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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”?

#661

Post by bradleyjg »

dmoy wrote: post #644
jugg1es wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with you if the interview process included ANY feedback to interviewees when they were rejected. Prior to COVID, I got flown to Seattle mid-week for 2 nights and interviewed well (the recruiter told me to start looking for houses). But 20 days later I was basically ghosted by my recruiter and I had to escalate to their manager to get a response that I was rejected. They gave me no feedback at all. The i…

> ANY feedback to interviewees when they were rejected This is a lawyer thing Without large societal changes to no longer have the US be crazy litigious, no big company will ever give you actionable feedback about your interview.

I’m skeptical. Several times in my career I’ve traced back “it’s a legal restriction” and found that it was not in fact a legal restriction. It was a mutated and distorted version of a legal restriction passed down a game of telephone, in some cases stretching back years.

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

#662

Post by namirez »

throwaway743 wrote: post #229
laurent92 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or discrimination. You never know, maybe you worked with his former boss, it could be anything.

Totally. Or the interviewer felt insecure and threatened by their competence. If that's the case, they dodged a bullet.

Yes, I thought about both possibilities (discrimination and insecurity) but I want to remain positive and not attribute ulterior motives to the interviewer. It was an ironic experience though because, I believe, had my code been a bit slower I would have had a better shot at the interview.

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

#663

Post by d0mine »

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…

How do you know that it actually works? Are there formal studies that compare different approaches? (it doesn't look like the difference can be easily evaluated and therefore it is extremely easy to mislead yourself on the effectiveness of some baroque process)

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

#664

Post by shagie »

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…

I am still fixing up the code of a developer from five years ago who was there for two years prior to me. He had ideas about how things should work and completely disagreed with the conventions of every framework.

And so, every time I go in a section of code to fix a bug or adjust a feature and I see his name in git blame... I spend another few hours to make sure that I'm not breaking some of the twisted framework code that he had and possibly fix it up a bit and adding a unit test for the functionality before I touch anything to assure myself that I know what it is doing.

An unproductive poor employee is bad... a productive bad employee is where the real problems are for years and years to follow.

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

#665

Post by hirako2000 »

mamcx wrote: post #501
prepend wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fi…

maybe they just don't understand the questions.

e.g: I challenge you to give an answer to my question?

it's such a simple question, how could anyone not give the right answer. but it's as badly communicated as your comment, subject to interpretation and perplexing.

now imaging being in a position of inferiority, in total fear to be asked about things you've never hear about before. like it happens not so rarely when sitting University in exams. you studied 90% of the curriculum for a year, but, bad luck, the exam concentrates on that 10% you've overlooked. you haven't prepared for a year for that interview, but it does feel like it while waiting in that soulless waiting room. The secretary bored to death nearby doesn't help gain any courage: she mastered the art of pretence, she isn't building some complex excel queries, she plays the solitaire. but you don't know that. and you haven't even entered the interview room yet.

if you don't picture that scenario, just try to give a speech on a very large audience. you will see how emotions can very well take full control over you.

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

#666

Post by brailsafe »

This is part of the reason why the last 7 years have been so shit to me. If you burnout and lose your job, it's absurdly difficult to get __any__ new one, even underpaying ones at shit companies that abuse their employees. All it takes is one idiot from marketing to think you answered the same question more vaguely than they would have liked, and 13 hours of interviewing time is out the window. Scale that up to applying at even 5 companies, and you're in the business of causing depression

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

#667

Post by gcheong »

rascul wrote: post #622
hirako2000 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think the opposite is more likely.If you are employed, there is no pressure. You may go through 12 interviews for a 12 different jobs and be only so slightly offended. For the unemployed, time is most likely ticking, if not financially, at least emotionally. A relative slowness at any step of the process affects the unemployed mindset. Stress alone lowers interview performance, especially on the soft skills s…

If you're employed it's more likely you don't have time for 12 interviews because you're working.

True but being employed goes a long way to giving the perception that you are employable so in the cases that the decision is a toss-up between an unemployed person and an employed one I’d be willing to bet the employed one wins almost every time.

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

#668

Post by gcheong »

mateo411 wrote: post #580
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.

Well no. It's expensive for the company too. All of the people involved in the interview process are still getting paid while they are interviewing the candidates. They aren't working on their projects that they have to complete. The company probably has a recruiting or talent acquisition team and the people on that team don't work for free. The company might also work with outside agencies or external recruiters. If…

Yes it’s an expense but you’re not doing it out of charity it’s for the benefit of the company and so it is also a part of the job.

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

#669

Post by oceanplexian »

google234123 wrote: post #597
mr_toad wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m dubious that companies can accurately measure ability or performance, either in the interview process or on the job.

Have you ever been in a job or taken a class with other people and not been able to see the different between the more competent and more incompetent people?

This is one of those things I stupidly thought I understood when I was a Jr. Engineer, and now understand quite a bit differently after decades have gone by.

The more competent people weren’t necessarily the ones getting more things done, or the most visible, but were those engineers who understood the long term implications of what they were building, how it related to the business, and their relationship to other teams and customers. It’s trivial to be a good “performer” toiling away on a feature or system that shouldn’t exist. It’s exponentially harder to have the awareness to identify where the real problems are, and make sure you’re investing effort where it actually needs to go.

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

#670

Post by sgtnoodle »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #654
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.

"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?

If someone is working hard and trying to make it work, the rest of the team is going to try and make it work too. A seemingly good rule of thumb is to start seriously considering firing someone the moment the thought enters your head. Typically by the time you're having those thoughts, the situation is likely irredeemable. In a generally positive work environment, folk aren't typically thinking about firing each other, and so it can take a while.
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