When they were crying about developer shortage for so long that they switched from regular tears to crocodile tears...
Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
131–140 of 833 posts
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#132I think people here (perhaps not OP) are not all thinking ‘an interview’ is the same thing.
In our company, it’s normal to spend 1/2 - 1 day at the office - or nowadays by video - being interviewed by 5-10 _people_, in sets of 2. It’s been like this for all my 20 years in the industry.
It’s not normal to have to interview on 5-10 different _occasions_ - that would be terrible!
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. It’s great getting data points on several programming interviews, system design, etc. That makes my sell interview so much easier because I can trust the process to assess their technical skills. You need multiple people because you’re consta…
> Is it perfect? No, but it does work. How do you know it works? > I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. There we are. It is all about you. No need to say anything else - your life is all about you, so of course if it works for you, 'it works'.
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can't calculate the optimal design (for hiring, in this case) from first principles, what option do you have but empirical observation? And when steady-state performance takes at least 2 years to obtain, is it unreasonable to have fads at roughly that frequency? Resumes suck, take-homes suck, interviews suck, nepotism sucks; yet people still need to invest $x00,000 based on something. I don't have the answer,…
If you are hiring someone with 10 years experience it becomes a lot easier. Just try them out, 9/10 will succeed.
I believe there is at least a factor of 2* in performance among qualified/not-outright-failing software engineers. If that's the case, anything you can spend less than 100 hours on to increase your chance of hiring someone whose performance at your company will be on the right half of that distribution is worth it.
* I think the actual factor is higher, but I think most people would agree to a factor of 2 without much debate.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#135I'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…
In addition to the obstacles others have mentioned, accounting for contract work creates extra nuisance at tax time. A tiny gig like you describe sounds like a lot of hassle for not a lot of money.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. It’s great getting data points on several programming interviews, system design, etc. That makes my sell interview so much easier because I can trust the process to assess their technical skills. You need multiple people because you’re consta…
People get PIP’ed and fired routinely that make it through this process. I think there’s a lot of bias in your response. The process worked for you, you work at a large tech company and it gives you validation. It also makes you feel good to lord over the process and boosts your ego, reinforcing your priors.
> People get PIP’ed and fired routinely that make it through this process.
Compared to what? I don’t think anyone is claiming this process is perfect. Just that it’s better than alternatives.
People will always get PIP’d and fired. But the goal is to reduce that as low as possible.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was going to say this. To add more: a single person (HM) might have biases for or against certain candidates. More people in the loop brings in diversity and helps to keep interviewers honest and consistent. Also these roles are usually high stakes and the cost of a bad hire is too high.
Yeah this also is a big issue. It was nice having the "debrief" meeting afterwards. This meant that people had to back up what they had written. " Why do you think this person 'isnt a good culture fit'? Oh because the team you run are all 20-something male brogrammers and this candidate is a 38 year old woman with kids? Hey cool, that's illegal discrimination."
Keep in mind that the hiring and interview process is bi-directional: if one finds that the company to which one has applied potentially consists of terrible human beings, exit quickly and move on to the next opportunity (unless you are yourself a toxic influence, at which point the culture fit may very well be right).
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
People get PIP’ed and fired routinely that make it through this process. I think there’s a lot of bias in your response. The process worked for you, you work at a large tech company and it gives you validation. It also makes you feel good to lord over the process and boosts your ego, reinforcing your priors.
> People get PIP’ed and fired routinely that make it through this process. Compared to what? I don’t think anyone is claiming this process is perfect. Just that it’s better than alternatives. People will always get PIP’d and fired. But the goal is to reduce that as low as possible.
how is it better than alternatives? this seems like a huge straw-man given almost every company that hires developers thinks they’re a large tech company and mimics their hiring process. it doesn’t seem like serious alternatives have been explored.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not so much effort or commitment if the team is fully remote.
You’re asking someone to quit their job to maybe get this new job. And you won’t know for months so all your other offers are gone. So if it doesn’t work out, you’re unemployed with no prospects. Sounds terrible. I’d take 15 interviews before taking that risk.
If it takes months to determine that someone is a bad fit for a team then the team has internal issues that need to be resolved.
Moreover, if someone has the skills on paper, and the references to support that, then any tech screening is unnecessary. It just tests for ability to pass tech screens.
Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?
#140> How is a process like this in any way shape or form efficient or productive? Because hiring the wrong person becomes a colossal waste of time and money.
That's only because you spent thousands having candidates go through 7 interviews.