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Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

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Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#251

Post by kyawzazaw »

dleslie wrote: post #139
StupidUser123 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re asking someone to quit their job to maybe get this new job. And you won’t know for months so all your other offers are gone. So if it doesn’t work out, you’re unemployed with no prospects. Sounds terrible. I’d take 15 interviews before taking that risk.

If it takes months to determine that someone is a bad fit for a team then the team has internal issues that need to be resolved. Moreover, if someone has the skills on paper, and the references to support that, then any tech screening is unnecessary. It just tests for ability to pass tech screens.

That's what internships are in a way. Do you think that's a bad idea?

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#252

Post by hungro »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #52

My God, I am so glad to be out of the rat race. I was chased out, by the very first contacts from companies, or, in a couple of cases, the second contact, being directly hostile and insulting. I’d assumed that this was because I’m older, and people just wanted me to self-delete from the hiring process (it worked). However, hearing all these nightmare stories makes me think that everyone has to go through that. If tha…

I recently interviewed at , got past HR, then while prepping for the tech screen they told me "by the way if you get past this stage there will be FIVE technical interviews." It was almost a relief to fail the technical screen and realize I got back an entire day or two of my life.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#253

Post by sahila »

dleslie wrote: post #139
StupidUser123 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re asking someone to quit their job to maybe get this new job. And you won’t know for months so all your other offers are gone. So if it doesn’t work out, you’re unemployed with no prospects. Sounds terrible. I’d take 15 interviews before taking that risk.

If it takes months to determine that someone is a bad fit for a team then the team has internal issues that need to be resolved. Moreover, if someone has the skills on paper, and the references to support that, then any tech screening is unnecessary. It just tests for ability to pass tech screens.

The problem is "skill on paper" is just that, words. There's tons of java developers but not all the same. References too are pretty easy to game. Alternatively if by skills on paper you mean open source projects, that's fair but most developers (and certainly most new grads) won't have anything worthwhile to show.

The tech screens can show a person's skill. Sure, lots of people are gaming that too and memorize solutions, but that's not most candidates.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#254

Post by what-the-grump »

alexashka wrote: post #146
angarg12 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say this. To add more: a single person (HM) might have biases for or against certain candidates. More people in the loop brings in diversity and helps to keep interviewers honest and consistent. Also these roles are usually high stakes and the cost of a bad hire is too high.

> these roles are usually high stakes and the cost of a bad hire is too high Really? High stakes? This fucking site. Have you ever worked as a software developer at a corporation? Nothing about it is high stakes. You spend most of your time dealing with useless idiots who report to other useless idiots, who report to other useless idiots, about a useless product they think is a great idea that every non-idiot knows i…

Hey stop stepping on fragile egos. We gave out participation trophies to a whole generation.

Hiring one wrong dev will end google!

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#255

Post by lukeschlather »

boisenberrier wrote: post #225
novok wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PIPing and firing is a huge time and emotional energy suck, and it sucks for people on both sides. To reduce the amount it happens is worthy. You can’t in practice just say, “this guy sucks, lets fire him next week” And it shows, barely anyone in my entire career has ever been fired. I only personally have been close to one.

So you’ve been close to one person getting fired? How do you have an opinion on the PIP process or firing at all if you have next to no experience with it? I knew a guy at a FAANG who earned himself and his report a PIP for the grave sin of choosing the wrong deputy to send upstairs while he was on vacation. The deputized person went to one meeting and ran his mouth (arguably, told the truth). Both are no longer at t…

I worked at a FAANG for 3 years and I'm pretty sure no one I worked with was on a PIP. A PIP is extreme. It's sufficient to simply not give people raises, most people can and will easily find another job earning 10% more.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#256

Post by vsareto »

dleslie wrote: post #58
mabbo wrote: post #44

Having been an interviewer at a FAANG for many years, I can explain some of the logic behind it. I'm not saying this logic is valid , but it's how we got here, imho. First: we no longer trust the hiring manager alone, because probably they aren't a strong developer. We instead trust strong developers that are well trained at evaluating good devs. At the same time, we don't want to thrust a dev onto a hiring manager,…

What I'm reading here is that even as an experienced interviewer you struggle to make the format effective and equitable. Sounds to me like the format isn't worth keeping; time to hire more, and fire fast?

Fire fast is a harmful policy to employees in the US due to health insurance being tied to employment.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#257

Post by StupidUser123 »

mylons wrote: post #129
StupidUser123 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. It’s great getting data points on several programming interviews, system design, etc. That makes my sell interview so much easier because I can trust the process to assess their technical skills. You need multiple people because you’re consta…

People get PIP’ed and fired routinely that make it through this process. I think there’s a lot of bias in your response. The process worked for you, you work at a large tech company and it gives you validation. It also makes you feel good to lord over the process and boosts your ego, reinforcing your priors.

How does me being okay with a smaller role in the overall hiring process equate to me wanting to lord over people? I’m a hiring manager, it’s literally my job to pick people to hire. I’d rather have the opinions of my colleagues in addition to my own.

My response was in good faith, and yours is not.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#258

Post by nowherebeen »

novok wrote: post #197
alexashka wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these roles are usually high stakes and the cost of a bad hire is too high Really? High stakes? This fucking site. Have you ever worked as a software developer at a corporation? Nothing about it is high stakes. You spend most of your time dealing with useless idiots who report to other useless idiots, who report to other useless idiots, about a useless product they think is a great idea that every non-idiot knows i…

High stakes means high investment. You can’t just hire a dev and have them running in a week, their bad work could cost the company multi-millions in obvious and non obvious ways and proper onboarding takes months at minimum. On the other hand, a cashier can be replaced in a week, and they don’t effect the entire future of the company as SOP.

> their bad work could cost the company multi-millions

They is false and hyperbole to justify your argument. If a single employee can cost a big company like Google multi-millions, then there is a company structure problem. You make it sound like there are no system of checks. The very definition of being 1 in 10,000 employees at big corp is that no one is important enough to cost the company multi-millions.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#259

Post by scarmig »

sokoloff wrote: post #134
ipaddr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are hiring someone with 10 years experience it becomes a lot easier. Just try them out, 9/10 will succeed.

I believe there is at least a factor of 2* in performance among qualified/not-outright-failing software engineers. If that's the case, anything you can spend less than 100 hours on to increase your chance of hiring someone whose performance at your company will be on the right half of that distribution is worth it. * I think the actual factor is higher, but I think most people would agree to a factor of 2 without muc…

There are just different skills, and a balance of different individuals is often the most effective.

There are definitely 10x (and even 100x) engineers, but throw five 10x engineers together and you will get substantially less than 50x results. There's always mundane but time consuming shit that can best be handled by a 1x.

And a bigger issue is that no company can hire a team of 10x engineers, because it's very expensive, 10x engineers are relatively rare, and dedicating more resources to the interview process gets diminishing returns in terms of identifying and hiring them. Not even companies with effectively infinitely deep pocketbooks manage to succeed at that.

It's best to design systems optimized for the 1x case, focus a lot on avoiding the -1x candidates, and grab the exceptional candidates opportunistically when you get the chance, usually by working outside the process. Which seems to be what the industry has defaulted to.

Re: Ask HN: When did 7 interviews become “normal”?

#260

Post by whimsicalism »

0des wrote: post #230
autarch wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would hire you to do 30 hours of contract work where we pair program on real life things. You say this as if most (or any) candidates could do this. If you currently have a job, then you almost certainly won't have time for this, unless you're single with no hobbies. If you do have time, you may not be allowed to moonlight under your current employment contract. And if you don't have a job, you _still_ may not ha…

Do you generally have this mindset because you are very successful or is there another track record element I'm missing? I don't recognize the username and wanted to understand your response better.

I don't understand this response? This is going to be the standard mindset for any experienced engineer in the Bay area, at minimum.
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