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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

#211

Post by tmpz22 »

Sodman wrote: post #182
tmpz22 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a candidate perspective its very hard to evaluate what your compensation should be without first pooling multiple offers. Its also very hard to schedule many interviews in a short period such that the offer letters can be compared side by side. For this reason I generally indicate a 1-2 week response time to an offer letter. I almost always come in before that, maybe around 2-3 days, but I find it absolutely ess…

Having multiple offers on the table certainly helps - but I feel a lot of people know what they're looking for in terms of comp range when they're going into the interview process. Recruiters will usually ask you up-front what your target comp range is before even submitting your resume to a company. At engineer salary levels in the US, +/- $5-10k isn't going to be a life changing amount of money (especially after ta…

Conversely a lot of companies don't list their range and a lot of recruiters, hiring managers, and other groups, won't list an accurate range especially in "newer" roles like devops engineering, ml-ops, security roles, semi-management roles, etc. I've seen anywhere from $80k-$180k offered for the same role disclosed randomly throughout the hiring process - sometimes its listed on a job board, sometimes you won't know until the offer letter.

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

#212

Post by ipnon »

BossingAround wrote: post #63
ipnon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apply the Lindy rule[0]: To get a job at a startup, have an app portfolio. To get a job at a Big N, go to an elite university, another Big N, or grind Leetcode for months. To get a job at a corporation, grind Leetcode and have recruiters spam your resume. Different jobs require different applicants. A balanced, general approach, would be to do 1 Leetcode problem and send 1 application per day. It'd be hard to still b…

> and have recruiters spam your resume What does this mean? Do you mean the applicant to spam recruiters with their resume? Or use Leetcode directly for hiring, because corpos will hire through Leetcode?

Get some buzz in recruiting circles, and have them do the hardwork of getting your name out

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

#213

Post by ipnon »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #34
ipnon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apply the Lindy rule[0]: To get a job at a startup, have an app portfolio. To get a job at a Big N, go to an elite university, another Big N, or grind Leetcode for months. To get a job at a corporation, grind Leetcode and have recruiters spam your resume. Different jobs require different applicants. A balanced, general approach, would be to do 1 Leetcode problem and send 1 application per day. It'd be hard to still b…

How are any of those recommendations related to the Lindy Effect?

Show an ability to survive in the different constraints unique to each type of software engineering job

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

#214

Post by jjav »

sethhochberg wrote: post #25
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…

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…

Exactly, the company needs to know whether to tell the other candidates in queue to go away, or pause for a while. They can't wait indefinitly so an expiration on the offer is reasonable.

That said, don't take the expiration date too seriously, it's not a hard deadline. If you want a bit more time just say so.

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

#215

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ipnon wrote: post #213
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are any of those recommendations related to the Lindy Effect?

Show an ability to survive in the different constraints unique to each type of software engineering job

How is that related to the Lindy Effect? Just throwing in the word "survive" doesn't automatically mean the Lindy Effect is in play...

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

#216

Post by jjav »

tmpz22 wrote: post #211
Sodman wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having multiple offers on the table certainly helps - but I feel a lot of people know what they're looking for in terms of comp range when they're going into the interview process. Recruiters will usually ask you up-front what your target comp range is before even submitting your resume to a company. At engineer salary levels in the US, +/- $5-10k isn't going to be a life changing amount of money (especially after ta…

Conversely a lot of companies don't list their range and a lot of recruiters, hiring managers, and other groups, won't list an accurate range especially in "newer" roles like devops engineering, ml-ops, security roles, semi-management roles, etc. I've seen anywhere from $80k-$180k offered for the same role disclosed randomly throughout the hiring process - sometimes its listed on a job board, sometimes you won't know…

It's hard to get a fixed answer because there is no fixed answer. Only government jobs have a strict predefined salary, private industry everything is negotiable.

The role may be advertised at a certain level but most of the time there is flexibility in going up or down a level based on candidate experience and how badly you make them want you. So 80K-180K can be a perfectly feasible range for the same job posting.

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

#217

Post by jjav »

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.

They are although often it's not even an intentional bluff. It's just part of the HR offer letter template so there it is. You want more time just ask. Never seen a company (either as interviewer or interviewee) say no.

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

#218

Post by kevinskii »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #190
kevinskii wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We make medical devices. They are surprisingly complicated things, and many peoples' lives depend on them. There's also a lot of ways in which they might potentially fail, and these failures can manifest years after the product has been in the field. When there's even the slightest hint of a potential safety issue, it quickly becomes the top priority for a whole bunch of people. Most issues turn out to be false alarm…

> "Sally really enjoyed talking to you but she's unexpectedly tied up in something" can be market-moving information if you find Sally's role on LinkedIn and tie it to recent news about the company. I'm curious if this level of caution is truly required to meet an SEC rule. I've never heard of another company feeling the need to be this secretive for market reasons.

SEC rules aren't the only concern, and "market moving" was perhaps too specific a phrase. There are lots of legitimate legal and financial reasons that a company may choose to be circumspect in its communication.

As one totally hypothetical example, let's say that the project a candidate is being interviewed to work on is suddenly in jeopardy. This could be due to sudden unexpected financial hardship, like a big contract falling apart at the very last minute. Or it could be due to a new competitive threat resulting in a need to shift resources elsewhere. Or the new CEO just doesn't think it's worthwhile. Or, maybe the project ultimately proceeds and the candidate gets an offer.

In any of these situations, a company can easily find itself the target of an investor lawsuit if the reason for the hiring delay is inadvertently disclosed and there is some ensuing stock movement, even if no SEC rules are violated.

You might still think that this is overly cautious, and you may be right. Either way, ghosting doesn't only happen because people are inconsiderate (though that is certainly a reason), and I personally try not to infer too much about the culture when it happens to me.

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

#219

Post by ipnon »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #215
ipnon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show an ability to survive in the different constraints unique to each type of software engineering job

How is that related to the Lindy Effect? Just throwing in the word "survive" doesn't automatically mean the Lindy Effect is in play...

I would like to respond in equal manner:

Show an ability to survive in the different constraints unique to each type of software engineering job

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

#220

Post by kmonsen »

duxup wrote: post #131
kmonsen wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how it works at all. First of all interviews are a two way interview. Your company will be judged based on it. Also people come in touch with hr later, and usually in high pressure situations. If HR was difficult during the interview that’s a big red flag for later on in case you have to deal with them.

That's totally how it can work, if it should or not is another story. I don't doubt people judged the company based on their interactions with HR, but that's HR's responsibility IMO. I gave my feedback on a few occasions, but they didn't take any action based on it. At that point their failures are 'not my job'. As for any other HR interactions most folks interacted with them as little as possible. At big companies (…

Sure HR is there to manage risk. If they already are shown to be like this in the interview I would not be safe if they decided to "manage risk" with me later on. I luckily never had to deal with HR, but it can happen to anyone.
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