Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–209 of 209 posts

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#201

Post by nedt »

In 2020 here in Austria I had people clearly tell me when I was a fit and when I wasn't and with a reason. As a background I'm working for 20 years so I'd call myself very senior for a typical dev job.

The only exception was Automattic. They are very proud of everything and how clear their communication is, which it was for most of the time. I got invited to slack, got links with a lot of information. Then I had the interview, which from my point of view wasn't too bad.

After the interview I got told that they won't move forward. I can apply again after a year after I improved my skills. No word about what they thought didn't match the position. Slack channel closed, no response to my email asking what they were missing.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#202

Post by azemetre »

LargeTomato wrote: post #116
Solvency wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet those sports teams still spend millions of dollars and expertise on it (recruiting). So what's techs excuse? It's harder so we don't bother?

We can watch players play previous games. We can see their progression as a player over time. For tech, it's hard to know if someone is good in just a couple hours of interviewing.

Why could you use someone's previous work or portfolio?

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#204

Post by LargeTomato »

filoleg wrote: post #147
LargeTomato wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a rocket startup. 1/3 ex SpaceX. 1/3 ex Google/Facebook. I interviewed a guy and asked him, essentially, "find the biggest number in a 2D array". This guy spent half an hour struggling because he "wasn't sure how to look through the grid in a circle pattern". You'd be incredibly surprised who gets interviews.

> "wasn't sure how to look through the grid in a circle pattern" Now I am curious to know whether I am too dense to get it or if the candidate was just that off the mark. Is circle pattern sorta like iterating through a 2d array like a spiral (i.e., outer layer of the 2d-shape first, then one deeper, etc.)? And if yes, why would that ever be useful for just searching for a specific value in a 2d array? I get how it c…

This was part 1 of a 2 or 3 part question. First we literally iterate through each element, keeping track of the max. I use this question for interns, too, so it's intentionally super easy. It gets harder in part 2.

For clarity, the pseudo code solution to the question is

    for row in a[0]:
        for e in row:
            max_so_far = max(e, max_so_far)
    return max_so_far
No tricks. Just an initial weeder question for interns before we move onto the real question.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#205

Post by nradov »

azemetre wrote: post #202
LargeTomato wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can watch players play previous games. We can see their progression as a player over time. For tech, it's hard to know if someone is good in just a couple hours of interviewing.

Why could you use someone's previous work or portfolio?

The best developers don't have any portfolio that they can share. It's all locked up in former employers' code repositories.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#206

Post by ravenstine »

CM30 wrote: post #19

The new normal? This has been the case for years for almost all job applications. Maybe if you're lucky and the company has put you through like 4 rounds of interviews you might get feedback, but the general rule seems to be that useful feedback for an interview is the exception rather than the norm. And heck, even that isn't something you can rely on. I've had a fair few interviews get about 80% of the way through t…

Worse yet - getting ghosted after submitting a take home assignment!

Has happened to me a couple of times.

Look, it's OK if you just found your dream candidate and the job is no longer available, but please tell me that and tell me whether the code I submitted is good or sucks.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#207

Post by filoleg »

LargeTomato wrote: post #204
filoleg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "wasn't sure how to look through the grid in a circle pattern" Now I am curious to know whether I am too dense to get it or if the candidate was just that off the mark. Is circle pattern sorta like iterating through a 2d array like a spiral (i.e., outer layer of the 2d-shape first, then one deeper, etc.)? And if yes, why would that ever be useful for just searching for a specific value in a 2d array? I get how it c…

This was part 1 of a 2 or 3 part question. First we literally iterate through each element, keeping track of the max. I use this question for interns, too, so it's intentionally super easy. It gets harder in part 2. For clarity, the pseudo code solution to the question is for row in a[0]: for e in row: max_so_far = max(e, max_so_far) return max_so_far No tricks. Just an initial weeder question for interns before we m…

Ah, makes perfect sense, thank you for clarifying. Your pseudo code solution confirms that I understood the problem statement correctly.

Out of pure curiosity, what were the follow up (part 2 and 3) questions? Not looking for a solution, but if you could post the problem statement, it would be very appreciated. If you feel uncomfortable sharing it publicly out of some concern, that’s entirely fair, no worries.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#208

Post by machomaster »

Niksko wrote: post #47

I've been ghosted twice lately. One was someone reaching out via Hacker News for an initial chat where they said "let's put you through our interview process" and then ghosted. The other was for a startup, similar situation, "let's set up a chat with our CEO", then ghosted. The commonality here is an inability to just be honest and say "doesn't seem like a good fit". Disappointing, and ironically, an indication that…

Often it is not about people not being honest, but about them having bad task management processes and things falling through. There is so muvh inefficiency and incompetency in basic skills it's crazy.

Re: Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

#209

Post by frognumber »

mschuster91 wrote: post #149
ineptech wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, which is insane! We'll spend untold zillions fine-tuning and A/B testing the process by which we get users, but when it comes to getting coworkers it's "Well HR says the applicants have to make an account to apply so I guess that's just the way it is".

It will be that way inevitably as an organization grows, usually it's an investor requirement to prevent outright nepotism hires or discrimination. No one cares too much for the first few dozen employees but anything larger usually will come with "ffs go and implement at least some basic hiring standards to reduce the legal risks".

For what it's worth, in the US, the legal risks are negligible.

So long as you don't discriminate against a protected class, you're usually good to go. Nepotism is bad business, but it isn't illegal.

Investors do care about bad business decisions, so it makes sense for them to require good hiring practice. However, if a sole proprietor -- or a business with all its shareholders -- decides to hire inept cousin Vinny to keep him from idling about the house, that's usually legal. In a family-run business (where there is a paper-thin wall between business and personal finances), it may even make financial sense.

This differs from almost any other jurisdiction in the world.

Post reply on HN