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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”?

#651

Post by no_wizard »

sgerenser wrote: post #528
efitz wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

I heard Microsoft did this for a long time as we. It’s my under it changed though since Nadella

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

#652

Post by joe_the_user »

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…

Yeah, but we pay you a lot of money, and it does actually work for us

I just want to highlight that this works specifically because there are a very finite number of these we pay you a lot of money companies competing for talent and that's the primary reason candidates put up with this [expletive deleted] treatment. And the result are beneficial for these companies, yes.

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

#653

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

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…

>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.

So they have to be unemployed while interviewing with you? Companies these day seem to be completely oblivious to the candidate already having a job but it's usually the case.

Other than that it doesn't sound bad, but it's kind of a big problem.

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

#654

Post by ClumsyPilot »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #388
tartoran wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PIPing and firing is a huge time and emotional energy suck, and it sucks So is the 7 interview gauntlet. But I guess it just shifts the burden on the candidates and externalizes cost.

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.

"it seems to take a company about 1-1.5 years to fire someone"

Well maybe thats the actual problem the company should be fixing?

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

#655

Post by bluedevil2k »

jugg1es wrote: post #623
bluedevil2k wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through the exact same thing at a big tech company a few weeks ago. Basically told me I got it, ghosted me for weeks, I had to escalate to higher managers, got told a generic “someone was a better match”. Do these companies think about the reputation hit these kinds of things cause? Amazon is the best example - I’m sure half the people on here would never apply to Amazon because their reputation is beyond repa…

From what I've read from managers of recruiters from FAANG companies is: 1) Recruiters at these companies are under a large amount of pressure to bring candidates in. 2) There is only so much time in the day 3) They feel all of their time must be spent on potential hires because of #1 and #2 4) No one likes giving bad news I don't feel like any of these reasons excuse you from being a considerate human being. Ultimat…

And the ultimate irony…they send me an e-mail a few days later asking me to take a few minutes to give feedback on their interview process.

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

#656

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

rdiddly wrote: post #172
jjmorrison wrote: post #15

Well I can say in my experience firing people is such a pain nowadays that I feel a need to be a lot more careful in hiring. I've seen a bit more than half of fired employees come back with some form of discrimination lawsuit threat after being fired.

Paradoxically enough, that sounds like a warning against hiring anyone but white males, the only group that can't credibly claim discrimination.

I dunno, the rise of whole jobs specifically for increasing "diversity" which increasingly seeming to be "anybody but white males" the lawsuit criteria is starting to seem credible. If the company has one of those positions with any authority it's at least circumstantial evidence.

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

#657

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

hungro wrote: post #252
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #52

My God, I am so glad to be out of the rat race. I was chased out, by the very first contacts from companies, or, in a couple of cases, the second contact, being directly hostile and insulting. I’d assumed that this was because I’m older, and people just wanted me to self-delete from the hiring process (it worked). However, hearing all these nightmare stories makes me think that everyone has to go through that. If tha…

I recently interviewed at , got past HR, then while prepping for the tech screen they told me "by the way if you get past this stage there will be FIVE technical interviews." It was almost a relief to fail the technical screen and realize I got back an entire day or two of my life.

>It was almost a relief to fail the technical screen and realize I got back an entire day or two of my life.

Been there.

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

#658

Post by justinlloyd »

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…

We don't do take home, leetcode, live coding either. We walk through past projects and ask very pointed questions. We ask about difficult problems we've faced in the past and how you might solve it. I role play a junior programmer describing a situation I have and then ask junior programmer level questions of how to solve the problem. You get to talk to two very senior software developers, and two very senior engineers in other roles, and the CEO (who is also highly technical).

Once you get past the first screening call, I find you on social media, blogs, forums and read your posts, and see what questions you're asking on stackoverflow. Then we might move you to the next stage. All in all, you get a pre-screening from our recruiter (about 15 to 30 minutes), a screening call from a technical hiring manager (30 minutes), and then you talk three or four principal engineers (45 minutes each). This happens in days.

The only person that doesn't talk to you that is highly technical will be the recruiter. If you're hired and start work, we watch what you're doing, mentor as necessary. If you have the right attitude and are coachable, so long as you can string together coherent lines of code then everything else can be taught.

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

#659

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #360
ipaddr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only because you spent thousands having candidates go through 7 interviews.

Stronger: You're also rejecting more candidates. So you're not only wasting the time of 7 interviews, you're wasting the time of 7 interviewss times the N people you interview before you find one you're willing to hire. And then, as others have said, there's the cost of the people who look at your hiring process and decide that they won't bother to try to jump through your hoops. Hint: They are not the least valuable…

I get 3-5 requests to interview from Amazon a week. I ignore most of them completely because I know too much about them. Guy I worked closely with at a certain cobbler in Beaverton Oregon you've probably heard of. He left for good reason and had lots of bad things to day. The managed to claw him back after about a year with "a huge pile of money" right after he had a kid.

Up front (before talking to the hiring manager) artificial coding challenge is a massive red flag, and I'll bail at that stage with most companies.

Last week I asked one of their spear fishers via LinkedIn if they're still doing that. She confirmed they are so I don't need to talk to them for a while.

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

#660

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

noir_lord wrote: post #23
hasmolo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this right here. i was told to fill out essays as part of the interview process to indicate i had a good culture fit. i'm talking college entrance length and prompt. shit like in 5.000 words tell me how u r a team player. nahhhhhhh

Would have just submitted "Clearly I'm not".

"I'm clearly a team player because I kept this short for you."
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