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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”?

#521

Post by igetspam »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #507
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

How do you handle the obvious problems of churn and reviews at places like Glassdoor? I can just see it now:

"Interview was weak. They don't know what they're doing."

"Aced the interview. Fired after two weeks. Leadership doesn't know how to hire or manage."

"Never seen a place with so much churn. In the last six months, I've seen at least half a dozen engineers exit after two or three weeks."

Know what raises the level of difficulty for finding candidates? Shit reviews about the company. You can have the best tech but if you have a toxic smell, you can't hire. To the outside, perception is reality and reviews are how you get that perception. You can't do the opposite though and say "J Smith passed interview but we let them go after two weeks because they couldn't do more than pseudo code on a whiteboard." and even if you could, you'd look like a shit company and you'd still have an impossible time hiring but for other reasons.

This idea of quick hire/fire is so bad that all you have to do it go one or two steps further to find the obvious problems. But hey, start a company and use that model. See how it goes. Prove us all wrong.

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

#522

Post by sys_64738 »

treis wrote: post #34
imtakmo wrote: post #12

I entered the software industry as a developer about 4 years ago, and I have been running interviews for the past 2 years or so. Interview hell is all I have ever known. Could you elaborate on how things worked differently in the past? I legitimately have no idea what a developer interview "loop" would look like without 5 to 7 interviews, but I desperately hope it can exist.

The thing I've noticed is that there's not many group interviews any more. So it's a lot of telling the same story 5 times to 5 different people. I think 3 interviews is probably reasonable. A leetcode style tech screen, a design one, and then a general work style/culture fit interview. Also, I don't know why more companies don't record interviews. Probably a legal and/or HR thing. But it'd definitely cut down on the…

Apple used to do group interviews. If I recall I did two rounds of them in size interviews. One had two people in one then the other was the whole team of about 6 with the manager. There might have been a third group, can't recall. It was fun though.

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

#523

Post by lanstin »

nova22033 wrote: post #380
mylons wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the hallways aren’t empty due to the total compensation and perceived prestige working at a FAANG or similar company offers.

due to the total compensation Yes..it's why people do jobs.

Probably not as much as you would guess from talking to FAANG employees. It’s been fifteen years since my compensation exceeded the amount where it makes any difference to me. Now I want to have interesting problems, a business model I am not ashamed of, good and smart coworkers and decent conditions. I won’t be retiring early, which is fine: my work is almost always a fun and valued way I contribute to the world. One of the big problems with software ethics and the joy of solving problems is the influx of people choosing software not due to intrinsic affinity but just for money. Sometimes I wish more of them still went for law degrees or MBAs or surgery. It’s just a little sad to see someone who can make beautiful and useful software gems be dissatisfied because they didn’t get to be a CTO by the time they are thirty or the like.

In the 90s people getting a big software job where thrilled because they were going to change the world. My mom’s friends used stuff that ran my code. Now it seems like people want FIRE or multiple houses or lambos.

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

#524

Post by vikingcaffiene »

bobabob wrote: post #447
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #346

Hiring manager here. IMO the current tech hiring norms are gross and not sustainable. It feels like a weird hazing ritual and with the current market, is the single biggest reason you can't hire. Why on earth would someone burn a weekend on a take-home test for your startup when they have 15 other irons in the fire? At my current employer we got rid of all that ridiculousness. No take home test. No live coding. We've…

> I think it's time we accept that the person we are talking to is who they say they are on their resume. Yea because we live in a place where everyone is super honest and no one is going to try and take advantage of that to make 500k a year. IMO, it doesn't work. Talk is cheap. I wouldn't have a job if I had to talk my way into any company, I'm an introvert, I suck at communicating orally. But I can solve problems a…

> Yea because we live in a place where everyone is super honest and no one is going to try and take advantage of that to make 500k a year.

You are right that there is more risk with this approach. I honestly think that its a better, more humane way to do things though. Anecdotally, I've hired a couple _really_ solid developers via this methodology. At least in my case, it's been working out well. As always, you try stuff and iterate.

> I'm an introvert, I suck at communicating orally.

I get it. So am I. Its actually very hard for me to reply to these comments b/c of my general aversion to putting myself out there! I don't think there's a one size fits all solution. At my company at least, being able to communicate effectively both orally and written, is important. We do a lot of pairing and documentation etc. Thats not for everyone. YMMV.

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

#525

Post by sgtnoodle »

Retric wrote: post #411
sgtnoodle wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it seems to take a company about 1-1.5 years to fire someone that's well intended but ineffective in their role. 15 or so "wasted" person-hours up front is well worth avoiding thousands of wasted person-hours, especially considering maybe 1 in 5 candidates that make it to a full interview are a good fit.

15 extra hours * N candidates per opening * M people onboarded per additional marginal employee discovered. Picking numbers from a hat say 15 * 7 * 20 = 2,100 unproductive hours to avoid a subpar employee that still actually gets something done in the ~3,000 hours before being fired. That could easily be a net loss depending on how much onboarding time is needed and how unproductive they are on average. Honestly, I t…

shrug hiring the wrong person into an engineering role is incredibly expensive and painful for organizations with a long term outlook. It cancels out the productivity of at least one good engineer, and stresses out at least 3 people.

I've been a hiring manager before, and hiring good people is a huge time investment. The reality is that something like 99% of applicants aren't qualified, and the majority seemingly lack enough self-awareness to know it. The really good people also tend to be bad at marketing themselves. I don't think of interviews as a waste of time, though, even when it's a no-hire.

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

#527

Post by adhesive_wombat »

I feel like I'm some kind of outlier because I only had one interview for my first perm job, and a phone and in-person for the current one. But both are small companies (not startups, just not behemoths).

Then again I also feel like an outlier round here for not making 500k, so maybe I'm just a failure!

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

#528

Post by sgerenser »

efitz wrote: post #486
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 f…

Your manager might also have a specific target for “unregretted attrition”, i.e. getting rid of people using the PIP process. If there is not a clear person who is the weakest link, then the manager will pick their least favorite. And remember, performance is very subjective. I have seen a couple of people get fired for cause; that was always clear. I’ve never seen an unambiguous PIP.

As far as I know only Amazon has targets for “unregretted attrition.”

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

#529

Post by sys_64738 »

bcantrill wrote: post #286

I need to write a longer piece on our approach at Oxide, but for us it takes effort (not always successful!) to hold ourselves to 9 conversations. This may (or perhaps does?) sound obscene, but (1) these are conversations not oral exams (we don't do red-black-trees-on-whiteboards), hopefully making them less stressful for the candidate (2) we take hiring really, really seriously and (3) I have learned from mistakes a…

9 "conversations" over how much actual time? 30 mins isn't a lot of time to get a good impression and ask all you need to. If you're telling me that those nine will be conversations then I would decline as you ain't wasting my time.

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

#530

Post by matheusmoreira »

jreese wrote: post #493
KerrAvon wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder what these performance expectations are.
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