Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 833 posts

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

#761

Post by nickjj »

ByteJockey wrote: post #598
Aachen wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are some high standards, you value your time at 250×8×5×52= half a million a year? I don't disagree that 30 hours is way over the top for an interview question unless you happen to find it as much fun as , or if it's somehow usefully spent time for other reasons, but your response seems to be at an equally extreme end of the spectrum.

This isn't a guaranteed full time job. For all intents and purposes, it's a short term contract with very little notice. Dev time is like anything else, if you buy in bulk (say... 2000 hours a year) and on a regular schedule, you can get some pretty good discounts. I'm in the mid-west, and that's a little under my rate for short-term low-notice (read: emergency) contract work. I can't imagine anyone on either of the…

> I can't imagine anyone on either of the coasts is going to jump at it.

So for clarity, they will jump to do 10 hours for 5-7 technical interviews at $0 but won't do 10 hours of paid contracting work where they get $2,000?

I can't speak for anyone other than myself but $200 / hour is pretty damn competitive for any contract work no matter where you live. That's $192,000 a year if you put in 20 hours a week (half the normal 40 hours that most folks put in). I wouldn't classify this as emergency work either. You're getting notified of a contracting opportunity in the form of an interview.

I spent ~20 years doing contract work. If someone messaged me on Wednesday, unless I'm really busy chances are I could start working with them the upcoming Monday. Sometimes I do find myself booked for weeks or months but if someone comes to me for an oddball job where I know it's only 5-15 hours of work and they're cool with me only putting in 1-2 hours a day then I can almost always find time to do it, even when I'm at near max "comfortable" capacity (~40 hours of contracting work a week).

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

#762

Post by graderjs »

graderjs wrote: post #682
kjeetgill wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don't think 2 phone calls and 5-6 hr onsite is that complex. Maybe the onsite could be 3 instead: 2 code + behavioral, but I can't imagine wanting to do less than that.

Nor do I. But I'm the cases we seem to be talking about here, normally it's not like that tho. It's multiple rounds: 5-7 interviews. Especially since remote.

eh: in the cases... Not "I'm", heh :) sorry :) ;p

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

#763

Post by water8 »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #710
water8 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but the damage that they’ll due to your reputation online will make you have to pay more for better talent. They are going to read the glass door and see your company environment as shit and say “I want an extra 20 grand” Not to mention the amount of technical debt high turnover causes for tech companies

Not that many people actually get fired in a hire fast fire fast workplace. The whole point of hiring this way is allowing yourself to not overprepare in an aversion to hiring poor talent. When you get a poor performer, you just let them go, but the average is not that bad, and you end up filling your billets faster where another company may not at all. The opposite is 7 interviews and shedding most of your applicant…

No question the interview process is akin to testing a marathon runner by their 100m dash time.

I was just talking about to implications of poor company chemistry which stems from lack of trust and job insecurity.

I think the best way to evaluate a person is just to talk to them about their experience and why they do what they do. Passion is a critical indicator

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

#765

Post by lIIIllllIIII »

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…

Funny, last time around it wasn't the interviewing that got to me, but the nightmare of lining up and going through interviews while also having a young baby and working full time. I remember working during the baby's naps on the weekend and then doing take home quizzes / online tests at like 10pm and like, barely scraping through.

I considered applying for Google at the time, but the combination of the famously arduous interview process, AFAIK both in terms of the time taken and difficulty (for which the recruiter recommended taking further studies in advanced data structures and algorithms) meant that attempting it would be silly.

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

#766

Post by ihateolives »

justinlloyd wrote: post #737
ihateolives wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 com…

It was a hypothetical question about whether you have plan B for when you do not find applicants presence in the social media to be enough to draw conclusions but you answered that now. I would consider most of these thing that you listed to have nothing to do with professional aptitude but the fact you took time to go through the process with random dude on the internet for some reason and then deemed these things important enough to list here speaks volumes about you.

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

#767

Post by just_testing »

boisenberrier wrote: post #225
novok wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PIPing and firing is a huge time and emotional energy suck, and it sucks for people on both sides. To reduce the amount it happens is worthy. You can’t in practice just say, “this guy sucks, lets fire him next week” And it shows, barely anyone in my entire career has ever been fired. I only personally have been close to one.

So you’ve been close to one person getting fired? How do you have an opinion on the PIP process or firing at all if you have next to no experience with it? I knew a guy at a FAANG who earned himself and his report a PIP for the grave sin of choosing the wrong deputy to send upstairs while he was on vacation. The deputized person went to one meeting and ran his mouth (arguably, told the truth). Both are no longer at t…

FINALLY someone on this thread that understands politics and freaking understands that human beings are not spherical and frictionless.

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

#768

Post by thematrixturtle »

boredtofears wrote: post #502
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YMMV, but it's actually quite difficult to get a PIP in many tech companies Generally, the more the company practices “hire fast, fire fast” the easier and more common it will be to PIP people. The companies with 4+ stage interviews and entire departments devoted to recruiting and candidate evaluation tend to not have as many PIPs because they’ve studied their interviewing processes and prevented most of the underp…

How do extended interviews root out people that are going to later go through some kind of major personal issue or have burnout or have a lack of motivation? Lack of motivation and burnout maybe could be somewhat sussed out in an interview if it was obvious, but the people that I've been around that's happened to (and myself at one point in my career) were completely fine, but I'm skeptical of any interviewer that sa…

They don't/can't, which is why you still see both at any company, no matter how it interviews.

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

#769

Post by nnt38 »

justinlloyd wrote: post #658
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 enginee…

So you screen out everyone who cares about their online privacy?

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

#770

Post by renewiltord »

nickjj wrote: post #757
renewiltord wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m trying to feel out why it bothers me and I think it’s because:

- I will probably exit an interview process in an hour if the company isn’t a good fit

- We’re not talking about normal employment here. This is in addition to my job.

Post reply on HN