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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”?

#501

Post by mamcx »

prepend wrote: post #186
greggman3 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is FizzBuzz cargo cult? I had my own company in 1995. We tried to hire programmers. The candidate would come in and we'd spend an hour interviewing. 9 out of 10 could not program at all and effectively wasted our time. So, we switched to "here's a short test, go in this room and do the test". Then we'd look at their answers. If the answers were wrong/poor we'd thank them for their time and excuse them. This way, less…

I had a similar experience in the late 90s. We had people who couldn’t program but represented that they could. We would give them a quick screen of “write in one of the languages this position requires a program that takes in a string, reverses it and prints it out.” And we changed it to any language once we started working with novel stuff like JavaScript that any programmer could pick up. It was so weird how many…

> I feel bad for people who freeze up and can’t even write a three line program on paper.

I do the same kind of interview, and after figure this issue happens, also LEFT the room.

Then eventually add: You can do it any language (even different to any we was hiring), then add: You can do whatever you want to succeed (hinting to the fact the machine used has the docs, internet, YouTube influencers, whatever at their fingerprints).

It STILL have huge casualty rates.

What all of this left me to wonder: How the heck this industry absorb they?

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

#502

Post by boredtofears »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #480
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.

> YMMV, but it's actually quite difficult to get a PIP in many tech companies Generally, the more the company practices “hire fast, fire fast” the easier and more common it will be to PIP people. The companies with 4+ stage interviews and entire departments devoted to recruiting and candidate evaluation tend to not have as many PIPs because they’ve studied their interviewing processes and prevented most of the underp…

How do extended interviews root out people that are going to later go through some kind of major personal issue or have burnout or have a lack of motivation?

Lack of motivation and burnout maybe could be somewhat sussed out in an interview if it was obvious, but the people that I've been around that's happened to (and myself at one point in my career) were completely fine, but I'm skeptical of any interviewer that says they can reliably fish that out.

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

#503

Post by dento »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #474
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…

> I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. The truth is that nobody likes being interviewed . Getting tested and judged by strangers isn’t fun. But developers also really don’t like being surrounded by unqualified developers who slipped through a weak interview process. They also don’t like having significant numbers of their teammates fired and replaced all the time becaus…

> The truth is that nobody likes being interviewed. Getting tested and judged by strangers isn’t fun.

I do. It might be because I'm way better at performing in interviews than in the actual job. It's also way more exciting to do. I have also done interviews on the hiring side of the table, and that's not nearly as enjoyable. However, especially finding people to work with you is quite rewarding.

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

#504

Post by ozzythecat »

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. 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, so they also need to interview you too and have a say.

We decided to ignore this protocol and hired a senior lever manager from IBM. After the next two years, we had an IBM fiefdom. This person hired his IBM buddies, who hired their own IBM talent.

None of these people accepted our culture. It reflected in the organization’s output. Turns out, when you bring in people from these legacy companies where people seemingly coast by and don’t actually produce out, and you have little oversight on what they actually output, it just turns into an inefficient and ineffective mess.

This went on for a while until the entire org was gutted with over half the people fired.

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

#505

Post by szczepano »

Hiring today is like meeting your wife after a wedding and just before you go to bed. And there are bigger questions, why we even need resumes if those are disconnected from hiring process and mean nothing except passing trough ATS algorithms. Hiring got broken exactly at the same time when it became separate profession not strictly connected with demand from people who need help with their work. I never fully understood why developer who need help can't hire people directly to help him. Those people would spend together 8 hours a day for at least couple of months if not couple of years and they often meet at the very end. If there's no chemistry between them why hire ? There's lots of talks about scaling and toxicity, but this is result of hiring people who don't talk with each other cause they didn't know they would work together before they got into this big brother show on company island called agile team. What was wrong with this idea of helping each other that worked 15 years ago that established this whole industry ?

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

#506

Post by mattnewton »

cortesoft wrote: post #462
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…

> Is it annoying for candidates? Yeah, but we pay you a lot of money, and it does actually work for us The best candidates can get jobs paying the same or more money with fewer interviews, so the very best aren’t going to pick you.

I'd be very suprised if this is the case, I just finished a few months of interviewing and very few places outside very small startups deviate from this format.

Not saying I am the very best, but I just didn't find opportunities for anyone to out earn by skipping the FAANG style loop. Unless you mean getting lots of equity and riding it to an outsized liquidity event, these places just tend to be not competitive to the top FAANG compensation; you would join for other reasons.

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

#507

Post by R0b0t1 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #264
mylons wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it better than alternatives? this seems like a huge straw-man given almost every company that hires developers thinks they’re a large tech company and mimics their hiring process. it doesn’t seem like serious alternatives have been explored.

Almost every alternative you can imagine has been tried. Lots of interviews, few interviews, take home projects, pair programming, hire fast fire fast, trial periods and on and on and on.

Hire fast fire fast is by far the best one, should you really need it. A 20 minute technical conversation and then firing within 2-3 weeks if they do not seem self-directed has worked in my experience.

If you can't get someone up to speed with your internal processes fast enough to at least gauge if they're following along that indicates an internal problem.

The problem is, I think, that HR does not want technical staff to see the hires for (probably made up) legal reasons. So the decision is mostly made by people who can't actually gauge competency.

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

#508

Post by politelemon »

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,…

> When I first was an interviewer, I liked everybody!

I've been interviewing for a long time and I _still_ really like everybody. I want everyone to join and even if they're not a fit I want them to join and want us to spend time on bringing them up to speed and nurturing them. Of course I'm aware that an org isn't always able to do that.

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

#509

Post by deprave »

Interviews are more thorough because firing became harder.

It used to be that if you hired an employee and found out they aren’t good at their job you could fire them. Today it is complicated and can backfire if the employee believes they were fired because of any reason other than their skills, or were not provided with ample opportunity and support to succeed.

The solution is a lengthier process based on the assumption that once hired, the company is stuck with the employee unless they decide to leave.

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

#510

Post by 14u2c »

StupidUser123 wrote: post #106
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,…

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…

> That makes my sell interview so much easier because I can trust the process to assess their technical skills

What makes you think that the process provides an accurate representation of the skills needed for the day to day job? In my experience it simply tests whether the candidate has invested lot of time cramming for that very specific type of test. If I was running a small company I would much rather discuss a candidate's experience with them and leave them the time to build useful skills, not worthless ones for passing a test.

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