Wednesday, and come on-site (or Zoom now) with 4 engineers next Monday, that’s 2 rounds and 5 interviews (or 3 and 6 if you count HR)

[deleted]
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