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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

#181

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…

I don't like having one interview with one interviewer. That can easily result in that interviewer having a bad day or simply being biased and costing someone a job.

That'd be a problem if there'd be a shortage of interesting jobs.

And, speaking as somebody who's seen a 4-digit number of interview packets: The multi-interviewer format is far from flawless, too. The capability of groups of humans to collectively fuck up without ever talking to each other is quite impressive.

If you absolutely want to invest more time, at least build a multi-hour interview that has people do their job, in a team environment. Because that's what ultimately will happen.

Don't do multiple rounds of CS trivia.

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

#182
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they said in the interview they’re very comfortable with Vue.js and Postgres, and then you find out after a few weeks that actually they barely know Vue or Postgres, they actually come from a React/SQLite background, they’ve overpromised. Rather than ensuring every bullet point on their resume is factual through six interviews I’ve found it’s better to assume they’re honest and as capable as advertised, interview…

Find me an engineer who knows both vue.js and Postgres and they’re worth their pound of salt. And, if you’re differentiating against React and SQLite - e.g. they’re not familiar with JSONB style queries or CTEs, but instead have some alternative, par familiarity with another db… and the same level of sophistication with an FE stack - e.g usage of useRef vs forwardRef… and you cut them loose… well, they’ll probably be…

Vue / Vuetify / Nuxt dev here, and a pinch of php. I used to work with some Postgres in a previous job.

Personally I don’t understand how people can keep switching between different libraries all the time. I’ve been working Vue for the past year and I still know I don’t know everything.

Glad I’ve gotten hang of typescript though.

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

#184

> "Phase three starts at 8 a.m. sharp, next Monday, and lasts for fourteen Pomodoro-timer cycles, concluding at 5:38 p.m." Unfortunately, this sounds dreadful and yet completely plausible. Pomodoros, or taking short breaks every once in a while, really are useful for avoiding stretching out tasks, though.

i already shrunk back inwards at the mention of 14 pomodoros.

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

#185
post #116

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…

I just went through an interview cycle at a FAANG, and I'm pretty sure only one interviewer out of five was directly involved in the actual position. And I'm somewhat certain that it was the others who were the nos. I actually didn't find out anything about the position until the final interview. Additionally, no one in the panel was a software engineer ... for a software engineering position.

Honestly, it sounds like you dodged a bullet.

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

#186
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we put our mental health on the line for this industry? There must be other jobs that are fulfilling and pay the bills.

whose bills though? most people find one of the most high paying jobs they can, then adjust their lifestyle to that income, then if they miss the mark ('lowball offer') they have to keep looking. lifestyle regression is exceptionally hard for humans, especially if your friends/neighbors don't have to go through the same thing (e.g. there's no war raging in your country). the best thing to do would be to keep your spe…

My spouse and I have household income around the median for the area, and through a combination of discipline and good luck have managed to keep expenses very low.

It's not a life of depravation. We take nice vacations and buy the things we want, but we have to be careful not to want things like fancy cars or elaborate remodels. These seem like very unimportant things to forego when you stand to gain freedom from monetary worry.

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

#187

Our most recent hire just quit - after 2.5 months. Because the interview process at a “better” company finally ended with an offer. So you might get screwed even if you don’t play these games.

Rather than being annoyed, maybe you should ask why the other offer was "better".

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

#189
post #121
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just went through an interview cycle at a FAANG, and I'm pretty sure only one interviewer out of five was directly involved in the actual position. And I'm somewhat certain that it was the others who were the nos. I actually didn't find out anything about the position until the final interview. Additionally, no one in the panel was a software engineer ... for a software engineering position.

That sounds unlike faang interviews (the only one person being a swe part). Which one was it and what were the interviews like? The non-team thing is common but they do it to bring “objectivity” to the process and since it’s leetcode or system design questions, it usually doesn’t matter unless you’re applying for a highly specialized role. I can speak for google and Amazon - you might not even apply for a specific te…

The interview revolved almost 100% around their leadership principles, of which humility is not one, so that should pinpoint it. And I said no one was a software engineer. All six were management.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is super expensive to hire someone. The costs are enormous. Let's take a hire that will make $10,000 per month, nice round number. Someone in HR has to write the job description. This takes the HR person's time, the hiring manager, the hiring manager's boss just to get the information for a job description Job description cost with hiring manager: $500 Job description cost with hiring manager's boss: $500 HR perso…

Companies give tiny raises to loyal employees. If hiring is so expensive why don't companies make effort to retain employees by giving them raises that make their compensation at least at par with that of the new hires.

Because human nature favors inertia. Some may leave because they don't get pay raises, but most people hate change. So they stay. And the company gets higher profits by keeping payroll down. However, if every single person quit exactly at performance review time, every single employee, due to not keeping up with new hires or comparable pay to the industry, they would change. But they don't do this because all employees don't quit. It's a simple calculation. How many people will quit? if you have 100 tech people, getting paid $100,000/year each, that is 10,000,000 per year. Give them 25% raise and then the payroll goes up $2,500,000 per year, and you have to pay that the next year, too, and the next year, and the next year. Plus bonuses and all that. Payroll taxes go up, too. So a lot more expenses. Also, if you give people a 25% raise, what do you give them the following year and the one after that? There's all kinds of psychological things going on in the game. You give someone a 25% raise this year and a 1.5% raise next year, nobody is going to look at it as bringing them on par to others, they are going to look at being ripped off because they got 25% last year and only a measly 1.5% this year. "Why didn't I get at least 12%???"

But if there are low raises, and 2 people quit because they are not getting paid enough, then the company hires 2 more people to replace them, that's going to be $350K to hire two new hires.

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