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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

#101

Post by anonymoushn »

vmception wrote: post #32
sethhochberg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the hiring side, a (reasonable) expiration on the offer helps be fair to the other people who are interviewing, too. If I have a single position open and multiple people interviewing, as a hiring manager I really need to know whether my top choice is serious once we're having a discussion about signing a contract - because if they aren't, or are still trying to land better offers from other places because they h…

Exploding offers are bluffs. We all know the team wanted someone that could hit the ground running yesterday for the last 6 months.

Google gave me a 4-day exploding offer and it really did explode.

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

#102

Post by nickff »

david38 wrote: post #41
sethhochberg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the hiring side, a (reasonable) expiration on the offer helps be fair to the other people who are interviewing, too. If I have a single position open and multiple people interviewing, as a hiring manager I really need to know whether my top choice is serious once we're having a discussion about signing a contract - because if they aren't, or are still trying to land better offers from other places because they h…

The hypocrisy is that to even get to the point where you have a 24 / 48 hour exploding offer, you (the candidate) had to often wait weeks to get a response to the application, phone screen, on-site, decision. So I don’t buy this fairness argument. If we’re talking about fairness, the process would be super quick, and then I would get a week to think about a decision that will affect YEARS of my life. To say nothing o…

Well, it's an asymmetrical situation; you had to wait to get an initial response, but on the other hand, you can keep interviewing while the offer is on the table. I think the explosion timer is simply a response to the fact that it's not an exclusive relationship (yet), but the company cannot explore other options while the offer is out.

I am not even sure how to judge fairness; do you have a specific moral/ethical framework in mind?

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

#103

Post by kmonsen »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #84
duxup wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous large company more than once I had to explain that the interview process 'is HR's show'...but once the job starts it is now 'our show' and they don't have to worry about that song and dance anymore. It's frustrating that it is that way, but the hiring at that company was a whole other song and dance that took very little input from anyone about the hiring process.

> but the hiring at that company was a whole other song and dance that took very little input from anyone about the hiring process. That doesn't sound healthy to me.

For sure, seem like they will treat lots of other things the same. What about comp? Promotions?

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

#104

Post by planet-and-halo »

dheera wrote: post #90
neilv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the compan…

I think part of the problem is interviewers at companies are (a) not properly trained to be interviewers, just pulled from their jobs and asked to interview some candidate on short notice (b) funneled into a certain way of interviewing that isn't optimal. Large companies have almost always given me the traditional "coding a whiteboard" interview and nitpicked for the whole hour at things that would be irrelevant for…

This was basically my experience on both sides of the process (with a major exception when I interviewed for my current job). I learned from both. On the interviewer side, I sat down and wrote out a framework for how to do a good interview since nobody ever gave me one and I was initially flying blind. (What am I looking for in the person who will do the role? How should I break up the time to check and validate those things?) On the interviewee side, I basically just decided any hiring manager that tries to make you feel bad/stupid almost certainly isn't worth working for. I complete those interviews and try to use them as a learning experience, and I try to exhibit grace in the face of rudeness, then I just move on with my life. It's not always pleasant and required some self-control, but I figure it's a good skill to have on its own.

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

#105

Post by theflyinghorse »

electrondood wrote: post #28
LaserToy wrote: post #20

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 wa…

Everything from the hiring company's perspective also applies to the candidate. The company is investing a lot of time and effort in the interviewing process. The candidate has been preparing for weeks for an assessment that has nothing to do with their actual job, and is being assigned multiple take-home challenges that take 4-8 hours of their time, etc. The company wants to feel free to shop around and spend as muc…

> The candidate has been preparing for weeks for an assessment that has nothing to do with their actual job, and is being assigned multiple take-home challenges that take 4-8 hours of their time, etc.

Take homes are usually pretty fun, I don't mind building yet another carwash react-express-postgres for someone. Leetcode is a whole different story. My ability to solve DP and graph questions deteriorates if I don't practice it constantly! Truly the biggest waste of time is being expected to be a solid leetcoder

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

#106

Post by kelnos »

vmception wrote: post #21

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not…

I don't think what you're talking about applies to the particular criticism leveled in the post.

The company gave him 72 hours to accept an offer. To me, that's a red flag right there.

And then they started pestering him (well before the 72 hour time limit) to accept the offer. If this had just been HR or the recruiter, I'd find it annoying, but perhaps not a big red flag.

But the VP and hiring manager were calling him. To me this says that they are pushy people who don't respect boundaries (not even the boundaries they themselves lay out!). I would be very worried about those attitudes from my boss-to-be and boss's-boss-to-be when it comes to project scheduling and deadlines.

Even if this doesn't reflect company culture as a whole, it certainly reflects the behavior of the people who would be in my direct reporting chain, and that's not the type of people I want to work for.

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

#107

Post by walshemj »

vkou wrote: post #50
neilv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the compan…

> If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the company? No, all that it reflects is that the company does not prioritize hiring people who interview well, or training people to interview well. The company also probably does not prioritize hiring peo…

The "deathgrip" is the red flag here

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

#108

Post by anonymoushn »

glitchc wrote: post #46
sethhochberg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the hiring side, a (reasonable) expiration on the offer helps be fair to the other people who are interviewing, too. If I have a single position open and multiple people interviewing, as a hiring manager I really need to know whether my top choice is serious once we're having a discussion about signing a contract - because if they aren't, or are still trying to land better offers from other places because they h…

It’s quite fair. Are you hiring the best candidate or just any candidate? If the former, you make your offer to the best candidate and wait a reasonable time for their response, a week is usually sufficient. If you wish to offer to any candidate, offer to them all and see who accepts, but as you may find out, that’s not actually legal. But of course you are looking for the best candidate right? If so, waiting for the…

companies apparently have no issue rescinding offers, so I wonder whether it is really illegal to give verbal offers to n candidates and then rescind n-1 of them.

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

#109

Post by bluGill »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #49
neilv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the compan…

It reflects that they might not do interviews so well, but it just doesn’t seem to say anything worth extrapolating to your day to day at that company. Some of the best jobs I’ve had were at companies where engineers ruled and also were the ones sucking at conducting interviews. At those places it was almost a good signal that the interviews sucked. A group of people solving interesting problems, not optimizing for a…

There is research on how to do interviews. So if they don't know how to interview, it is clear the company isn't big on doing things in the best way.

The above may or may not be good, but it is a signal.

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

#110

Post by jmcgough »

vmception wrote: post #21

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not…

Really? Yes, sometimes you catch them an interviewer on a bad day or something, and often people are just cargo culting what they're familiar with, but if their interview process is a complete mess their company likely is too.

Once I interviewed somewhere and their engineers seemed very burnt out, an interviewer I was scheduled to meet with had left the company, and two of the interview rounds seemed like they had no idea what to ask me. I ran away screaming as fast as I could.

Another time I interviewed by a company who was recently acquired and missed my scheduled interview time (twice!) so I decided to withdraw. My friend working there left the company a year later, saying that it was a complete mess there.

Otoh a friend accepted an offer at a company because of their interview process - it was extremely well thought out and designed to be respectful of candidates and test what really mattered. Those values and mindset carried over to her experience at the company.

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