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Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

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Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#141

Post by gcheong »

KerrickStaley wrote: post #50
monster_group wrote: post #31

Most tech companies now do around 4-5 interviews. It has been like that for at least 7-8 years (probably more) but I just found out that not all companies are like that. After being subjected to these demeaning Leetcoding interviews I went through a refreshingly pleasant experience. It was an interview with just one person. They gave me a technical open-ended problem and two weeks time. After two weeks I had to do a…

I would argue that 30 hours invested in interviewing at a single company is a lot more work than you put in doing a couple phone screens and a one-day onsite. I personally abhor take-home projects because they tend to balloon in scope (I'm a perfectionist and want to put the best foot forward). With an on-site loop, when you're done you're done.

30 might be too much but it also depends somewhat on the probability of success. 100 hrs practicing leetcode + systems design for a 2% chance at a FAANG seems a worse trade off than 30hrs researching an interesting subject for a presentation with an 80% chance of success. Problem is you don’t know what your chances are with the latter going in but I think it would be a fair question to ask.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#142

Post by jorpal »

mnd999 wrote: post #117
angarg12 wrote: post #74

Earlier 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.

Quoted post unavailable.

At least half of them are Indian, in my experience.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#143

Post by kxrm »

monster_group wrote: post #31

Most tech companies now do around 4-5 interviews. It has been like that for at least 7-8 years (probably more) but I just found out that not all companies are like that. After being subjected to these demeaning Leetcoding interviews I went through a refreshingly pleasant experience. It was an interview with just one person. They gave me a technical open-ended problem and two weeks time. After two weeks I had to do a…

I was interviewing with companies last Fall and got a homework assignment project where I could pick from 3 different problems. I am not big on companies giving me 30 minutes and expecting hours of investment in return but I figured I would look into these problems to see if they were worth solving.

I literally copied the questions verbatim into a search and found the solution to all 3 all over GitHub in multiple languages. How is this an appropriate evaluation? Certainly a candidate could simply copy the answer in their chosen language, tweak the structure a bit and call it their answer.

I contacted their recruiter and told them I was no longer interested in interviewing. I told them I couldn't take them seriously since all they did to invest in the interview process was to steal questions from other hiring managers.

If a company wants an efficient, honest and quality interview process it needs to go both ways.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#144

Post by kjeetgill »

geeky4qwerty wrote: post #53
kstenerud wrote: post #4

Tech 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.

I think the OP has a clever concept, and in online discussion that can make an idea unduly appealing to me, but is it really more right?

The straightforward, obvious answer of: maybe it makes more sense than you think has no appeal to it, but I think it's closer to the truth.

I'll let you answer for yourself if the answer had insight or appeal. Both tickle that novelty button, but only one has (elements) of truth.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#145

Post by dleslie »

sokoloff wrote: post #119
dleslie wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To be honest, it sounds like "the format with only 3-4 interviews wasn't effective and equitable, so we adjusted it to make it more so, resulting in the current 5-7 format..."

Yah, and I expect they'll find that insufficient and find themselves considering 8-9 interviews! ;)

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#146

Post by alexashka »

angarg12 wrote: post #74
mabbo wrote: post #44

Having 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,…

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.

> these roles are usually high stakes and the cost of a bad hire is too high

Really? High stakes? This fucking site.

Have you ever worked as a software developer at a corporation? Nothing about it is high stakes. You spend most of your time dealing with useless idiots who report to other useless idiots, who report to other useless idiots, about a useless product they think is a great idea that every non-idiot knows is useless garbage.

That's how you get Google not creating a single non garbage product over the past 15 years.

When they did Google Maps, did they have 7 interview processes? I bet you they didn't.

Here is how the real world works - 0.0001% create something, then 99.9999% turn it into what 99.9999% of people are. What that is - I leave to you as an exercise.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#147

Post by UncleOxidant »

I think it really depends on where you're interviewing, especially now that lots of places are desperate to find people. Sure, at the big FAANG companies you still have to jump through a lot of hoops, but at newer, smaller companies they seem (in my recent experience, anyway) to be much more willing to hire after 2 or 3 interviews (phone interviews even). The place where I'm working now I had a total of 3 phone interviews (not in person due to covid, plus it's a completely remote company). The 3rd interview was with the CTO. He basically said: "It's really hard to find people to hire right now. We'd like to hire you, do you have any questions for me?"

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#149

Post by uxp100 »

mnd999 wrote: post #117
angarg12 wrote: post #74

Earlier 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.

Quoted post unavailable.

(For a definition of white that is heavily Asian)

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#150

Post by JohnHaugeland »

alexashka wrote: post #118
StupidUser123 wrote: post #106

Earlier 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'.

> How do you know it works?

Because the hallways aren't empty.

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