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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”?

#381

Post by georgeburdell »

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,…

>Second: Is it really fair to have just one or two developers evaluate you? When I first was an interviewer, I liked everybody! I would have hired them all. So getting multiple data points matters. Best to have at least a couple dev interviews.

Except FAANG interviews require excellence on almost all of the interviews, so the extra people only represent further opportunities to be denied.

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

#382

Post by hobs »

igetspam wrote: post #224
alexashka wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it perfect? No, but it does work. How do you know it works? > I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. There we are. It is all about you. No need to say anything else - your life is all about you, so of course if it works for you, 'it works'.

No, it's all about everyone. If I hire a person and fire them in less than a year, that's almost always because of a performance problem that's impacting the team or the org. If you're the one being fired, you probably left a job or didn't take some other job to work with us and now you're going to be unemployed. Additionally, as a hiring manager, I too am a human who wants to enjoy my job and have positive experienc…

If I could get a job in a week instead of 3 months of interviews? Yeah I'd be fine with that.

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

#383

Post by leowoo91 »

That is a good question I believe, it exposes how embedded knowledge software engineers actually have and that wouldn't be something to measure very quick. Every interviewer is likely just trying to confirm if engineer is who he/she claims to be during the application.

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

#385

Post by igetspam »

ethanwillis wrote: post #364
igetspam wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's all about everyone. If I hire a person and fire them in less than a year, that's almost always because of a performance problem that's impacting the team or the org. If you're the one being fired, you probably left a job or didn't take some other job to work with us and now you're going to be unemployed. Additionally, as a hiring manager, I too am a human who wants to enjoy my job and have positive experienc…

It's not "best for everyone." Hired and fired quickly is better because when I have to dedicate weeks or a month of unpaid, uncompensated time to your process then I'm the one losing. You are already getting paid for putting in the work of interviewing me. If your team is stretched so thin that you need to put your time at a premium, that's a problem with your process not having enough throughput. How many people do…

If it's taking months, then they're doing it badly. Our hiring process is five rounds but it never takes more than a couple weeks, including the negotiation phase. Our data shows that we need something like 14 resumes to get one candidate worth interviewing. Of those, it takes 4-6 candidates for one hire. Hiring and firing fast means we also have to invest in onboarding, training and allowing people to settle in. During that time, we've filled the current position and we're no longer interviewing candidates. Once someone is fired, we have to go through the whole mess again. That would be the most wasteful model for everyone involved. By my math, that's a minimum of two months of time on a single person (I think six weeks to fully productive is reasonable) just to go back to searching again. And that's just the US and ignores the two week notice (or more) for each candidate.

I hire in APAC too. Indian engineers are giving 60-90 day notices now and that's contractual. Two candidates, using your model, could easily take up a year. (Hiring in APAC take a long time already.)

I can only assume you've had some bad experiences lately but your personal bias has created a really bad mental model for you that would be a net negative for everyone.

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

#386

Post by hinkley »

tartoran wrote: post #297
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.

> PIPing and firing is a huge time and emotional energy suck, and it sucks So is the 7 interview gauntlet. But I guess it just shifts the burden on the candidates and externalizes cost.

It also selects for people who will put up with anything, which to a cynical manager might sound like a good employee, except that our job is to replace labor with machines.

People who put up with anything are expensive. They keep billing you hours for tasks that could have been reduced to minutes by someone with a lower tolerance for BS.

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

#387

Post by piptastic »

mandeepj wrote: post #342
thematrixturtle wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV, but it's actually quite difficult to get a PIP in many tech companies, and it's rarely if ever for lack of tech skills. The ones I've seen usually involve either motivation, output, or both plummeting to zero for extended periods of time due to burnout or a similar extended personal crisis.

> it's rarely if ever for lack of tech skills. isn't output related with lack of tech skills?

not really, plenty of talented lazy people out there

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

#388

Post by sgtnoodle »

tartoran wrote: post #297
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.

> PIPing and firing is a huge time and emotional energy suck, and it sucks So is the 7 interview gauntlet. But I guess it just shifts the burden on the candidates and externalizes cost.

In my experience, it seems to take a company about 1-1.5 years to fire someone that's well intended but ineffective in their role. 15 or so "wasted" person-hours up front is well worth avoiding thousands of wasted person-hours, especially considering maybe 1 in 5 candidates that make it to a full interview are a good fit.

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

#389

Post by cableshaft »

georgeburdell wrote: post #381
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,…

>Second: Is it really fair to have just one or two developers evaluate you? When I first was an interviewer, I liked everybody! I would have hired them all. So getting multiple data points matters. Best to have at least a couple dev interviews. Except FAANG interviews require excellence on almost all of the interviews, so the extra people only represent further opportunities to be denied.

Exactly. Many of these interviews it only takes one person to feel 'eh' or negative on the person to tank the candidate, so the more people you interview that person, the more likely you're going to have that impression on one of those people (especially if it's an all day series of interviews, you'll probably start to get mentally exhausted near the end of it), and the more likely any given candidate will be rejected.

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

#390

Post by fataliss »

mandeepj wrote: post #342
thematrixturtle wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV, but it's actually quite difficult to get a PIP in many tech companies, and it's rarely if ever for lack of tech skills. The ones I've seen usually involve either motivation, output, or both plummeting to zero for extended periods of time due to burnout or a similar extended personal crisis.

> it's rarely if ever for lack of tech skills. isn't output related with lack of tech skills?

Not if output was satisfactory before and then drops
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