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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#681

Post by luffapi »

TGImemegen wrote: post #503
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…

Googler here. At some stage of the interview process, we have to check whether you're able to code, there's no way around it if you're applying for a coding position. So yes, we'll have you code the solution to a problem. Of course in the real world we'd use a library or look up the algorithm on stack overflow like everyone else. Good for you if you came up with a workable algorithm for the problem quickly. But that'…

How does Google interview for product development skill? That’s seriously lacking in that organization, definitely the worst of the FANGs.

The arrogance displayed in your comment isn’t backed up by the ultra-low quality of product being produced by Google. Something is clearly wrong with the culture and hiring process there. Maybe instead of fretting over people using strlen as an exit condition, you should look for people who can actually produce software people enjoy using. You don’t even need to do a coding interview! Just browse GitHub for people you want to hire and get to work convincing them to join you.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#682

Post by dagw »

Bodell wrote: post #627
lordnacho wrote: post #569

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

Sometimes I see articles about a wrongfully convicted man being let out of prison. This usually comes with a cash payment of some sort. The whole we took 20 years of your life, oops, here’s a million dollars. Every time I see this though I think ‘no, no way does money replace my time.’ That’s simply not good enough. And not because the payments are usually ludicrously low, but because there is no amount of money that…

I value my actual life and dignity far and above what I value as an upper middle class income.

I am at least 90% sure that part of these interviews is to filter out people who these sorts of views. These employer would much rather have someone who wants to work 100 hour weeks and be the 'hero' over someone who works exactly 8-4 monday-friday and then goes home.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#683

Post by simias »

throwawayboise wrote: post #667
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've never written a sort from scratch since my college days, over 30 years ago. Also never had a job interview that asked me do to so, or any other coding questions. I'm planning more for retirement than a next job at this point, but I shake my head at what my younger colleagues need to go through these days for the opportunity to write JavaScript with IDEs that do most of the work for you.

I sometimes have to implement a sorting algorithm when I write bare metal code that doesn't have any sort of standard library available. Of course, being a 1337 hacker, I then resort to the state of the art bubble sort. Or maybe an insertion sort if I'm feeling fancy. But enough bragging.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#684

Post by drclau »

laurensr wrote: post #666
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…

A lot of people tend to forget that hiring, certainly in software engineering, is a two-way process. The employer assesses "is this a good candidate?" But a clever candidate assesses "is this a good employer?". Even during the hiring process.

There is asymmetry involved, tho. They judge you as a single individual, while you have to judge an entire company from your experience with one single interviewer. The company can be employing thousands or even tens of thousands of engineers. Also, you don’t get to ask so many questions. The time allotted to your questions is but a small portion of the interview.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#685

Post by brainwad »

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.…

It can get very demoralising as an interviewer when you interview dozens of candidates, and none meet the bar - and even the ones you rate hire or leaning hire get rejected by the hiring committee. When I first started interviewing (at Google) I was like the Apple interviewers you admire, but I have slowly become inured the process and now I probably give candidates the impression that I've seen it all before and I would rather be doing something else - because it's true.

But the alternative is more filtering before the main round of interviews, to increase the base success rate of candidates, which many people hate (see many other comment threads on this post). And too much would turn off the best candidates probably more than the worse candidates, as they have more outside options.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#686

Post by fridif »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #672
TheHypnotist wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As i mentioned in another post, don't forget to work in those LP's otherwise you get 0 Bezos points and your experience is worthless. Edit: Meant LP's. Leadership Principles.

What's GP? Gaussian process? General practitioner? Or, most commonly on HN, grandparent [post]? Or maybe the whole point of using that abbreviation is to exclude those outside Amazon?

I think he means LPs, Leadership Principles

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#687

Post by bigbillheck »

cainxinth wrote: post #597
lordnacho wrote: post #569

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

You’re forgetting that it’s easier to get a FAANG job once you’ve already had one. They love to poach each other’s people.

> They love to poach each other’s people

The 'FA.N.' part of it maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#688

Post by ugjka »

tyingq wrote: post #673
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…

That's a weirdly phrased question anyway. There's a directory entries reference in the inode that leads to the filename. So the name(s) isn't exactly "not in" an inode. A lot of those interview questions just seem to test for "how good is their memory", which I don't think correlates to future performance very well.

No, they just have to turn down 99% of candidates because it will look bad for interviewers to have too many promising ones

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#689

Post by pinewurst »

sdevonoes wrote: post #568
AJRF wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I thought it was exactly those who Google wants to pass. Anecdote: ex-colleague of mine who is not specially bright studied 3 months how to "crack the coding interview" and got a job at Google. His knowledge about algorithms and data structures was like mine: I know what a tre…

I read an article recently about Google’s fairly awful interactions with HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities). One thing that caught my eye was Google’s disapproval of seemingly standard CS programs in favor of a syllabus for cramming algorithms into student heads. That was one of their excuses for hiring differentials.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#690

Post by iovrthoughtthis »

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…

feedback is the hardest part of any assessment, not just in interviewing
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