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The rise of never-ending job interviews

bbc.com

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#581

Post by markus_zhang »

ladberg wrote: post #226
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 remembe…

Sometimes I sarcastically think they already have a friend who applies and needs to fail the others.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#582

Post by laurent92 »

bb88 wrote: post #282
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).

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.

In my startup I interviewed a 48 years old senior Java programmer with excellent resume, who took 1hr to write a String.contains(), it only worked for the requested 4 letters, didn’t work if a letter was repeated twice, and didn’t work with Chinese characters. At least it had the JUnit. I asked an employee to do it too and he made his code pass the JUnit in 6 minutes.

The candidate hated the interview, claiming it was discouraging. Coding is erratic, talent is strange, it really is a craft and we still don’t know how to reliably raise someone to competency.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#583

Post by valdiorn »

ironman1478 wrote: post #112

I don't mind going through a single day with many rounds, but when it's spread out it's super frustrating. It feels really disrespectful of my time. I interviewed at Apple and had like 3 onsites with different teams all in one week and got the results quite quickly. It was such a good experience compared to some companies where it's such a chore. I also think the attitude of companies during interviews really sucks.…

I once applied for a job at an oil trading hedge fund in London. The company was small, and everyone who worked there became a partner in the firm once they joined. There were about 23 people there IIRC. I did a 1 hour interview with one guy, a bit technical, a bit of random trivia. Then another guy, similar thing. Then the third guy.

After that I asked how many more interviews I should expect. To my horror the answer I got was "we only hire people if all the partners agree to hire you, we all have veto power, so you should expect to see everyone"... so TWENTY more interviews. I rather abruptly told the guy that was insane and I didn't have time for that, shook his hand and walked out. He seemed perplexed.

... they went bust about a year later.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#584

Post by tech_tuna »

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…

Inodesaurus would like to have some words with you.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#585

Post by oblio »

lordnacho wrote: post #569
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).

> 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). This might actually be part of the retention strategy. If everyone who works at FAANG knows that they're somewhat l…

Congrats, you're discovered why hazing rituals have been a thing for thousands of years!

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#586

Post by martindbp »

I'm starting to think these interviews are not about skill, but about resiliency. It filters out people with (occasional) physical/mental health issues, difficult/many kids or other difficult life situations etc. Which is fair I suppose, companies would prefer perfectly healthy 26 year-olds that can dedicate their life to the company without burning out.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#587

Post by valdiorn »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #408
theonething wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is this person not fired?

We have too good employee laws. As long as you are trying your best it is really hard to fire anyone. There needs to be evidence that they aren't capable and even then they need to be given multiple chances over multiple months to correct this problem. Only way to fire someone on the spot is if they are breaking law or refusing to do the work

this is 100% your companys fault.

If this person is literally not producing anything useful, then set them a basic piece of work and tell them to complete it. If they can't give them a warning, tell them to upskill. Repeat after a month. And again a month after that. If they still can't do it then you have plenty of evidence to justify firing them, anywhere in the world.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#588

Post by rendall »

Ntrails wrote: post #377
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.

Github PRs also lack syntax checking etc - so it isn't something you'll never see at work right? (Admittedly if the PR doesn't build why are you reviewing it but whatever)

This is incorrect. You can run tests on PRs and disallow merging until it passes all the checks

https://github.com/features/actions

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#589

Post by liveoneggs »

trinovantes wrote: post #301
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…

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.

you prefer being asked to write it out long hand?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#590

Post by Ensorceled »

I think a big part of the problem is how much software engineers are being paid now. 4, 5 or more rounds is not unheard of for a VP/CTO role. Companies are acting like that Intermediate Developer is a critical role because the pay is making it seem like a critical role, they are making what would have been a Director salary within institutional memory.

I just had candidate that was already getting paid what would have been an insane amount a few years ago, get a counter offer that included a 20% raise and significant equity.

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