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Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

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Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

#41

Post by rwallace »

dominotw wrote: post #24

Can't they atleast hire one person that didn't luck out by being born in a rich/middle class american family to go to ivy league universities. What is such complicated product that Fog Creek makes that it needs graduates from top 10 universities? Serious question.

The phrasing in your second paragraph is a little off target: the truth is if you're doing anything nontrivial you always want better people because they'll get the job done faster and better even if less skilled people could have done it at all. The real question is, why does Fog Creek think it is to its advantage to only hire potlatch participants, when such discrimination is usually irrational as well as unethical?

The answer, I think, is because they are in the unique position of being able to get away with it. In the normal course of events you'll do worse looking for candidates from Ivy League universities than from people who haven't gone to college because you're fishing in a pool that has already been thoroughly fished by your competitors. But Fog Creek frankly doesn't have very many competitors in this regard, at least not ones remotely in the same league. They seem to be so much better at hiring interns than almost anyone else (in the sense of having a strong brand name to attract attention in the first place, a rigorous selection process and generous offers to those selected) that they will probably be able to pick the cream of the crop no matter where they look, so they have no need to look further afield.

So I think it's a case where the number one player can get away with something the rest of us couldn't.

Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

#42

Post by acchow »

CocaKoala wrote: post #22
bcaine wrote: post #18

This sounds like a great program, I just wish it was offered year-round. Even though I think Northeastern University and Waterloo are the only schools with a completely integrated, well defined Co-op program, it seems like its a growing trend. I'd assume having year round interns and a continuous recruitment process would be less disruptive to the team's work velocity and give you a bit bigger reach for students too.…

I didn't attend the Rochester Institute of Technology, but friends of mine who go there tell me that co-ops are a mandatory part of the CS program there.

Waterloo's "co-op" system is quite different. The whole undergraduate co-op program lasts about 5 years, and you alternate between 4 months in school and 4 months working throughout (i.e., you don't get summers "off"). This allows the students to try many different companies of varying size and culture.

Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

#43

Post by asafira »

scrumper wrote: post #39
crazypyro wrote: post #9

As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were jus…

> MOST ANNOYING THING A weekend is plenty . You're an intern: there are many, many more of you to choose from. As you pointed out, nobody wants to waste time. The person that offered you the placement wants someone who wants to be there, not someone looking for an backup offer.

I am going to respectfully disagree. Just because the company can do it doesn't mean a weekend is plenty. You are given a weekend to decide where you might spend months of your life, potentially in a place you've never been. On top of that, who knows if that weekend was going to be extremely busy for you? Just because you take one week to decide on an offer doesn't mean you don't want to be there. It's also not at all an industry standard to give such a short timespan for the decision; if anything, it's a reflection of how little the company will care about the intern when he/she is there.

All in all, a weekend is certainly not "plenty". I sympathize with crazypyro.

Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

#44

Post by ampersandy »

scrumper wrote: post #39
crazypyro wrote: post #9

As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were jus…

> MOST ANNOYING THING A weekend is plenty . You're an intern: there are many, many more of you to choose from. As you pointed out, nobody wants to waste time. The person that offered you the placement wants someone who wants to be there, not someone looking for an backup offer.

The most annoying thing about internships are smug comments like this about interns.

Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

#45

Post by crazypyro »

scrumper wrote: post #39
crazypyro wrote: post #9

As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were jus…

> MOST ANNOYING THING A weekend is plenty . You're an intern: there are many, many more of you to choose from. As you pointed out, nobody wants to waste time. The person that offered you the placement wants someone who wants to be there, not someone looking for an backup offer.

I don't know if you haven't been on an internship search lately, but I'd say CS interns, especially ones that that are going to be seniors and with prior experience, are in high demand. Even with my less than stellar resume, I got a high offer rate from everywhere I interviewed.

Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

#46

Post by crazypyro »

asafira wrote: post #43
scrumper wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MOST ANNOYING THING A weekend is plenty . You're an intern: there are many, many more of you to choose from. As you pointed out, nobody wants to waste time. The person that offered you the placement wants someone who wants to be there, not someone looking for an backup offer.

I am going to respectfully disagree. Just because the company can do it doesn't mean a weekend is plenty . You are given a weekend to decide where you might spend months of your life, potentially in a place you've never been. On top of that, who knows if that weekend was going to be extremely busy for you? Just because you take one week to decide on an offer doesn't mean you don't want to be there. It's also not at a…

Just to re-iterate how quick the turn around was, I interviewed on Thursday, got offered on Friday while I was at an interview for a different internship and then had to accept by that Monday.

Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

#47

Post by chimeracoder »

crazypyro wrote: post #9

As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were jus…

> I was given the offer on Friday and he needed an answer on Monday, else he was going to extend the offer to other candidates.

This is known as an "exploding offer". In fact, Joel Spolsky (founder of Fog Creek, the company featured in this article) has a great post on this practice[0] (spoiler: he's against it).

[0]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/26.html

Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

#48

Post by crazypyro »

chimeracoder wrote: post #47
crazypyro wrote: post #9

As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were jus…

> I was given the offer on Friday and he needed an answer on Monday, else he was going to extend the offer to other candidates. This is known as an "exploding offer". In fact, Joel Spolsky (founder of Fog Creek, the company featured in this article) has a great post on this practice[0] (spoiler: he's against it). [0] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/26.html

Thanks for the link. I was tempted to make a post asking for advice before my search back in January or so, but I decided not to. It would've been nice to have some strategies against this kind of offer, but the nice thing was the company was my first choice, so it didn't end up being a huge deal.

Re: Fog Creek's Intern Hiring Process

#50

Post by mwfunk »

scrumper wrote: post #39
crazypyro wrote: post #9

As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were jus…

> MOST ANNOYING THING A weekend is plenty . You're an intern: there are many, many more of you to choose from. As you pointed out, nobody wants to waste time. The person that offered you the placement wants someone who wants to be there, not someone looking for an backup offer.

This is actually true, nothing smug about it. It's an internship, and a lot of companies look for people who might be interested in working for the company after school's over. If someone has that much to think about that they would need more time, then they clearly have no interest in the company itself- they're just looking to get the most money, regardless of who it's coming from.

The differences in compensation aren't that huge, and it's just a summer, and the interns themselves are usually still living off of their parents. So, usually anyone that's agonizing over nickel and dime stuff that early in their career likely has no enthusiasm for what they would be working on (which by itself is reason enough for not taking an intern), and might be super entitled on top of that, also not a good thing. Because, again, we're talking about mostly CS undergrads here. A very small number of them might have a big impact over the course of a summer, but for the majority of them it is practically charity for these companies to take them on- they're not getting anything out of it other than giving a potential future employee some hand-on experience.

And, it's an employer's market- there are plenty of equally qualified interns to choose from in many cases, as well as a small window of time in which they either have to pick an intern or not get one at all. If they gave everyone weeks to make a decision, they could easily end up taking so long to even find an intern that they would run out of time in which to do it.

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