Interviewing in Silicon Valley

I agree with this article that communication with companies is getting absurdly poor. With all these communications channels available, why is it so hard to send a quick email? Don't have time because of too many candidates? Maybe you shouldn't have more candidates than you have time to handle.

I've reached a point in my career where I'm not interested in engineering positions anymore (a great motivator has been to avoid the absurd SV-style interview). SV-style companies don't know what to do in these situations, they have an open position, I have the experience and skill set, let's have a conversation about the work I've done and what your needs are.

Problem is, nobody in the company knows how to hire for these positions and they seem to be done based on word of mouth or through the networks of the investors or other seniors in the company. In a couple of interviews at these companies, they plan for the usual all-day interview, and then I sit there in front of an interviewer who is simply at a loss for what to ask me.

On occasion they haul out a brain teaser, but I usually stop that with a "you do realize the position that you are hiring for is not one where solving brain teasers will be a reflection of the kind of work I'll be doing". This rings some alarm bells as some of the larger SV companies have found themselves on the business end of a law suit for this. Asking prospective project managers nonsense questions during an interview offers no information to the hiring committee about the suitability of a candidate. This can create a legal liability for the company if the unhired candidates feel they've been discriminated against -- especially if the company just hires somebody they know anyway -- proving that the position wasn't filled on a level playing field for all the candidates.

One other problem I've faced, I simply make too much money these days. In an interview with a now very large company that exactly matches the format in this article, I made it through the interview gauntlets and finally got to the compensation round:

"So what kind of compensation are you looking for?"

"Well, I made this much last year, I'd like to make at least that much this year and going forward."

blank stare of shock "y-y-you made how much?"

"Well, it was a mix of sources, my base was this, I made this much in bonuses and additional grants, and I was helpful in a few sales and earned this much commission. I don't expect that this job is commissionable, but I'm open to alternate mixes of compensation so long as my base stays about the same."

"y-y-you realize not even the CEO is pulling down that much base?"

"I'm afraid I'm not privy to your company's compensation packages, but I know that the CEO reported a few tens of millions in stock grants last year, I'm not expecting that much, but if you feel the need to offer a lower base, I'd like to expedite the vesting schedule by a year then"

"I-I-I.....I'll see what I can do."

And that ended that job right there. I received a very nice call with a rejection a week later.

Another anecdote, a friend of mine interviewed for a VP position with another major SV company, he got through the initial rounds based on his education (Ivy-League) and other credentials. During the interview they decided to do the equivalent of an engineering-style interview...the recruiting team had clearly dug deep into the bowels of some undergrad finance textbooks, and asked him to derive a number of finance formulae he hadn't seen or cared about in 20 years. It was utterly random and doomed to failure. He went on to other companies where we was quite successful, while that position remained open for the better part of two years before finally being filled with a friend of one of the investors.

The best places I've worked (as an engineer and otherwise) have been the ones that don't engage in this nonsense. I can see a simple fizzbuzz test being a prescreen as being useful, but just sitting down with a candidate and having a conversation about their resume seems to work best. Bonus, it's respectful of the candidate. Unlike a great many companies, you've actually taken the time to look at their resume. If you recognize something on the resume, ask them some penetrating questions and dig into what they know. If you don't recognize something, engage them to teach you about it. Competent people are competent at talking about their job. Ask them things like "can you give me examples of where you applied algorithm design or at least some complexity theory in a job?" If they give an example, probe deeper, have them talk in depth about the algorithm, see what they remember from their undergrad about big-O. Or "what was the most difficult integration you've ever faced?" followed with a "why?". Dig in, make it a conversation. Let them become a teacher during the interview, where they teach you about what they know and about their life. Ask questions like a student would. It's respectful, humble and draws unbelievable amounts of information from a candidate.

You'll quickly learn what kinds of things they know, what they don't know and what they're weak at. You'll also learn about their soft skills, like communication. Instead of playing an insipid game of cat and mouse, you'll learn about the person you're hiring. Ain't that what YC looks for?

> Most of us have accepted offers at smaller companies

You'll probably be happier, more challenged and learn more this way. Having worked from ultra-small to ultra-big, I learned the most from the small to medium-small places. There's fewer people to fall back on, so you end up cross training.

If you think "Explain design decisions and trade-offs of different techniques." is a 'puzzle'... Perhaps that explains a lot.

then, why not ask for a verbal solution?

This is a good comment. Some nits I'd like to pick:

* Companies aren't required to provide a level playing field to applicants. I think you've alluded here to discrimination against protected classes; that is, you're suggesting that someone could get an unnecessarily hard interview and use it as evidence that they were constructively rejected for their race or gender. That could happen, but most companies probably use the same terrible interview for everyone but their friends, which, while unethical, is lawful.

* In our experience, the resume conversation is the second-worst hiring signal, after the trivia interview we're discussing here. The ability to sound smart while talking about your experience involves a set of skills usually disjoint from those of the job. Every hiring mistake I've made in my career has involved someone who could "talk the talk"; in fact, many times, those people can also, if forced at gunpoint, "walk the walk", which makes their unsuitability all the harder to spot.

I'm an advocate for work-sample tests: have a standard set of (reasonably small) problems that are representative of the work you do and give them to all candidates so you can grade them. After we started doing this, it quickly became apparent that I didn't even need to have much insight into what reasonable or "good" solutions to our challenges were, because I could just look how good hires/candidates had solved those problems in the past.