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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”?

#391

Post by shrimpx »

kxrm wrote: post #143
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 lan…

It’s the same situation with leetcode questions. The only difference with leetcode is that you don’t know the exact questions in advance but you roughly have the total set of questions that could be asked. Complete with solutions, YouTube tutorials, and discussion threads.

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

#392

Post by jddddd »

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…

If you don't mind me asking could you share the company, assuming they want frontend or fullstack JS/TS node/react/* engineers with 15 years experience? (email is in bio). I'm about to go through the process and the thought of solving leet code over zoom with fresh grads is keeping me at my current place which I've outgrown.

I love these take homes with discussions/presentations but companies keep insisting on the zoom coding over google docs route.

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

#393

Post by hinkley »

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,…

You’ve already identified several ways to improve this. You don’t want to waste the devs’ time so you screen with low tech questions, which are also the only ones the HM is qualified to ask.

(Also, nothing is as expensive to a dev as a manager with too much free time. Spending a little on HR may be a QoL improvement even if we never hire)

I am also exceptionally fond of being a silent party in an interview.

Nobody wants to walk into a room with four people who are all asking questions, but I can learn a lot about people just by watching their interactions. Indeed I learn more about secondary characteristics than the interviewer because they’re wrapped up in the answer, not side comments the candidate makes about development philosophy.

Additionally, it takes less investment in an interview to ride shotgun like this. So jumping from 1 to 2 is not twice as expensive, and it protects you from hiring decisions being made with only one employee having been privy to the conversation. Especially with all of the EEO concerns that come from he said she said situations like this.

Three is the most I would put in a room, and only if two are asking questions and the third only answers them.

But you can still easily get seven people in front of the candidate with only 3 sessions in this way.

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

#394

Post by harshalizee »

moron4hire wrote: post #367
whimsicalism wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes up routinely. The answer that continues to be true is that if you want to hire talented developers, nobody would agree to this process. You have to understand that, as an employer in the current market, you do not really hold any of the cards if you want to hire talented developers. It's not a win/win. Nobody with options is going to accept multiple weeks of limbo in exchange for maybe having a job.

This answer lacks a lot of imagination. I have successfully used this hiring method. To say "nobody with options would do this" is patently false. In fact, it can be a great way to get in with people who have a LOT of options, but they aren't sure they want to work for YOU. Every single time I've used this hiring method, I've gotten some of the best developers I've known. They weren't even looking for a job at the ti…

I don't mean to be rude but that just doesn't compute at all. I've worked with a lot of devs (both at FAANG and outside) that I'd consider some of the best in the world. And absolutely none of them ever "wanted to hustle a few extra hours to make some play money". They all made ridiculous money hand over foot and highly valued their free time.

It may be more likely you've hit a local maxima in your hiring system and attract the same type. It's great that this system works for you to hire people that you're looking for, but this definitely would not fly for devs with any semblance of an option.

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

#395

Post by shrimpx »

emerged wrote: post #248
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.

Where “wrong” person means “doesn’t want to subject themselves to a ridiculous amount of submissive hoop jumping” — which excludes a tremendous amount of the best possible hires. They want cogs for the machine.

The best possible hires don’t go through this interview nonsense anyway.

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

#396

Post by hibikir »

mandeepj wrote: post #342
thematrixturtle wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it's rarely if ever for lack of tech skills. isn't output related with lack of tech skills?

To a point, but it's rarely the inability to code that is leading to lack of output. Output often means "did sufficient work that was seen, by management, as impactful enough". This has more to do with communication and task choice than anything. This is not really a skill that we even really attempt to measure in interview.

In my experience in high performing tech companies, I've seen about 40 PIPs. There are 'utter tech incompetence' PIPs in the world, but as far as I've seen, they are far less popular than 'thoroughly uninterested in working' PIPs, 'disliked by new manager' PIPs and 'person has a work unrelated crisis' PIPs. Those tech related PIPs will normally have all the symptoms already in the first review cycle. If someone made it to their 2nd year in the company, tech incompetence is not really the issue. It's just unfortunate that nobody provides stats for this kind of thing, so we don't have to just rely on "you have seen" vs "I have seen" arguments.

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

#397

Post by shrimpx »

nouveaux wrote: post #365
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #174

As someone who's played all roles in this story (candidate, interviewer, hiring manager, person designing the process) I'm going to argue that symmetry is more important than length. By symmetry, I mean that at any point in the process, you and the company have invested the same amount and learned the same amount. If you're going to give me 5 interviews where I'm answering 90% or 100% of the questions, go away. If yo…

I am so tired of recruiters and hiring managers spending time telling me about the company. It's all the same BS. Everything I want to know about the company I can usually learn from the website.

I mostly agree about the buzzwordy description of the company. But it’s critical to learn about the team’s internal process and tools.

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

#399

Post by doodlebugging »

Frankly speaking here. (O&G industry so not in IT specifically)

If I interview with you once and I find out that you didn't have sense enough to make sure that you asked all the relevant questions and made sure that I met and interacted with those people who would be working closely with me in that position then the only valid conclusion that I can draw is that you are too bureaucratic or disorganized and that I will have to waste a lot of time at your company or learn to deal with the bullshit. I don't suffer fools very well and from experience, bureaucracy breeds indecision and thrives in environments with no accountability.

In my career I have only interviewed twice with a company on one occasion and in that case I was notified up front that there would be two meetings necessary since one of the managers was out of the country on the date of the first meeting and others in the group would be traveling during the second so they needed to break things into time slots so that everyone could get an opportunity to ask questions, shoot the shit, or whatever. I ended up spending one full work day and part of another interacting with two small groups who could fit the interview into their schedules.

I didn't get that position because I had another offer come in before they could make an offer and I took the other offer.

Don't waste people's time. The hiring company is also being evaluated here and disorganization is not an attractive feature.

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