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

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

#491

Post by polote » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

Well my hypothesis is that there is too much talent applying to each offer. So companies have to build a process that evaluates all candidates to be sure they only hire the best according to them. It's FOMO.

In the past company I was working, they boasted off only hiring the best, and having like 5 interviews, skipping tons of candidate. And the one they were hiring at the end were consistently worse developers and product managers than average.

I don't think that skill of tech employees is strongly linked to company performance (but I have no data on it). Meaning hiring the best developers will not impact the financial metrics of a company. As a result of that it doesn't really matter if your hiring process is performant or not

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

#492

Post by gusgus01 » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #255

boisenberrier wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’ve been close to one person getting fired? How do you have an opinion on the PIP process or firing at all if you have next to no experience with it? I knew a guy at a FAANG who earned himself and his report a PIP for the grave sin of choosing the wrong deputy to send upstairs while he was on vacation. The deputized person went to one meeting and ran his mouth (arguably, told the truth). Both are no longer at t…

I worked at a FAANG for 3 years and I'm pretty sure no one I worked with was on a PIP. A PIP is extreme. It's sufficient to simply not give people raises, most people can and will easily find another job earning 10% more.

I've worked at a FAANG for almost 5 years. I know probably a dozen or two people who have been PIP'd. I even know one guy who was PIP'd twice and then left when he was given his third PIP.

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

#493

Post by jreese » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

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.

The cover sheet has the words "Performance Improvement Plan", with key goals to achieve in a 30 day period, with the final page to be signed by me and my manager.

https://cdn.n7.gg/pip/pip-1.png

https://cdn.n7.gg/pip/pip-2.png

Not every company is awful.

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

#494

Post by thenerdhead » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:30 PM UTC

You're not out of touch, the industry is.

I firmly believe that nobody knows what they are doing when it comes to hiring and everyone is just following each other.

It's as if interview loops are so long winded that only the ones with enough willpower/endurance survive. They also tend to expand so much time that each company is hopeful to find a better candidate in that duration. Yet corporations don't tend to take into account optimal stopping into their hiring practices and end with less than ideal candidates or come out with no candidate at all.

Personally I think more companies should hire faster and improve their performance evaluation processes to fire faster. It shouldn't take more than 2-3 interviews to get enough "data points" that someone has potential to grow in the position. Especially at this level of pay and responsibility, you should have something online to show you're competent already. Everything else is corporatism and appeasing the social agenda.

Some big tech companies you can get hired and never get fired. Other companies you can get PIP'd although you'd be a 10x contributor at another big tech company. The goal posts will continue to move as tech jobs become more accessible to the world. I think that's a good thing, but I think we should challenge what is normal to land a job in the first place. 5-7 is ridiculous and costly for all parties involved.

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

#495

Post by efitz » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:30 PM UTC

andrewcarter wrote: post #473

cookiecaper wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"(Personal|Professional|Performance) Improvement Plan". It's the first formal stage in the firing process at most companies with HR depts, which would almost certainly include any publicly-listed company. If you're at the PIP stage, it generally means your boss and your superboss have decided that it's time for you to go, but for legal purposes, they need to look like they tried to give you a chance, so they work wit…

At the company I work for PiPs _usually_ lead to issues being solved. There are several developers I've worked with on PiPs (we do specific mentoring and follow ups on the areas of concern) that were able to improve and are now doing great. It isn't always a terrible thing, certainly not comfortable for the person on the PiP but it can be a positive thing in the long run!

Good on your company; PIP should focus on shoring up skill gaps or finding better role fit or invinting someone to take unpaid LOA to work through whatever life challenge they have.

BUT, I’ve only ever seen the “unattainable goal” type.

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

#496

Post by rockemsockem » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #424

sahila wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is "skill on paper" is just that, words. There's tons of java developers but not all the same. References too are pretty easy to game. Alternatively if by skills on paper you mean open source projects, that's fair but most developers (and certainly most new grads) won't have anything worthwhile to show. The tech screens can show a person's skill. Sure, lots of people are gaming that too and memorize solut…

There's a difference between: Foo Corp - Wrote Java on Bar project And: Foo Corp - Designed and developed infrastructure for Baz for Bar project (Java) A resume that doesn't give an idea of what someone did, beyond the tech they used to accomplish their goals, isn't likely to pass my interest test.

There's only a very, very small difference between those two things though. I'm not hiring anyone based on either of those bulletpoints or similar ones; no matter how many there are.

It's so easy to inflate your role on a project and what you contributed and the people who are best at it are usually also able to talk, talk, talk.

The first interview question I ask is so easy that I don't think anyone should be paid to write software anywhere if they can't solve it. And yet, I have candidates with plenty of nice bulletpoints like your second one on their resume who can't solve it or take 30-45 minutes to solve it. Good candidates take less than 10 minutes, very good ones take less than 5.

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

#497

Post by csomar » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:32 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.

Yeah, sure. We got all these smart people in a room. They can't be wrong. /s

I'd actually say the opposite. These researches are probably making hiring worse.

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

#498

Post by mahalel » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #472

dleslie wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5-6 hr onsite is a strong filter against folks who are presently employed; particularly those who cannot spare personal days or unpaid days for every interview.

I don't think that argument is particularly relevant in the tech industry. It's not that hard to find a "sick" day, even if you don't have unlimited PTO. And especially during COVID, where going missing for a day might go unnoticed for a lot of people.

Are you really advocating people take sick days to interview for other jobs?

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

#499

Post by rockemsockem » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:35 PM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #187

prepend wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> expressing a concern that a fast hiring commitment would be riskier; but that's not necessarily so. I think it is necessarily so. Hiring fast is effectively hiring randomly and that is way riskier. Would you read random books? Watch random movies? Maybe, but probably not. Would you buy a random car? Of course not. Would you buy a random home? Etc etc You can logistically reduce the number of days by maybe doing mul…

I'm not advocating for hiring literally anyone. If they pass your credential requirements, reference checks, and team meet then they're already passing through significant filtering.

Resumes aren't really credentials. They're lists of things provided by the individual themselves and are almost always inflated in some way. Reference checks are just "I got someone you don't know (and shouldn't trust) to say good things about me", and meet the team is just "I can talk to people and sound smart for about an hour or two".

There are a very large number of idiots who can do those things. I strongly disagree that this is a significant filter.

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

#500

Post by greenyoda » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 9:36 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #146

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.

> 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 i…

> When they did Google Maps, did they have 7 interview processes?

Actually, the original work for Google Maps was done by three companies that Google acquired:

> Google Maps first started as a C++ program designed by two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen, and Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma, at the Sydney-based company Where 2 Technologies. It was first designed to be separately downloaded by users, but the company later pitched the idea for a purely Web-based product to Google management, changing the method of distribution. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google Inc. where it transformed into the web application Google Maps.

In the same month, Google acquired Keyhole, a geospatial data visualization company (with investment from the CIA), whose marquee application suite, Earth Viewer, emerged as the highly successful Google Earth application in 2005 while other aspects of its core technology were integrated into Google Maps. In September 2004, Google acquired ZipDash, a company that provided realtime traffic analysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Acquisitions

Android was also acquired:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#His...

Some of the things that Google is best known for were not invented by Google employees.