Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”? • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by benreesman » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

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,…

> First: we no longer trust the hiring manager alone, because probably they aren't a strong developer

This is a huge problem IMHO. I topped out at L7 on the FAANG EM track, but that’s dozens of ICs and a few EMs in your org and I still think you need to be able to build the software and review diffs and write serious ones now and again. Clearly this is now only part of your job, not the focus of it, but it’s very difficult to manage a process that you don’t understand with some sophistication.

In everything from law to management consulting to steel fabrication: the person in charge is the most knowledgeable person. Carmack is the best hacker, Mike Krieger wrote code. Hell pg wrote this site and the language it’s written in while building the most successful early-stage investment firm in the world.

Obviously directors and VPs and CEOs are delegating the details at same point, but this idea that an L6 manager shouldn’t need to seriously understand the subject matter seems wrong to me both in principle and based on watching it go to hell countless times.

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

#302

Post by passivate » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

8ytecoder wrote: post #123

angarg12 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people simply assume big tech companies are dumb and they haven't thought their hiring process through? Amazon literally has a research team focused in hiring, and they run A/B experiments to continually improve the process. The current interview format is not a cargo cult, is a high refine process through the years. Is it perfect? hell no, but it isn't the mindless copycat people make it to be. They have actu…

How many formats have they tested? For AB testing to work, A and B should be at least distinguishable. Every single tech company has the exact same process. Sometimes even the same questions. And that applies even to any point in the ladder. And to every single role as well. (Only PM interviews are slightly different but in tech companies even they have to go through the same process until that differentiating round)

When people complain about hiring practices, often, but not always, the concern is a false negative - missing out on hiring a talented and qualified candidate.

Ultimately, if the point is "you guys are doing it wrong", they're going to look back at their financial success, shrug and say "seem to work for us". They have had problems with treatment of employees and other issues, but I'm assuming we're talking about hiring in the context of people being hired to do a job that financially benefits the company. Just my $.02

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

#303

Post by BeetleB » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

angarg12 wrote: post #91

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…

Why do people simply assume big tech companies are dumb and they haven't thought their hiring process through? Amazon literally has a research team focused in hiring, and they run A/B experiments to continually improve the process. The current interview format is not a cargo cult, is a high refine process through the years. Is it perfect? hell no, but it isn't the mindless copycat people make it to be. They have actu…

> Amazon literally has a research team focused in hiring, and they run A/B experiments to continually improve the process. The current interview format is not a cargo cult, is a high refine process through the years.

The median time an employee stays there is now under 2 years. Clearly Amazon isn't hiring the calibre of people they need.

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

#304

Post by b20000 » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

lbotos wrote: post #78

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?

1. Often, legally, firing people is harder than hiring. 2. Hire more, fire fast sounds good on paper but will destroy morale as the team identity will be constantly influx. 3. Engineers will spend less time onboarding newer engineers to the detriment of everyone because well, they might not just last.

in the US employment is at will or whatever it's called so they can fire you on the spot for no reason at all.

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

#305

Post by logifail » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #165

logifail wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can one interview really tell if you're good problem solving, coding, algorithms/data structures, and any specialization the role has? Sorry, but if it can't, aren't you doing the interview wrong?

They all are doing the interview wrong and everyone knows it. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of great alternatives that don’t take up even more time.

> They all are doing the interview wrong and everyone knows it

Most countries manage to devise the testing for a driving licence based on - at most - one theory test and one practical test. The practical test typically includes many different situations and manoeuvres in order to assess the candidate's suitabilty for being allowed to drive.

You don't sit a practical driving test in which you consider one single aspect of driving. The test attempts to cover everything. In one test.

Why would one not attempt to devise an interview along the same lines?

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

#306

Post by Aachen » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:11 PM UTC

greggman3 wrote: post #79

nickjj wrote: post #43

I'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 2012 a Google recruiter told me the got 1 million applications a year. I'm guessing that number is higher in 2022 and it's similar for other similar companies. You can't give 1 million applicants 5-30 hours of contract work. You still need some process to select a few of them. What would that process be?

Nobody said you needed to give contract work to everyone and their dog, or that it was specifically a great idea if you're big enough to get a million applications (proverbially or literally).

If it's clearly not a good fit then this wouldn't be offered. If you are doubting then this could be a good way to make a decision with the most information you could possibly have, low risk for the company, the applicant gets paid when they might otherwise be between jobs... there are the caveats mentioned in sibling threads, but in some cases, yeah I can see this being a good idea.

We recently rejected someone and I still think that was the right decision, but there is still a chance it wasn't. I wouldn't have minded giving them some contract work to find out if they were competent and just terrible at showing it in an interview. I didn't realise this was even an option. Though in this case it probably wouldn't have worked out due to them currently having a job.

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

#307

Post by kjeetgill » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:11 PM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #121

kjeetgill wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand answers of this format: "status quo has flaw of some known, finite impact" time to "completely ridiculously overcompensate, overreact, and make arbitrary move?" I can't even fathom in what ways you think "time to hire more, and fire fast?" is more "effective and equitable"? You just shove even more risk onto individuals who might be getting their footing still. You're just turning a 8-9 hours commi…

The response is to the needless growth in complexity of the hiring process; advocating for reducing that complexity is appropriate. You're tacitly expressing a concern that a fast hiring commitment would be riskier; but that's not necessarily so. A minimal set of filters are meaningfully effective: resume, references, and meet the team. Anything beyond that doesn't have just diminishing returns, it can negatively imp…

I guess I don't think 2 phone calls and 5-6 hr onsite is that complex. Maybe the onsite could be 3 instead: 2 code + behavioral, but I can't imagine wanting to do less than that.

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

#308

Post by xivzgrev » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:11 PM UTC

It is totally normal. Consider

1) recruiting needs an initial chat, to get you excited, do some light screening, and ensure comp expectations aren’t out of whack 2) then the hiring manager has a screen 3) once the hiring manager likes you, then you need to conduct due diligence. As others have echoed, one interview can’t possibly probe on all the key aspects of the job. In our case, we look at growth potential, tactical experience, and 2 case interviews, usually one more qualitative and one more quantitative.

So there’s 6 right there. At the end, you know several things: the candidate is aligned on comp, the hiring manager likes them, other people like them, they can do the job (as reasonably confident as you can be), and they have good upside potential. Hire!

If you cut anything out, you have to sacrifice some aspect - maybe less confidence they can do the job etc. as others have echoed it’s actually hard to fire someone from a practical standpoint esp if they are not obviously terrible, or they’re willing to try. Better to just hold a high bar up front, to minimize risk on back end.

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

#309

Post by Mountain_Skies » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:12 PM UTC

hungro wrote: post #252

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #52

My 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 tha…

I recently interviewed at , got past HR, then while prepping for the tech screen they told me "by the way if you get past this stage there will be FIVE technical interviews." It was almost a relief to fail the technical screen and realize I got back an entire day or two of my life.

At least they let you know pretty early on what you would have to go through to finish to process. It would have been better if they let you know before the HR interview, perhaps in the job posting, but now I'm getting into fantasy world even though it should be a reasonable thing to do.

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

#310

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 6:12 PM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #301

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,…

> First: we no longer trust the hiring manager alone, because probably they aren't a strong developer This is a huge problem IMHO. I topped out at L7 on the FAANG EM track, but that’s dozens of ICs and a few EMs in your org and I still think you need to be able to build the software and review diffs and write serious ones now and again. Clearly this is now only part of your job, not the focus of it, but it’s very dif…

An L6 manager and an L6 IC do different work though. And it's rarely (read: never) the case that the person in charge is most knowledgeable about all the details.

If an L6 manager could keep all of the details of all of the things all their reports are working on organized, they aren't handling enough scope. Imo that's the difference between 5 and 6. You can no longer track all the details in one person's head.