I am talking from personal experience here:
Hiring is broken
is a statement that is often the result of long intensive (and multiple ) interview processes which is met with sheer frustration.I went through that, cooled down a bit and came to a conclusion which I would like to share :
Hiring is Broken:
Yes it is,but not the process,but the people.
When you interview in a big company(especially a profitable one) you need to realize they are not looking for a typical skillset.
Big (for profit) companies tend to keep their softwares behind closed doors.
Hadoop was open sourced by google atleast a year after internal usage ,the same goes for Bazel(Blaze internally) .These were open sourced because they had much better versions of the same software that were consumed internally.When you reach such levels,performance factors are as important as
- ability to ship fast
- writing clean/testable code
- and all the other things that we programmers/coders are good at.
I am not saying that we aren't good at optimizing. But they are not really looking for the horde. This could also explain poaching college professors/PhD candidates for jobs.They need to people to push boundaries,not implement/build things from existing technologies.There is only so long that you can spend in a domain without having the need to extend that domain which you have been working in the past 20 years for.
Regular start-ups and other companies need a product.They need to make a mark in a field by pleasing the customer who would be using their products/technologies and who are looking for a service alternative mostly.
That is my justification for such interviews.This changed the way how I even handled interviews.
If I am asked these algorithmic questions,I generally smile and ask them if they want a Computer[1] or someone who can use a computer.I Immediately steer the conversation to what do they expect from me and explain to them what I can do.Often this clears the air and helps me(stress on the me) decide if I would like to join them.
What you need to realize is that its you who is joining them.The impact that the organization will have on you is normally a much larger of magnitude in comparison to what you will have on the organization. The environment you end up working in will mould you in ways that you cannot anticipate.
PS: There are a couple of people who do the job hunting for the massive salary hikes and those sort of factors.I guess none of my arguments apply for them .
[2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer