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Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

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Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#11

Post by nullserver »

jtsiskin wrote: post #4
ziddoap wrote: post #2

Interesting read but I (and I think many others) would be more interested in reading about how one manages to land 60 interviews, at all, in the current job market. You must have either a stellar resume, incredible experience, access to a huge network, or a combination of the above.

“The current job market” - tech stocks and revenue is exploding, is the job market difficult currently?

I got an offer from a place (hot startup)that I wasn’t really interested in. Had a call to talk about it, see if I might be into. Oh can you talk to so and so, hey can we do a coding exercises really quick, hey can you chat with founder really quick.

3 days from hearing about company, I had an offer.

Then was being pestered about background check.

Wait, how did I get to this point? I wasn’t even really interested.

Few days later offer was withdrawn since I hadn’t completed paperwork.

Overall I’m glad I didn’t accept, they clearly had a very inflated opinion of themselves and how eager everyone would be to join.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#12

Post by Zenst »

Good to see an article like this as so many people think an interview is a one-way process, it's two-way and you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. SO many let the potential employer dominate the whole process, with the token - do you have any questions at the end. If you have an interview like that, it wasn't a good interview and you will either find out by not getting the job, or later on, doing the job and regretting it down the line.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#13

Post by ipnon »

ziddoap wrote: post #2

Interesting read but I (and I think many others) would be more interested in reading about how one manages to land 60 interviews, at all, in the current job market. You must have either a stellar resume, incredible experience, access to a huge network, or a combination of the above.

Apply the Lindy rule[0]:

To get a job at a startup, have an app portfolio.

To get a job at a Big N, go to an elite university, another Big N, or grind Leetcode for months.

To get a job at a corporation, grind Leetcode and have recruiters spam your resume.

Different jobs require different applicants. A balanced, general approach, would be to do 1 Leetcode problem and send 1 application per day. It'd be hard to still be underemployed after doing that for any while.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#14

Post by mcqueenjordan »

dbish wrote: post #10

My biggest annoyance is late interviewers who then try to rush you through a question. I’ve had multiple interviews in the past where they are around 10 min late when you’ve taken time from your day and they barely acknowledge it, then clearly rush for time. I guarantee they also write down in many cases that they didn’t get enough data points, not noting that a big part of that is their own time management problem (…

I've been in hiring committee debriefs where "I was missing a few data points on X, but this is offset by the fact that the interview started Y minutes late, so we had less time than anticipated" explicitly called out in the written feedback.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#15

Post by NickNaraghi »

> In both interviews, even though the interviewers shared some details about the company, there was a lot of vagueness and about the company’s direction and where the company was headed.

In addition to asking about company direction, I've found this list[0] extremely helpful in both as a hiring manager and as an interviewee.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/35mjw8/what_i_ask...

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#16

Post by ajcp »

ziddoap wrote: post #2

Interesting read but I (and I think many others) would be more interested in reading about how one manages to land 60 interviews, at all, in the current job market. You must have either a stellar resume, incredible experience, access to a huge network, or a combination of the above.

He never says how many actual positions he interviewed for, or at how many companies for that matter. From the article it sounds like he was counting initial phone-screens as well.

If he had applied to 20 separate job postings they could have included a technical phone-screen, a "take-home" test, and a technical interview. Still a banana's amount of engagement for someone to receive in just 30-days though.

That being said and looking at the writer's LinkedIn profile he does appear to have a stellar resume, solid experience, and a large network.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#17

Post by mooxie »

jtsiskin wrote: post #4
ziddoap wrote: post #2

Interesting read but I (and I think many others) would be more interested in reading about how one manages to land 60 interviews, at all, in the current job market. You must have either a stellar resume, incredible experience, access to a huge network, or a combination of the above.

“The current job market” - tech stocks and revenue is exploding, is the job market difficult currently?

My understanding from younger colleagues is that entry-level positions are much more competitive than they were when I was leaving college and entering the tech market 10 or 12 years ago. At that time, my experience was that if you knew Linux (at all) or Windows/Mac administration - and were otherwise a good interviewee - you essentially had your choice of jobs.

People entering the market now talk about it like it's a complete wasteland. Apparently entry-level 'learn-on-the-job' tech work is extremely competitive and difficult to access for new graduates these days. If you're already 'in' and have a network and experience it's still largely like the glory days, but getting to that level is supposedly much more difficult now.

(To be fair to any younger people reading this, my entry-level tech job was at $28k/yr and I worked restaurants and bars until I was able to move on, so it's not like I got a degree and someone threw $150k at me to intern. It took a lot of work, even in the glory days)

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#18

Post by eric-hu »

rsj_hn wrote: post #9

This is at least the third time this thing has been posted to hacker news. Previous dupes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24017555

The second link is a different article on the same blog.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#19

Post by setgree »

I once got stood up for a round of interviews — I showed up, waited, emailed them multiple times to let them know I was there, and then 30 minutes later they wrote to me to ask if I could come in another day (rather than meeting me at the front desk where I was sitting). At the time I was just annoyed that they had wasted my time, but in retrospect, the real red flag there was that no one took responsibility — “there was a scheduling conflict” was as much as I got. I went to the next interview but when I got a weird feeling about it, I withdrew from the process.

You can learn a lot about an org if you just watch how they treat you and each other. That’s the lesson I took from this article as well.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#20

Post by LaserToy »

Had similar marathon 8 years ago and it is draining.

Now, being on the other side (hiring folks for a startup), I would argue that some of flags are a bit misleading. Examples: “Undue pressure to accept an offer letter” - interviews are not free, companies are investing eng time into evaluating each candidate and once they find great one, they really want them to join. They also do not want to be part of a bidding war, so it is natural to impose limits (some folks do go overboard). Recency bias also tells us that if you sit on the offer for a long time and continue interviewing, chances of you accepting the first one are going down. And something I learned only recently - offer stage is also part of the interview, it shows how 2 sides will be working together in the future.

“ Not enough clarity about your role” - normal for growing startups. I tell the candidates - here is what we do, pick something you like and run with it. Of course it is biased towards entrepreneurial types who thrive in uncertainty, but that is the state of many startups.

Mostly agree with other examples. One fun thought, they had 60 interviews. Assume some were 1 hour phone screens and some 1 + 5 hours virtual on sites. If we do 50:50, the industry spent 30 + 30 * 6 = 210 hours of eng time + debriefs, outreaches, negotiations, ... I think statistically, it is not in the interests of companies to participate in such marathons as ROI will be low.

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