Here Are Google, Amazon and Facebook’s Secrets to Hiring the Best People

I don't really ask people to configure things. I ask if you understand how DHCP works, and how TCP works, how top works (ie info is in proc . . . I volunteer laptop at the start of interviews but most people never use it. I try to stray away from asking for a list of facts.

Often I will ask a question about making a big change and I want to know how they go about it, is there error checking, is the a list of failures that can be worked later, if it's big scale are things run in parallel, are parallel processes run in a way that would max out the boxes resources? I don't need all of those because everyone answers those questions differently but I want to know how you think and assume you can look up arguments later. Or that I can teach you how to use a man page depending on the level of hire.

A huge majority of our stack is proprietary so you won't know how to use it anyway. So if you know how to think and you know how to learn then you should be fine.

As someone who is going through a lot of interviews right now, this really made me laugh. Though it also frustrates me.

Before I was in technology, I was a musician. I hate auditions. Every classical musician hates auditioning for an orchestra gig. It's an awful situation that is totally unrealistic and isn't a good measure of how you perform in reality, in an orchestra.

You're standing behind a blind curtain with a handful of people on the other side, and you are playing a violin part from some of the most difficult literature out there with none of the rest of the orchestra for context.

The people on the other side of the screen are waiting for you to make a mistake or just to play something in a style that they don't particularly like so that they can cut you off and say, "Thank you. Next!"

It's fucking brutal. The stress is insane, and the disappointment when you play 10 notes and get sent out is crazy.

When you actually win your job that will pay you a grand total of maybe 20k/year and you realize that you just beat 1,100 people who all went to better music schools than you did, it's pretty euphoric. Until you realize that you now need to go win another 3 of these jobs to make a decent living and travel around to each of them wherever they are.

But as nuts as that experience is, it's still better than the experience of interviewing for tech jobs. I know what I'm up against with an audition. I know what excerpts I'll be playing for as much as a year in advance. Some of the hardest are so standard that I've been practicing them for more than 10 years. It's brutal, but it's known territory. If you keep at it long enough, it is possible to win reliably.

Tech interviews are wildly unpredictable. The range of experiences I've had in the last couple of months is seriously dysfunctional.

Is it a one-person show where you are going to spend the entire time answering questions about the interviewer's PhD project with machine learning (for a Python web developer role) and get tossed out because you are not an ML expert?

Maybe.

Is it a team of 8 developers asking you about Linux kernel internals?

Maybe.

Is it 3 guys in shorts who actually point and laugh at you for wearing a suit and tie to an interview? Because who does that?

Maybe.

Does the director of the dept. actually give you a real idea of what the process is during the phone screen and tell you what to prepare for and what to expect and how to be successful?

That happens sometimes as well, thank goodness.

I probably sound more frustrated than I really am. But I'm starting to judge companies based on their hiring process as harshly or possibly more so than they judge me--starting with the phone screen.

It's mostly a complete shitshow out there right now.

If you can't respect my time enough to call within 5 minutes of when we agreed to talk, and you also can't be bothered to send a quick email letting me know that you are running late, what does that tell me about how you are going to treat me if you do decide to hire me? Nothing good.

If you advertise a job that covers a certain topic and then spend all of our interview time on a completely different topic, what does that tell me about you as a manager or your ability to stay focused on a problem I can help with after you do hire me? Nothing good.

If you show up to my in-person completely unprepared, distracted, and acting like you would rather be doing anything but interviewing me, what does that tell me about what it would be like to work for you and need to have a meeting? Nothing good.

Looking at my calendar since January, I've had more than 50 phone screens, about thirty in-persons, 10 follow-ups/code reviews, and turned down 3 offers because of bullshittery mentioned above. I'm not looking for a quick gig or a paycheck for now. I'm looking for a career and an opportunity to settle down for the next 10-15 years.

The music life was brutal for me. It's a lot of hard work, a lot of travel, no benefits, and very low pay. But you always knew that when you didn't win the job, it was because you just weren't good enough.

The tech life feels more like a lottery than anything related to actual skills, knowledge, or abilities.

We should be doing better than that.

I would recommend reading the article!

Sorry that happened, it's not perfect and sometimes things go wrong. If this was several years ago, things have improved a lot since then.