If You Want This Job, We Must Interview You Forever • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by jeffrallen » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:02 AM UTC

I found my last job by targeting a company I found fascinating and then finding a way to make myself useful to the CEO. It took 4 or 5 interactions with him over 6 months, and the last one was a formal "pair programming" session.

I am not saying this would work for everyone, just noticing the interesting symmetry that when you find a job by networking instead of applying directly through the front door, the interview cycle is also long, but it is more about learning and adapting to the other than a high stakes set of judgements.

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

#292

Post by celdon25 » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:04 AM UTC

NonNefarious wrote: post #250

bmitc wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From that I would guess Google, who are known to be douchebags in the interview process and in the peer-eval process. Hell, they admitted as much a few years ago... and claimed they were going to try to be better.

Google told me the interview would be in my choice of language. I chose C#, passed the first interview, then the second interview was in C and was based on language trivia. The kind of stuff you won’t know unless you work with C on a daily basis.

Needless to say I was pissed.

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

#293

Post by carl_sandland » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:05 AM UTC

With regards to short term work; It does seem like the barrier of entry for shorter term contract work can be dramatically lower than with full-time "join our cult" scenarios. My personal pet peave is when smaller companies seem to go broke in the middle of an interview process, I guess it's for the best lol.

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

#294

Post by mkl95 » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:07 AM UTC

My longest interview process lasted around 7 weeks. During this time I basically met all my bosses, from my direct manager to C-level. I was going to do some formal engineering challenges initially, but they were eventually removed from the process.

A few days after I joined the company an engineer at my level was fired, allegedly due to his performance. His manager said that the hiring process had been improved to prevent that from happening again.

I instantly knew he was lying. The hiring process had actually been made more stupid because the company was struggling to attract engineers. I was actually the only candidate during the last few rounds of interviews.

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

#295

Post by closedloop129 » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:08 AM UTC

Can something be done that changes the dynamics in the job market? The underlying problem is that companies don't trust the existing available information.

E.g. if individuals cannot be judged, could it be easier to hire entire teams? This would reduce the control that a company has over their software because the knowledge is gone if the team abandons the contract. So, could software be structured and documented to the extend that leaving teams are not a problem? And if so, would it be feasible to create enough software teams and software managed by teams that there is a working market?

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

#296

Post by jeffrallen » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:09 AM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #59

bruce511 wrote: post #37

Interviewing is hard, requires skills precisely zero people are trained to do, and has huge long-term upsides and downsides to a business. I'm a programmer. I trained for years to do that. Then I'm asked to hire someone. A task I have zero experience or training at. Spoiler alert - any actual competence is a fluke. At my peak I was hiring maybe 2 or 3 people in a year. Mostly I hired people I'd heard about who came w…

I think I've been fairly successful as an interviewer by having a few basic rules. Basically, do your homework, which I'm routinely surprised is so lacking in the adult world. For interviews, that means read their resume and probably have it with you in print form or other when you interview them. Print feels more sociable than staring at them over a laptop and clicking a bunch of keys while they talk - though I do t…

+1 for paper, you can even point to things on their c.v. to direct their attention to something you want to discuss... this is a good way to put them at ease, after all, if they don't know their own c.v. what do they know?

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

#297

Post by thebeastie » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:10 AM UTC

Code interview practical exercises. Ive been asked to do them maybe 6-10 times. Each time I completed the test to a high standard and got rejected for other random reasons. Once I spend a day writing a PostgreSQL extension in C to shuttle data between tables, at the request of a company, and I didn’t even get an interview.

Once I interviewed for a company and everything was great but they said my rate was too high even though I had told them up front.

Once I showed up and the interviewer wasn’t even there and they hadn’t bothered to let me know.

Once a dude got me to propose and diagram an architecture for their actual system during the interview and I didn’t hear from them again. Swindled.

Then there’s having recruiters breathing down your neck and asking invasive questions while protecting all the details about the client and the job…

Yea. Done with it

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

#298

Post by philliphaydon » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:14 AM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #255

philliphaydon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why propbation periods exist. It’s a chance for the employee or employer to back out.

> This is why propbation periods exist. It’s a chance for the employee or employer to back out. It's not an equal risk though - the employer can easily weather (or not even notice) the ending of that employment, while the employee undergoes a life-changing event.

I disagree.

> the employer can easily weather

In a large business maybe, but more often than not in a large business you're a number and you're gonna pass probation regardless.

In a smaller business, the cost of recruitment process can be huge, it's not just 1 hour interview and you're done as an employer. It's hours of reviewing CVs, contacting people, arranging times, conducting interviews, weening people out, disruption to your primary job role, etc etc. That's a huge cost and drain on the business.

If the business decides they don't want you during that probation period, you must have done something pretty bad, because that's a huge cost sink to that business.

In a medium business alot of that goes away, sure, but they pay for in recruitment fees, interviews (less) offers, onboarding, etc.

My point is, its very difficult for a business to weather this stuff. If a business lets you go during a probation period, it must really not be a good fit.

I've been involved in some recruitment process over my 18 year career, never the primary person doing it, so only reviewed CVs and been in the interviews.

Only once did we let someone go during probation, because he was quite toxic and spent all his time complaining rather than working.

At the same time I've only seen 1 person quit during probation after 1 week. He was hired to do Design and HTML/CSS, but decided after 1 week he didn't like doing HTML/CSS and decided to leave. Which made my boss absolutely furious because of the wasted time that the typical 1 week notice was thrown out the window and he was asked to leave the building right away.

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

#299

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:14 AM UTC

PebblesHD wrote: post #177

thundergolfer wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canva, Square, AWS, Atlassian, Palantir, Google. If you’re senior ex-FAANG you can easily get $250+ $300+ is probably staff level and above.

Surprised to see Square and Canva in the list there. I’m currently staff level elsewhere but semi-regularly get approached by them with offers lower than $200k for senior roles. Would you say the salaries mentioned are fairly common there or fairly niche?

They would be very rare unless he’s talking total compensation (inc. super, stocks, bonuses) at the larger companies. Even then I’d expect the average to be low $200k for a senior depending on how they define senior.

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

#300

Post by jeffrallen » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:15 AM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #248

SxC97 wrote: post #235

It's very refreshing to hear others complain about the interview culture at these companies. In the last year I've interviewed at Apple, Amazon, Meta, IBM and a couple others and failed every interview. I've only recently finished my undergrad in CS and am still working on my CS masters but despite doing well in school I felt like an absolute failure after every interview. It's somewhat comforting to hear this is a c…

Some of the most interesting and friendly places to work at, where I learned the most, were small companies. I strongly recommend you consider looking around for any small, cool tech companies in your area. Ask among your professors, look for local slack/discord groups, etc.

Or watch for small, neat signs in low rent business parks. Someone who cares enough to present a tidy and professional image while economising on rent is going to make a good boss.