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If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

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Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#151

Post by peteradio »

yrgulation wrote: post #75
jackblemming wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always amuses me seeing programmers chasing as much money as possible when they make a fraction of executives or many other professions. Even if they're at the "elite grand master SRE" level. Still a fraction of some MBA.

thats why i keep telling people that software “engineering” or computer “science” are not worth pursuing. unless you use either as a launchpad. these types of jobs are just fancy bricklaying. however there is nuance to everything. some people find 200k a year and living with flatmates in an expensive city rewarding. to each their own. i know i did. until it hit me.

Then what is worth pursuing? Entrepreneurship? I can't even spell the word correctly without a spellchecker.

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#152

Post by temporallobe »

The beginning of wisdom is to understand that nobody knows everything. I regularly interview candidates for my team and other teams. I can pretty much determine in about an hour if a candidate is a good fit or not. But one thing I have noticed lately is that some of them try to cheat (only possible with remote interviews of course). Basically they google answers as we are talking, or they have someone else do it in the background. It’s pretty obvious because there are long pauses, attempts to delay, indications that they’re reading something, and then they suddenly know the answers. They never say “I don’t know.” My “gotcha” technique is to ask a really esoteric question that I am certain the candidate would not know, and somehow, miracle of miracles, they suddenly know the answer after “thinking” about it for a minute. I actually don’t really care how much you know, rather, I care that you are honest, confident, resourceful, passionate, and that you communicate clearly. Obviously intelligence matters as well, and I’d take an intelligent person with the above-mentioned qualities who lacks knowledge in a particular technology than a “qualified” candidate who pretends to know everything and is a liar. And hey, I’ll be the first to admit that I live on stack overflow.

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#153

Post by yieldcrv »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #110
treyfitty wrote: post #94

I’ve been interviewing for 8 months. Getting to many final rounds, 1 lowballed offer, 1 rescinded offer, and it’s playing a mental toll. Today, I got a rejection that went along the lines of “everyone loved you and there was absolutely 0 negative feedback, but we just found a better fit.” I almost broke down, but hid behind a facade of positivity because the long weekend was starting and my kids can’t afford a bummed…

This is why I just interview endlessly. At least one a week. You need to develop a callus to interviewing. Find the time for it by rubber stamping a few code reviews. It gets boring after a while. Just a very repetitive process after 100 or so.

Realizing my competition is doing this was even more discouraging for me. Energy can just be put towards other things.

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#154

Post by sys_64738 »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #110
treyfitty wrote: post #94

I’ve been interviewing for 8 months. Getting to many final rounds, 1 lowballed offer, 1 rescinded offer, and it’s playing a mental toll. Today, I got a rejection that went along the lines of “everyone loved you and there was absolutely 0 negative feedback, but we just found a better fit.” I almost broke down, but hid behind a facade of positivity because the long weekend was starting and my kids can’t afford a bummed…

This is why I just interview endlessly. At least one a week. You need to develop a callus to interviewing. Find the time for it by rubber stamping a few code reviews. It gets boring after a while. Just a very repetitive process after 100 or so.

Once you interview and turn them down then will they interview you again? Doesn't that close a lot of doors?

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#155

Post by Retric »

yrgulation wrote: post #57
Retric wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re selling your life, focusing on chasing ever more money is a poor trade IMO. Not saying you have to join a non profit, just consider what you want to work on, who you want to work with, and the kind of hours you want to put in.

Yeah sure i should chase making a boss happy instead “for stuff that matters”. No thanks. I’ll work my butt off instead for the right people and pay. It’s a win win situation.

Working your butt off is one option, working significantly less than full time is another.

However, if you only focus on pay you drastically diminish your search space. No SV company is actually pushing the bounds of AGI research for example.

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#157

Post by cgio »

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #134
PebblesHD wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can absolutely see this position, for me it’s more a case of protecting ourselves against the rare but increasing occasions of candidates actually making misleading claims. As I’ve said in a sibling comment, for me I like to be able to take basic skills at face value, and focus on core competencies. If someone can learn the skill during probation, that’s totally fine.

To me it seems simpler to just let someone go if they're not working out after 90 days; no need to tell every new hire that they're "on probation".

To be fair to the original poster, in Australia, whether you tell every new hire or not, they are still on probation legally in terms of employer obligations, so it is good to tell if you want to establish clarity, and follow appropriate procedures in terms of setting goals and keeping them up to date as end of probation nears to avoid vagueness and stress. Depending on size of hiring organisation, probation is 6 months for big organisations and 12 months for smaller ones.

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#158

Post by warriormonk5 »

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #134
PebblesHD wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can absolutely see this position, for me it’s more a case of protecting ourselves against the rare but increasing occasions of candidates actually making misleading claims. As I’ve said in a sibling comment, for me I like to be able to take basic skills at face value, and focus on core competencies. If someone can learn the skill during probation, that’s totally fine.

To me it seems simpler to just let someone go if they're not working out after 90 days; no need to tell every new hire that they're "on probation".

Probation is a legal term that has implications like you can let someone go for no reason. Most places don't have zero worker rights like the US does.

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#159

Post by charlieyu1 »

gabeio wrote: post #65
PebblesHD wrote: post #44

These styles of multi-round interviews inspired by the FAANG collective started picking up in Australia before the pandemic, but it got to a point where most of my more talented colleagues and I all agreed it just wasn’t worth the time for the salaries being offered. 4 round interviews for a ‘senior’ developer position on $120k? When interviewing my own candidates, I use a 1 hour interview mostly focused on approach…

> We have a probation period to work out if they’ve over-promised I'm curious what you mean by over-promised? Unless you only do this for people who don't already have a job, this sounds more toxic than multiple interviews. "Oh yeah we want you to work for us, but quit your old company, we'll try you out for a few weeks and if not we'll go our separate ways" ... but they quit their previous company so it's not as nic…

But is it better than the alternative, that’s the current system of multi-round interview that takes months because companies try to avoid a wrong decision?

Re: If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever

#160

Post by askafriend »

xtracto wrote: post #69
happyopossum wrote: post #27

I’ve seen so many of these jokes and complaints about modern SV interviews that I was blown away when I recently interviewed at a FAANG… I was assigned a recruiter who communicated clearly and often with me, told exactly how many interviews I was doing (3), what each was about, and all 3 were scheduled on the same day, and were handled by extremely smart and supportive people. Offer came through by the end of the wee…

I found it funny that a week ago I got an email from a Google recruiter, offering me to enter their interviewing machinery. I bluntly told him that I rejected the offer because of the horror stories regarding 5-7 interviews in Google. The recruiter's reply was that it was ok of this was not an appropriate time for me , and that we would stay in touch. How can they be so dense? Of course it may be that they are also j…

They don't need you - they have tons of very talented people applying.
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