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

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#341

Post by knuthsat » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:46 AM UTC

bufferoverflow wrote: post #40

xyst wrote: post #19

Interviewing these days is not a technical challenge. It’s a fraternity/sorority rushing week. Technically I was qualified and able to answer their questions. But ultimately was turned down after 6 rounds of interviewing. I think I was heavily dinged because I wasn’t entirely familiar with their product in the wild, and was never given any hint as to what product I would be working on.

I'm surprised good programmers have the time/patience for 6 interviews. I think 3, maybe 4 is my max. If you can't figure out my skills in that amount of time, your process is broken. I also disagree that interviewing is not a technical challenge. For most programmers it is. There are very few who can breeze through FAANG-level technical interviews.

For me, if the 2nd interview is not me talking to someone from their company that I might work with and if I cannot ask questions about the problems they solved, their approach to programming or building teams (depending on their role), I just say to the recruiter that I'm not interested.

The only reason why I'd come somewhere is if I like the engineers or if I'm in need of money. If I need the money, I won't ask a thing.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#342

Post by rcarmo » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:48 AM UTC

I’m usually OK with doing more than three calls after a recruiter call (which are ideally with a hiring manager, peer manager, and a prospective peer), but that is usually because I quite like getting a feel for company culture.

More than that is just silly and contrived (although I usually end up talking to a VP or similar these days on account of my seniority).

There are usually three major red flags that make me step away (or at least curb my expectations):

- Any kind of automated coding test (I have a GitHub profile and plenty of public code, plus HackerRank and the like can be gamed if you have enough free time)

- Whiteboard or live coding interviews (I find contrived discussions about algorithms stupid when I can reach into my actual, physical bookshelf to a well thumbed-through copy of Skiena, get a tested approach going and _then_ figure out how best to optimize things)

- When I am asked for compensation on the very first interview. I see it as culturally rude, and if they read through my CV at all and have a target for the role they are interviewing me for they should have already done the math.

But as I am edging towards 50, a lot of the above just doesn’t happen. Instead I have long, rambling conversations about company values, people culture, and even end up doing free corporate strategy consultations, in which I am obviously expected to utter the right buzzwords that fit the interviewers’ worldview.

I quite enjoy those conversations for the insights they provide into how completely broken some companies are - instead of getting down to brass tacks and discussing their challenges, many startups end up coming across as cargo culting FAANG concepts without addressing their actual pain points (how to grow, how to retain employees, how to actually deliver product, etc.).

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#343

Post by hiyer » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:50 AM UTC

worker767424 wrote: post #89

hiyer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every single tech company I've interviewed at (ranging from medium-sized startups to FAANG), I've given at least 5 interviews, going up to 7. The only exceptions were very small startups and a couple of large Chinese organizations, where they stopped at 3.

Interviews or rounds? Phone screen and 4-5 on-site is pretty reasonable, but that's only two rounds.

I'm not sure where the distinction lies - both seem same to me :-)

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#344

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:50 AM UTC

anchpop wrote: post #246

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Job training is not as much worth it for companies when employees can switch jobs at the drop of a hat.

Yep. Apprenticeships solved this problem in the past (and of course created many others). Actually it’s almost a fun little exercise in economics. Basically there’s two types of efficiency, investment efficiency and allocative efficiency. (There may also be other types I don’t know about.) Investment efficiency means people are incentivized to make positive-expected-value investments. Think about how people are incen…

So, in this hypothetical, the sector-wide union is preventing individuals who learn to create an additional $50K/yr in value from realizing the increase in pay which would otherwise accrue to them?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#345

Post by laumars » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:51 AM UTC

peakaboo wrote: post #221

silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

It's so stupid, all of it. They try to come up with random questions that doesn't mean anything if the candidate remembers the answer at that point in time. I've read about Linux inodes. I know what they do. In fact I even have had Linux systems where I get inode related error messages because the partition had too many small files on it. But given that question, in that situation, I would likely not know what they e…

I’ve written a few Linux file systems and I’m not even sure I’d have answered that question correctly.

I’ve also failed job interviews where I was told there was no coding expected in the face to face and then got given a piece of paper and asked to solve 3 theoretical problems in SQL on paper while 3 interviewers watched. 10 years prior I’d worked for several years on Oracle middleware so I knew SQL inside and and out but I still lost my nerve at that interview and was told I wasn’t experienced enough.

There was another telephone interview where I was asked all sorts of command line questions, the problem there is they spelt out the command line flags differently to how I normally talk and read then (eg “what’s see hatech em ohh Dee seven hundred and seventy seven”, had i seen it written down I’d have been like “oh you mean see hatech mod seven seven seven” (chmod 777) but they way they read it out sounded cryptic has hell.

So there’s a valuable lesson I’ve learned for interviewing: putting pressure on interviewees is just as likely to filter out good candidates as it is bad ones. So you’re better off making them comfortable during the process. Good but nervous candidates will perform better. The interviewing process shouldn’t be about who can hold their nerve the longest.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#346

Post by Terr_ » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:52 AM UTC

ladberg wrote: post #329

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually this one might make sense, depending on the code and the position you applied for.

Design mistakes maybe, but syntax errors are just not representative of any real debugging experience IMO.

I could see it if you're resume talks about a whole bunch of intense recent development in the exact same language they want to test, but only then.

In contrast, I've been stuck in a giant multi-language integration-fest, and... well, there are definitely languages on my resume that I would not be comfortable being pop-quizzed on, simply because I've been using others for the past two years.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#347

Post by manish_gill » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:52 AM UTC

mrb wrote: post #303

silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

As an ex-Googler who interviewed 100+ candidates (mix of phone & onsite interviews) I can tell you that there is a great variance across the company groups in the quality of questions we ask. And the reason is simple: it's up to the interviewer to choose his questions. Questions aren't standardized. I took great pride in the fact that my questions were unique. I designed them myself, about 30: some quick knowledge te…

Unique questions? What's there to be so proud of in selecting questions? Are you playing jeopardy with the candidates careers? Enticing the candidates to moving on and not answering questions in what is probably the biggest interview in their life? "Quickly!"?

> Some candidates make it hard because they want to keep persevering, keep thinking

Yeah, amazing that some candidates want to demonstrate their perseverance even in face of problems that they find challenging. Crazy right?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#348

Post by that_guy_iain » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:53 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #283

that_guy_iain wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I understand the whole send the tech test first. Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren't able to do the job I would rather waste their time than mines. For me, it's when I talk to their developers and it's clear they know I know what I'm talking about and they then try to tech test me. At that point, no. I just impressed the hell out of some of the people you consider to be your best and…

Having wasted time on talking to people who clearly weren't able to do the job I would rather waste their time than mines. Of course. But consider how that attitude looks from the perspective of a candidate - you'd rather waste my time that yours is a really good reason for me to drop out of the interview process. This is essentially what's wrong with hiring right now. Companies don't want to have anyone "waste their…

Well, being the candidate I would rather they did a tech test first than talk to me and then do a tech test. Actually, if someone technical has spoken to me and then they ask me to do a tech test. I'm very likely to say no because they've already got a feel for my abilities and that is the point of a tech test.

I think sometimes people forget people working at these companies are people too and noone wants to have their time wasted. This isn't companies deciding these things. It's people. It's the person on the otherside that doesn't want their time wasted.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#349

Post by indigodaddy » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:53 AM UTC

sz4kerto wrote: post #273

silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

I don't think this was scripted; it's a typical sign of bad interviewers when they think that 1) they are smart 2) therefore if you're smart you have the same way of thinking 3) also you have the same knowledge (and gaps!) about irrelevant details Therefore instead of checking your knowledge they check whether you're like them. It's just amateurish.

This is pretty spot on

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#350

Post by powerapple » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:55 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

it is not optimal, but there is no alternative. The interviews should show 1) you want the job, i.e. you put some effort; 2) you can learn, i.e. those ridiculous questions; 3) team fit, i.e. you like them, and they like you. Programmer interviews are the only thing people can do in a reasonable timeframe.

As programmers we always learn, we learn what we need to learn to do the job, there is no reason to reject someone because he does not know the answer to a technical question, but if you are not making the effort to know the answer in order to get the job, maybe you don't want the job.