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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#361

Post by kxrm »

MattGaiser wrote: post #227
Dig1t wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree actually, I've had a similar experience except in the mobile engineering space. Currently I'm going through the interview process with a ton of companies (because my company is really dumb and is forcing everyone to move back to a certain bay area city post-covid), and I have been happily surprised to find that most of my interviews are very practical, project based, ones instead of straight whiteboarding lee…

Where do you find take home project interviews?

I just went through this with a company. They sent me a generic packet with 3 projects to choose from. With a simple Google search I was able to find all of the answers to all 3 sample projects implemented in different languages.

This was after a 10 minute conversation with the company's recruiter. To top it off, nothing in the job listing said anything about software. Just Cloud and Devops management role.

I am absolutely ok with take home or some presentation of my skills. However, I expect to know that I am being taken seriously as a candidate by that point. I don't want to waste my time on something with no investment from the company.

As you can guess, I bowed out of the running explaining that I didn't think it was appropriate for me to give them so much of my time with no commitment from their end. I also told them I could tell their take home project took them less than 5 minutes to generate for me as it was everywhere on the internet. How can I trust a process where the answers to the interview are everywhere? How can they really know my skills as a candidate if I can just steal the answers off of GitHub? Worse, how can I know how I will stack up to someone who might be less scrupulous than I and steal those answers when I tried in earnest and actually burned an afternoon trying to solve their test?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#362

Post by aix1 »

devnull3 wrote: post #291
aix1 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you choose Python or were you asked to use Python by the interviewer?

I chose Python because its faster to code

It's quite a common pattern these days: I often see candidates who choose a language because they think it's better suited for interviews, not because they know it well (we leave the choice of programming language to the candidate).

Sometimes this works well, sometimes it really backfires on them. Coding is one of key rubrics on which we assess software engineering candidates, and if the only signal I have is that they don't know know their chosen language very well, it's hard to justify scoring that rubric highly.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#363

Post by gspr »

ladberg wrote: post #226
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 had a similarly bad Google experience that I've talked about before[0] but will copy here: I was asked to do a task that eventually boiled down to a topological sort, and I thought the question consisted of recognizing that the answer was a topological sort and moving on because it was over the phone. However, that was not the case. The interviewer wanted me to code it all out over Google Docs, but I didn't remembe…

It's also incredibly telling that the interviewer couldn't figure out whether your code was correct or not without compiling and running it.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#364

Post by pjerem »

jcelerier wrote: post #320
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…

Isn't the question nonsensical ? inodes are a property of some filesystems like ext, xfs..., that you can happen to use on Linux. If you installed Linux, say, on an NTFS partition there would be no inode anywhere, no ?

I'd be curious if you already saw / read about a working Linux installation on NTFS. IIRC, even WSL works with an EXT4 layer.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#365

Post by discordance »

achow wrote: post #207
whatshisface wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manhole covers are round because they minimize the circumference per area that must be cut to make the cover fall in.

Most probably, because manhole covers were/are made using cast iron, which were sand casted. Mold for sand casting is easily done in lathe (turning a wood on lathe for precise shape is faster and more accurate than sawing). So as one of the parent comment mentions - it is round because of production reasons.

... fell for it like a dude trying to get his try at opening a stuck jar lid.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#366

Post by gspr »

ellenhp wrote: post #357
biztos wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it… troubling? That a technical interviewer can’t tell for herself whether your code will work. Wouldn’t you ideally want people who actually understand code to be giving the coding questions?

Are you saying that because this interviewer needs to run code to find logic errors, she's somehow not a competent engineer? Because I usually need to run code to find logic errors. Sometimes I use formal verification instead but that's pretty rare. Am I also not a competent engineer?

Does this reasoning not also apply to the applicant, though?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#367

Post by beebmam »

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…

What an insane interview question. If someone asked me that question I'd quickly end the interview.

A team looking for people with knowledge instead of looking for people to know how to reason is a team that is already dead.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#368

Post by brailsafe »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #21

If you go to an interview, you can probably suss out which are stringing you along and which want to hire quickly. Ask if they need a candidate immediately or are taking their time. Ask if your qualifications are exactly what they're looking for, and if you feel like a cultural fit for them. Ask if they have the budget and headcount to hire you immediately. Ask which teams the people interviewing you are on, to find…

Ya, seems like decent advice.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#369

Post by gspr »

konschubert wrote: post #325
raffraffraff wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Help the person you're interviewing. You'll both get more out of it, you'll both enjoy it. If you're in a company that is expanding, you'll be interviewing a lot, so it's really important that it doesn't depress the shit out of you.

There is a risk that you accidentally do the thinking for them and give the answers for them without noticing. Doing a collaborative interview requires careful attention by the interviewer, but I agree it’s worth it.

I mean, sure. Nobody said interviewing should be easy. Be attentive and focused as an interviewer too!

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#370

Post by theonething »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #324
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #306

I think the post-covid wfh job market has clouded something a bit which is that the tech industry in particular is becoming increasing oversaturated. There is so many people applying for positions now that companies are resorting to these more and more annoying filtering processes. My first job in this field 14 years ago was one interview and I got the job the next day. That would be almost impossible today. I blame…

As someone who is stuck with a "junior developer" who hasn't produced a single line of working code during past 1.5years in my team the "one interview and done" isn't working these days.

how is this person not fired?
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