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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”?

#451

Post by Dudeman112 »

BeetleB wrote: post #303
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…

> 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.

Alternative hypothesis: they did hire the correct people, but working there is so unpleasant that very few people decide to stick around.

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

#452

Post by joshuamorton »

Aachen wrote: post #312
paxys wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you going to pay me $250/hr for that time? If not, why would I spend 30 hours of my life vying for a chance for a full time job with your company? And what about my current job?

Those are some high standards, you value your time at 250×8×5×52= half a million a year? I don't disagree that 30 hours is way over the top for an interview question unless you happen to find it as much fun as , or if it's somehow usefully spent time for other reasons, but your response seems to be at an equally extreme end of the spectrum.

An average FAANG SWE (l4-l5 equivalent across all including msft) is pulling in 250-400K salaried. Convert that to hourly corp-to-corp rates and yeah you're looking at a billable rate of 200/hr or more for a lot of potential hires.

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

#453

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

KerrAvon wrote: post #423
jreese wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PIPs are not exclusively foregone conclusion/CYA before firing. I've personally been on a PIP while in the "red zone" before an expected promotion, and came out the other side with an "exceeds" rating and said promotion during the next cycle. Sometimes, it's legitimately just a formal way of stating "this is what we expect from you if you want to stay here"; if you can meet those expectations, then great!

Are you sure that was a PIP? That’s really not what a PIP is used for.

In your exp

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

#454

Post by soheil »

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,…

> These roles pay a huge sum of money, so there's a lot of worry that someone will be hired who doesn't really meet the bar, you know?

No, I don't. Making the wrong hire is costly not because of the total annual compensation, but because of the upfront cost which is realized the moment the employee signs the offer letter.

All the admin stuff.

By your logic you shouldn't fire someone either (at least not that easily) and maybe that's why so many FAANG engineers end up "cruising" because the company is so scared of hiring new talent.

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

#455

Post by heavyset_go »

georgeburdell wrote: post #381
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,…

>Second: Is it really fair to have just one or two developers evaluate you? When I first was an interviewer, I liked everybody! I would have hired them all. So getting multiple data points matters. Best to have at least a couple dev interviews. Except FAANG interviews require excellence on almost all of the interviews, so the extra people only represent further opportunities to be denied.

It's the same principle behind using large numbers of disks in certain RAID configurations. If the pool can't tolerate a disk or two failing, adding more disks increases the chances of one or more failures occurring and tanking the pool.

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

#456

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

gcheong wrote: post #288
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.

From what I’ve seen it’s almost always as you describe or something political like a manager taking over a group and wanting to make room for their friends. But if employees are burning out and then being PIPed instead of getting support I think that is a rather sad indictment of our industry in an of itself.

>if employees are burning out and then being PIPed instead of getting support I think that is a rather sad indictment of our industry in an of itself

The thing is most big companies don't care about your burn-out or personal situation, they either have product launch deadlines to meet, or revenue targets or customers to please, and people in the trenches are considered replaceable so churn is something they account for in order to meet those commitments.

If you're lucky you might have an understanding manager, but he himself may have targets to reach for his bonus or promotion, and if you're dragging his team down and his bonus promotion with it, then ... it's nothing personal, it's just business, you will be let go.

I worked for a major European semi company and the churn there is insane, either they fire people or people leave by themselves within the first 2 years. All because managers are given near impossible targets, along with great bonuses and stock packages to incentivize them to use whatever means necessary to deliver on those targets, usually at the expense of people in the trenches which are treated as expendable commodities.

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

#457

Post by nickjj »

Tao331 wrote: post #437
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…

Turn the table. How would you feel about your employees doing work for someone else on the side? I know some people are cool with their employees moonlighting, but I'm pretty sure it's still a minority.

> Turn the table. How would you feel about your employees doing work for someone else on the side?

The alternative isn't much better. The current standard interview process leaves your employees going behind your back to interview for jobs with better compensation and the moment one of those offers materializes they put in their 2 weeks notice without blinking an eye.

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

#459

Post by megous »

franklampard wrote: post #263
mylons wrote: post #129

Earlier 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.

Quoted post unavailable.

Objective answer? Pretty much every single sentence is a subjective statement... "I like it,... I don't want... , my job would be awful, ....I can trust...."

And all the two non-subjective statements are provided with "trust me" and 0 data.

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