Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 833 posts

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

#231

Post by newsclues »

edmundsauto wrote: post #80
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?

Hire fast and fire requires even more effort and commitment from a candidate, I’m not sure how that would be an improvement. Firing fast would be like 3 months of interviews! I’d also like to add that having multiple interviewers, if they have diverse backgrounds, is more likely to be equitable than a single interviewer.

But with being hired you get paid.

If employers with lengthy interviews want to pay people for their time that would be fair.

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

#232

Post by michaelt »

Aeolun wrote: post #203
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.

> To add more: a single person (HM) might have biases for or against certain candidates. That would be true for all organisations. You could do 6x more interviews if they were all a single round. > Also these roles are usually high stakes and the cost of a bad hire is too high. Hiring a brain surgeon is high stakes. I don’t know a lot of software positions where it is true.

> Hiring a brain surgeon is high stakes. I don’t know a lot of software positions where it is true.

Arguably it's not.

But if I think I'm doing a guy a favour by 'giving them a chance' and hiring them when they're marginal, and they quit a stable job and move across the country, then I fire them? In that case I didn't do them a favour by giving them a chance.

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

#233

Post by pqwEfkvjs »

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,…

It is somewhat easy to cheat through these N+1 interviews by grinding tons of practice problems before. At least that was my strategy. Sure I can implement DFS or a linked list, but I am a pretty suboptimal developer, especially when working with huuge codebases.

Maybe they should ask to implement a feature or fix a bug in some huge OSS project. That would evaluate skills relevant for a job in FAANG more closely imho.

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

#234

Post by igetspam »

8ytecoder wrote: post #107
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.

Most orgs use a veto model. If not everyone is a strong hire, the candidate is rejected. The bias is still there, just not a positive bias now. It’s a strong negative bias. And obviously most people don’t want to come across as “too easy”. Essential you’re positively reinforcing to reject more and more candidates and make the whole process a nightmare.

I will accept a veto but only if the interviewer can explain it sufficiently. I think it's important to trust but it's also important prevent abuse from bias. (Someone who abuses interview vetoes is likely a poison pill themselves and that's something I have to deal with as a manager.)

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

#235

Post by prepend »

geeky4qwerty wrote: post #47
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #3

Tech companies are extremely risk adverse when it comes to hiring the "wrong" person. More interviews means more people to spread to blame over if a wrong hire happens. At seven interviews, if everyone signed off on the bad hire, that wasn't anyone's fault, it must have been that the hire was skilled at deception or some other deflection.

Doesn't this seem like the (hopefully inadvertent) perfectly structured model for hiring sociopaths? I'm speaking semi-hyperbolic but seriously... An employee isn't a romantic partner or social club member. Some (most?) of the most brilliant and hyper-productive people I've hired and worked with were socially inept. In fact I once hired a guy whose resume was -barely- legible and horribly structured who turned out to…

Sociopaths are frequently great employees. Psychopaths are bad news, but some of the best people I’ve ever worked with were total sociopaths whose goals aligned with the organization’s.

I actually there’s quite a few “ethical” sociopaths who don’t care about anything but success but aren’t willing to hurt people or break laws to do so. They don’t have empathy toward people but accept that not hurting people will advance their cause.

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

#237

Post by thematrixturtle »

mylons wrote: post #129
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…

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.

YMMV, but it's actually quite difficult to get a PIP in many tech companies, and it's rarely if ever for lack of tech skills. The ones I've seen usually involve either motivation, output, or both plummeting to zero for extended periods of time due to burnout or a similar extended personal crisis.

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

#238

Post by morelisp »

I have been trying for the past two years to bring our team's down from 2 + work sample to work sample + 1. All my effort has been stymied by an increasingly bureaucratic and "empowered" HR department that wants to standardize on 3 + work sample + test day company-wide. It's driving me insane just to keep the status quo.

We are not a FAANG, not in the US, do not and cannot offer SV salaries. They just do not understand one of the best things we can offer is less bullshit and a bigger chance for people with skills but not traditional backgrounds. So instead I have an endless line of young men who kind of know how to add a new JPA repository to a Spring application, and an MSci in some easy-to-get-an-EU-grant area, and we actually spend hours time on each one instead of asking them to code first.

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

#240

Post by kyawzazaw »

mylons wrote: post #129
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…

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.

Isn't that only at a handful of companies?
Post reply on HN