This sounds to me like the place is wacky for "culture fit" or whatever. If you go for remote gigs I can't imagine it gets beyond 2 or 3 interviews, mostly technical, since they won't ever hang out with you anyway.
Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
51–60 of 833 posts
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#52My God, I am so glad to be out of the rat race.
I was chased out, by the very first contacts from companies, or, in a couple of cases, the second contact, being directly hostile and insulting.
I’d assumed that this was because I’m older, and people just wanted me to self-delete from the hiring process (it worked). However, hearing all these nightmare stories makes me think that everyone has to go through that.
If that’s the case, then it’s really just a hazing ritual; preparation for new hires to be pliant and subservient.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#53Tech is very cargo cultish, which comes from having a young average age, and a strong survivorship bias in the media. Remember the Google brainteasers? Fizzbuzz? "Culture fit"? Tech companies have the lowest infrastructure costs of any industry, and so they have no place to hang their risk aversive paranoia except on personnel (the safer you are, the more trivial the things you fear). There's nothing logical about it…
This is incredibly insightful, thank you.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#54My last interview was about 2 years ago. It was single 1.5 hour long interview with the company owner and their CTO. Still contracting to them.
I am an independent vendor, so it was kind of different interview (I develop products for my own company and for hire).
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#55I'm not sure why part time contract style "interviews" aren't more common. If I ever got into a situation where I was hiring, it would start with a 2 hour conversation. No coding questions. I want to get to know you and also talk shop about applicable technologies. Then after that is simple. I would hire you to do 5-30 hours of contract work where we pair program on real life things. The interviewer would do the driv…
because people don't have time to do a job and a half, so you'll be selecting for people with copious free time or will to spend the few they have working for you.
Works great for students or people unemployed or just graduated, not so much for older people with e.g. a family.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#56There needs to be something like the SAT for computer programming. Getting a 1500 won't mean you're a genius but it will mean you can do the job, and then there can be 1-2 interviews for domain-specific skills and culture fit.
I know many have tried this, some have built great businesses, but nobody has yet become "The Credential" but I do believe this will eventually exist.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#57It hasn't, and isn't.
IMHO, if a company cannot execute a hire in three interviews (or generally less), there are serious structural issues that one should steer clear of.
That said - the applicant screening process is where the most significant work-multiplication value lies; to this end, I cannot stress the significance of writing and communications skills with regard to the quality of a CV / resume. If the execution in this area is poor, it will be poor elsewhere. This is one's pitch deck, of sorts.
Frankly, there is a more critical question IMHO than (the existence or quality of) one's university degree or developer skill set: can a prospective hire with relevant experience and a history of execution be put in front of clients, co-workers and investors to communicate concisely and clearly?
Answer: they can certainly start with selling themselves during the interview process.
With the right hire, it can then be possible that requirements gathering is better defined, technical documentation is accurate, and work sizing becomes an exercise in clear communication of risk. It also makes culture fit a much simpler proposition.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#58Having been an interviewer at a FAANG for many years, I can explain some of the logic behind it. I'm not saying this logic is valid , but it's how we got here, imho. First: we no longer trust the hiring manager alone, because probably they aren't a strong developer. We instead trust strong developers that are well trained at evaluating good devs. At the same time, we don't want to thrust a dev onto a hiring manager,…
What I'm reading here is that even as an experienced interviewer you struggle to make the format effective and equitable.
Sounds to me like the format isn't worth keeping; time to hire more, and fire fast?
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#59I'm not sure why part time contract style "interviews" aren't more common. If I ever got into a situation where I was hiring, it would start with a 2 hour conversation. No coding questions. I want to get to know you and also talk shop about applicable technologies. Then after that is simple. I would hire you to do 5-30 hours of contract work where we pair program on real life things. The interviewer would do the driv…
Not a chance. I don’t want to be a freelance interviewer and this sounds exhausting. I need a job and to move on with my life.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#60I'm not sure why part time contract style "interviews" aren't more common. If I ever got into a situation where I was hiring, it would start with a 2 hour conversation. No coding questions. I want to get to know you and also talk shop about applicable technologies. Then after that is simple. I would hire you to do 5-30 hours of contract work where we pair program on real life things. The interviewer would do the driv…
Most interviewees already have a full time job, and your existing employees don’t want to spend their evening hours pair programming with a candidate. So this doesn’t scale at all.
However, this is exactly what I did to hire the first few employees of my startup, because those initial hires are really critical. I was willing to limit my choices and take more time in order to avoid false positives. Also, that was ten years ago in a somewhat less crazy job market.