A Limited Interest Article on Employer Value Prop and Hiring

False negative problem is so ridiculous. I work for a faang, I’ve worked at all kinds of “prestigious” companies, I have worked at all kinds of companies, I get paid more than most people will ever do in their lifetime, and most importantly I know my stuff. Yet there are companies out there rejecting me for job descriptions which are only 50% of my skill set because I couldn’t code this obscure hard algorithms problem in 45 mins. Makes absolutely no sense.

I know “tech interviews are bad” has been discussed at nauseam,but I feel compelled to write this because it still doesn’t get fixed.

PS: I am not salty. I’m one of those engineers who doesn’t care about company mission. I’ll work optimizing streaming at 4K for adult content websites if they pay me enough.

Re: A Limited Interest Article on Employer Value Prop and Hiring

#6

Post by xwolfi » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 4:41 AM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #5

False negative problem is so ridiculous. I work for a faang, I’ve worked at all kinds of “prestigious” companies, I have worked at all kinds of companies, I get paid more than most people will ever do in their lifetime, and most importantly I know my stuff. Yet there are companies out there rejecting me for job descriptions which are only 50% of my skill set because I couldn’t code this obscure hard algorithms proble…

And Im sure adult sites are full of non trivial interesting problems and could be managed relatively ethically.

As for the interview problem you face, it's due to offer and demand. I work in an investment bank in Hong Kong, we need ideally super experts in everything who can do low latency, understand swaps, know other brokers, client systems, exchanges, FIX by heart and stuff like that.

We start interviewing on those constraints and then if we find no one we lower the bar until we ask for a LinkedList implementation and find a guy doing it relatively ok. And the guy turns out to be great and useful most of the time and we have to teach him the gaps. If you cant get in the job you want it s prob because they find too many people already and can afford to select on absurd skills.

Re: A Limited Interest Article on Employer Value Prop and Hiring

#7

Post by gopalv » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:25 AM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #5

False negative problem is so ridiculous. I work for a faang, I’ve worked at all kinds of “prestigious” companies, I have worked at all kinds of companies, I get paid more than most people will ever do in their lifetime, and most importantly I know my stuff. Yet there are companies out there rejecting me for job descriptions which are only 50% of my skill set because I couldn’t code this obscure hard algorithms proble…

> Yet there are companies out there rejecting me for job descriptions which are only 50% of my skill set because I couldn’t code this obscure hard algorithms problem in 45 mins

This is usually an odd thing that happens when you accidentally interview yourself a level below - there's a definite "I made a trade-off to do something else" that you hit at the boundary of senior+ engineer.

I interviewed at a FAANG recently where they asked me when I committed my last patch. Not "when did you review a patch", but had to skip over all the +1s and to a patch I had authored.

I knew immediately that the interviewer didn't care about whether I could talk to customers or get other teams to do dependency features or even if I could balance a tech-debt vs velocity decision.

I knew I had missed on my leveling, because I didn't get worse at algorithms or writing patches because I couldn't, but because I was doing something else more relevant to shipping software in my organization.

The next job conversation, I was interviewing for a Sr Principal and the VP I talked to could see how they could use the last 3 years of my "optimizing for results" better than the engineer who couldn't understand why I was doing management tasks as an IC & why that meant I didn't write patches, that I got them in into the releases in the right order across teams.

They're rejecting you because you aren't a match for the job they have at hand.

You should see mismatches as time saved on your part, not as rejections.

Re: A Limited Interest Article on Employer Value Prop and Hiring

#8

Post by azov » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:29 AM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #5

False negative problem is so ridiculous. I work for a faang, I’ve worked at all kinds of “prestigious” companies, I have worked at all kinds of companies, I get paid more than most people will ever do in their lifetime, and most importantly I know my stuff. Yet there are companies out there rejecting me for job descriptions which are only 50% of my skill set because I couldn’t code this obscure hard algorithms proble…

Frankly, optimizing streaming for adult content might well be one of the most innocent things one can do in our industry :)

Re: A Limited Interest Article on Employer Value Prop and Hiring

#9

Post by darth_avocado » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:38 AM UTC

gopalv wrote: post #7

darth_avocado wrote: post #5

False negative problem is so ridiculous. I work for a faang, I’ve worked at all kinds of “prestigious” companies, I have worked at all kinds of companies, I get paid more than most people will ever do in their lifetime, and most importantly I know my stuff. Yet there are companies out there rejecting me for job descriptions which are only 50% of my skill set because I couldn’t code this obscure hard algorithms proble…

> Yet there are companies out there rejecting me for job descriptions which are only 50% of my skill set because I couldn’t code this obscure hard algorithms problem in 45 mins This is usually an odd thing that happens when you accidentally interview yourself a level below - there's a definite "I made a trade-off to do something else" that you hit at the boundary of senior+ engineer. I interviewed at a FAANG recently…

Right but I’m not talking about rejections when you’ve had extended conversations, I’m talking about phone screens, which often have nothing to do with the actual job.

Re: A Limited Interest Article on Employer Value Prop and Hiring

#10

Post by darth_avocado » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 5:42 AM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #6

darth_avocado wrote: post #5

False negative problem is so ridiculous. I work for a faang, I’ve worked at all kinds of “prestigious” companies, I have worked at all kinds of companies, I get paid more than most people will ever do in their lifetime, and most importantly I know my stuff. Yet there are companies out there rejecting me for job descriptions which are only 50% of my skill set because I couldn’t code this obscure hard algorithms proble…

And Im sure adult sites are full of non trivial interesting problems and could be managed relatively ethically. As for the interview problem you face, it's due to offer and demand. I work in an investment bank in Hong Kong, we need ideally super experts in everything who can do low latency, understand swaps, know other brokers, client systems, exchanges, FIX by heart and stuff like that. We start interviewing on thos…

It’s actually the other way around. Being on the other side of the interview panel quite a few times, I’ve seen great candidates get rejected for silly reasons, meanwhile the positions get filled with people not at all qualified to do that particular job because they interview well.