Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”? • Hacker News Board

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

#751

Post by joshuamorton » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 7:51 AM UTC

softveda wrote: post #718

joshuamorton wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - a few examples of extremely senior, extremely successful engineering leaders who stayed at or near the top of the game technically, and those are but a few examples from a very long list But all of these are the exception, not the norm. You said you've been in a FAANG style org, so you've been able to view the org-chart. For every Jeff Dean or John Carmack, there's three-dozen directors and VPs who manage large o…

> Maybe we have different definitions here, but I've never, or perhaps once, had a manager who I felt could do my job in a pinch, The chief of Air Force still flies the fighter jets just as well as the junior pilots. The head of surgery in a hospital still operate just as the junior surgeon. Why does tech have to be different?

An air force officer may have to qualify on their aircraft each year, but they're unlikely to be "the most experienced" fighter pilot, and it's common in the military for enlisted people to make fun of officers for being too abstracted away from the life of a soldier.

> The head of surgery in a hospital still operate just as the junior surgeon. Why does tech have to be different?

Because the load we put on medical personal is abusive and we shouldn't copy it in tech?

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

#752

Post by Ancalagon » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 7:59 AM UTC

rafiki6 wrote: post #513

Too many people got into this industry, and too many people were able to easily switch between companies and boost their salaries absurd amounts. The big boys decided to use interview grinds to reduce turnover (that's why they all more or less have the same process) and all the people who started companies and came from these companies have been through and assume this process works due to the success of the big boys…

This I suspect is the real answer. Arguably better code was being written prior to leetcode interviews being introduced

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

#753

Post by GeneralMayhem » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 8:08 AM UTC

mahalel wrote: post #498

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that argument is particularly relevant in the tech industry. It's not that hard to find a "sick" day, even if you don't have unlimited PTO. And especially during COVID, where going missing for a day might go unnoticed for a lot of people.

Are you really advocating people take sick days to interview for other jobs?

Well... yes. I think that for most HN commenters, who work for a non-hourly salary and provide hard-to-quantify value in a seller's market for labor, it's generally possible to get a day off if you need it.

Many tech companies have gone to "unlimited" PTO, so there's no cost to taking a few days off. But even outside that, almost no managers are following the letter of the law. Last time I changed jobs, my employer at the time had explicit PTO time, but unlimited sick leave, and in practice during COVID (and especially near any holiday) was pretty lax with accounting for "I need to be out on Friday afternoon" as long as work was getting done and you were somewhat responsive to email/pings on the day in question. I wasn't hunting very actively, so it was just the one day of interviews with one potential new employer - I concede that if you needed to do many full-day interviews, it would eventually become conspicuous.

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

#754

Post by Retric » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 9:09 AM UTC

shagie wrote: post #664

Retric wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

The question is how likely a longer interview process with avoid such employees not that they have a cost.

In your case code reviews could have caught the issue early before it became such a problem. Though obviously they also have a cost.

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

#755

Post by hassancf » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 9:30 AM UTC

py_or_dy wrote: post #77

Best of luck. I have no idea how to get hired. I jumped shipped from my last employer in May of 2020 thinking I'd take a 2 month break and then start interviewing. Over 18 months I submitted over 80 applications, and got interviews at 40-50 different companies. Total phone and video interviews ended up being over 110 before I basically gave up. I was trying to transition from a full stack dev mostly with perl backend…

I think you hit the nail on the head. This interviewing thing is completely ridiculous

Best of luck to you

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

#756

Post by lodovic » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 10:17 AM UTC

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…

Are candidates paid for their time when doing such extensive interviews? Doing 7 rounds, including preparation and travel time, may well add up to a full week.

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

#757

Post by nickjj » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #725

nickjj wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For $200/hr I’d rather spend the time on my own life. The alternative is spending 7-12 hours doing 5-7 technical interviews for $0.

I got my last job with 5 h. And honestly, I’d rather do 7 h as an interview than 20 h over 2 w for $200/hr. I’m just thinking about this and the thought just makes me feel so bleh. I think it’s the liability it incurs. A two week commitment. I just can’t see doing it for $4k. It’s just not worth it. It’s like 4 calls for 4 hours on a consulting platform. Instead of 4 h I have to spend 20 h and spread over 2 w. This k…

> I think it’s the liability it incurs. A two week commitment. I just can’t see doing it for $4k. It’s just not worth it.

In my opinion it's the opposite of a liability. You're getting practical experience to know what it'll be like to work at that place. More hours ends up being better because each hour you put in gives you more information. It's an opportunity to see how things are run, get to know the team (if you pair'd with a few different people), get a feel for what you'll be doing, etc..

If you're worried about a 2 week commitment how are you not worried about general W2 employment where it's expected you'll be committing 40 hours a week until you either retire or die? The same applies for most 1099 contracts too where chances are you'll be putting in multiple weeks or months to complete a task.

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

#758

Post by stuaxo » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

That is insane.

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

#759

Post by nickjj » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 10:46 AM UTC

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #653

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.

> So they have to be unemployed while interviewing with you?

If you're doing 5-7 normal interviews that could end up being 5-15 hours worth of interviews. The time issue is shared with both styles of interviews.

I know I said 5-30 for contracting but at this point if you're doing 15 hours of normal interviews it's not really much different to do 20 or 30 hours of contract interviews. It's just a longer process, which IMO is beneficial because you (as the person being interviewed) get to see a better picture of what it's like there. Plus this 30 hours isn't set in stone, maybe after 5 or 10 hours you find out you're a perfect match and now it's the same time as standard interviews except you've gotten paid for it too.

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

#760

Post by jbergens » Sun, Apr 03, 2022, 10:52 AM UTC

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,…

One main issue I see is that it is a huge difference between FAANG and other companies but everyone seems to do the same as FAANG.

I don't live in the US but I think even different US companies has different needs. Our current problem is that it is very hard to find developers. A small or medium sized company may not get many candidates to interview, the problem then changes from finding the best in a large pool of candidates to finding anyone that can do the job. Scaring people off with 7 interviews would probably get us even fewer candidates.