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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”?

#731

Post by graderjs »

mylons wrote: post #714
graderjs wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me add my experience. I've never had the FKANG experience but for a number of startups that I've contracted for I've had a chance to observe if not participate in the hiring process. They were US startups and they've all tried to emulate what I think of as the FAANK process: so you have an initial call, a technical screen a couple of other rounds of technical screens, that maybe include system design, and fit/beh…

this is the in-depth reply that illustrates my flippant comment. there can be an inherent competitiveness in white-boarding interviews. the interviewer can implicitly want to show their superiority over the candidate. i think that's the core reason behind a lot of overly difficult problems being offered that have no analogous presence in the day to day work. how many times have you written a graph traversal algorithm…

agree, now let's you and me apply to YC with our disruptive, upending-the-traditional-inefficiencies in tech hiring startup idea. Ho ho ho! :)

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

#732

Post by miraculixx »

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,…

Well if you want me to invest 5-7 hours of my time you'd better give me some assurances as to why I should do that.

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

#733

Post by weatherlite »

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,…

> These roles pay a huge sum of money, so there's a lot of worry that someone will be hired who doesn't really meet the bar, you know?

So do roles in medicine, finance etc. Do they also go through 7 interviews grilling them about material from their bachelor's or asking random logic questions? Why don't we test doctors "problem solving" skills by asking them how many cars are in Manhattan, don't doctors need good problem solving skills?

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

#735

Post by smaudet »

gcheong wrote: post #667
rascul wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So what its a circle jerk of people putting up with BS, then going through BS again because they did so well the first time?

I mean, maybe their other job isn't doing great, because they clearly have all this time to interview, wonder what is going to happen when they join your company...

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

#736

Post by atoav »

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 outcome of such a rigorous process. It also helps protect people from becoming false negatives because they didn’t mesh with a single interviewer or struggled with a single interview problem.

Only if we assume the managerial class doesn't use this extended process as a chance to do politics and if we assume a longer interview results in better matches.

My experience in casting actors (different field I know) is, that after a certain duration you will get diminishing results. You can tell most of the time within an 20 minutes or less of someone could do the job or not. The rest of the hour is needed to figure out how they work in different situations.

What I would never do is have my existing actors interview them. They can veto someone, they can tell me what they think, but why on earth would I let them interview someone?

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

#737

Post by justinlloyd »

ihateolives wrote: post #716
justinlloyd wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enginee…

> 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. And what if my social media presence is minimal or not public?

It is possible that a candidate's social media presence is minimal or non-public, and that will lead to a dead end. But are you claiming that _your_ social media presence is minimal or non-public? Candidates are applying with their real names and a work history; not to sound creepy but they become very "findable" with that information. And I use that to judge "does this person know what he's talking about when it comes to his job?"

I know you are a web developer, full stack but with a slant towards backend, like the Jetbrains applications, run a Thinkpad with Windows OS, have a beard (by your own admission), possibly live in a Nordic country but I don't think you are from there (UK I think, London area, or at least lived in London, or you live in the far North of Scotland or London has been a bit dark this year), are in your late 50's or early 60's, have a small family, like noisy keyboards, dislike Vim, absolutely loathe "Fn" keys, own a Mac that you ocassionally use, enjoyed Star Trek: TOS, run Android on a Samsung Galaxy (S3, Nexus 5, S10). You didn't wait for your resin in your table to reach flashover point. Found your reddit account, your stackoverflow, your github, and your abandoned twitter account, looks like you purged your Facebook account but didn't delete it. I am pretty sure you used to skateboard, enjoy riding a fixie bike and photography, possibly did some rock climbing in your youth. I may be off on some of the details, I only spent 20 minutes on it. Of course, I might be connecting two different sets of data points about two different people.

Over-sized coloured mice are very clever if they can build the CMS for a real estate agent.

My point is, people are "findable."

Update: Pretty sure I found your LinkedIn.

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

#738

Post by atoav »

paganel wrote: post #554
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another thing - if you want to work at a FAANG, presumably you want to be there a while. Anyone who can't put up with a little bit of nonsense and headache for something meaningful is likely to struggle with any nonsense and headache generally. Working on any large scale project at a FAANG is going to involve a decent amount of nonsense and headache, and you gotta roll with it. And then on the flip side - if…

Maybe it's an age thing, because I've already hit 40, but doing 5-7 interviews seems like time lost for all the people involved. If a company cannot decide after 1-2 interviews if the person they're trying to hire it's worth the effort or not then it means it has lost its golden touch, especially in this industry. And vice-versa, if, as a potential employee, you don't "sense" your employer after 1-2 meetings then it…

This is my conclusion as well: exluding total unusual cases, where three candidates are all equally good and you can't decide: not beeing able to tell whether a candidate fits after more than two interviews tells more about the company than the interview.

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

#739

Post by stackbutterflow »

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…

Is it annoying for candidates? Yeah, but we pay you a lot of money

Well, no you don't. You pay a lot of money only the people you hired.

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

#740

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

prepend wrote: post #154
mnd999 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I’ve worked in tech for decades and I’ve never experienced a process with “7 straight white guys” much less every time. First, how do you know the sexual orientation of interviewers? Next, tech is like 50-70% Asian so it would be so weird to only have white guys doing programming interviews. The guy pet is spot on as programming is way heavy in guys. But I’m not sure why you would think that 7 interviews = 7 straight…

> Next, tech is like 50-70% Asian

On the west coast. I've had employers where Eastern Europeans were more commonplace. The same employer had an Indian subsidiary but didn't hire H1-Bs and South Asians weren't present in notably large numbers.

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