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

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

#831

Post by H12 » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

StupidUser123 wrote: post #257

mylons wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get PIP’ed and fired routinely that make it through this process. I think there’s a lot of bias in your response. The process worked for you, you work at a large tech company and it gives you validation. It also makes you feel good to lord over the process and boosts your ego, reinforcing your priors.

How does me being okay with a smaller role in the overall hiring process equate to me wanting to lord over people? I’m a hiring manager, it’s literally my job to pick people to hire. I’d rather have the opinions of my colleagues in addition to my own. My response was in good faith, and yours is not.

I think mylons had the perception that you were a senior engineer conducting technical interviews as opposed to a hiring manager.

Having had a fair bit of experience interviewing on the technical side, I've observed a huge variance in quality of interviewer. Sometimes you get someone who values communication, creative problem solving and asking good questions. Sometimes you get a whiz kid who gets off on playing gatekeeper and judging people as below their superior intellect.

Even a single person in the chain who falls into that latter group can completely derail a potential hire, leading to an overabundance of false negatives, IMO.

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

#832

Post by cookiecaper » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

linspace wrote: post #417

cookiecaper wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"(Personal|Professional|Performance) Improvement Plan". It's the first formal stage in the firing process at most companies with HR depts, which would almost certainly include any publicly-listed company. If you're at the PIP stage, it generally means your boss and your superboss have decided that it's time for you to go, but for legal purposes, they need to look like they tried to give you a chance, so they work wit…

> it generally means your boss and your superboss have decided that it's time for you to go The problem is that those are two highly correlated data points. Toxic bosses are eventually found but at that point they leave a track of dead bodies. What I have seen sometimes is moving around disgruntled employees. It has its own problems but a lot of the times they are recovered and even become very productive again.

> The problem is that those are two highly correlated data points. Toxic bosses are eventually found but at that point they leave a track of dead bodies.

Agree, and this is often overlooked. There's a handful of people I used to admire whose tendency to readily believe whatever's being sold by their middling middle management chain has left me deeply disappointed.

Middle management is a necessary evil, but there's little hope if upper management fails to recognize and subvert its inherent incentive structure.

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

#833

Post by sevrinsky » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 8:14 PM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #297

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.

> 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.

Speaking as a senior dev who has interviewed dozens (if not hundreds) of candidates, I assure you that the bulk of the burden is firmly on the interviewers, not the candidates.