The rise of never-ending job interviews

Started with applications over a web form on the university careers website, then chatted over email with the hiring manager. Eventually got set up with some interviews with current lab people, and eventually the PI.

Mirrored in industry, although that was back in 2018. So all in all the “regular” route at least for this level of work in biotech/biology is pretty sane.

That being said, I’ve used your method in the past as well to great success, and is one of my secret techniques to get more traction when I’m looking ;)

Or they can run it, asking the real arbiter of truth whether it works or not.

Of course, "whether it works" is merely one (very important) metric of quality.

Google is hiring 10's of thousands of engineers a year. It's really hard to do well. Most of the questions are deliberately scripted because they are known to be good questions on some dimension.

So... work with them. Most of them actually want you to do well. Most of them are smart. Some of the questions are an open invitation to just talk and show that you can behave like someone they'd want to work with.

Your answer of "dinosaurs" etc, while the result of frustration more than anything, just said to the interviewer "not someone i want to work with".

It sucks, but you have to know your audience.

I have been headhunted by them multiple times in the past. The last time their recruiter called me and explained me that after the usual screening and HR calls I would need to pass multiple increasingly complex technical interview rounds - and then THEY will decide on the role and project I am best suited for (if at all). I have flatly asked the guy whether they are being serious and turned him down.

To be fair to Google, though - their interviewing used to be first class. When I got into the first call sometime in the early 2000 or so, the interviews were difficult but with competent interviewers and no BS scripted questions. But that was because it was done in-house, I was talking directly to some engineer in Palo Alto over the phone. Even the HR lady was actually pretty technical and was asking me rather pointed questions.

Later on they outsourced it to HR agencies and it became "the process", with people being called over irrelevant/not interesting jobs (entry level sysadmin in Ireland once - even the HR guy on the phone recognized it makes no sense to call me over it ...) and the "we decide ..." at last.

However, Google is by far not the only company doing it. Microsoft's hiring process was very similar and Google's explicitly inspired many smaller companies or "less desirable" (for the candidates at the time) companies to ape this, thinking it is somehow a good idea.

This seems to be pretty much the norm in the tech industry. Along with attempts to effectively have the candidate redo all comp-sci final exams during the interviews - because "credentials can't be trusted", as someone told me.

Give me a break. It is high time tech companies should start treat (especially experienced) engineers with a bit of respect and dignity, we are not school kids anymore.