The rise of never-ending job interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#101

Post by MattGaiser » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

phdelightful wrote: post #71

MattGaiser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable? Why do people find it so horrible that their labour is a commodity? To me that just tells me I should treat my labour like a merchant treats his goods. Always be checking the market to ensure you have something worth selling and while you might sign long term deal…

The answer to a charitable interpretation of your question: most tech workers don't mind exchanging their labor for money, of course. The answer to the question as written is...of course people want the entity that has outsize influence on 40 hours of their week to view them as a person instead of a mindless cog in a machine. People get treated better than cogs. Workers want their working hours to be as pleasant as p…

Not a mindless cog, but more as a merchant or even a labour supplying Lambda function. Just simply acknowledge that my employer and I are trading, the arrangement may end at any point for business reasons, and likely will end in a few years as our needs diverge.

Needs can include a nice workplace and you can negotiate specific details about what that means to you. I did not mean to say that it needs to be money.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#102

Post by LAC-Tech » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #63

LAC-Tech wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a hundred times over. I still remember in 2020 multiple places asking me "I see you've used .NET core, what *version* have you used?". I had a kind of career crisis/breakdown, where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. Accepting that it wasn't working for me was one of the best things I've done for my career.

> where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable? Why do people find it so horrible that their labour is a commodity? To me that just tells me I should treat my labour like a merchant treats his goods. Always be checking the market to ensure you have something worth selling and while you might sign long term deal…

> Why is it important to you that your employer view you as a person?

It's not about being viewed as a person. It's about being viewed as a professional.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#103

Post by MattGaiser » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:23 AM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #102

MattGaiser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable? Why do people find it so horrible that their labour is a commodity? To me that just tells me I should treat my labour like a merchant treats his goods. Always be checking the market to ensure you have something worth selling and while you might sign long term deal…

> Why is it important to you that your employer view you as a person? It's not about being viewed as a person. It's about being viewed as a professional.

Ah. I understand this objection.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#104

Post by MattGaiser » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #75

MattGaiser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where I realised no one gave a shit about anything except my utility as a walking set of tech keywords. I am genuinely asking. Why is this objectionable? Why do people find it so horrible that their labour is a commodity? To me that just tells me I should treat my labour like a merchant treats his goods. Always be checking the market to ensure you have something worth selling and while you might sign long term deal…

Because the buzzwords are never even coherent. "Puppet or Ansible" - well no, those are not even slightly the same thing, which one are you using? GCP or AWS or Azure - same thing. Which one are you using, not what are you imagining? This would all be fine, but no one writes ads saying what they actually need or what they're trying to do.

I want to know what HR people ask Santa for in their letters. It would be so confusing.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#105

Post by jijji » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

mitsuchen wrote: post #90

For everyone saying that it's risk mitigation, I recently asked about something similar[0] for a junior position, and the process still hasn't finished. For context, the company is a medium-size tech company with presence mostly in Europe and Asia. I don't know these things well enough but it makes no sense to me. For starters, in the tech sector in my country the salary for fresh grads like me actually come mostly f…

On all job responses you should spell out your minimum salary requirements before you agree to the interview, unless you are ok with wasting time on interviews only to get low balled on the salary side or it doesn't match your minimum requirements.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#106

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

sgerenser wrote: post #81

zhte415 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have probation period where you work? i.e. if an employee doesn't live up to expectation, release with short notice? Where I am, a 3 year contract typically carries a 3 month probation period, and a 1 year contract carries a 1 month probation period. The problem is management are often too busy or overwhelmed with other stuff to observe and provide feedback until someone's passed the probation period then rele…

Probation periods in the US are rare, especially for white collar positions like software engineers. Of course, that’s mostly because of at will employment where either side can choose to part ways at any time.

That sounds like infinite probation period to me

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#107

Post by MattGaiser » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #94

andrew_ wrote: post #66

I recently agreed to go through a 5-round process which totaled to about 6 hours. I'm the first person to bitch about the ineffectiveness of leetcode/hackerrank bullshit for people with 10+ of verifiable experience, but I went through this one because it was a field I had never worked in before, and the personnel I was speaking with were truly interesting. Sans all of those qualifiers, anything more than 3 rounds is…

Devil's advocate. Every bad hire costs the company $50,000 - 200,000. Sometimes more. They can also sink or demoralize teams. Many of the people conducting interviews are new to the process and don't know how to extract signal. Sometimes scales don't line up. When you have a revolving door of employees (because that's the way things are these days), have trouble scheduling interviews (busy engineers trying to get the…

> because that's the way things are these days

Why is nothing done about this? As turnover soars and tenure plummets, I am willing to buy that companies do not value codebase knowledge, domain knowledge, or believe that it takes time for an engineer to get going. I can buy them seeing us engineers as replaceable widgets.

But we are at the point where a lot of companies cannot replace us and yet nothing is done about the endless parade out the door. The focus is entirely on shovelling new people in.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#108

Post by thayne » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:28 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #94

andrew_ wrote: post #66

I recently agreed to go through a 5-round process which totaled to about 6 hours. I'm the first person to bitch about the ineffectiveness of leetcode/hackerrank bullshit for people with 10+ of verifiable experience, but I went through this one because it was a field I had never worked in before, and the personnel I was speaking with were truly interesting. Sans all of those qualifiers, anything more than 3 rounds is…

Devil's advocate. Every bad hire costs the company $50,000 - 200,000. Sometimes more. They can also sink or demoralize teams. Many of the people conducting interviews are new to the process and don't know how to extract signal. Sometimes scales don't line up. When you have a revolving door of employees (because that's the way things are these days), have trouble scheduling interviews (busy engineers trying to get the…

They least they could do is let you know up front what the interview process is going to be like. From what I've seen the candidate often has no idea if the second interview is the final interview or just the next in a long series. And I've even seen employers wait weeks befor calling back to inform the candidate they qualify for a third interview.

And if you have a revolving door of workers, that suggests something else is wrong. Maybe you should focus on retaining existing workers rather than acquiring new ones.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#109

Post by MisterBastahrd » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:28 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #94

andrew_ wrote: post #66

I recently agreed to go through a 5-round process which totaled to about 6 hours. I'm the first person to bitch about the ineffectiveness of leetcode/hackerrank bullshit for people with 10+ of verifiable experience, but I went through this one because it was a field I had never worked in before, and the personnel I was speaking with were truly interesting. Sans all of those qualifiers, anything more than 3 rounds is…

Devil's advocate. Every bad hire costs the company $50,000 - 200,000. Sometimes more. They can also sink or demoralize teams. Many of the people conducting interviews are new to the process and don't know how to extract signal. Sometimes scales don't line up. When you have a revolving door of employees (because that's the way things are these days), have trouble scheduling interviews (busy engineers trying to get the…

If someone is new to the interviewing process, then they shouldn't be doing interviews alone. If they don't know how to gather information from a resume, then they shouldn't be reading resumes alone.

You say that a bad hire is worth tens of thousands of dollars, but if that's the case, then most of what you said is irrelevant because a company that is smart enough to recognize this would be smart enough to never put a junior manager in a situation to make a terrible decision.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#110

Post by void_mint » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:28 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #94

andrew_ wrote: post #66

I recently agreed to go through a 5-round process which totaled to about 6 hours. I'm the first person to bitch about the ineffectiveness of leetcode/hackerrank bullshit for people with 10+ of verifiable experience, but I went through this one because it was a field I had never worked in before, and the personnel I was speaking with were truly interesting. Sans all of those qualifiers, anything more than 3 rounds is…

Devil's advocate. Every bad hire costs the company $50,000 - 200,000. Sometimes more. They can also sink or demoralize teams. Many of the people conducting interviews are new to the process and don't know how to extract signal. Sometimes scales don't line up. When you have a revolving door of employees (because that's the way things are these days), have trouble scheduling interviews (busy engineers trying to get the…

Your response is the voice of the company. The person you're responding to, and lots of candidates, don't really care about the voice of the company. From a company's perspective, sure waste all the time you want, you want to be _sure_. But to candidates, getting dragged around sucks, and is usually a waste