Earlier quoted context omitted.
cost of living in california is 4x what it is in western europe
London is very expensive
the UK is no longer part of europe.
Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
121–130 of 144 posts
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What would you rather have? Ideally? Not to assume my resume/education experience is a lie and to instead assume that I've done enough technical work by this point to merit respect that I don't need to prove some "technical merit" via any sort of whiteboarding exercise that is neither anything like day-to-day technical work nor it is it much more than time wasting busy work to give interviewers plenty of room for e…
> Ideally? Not to assume my resume/education experience is a lie and to instead assume that I've done enough technical work by this point to merit respect that I don't need to prove some "technical merit" Unfortunately, I have interviewed many candidates who have excellent resume, relevant experience, but who can't write basic string manipulation code which does not even require any advanced algorithms or data struct…
I think a lot of this is a variant of "survivor bias" ("failure bias"?): a whiteboard interview tests unrelated things like nerves/anxiety/stress/context. You have no idea how many of those candidates you interviewed were just having a bad day, or were too focused on trying to solve for "traps" in the interview they stumbled over basics, or had to do so much advanced string manipulation that got trapped in trying to re-simplify their concerns from real world practical work (forest) to "basic string manipulation" (trees).
I think a lot of it gets down to what are we actually testing for here?
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
whiteboard/leetcode is not necessary. discuss a prior project and walk through code of a prior project and discuss it. if you don’t have a prior project, build one. takes only a few days and you will have a new asset you own the IP to. if your interviewers don’t do it this way, pass politely.
This would only be one facet to an interview and definitely not the entire technical portion.
that IS the technical portion. You don't need the typical leetcode BS questions.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume they mean in an apples-to-apples comparison, not tent-city in SF vs mansion in Warsaw
If we are comparing expensive cities, we might as well start with Geneva: > You would need around 7,858.14$ (7,254.94Fr.) in Geneva to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 8,300.00$ in San Francisco, CA (assuming you rent in both cities). Although other countries/cities in Europe are cheaper than this, you should know that Switzerland has extremely low income tax, compared to others.
Switzerland is not really part of europe.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
cost of living in california is 4x what it is in western europe
Depends where in California and where in Western Europe
The cost of living doesn't really vary much no matter where you live in California. Rent maybe varies between 2,500 and 4,500 for an apartment, but other costs are still the same.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What would you rather have? Ideally? Not to assume my resume/education experience is a lie and to instead assume that I've done enough technical work by this point to merit respect that I don't need to prove some "technical merit" via any sort of whiteboarding exercise that is neither anything like day-to-day technical work nor it is it much more than time wasting busy work to give interviewers plenty of room for e…
A standardized test might actually be ok but I doubt it could encompass all of the technologies that appear over the years which one would use at a company if the company is looking for a specific skillset. That's why we go with resumes. I would be willing to bet that you have at least one thing on your resume that is embellished ever so slightly. Some people take it a bit further than others, which is what these int…
> A standardized test might actually be ok but I doubt it could encompass all of the technologies that appear over the years which one would use at a company if the company is looking for a specific skillset.
I think the problem here is the company never knows if it is looking for a specific skillset or not, and "how specific" to hire. Then using that as a crutch to avoid asking hard questions of itself if it can hire-to-train.
Most specific skillsets can be trained with a broad enough education. That's what most other industries/career paths rely on. Software uses the excuse that technologies move "too quickly" to avoid hiring to train or hiring generalists that would be fine with a specific skillset if given the right guidance/time/budget.
> I would be willing to bet that you have at least one thing on your resume that is embellished ever so slightly.
I don't. Why would I?
This is exactly what I'm complaining about. As an industry we've taken a "guilty until proven innocent" mentality and interviews aren't about respect but presuming lies and always about "ferreting out" the liars. It's awful and just about no other industry works that way in hiring decisions.
I've had interviews find lies that a recruiter edited into my resume, but that's a problem with the industry's relationship with bad recruiters and doesn't seem a good reason to call me a liar, when I'm not the one doing that.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What would you rather have? Ideally? Not to assume my resume/education experience is a lie and to instead assume that I've done enough technical work by this point to merit respect that I don't need to prove some "technical merit" via any sort of whiteboarding exercise that is neither anything like day-to-day technical work nor it is it much more than time wasting busy work to give interviewers plenty of room for e…
I mean we could have like a bar but that would severely limit opportunities of smart people who can code. It’s one of the best/worst things about our industry. Personally, I wouldn’t suffer, but I think as an industry we're unique in this way and it’s kind of overall maybe slightly better than not.
A lot of professions split into separate job categories for white collar/blue collar or "formally educated"/"on the job learning". Lawyer/paralegal, Doctor/RN/Nurse Practitioner, etc.
I don't know if that is something that software could use, but it certainly is a known option, and might help. In some ways software already has bespoke versions of those career paths, but there's no standardization from company to company and that's part of what makes interviewing hard because even career paths mean different things to different companies.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#128They've been rude in a variety of ways. The big one though is simply ghosting me after 5+ rounds with no explanation. This has happened a variety of times and reaching out usually gets a non response. It's infuriating. The others are just not being professional. Wearing pajamas or not paying attention or acting incredibly disinterested. It's really terrible.
I don't take that personally. If I don't hear anything within a period of time then I get they've moved on. There's no utility for them to be in contact anymore with me. It's unprofessional but I get why it occurs and don't feel slight.
You should feel upset. It’s basic courtesy to say “we don’t want you”. This is not dating it’s literally a massive corporation it costs them nothing to send a rejection email instead of leaving you in purgatory
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
A standardized test might actually be ok but I doubt it could encompass all of the technologies that appear over the years which one would use at a company if the company is looking for a specific skillset. That's why we go with resumes. I would be willing to bet that you have at least one thing on your resume that is embellished ever so slightly. Some people take it a bit further than others, which is what these int…
> A standardized test might actually be ok but I doubt it could encompass all of the technologies that appear over the years which one would use at a company if the company is looking for a specific skillset. I think the problem here is the company never knows if it is looking for a specific skillset or not, and "how specific" to hire. Then using that as a crutch to avoid asking hard questions of itself if it can hir…
Then you're a paragon of honesty. There are many others who aren't, sadly. Rather than assume people are liars I use the live coding test more as another filter. It verifies the resume, sure, but it also showcases or sometimes exposes other aspects of the candidate that a resume or maybe just their resume cannot.
Re: Ask HN: How are your interviewers being rude to you?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What would you rather have? Ideally? Not to assume my resume/education experience is a lie and to instead assume that I've done enough technical work by this point to merit respect that I don't need to prove some "technical merit" via any sort of whiteboarding exercise that is neither anything like day-to-day technical work nor it is it much more than time wasting busy work to give interviewers plenty of room for e…
I give take-homes because they’re a better representation of people’s actual work output. But I’m not giving them because I think people are lying. I can tell if people are lying about their experience in the first interview. The assignment part of the interview is to assess the quality of their work. Some people do awesome work straight out of school, and some have been doing awful work for 20 years. We do have stan…
But it is about "lying": you don't trust the quality of people's "actual work output" despite what their resume states. You have a "guilty until proven innocent" attitude with respect to people's professional work. You aren't trusting that other companies develop talent or prune people "doing awful work".
Sure, a resume isn't about "job performance" but how much do you distrust the labor market in your own industry that you think people can do awful work for 20 years and still remain meaningfully employed enough to have resume experience across all 20 of those years?
I understand where you are coming from and appreciate it is a common attitude in this industry, I just think it is a wild attitude, and an attitude related directly to the immaturity of our industry that everyone assumes the labor market is inefficient and doesn't reflect "quality"/"performance".