Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The rise of never-ending job interviews

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 1001 posts

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#411

Post by sneak »

powerapple wrote: post #350
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…

it is not optimal, but there is no alternative. The interviews should show 1) you want the job, i.e. you put some effort; 2) you can learn, i.e. those ridiculous questions; 3) team fit, i.e. you like them, and they like you. Programmer interviews are the only thing people can do in a reasonable timeframe. As programmers we always learn, we learn what we need to learn to do the job, there is no reason to reject someon…

There are alternatives.

They don't prescreen for candidates that will put up with a large amount of big corporate bullshit without fucking off unexpectedly, however.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#412

Post by jack_riminton »

laumars wrote: post #345
peakaboo wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so stupid, all of it. They try to come up with random questions that doesn't mean anything if the candidate remembers the answer at that point in time. I've read about Linux inodes. I know what they do. In fact I even have had Linux systems where I get inode related error messages because the partition had too many small files on it. But given that question, in that situation, I would likely not know what they e…

I’ve written a few Linux file systems and I’m not even sure I’d have answered that question correctly. I’ve also failed job interviews where I was told there was no coding expected in the face to face and then got given a piece of paper and asked to solve 3 theoretical problems in SQL on paper while 3 interviewers watched. 10 years prior I’d worked for several years on Oracle middleware so I knew SQL inside and and o…

Seems like in these cases bad interviewers are a great opportunity to glimpse into bad companies

A frustrating way to find out though

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#414

Post by agent327 »

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?

He's saying that in order to judge someone's ability at something, you need to understand that thing yourself. If you require the candidate to write perfect code using nothing but a whiteboard, you need to be able to read that code using nothing but a whiteboard as well.

If the interviewer cannot do this, how is he going to judge the result? Does he know how to run a compiler? Does he know how to run the code? Does he have the skill to judge the output? Is it really a good policy for a company to discard a possibly excellent candidate that just missed something silly that would normally be checked by a tool while you type?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#415

Post by rdedev »

kamaal wrote: post #353
yobbo wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is disrespectful, but it is a proxy test for how many hours you have spent reading and writing code in that language.

A while back Indian companies were notoriously famous for giving questions from Let us C, from Yashwant Kanitkar . The questions go like, What is the output of the expression below? int i = 10; ****++&&*+p; Followed by a myriad of options. Including things like Syntax error . Not sure how this measures language proficiency.

My diskile of C and C++ were particularly due to such questions. Its always in C or C++ I see such convoluted questions

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#416

Post by sokoloff »

yobbo wrote: post #338
trinovantes wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had an in-person interview where they gave me a sheet of printed code and asked me to point out the syntax errors. Some interviewers are absolutely insane.

It is disrespectful, but it is a proxy test for how many hours you have spent reading and writing code in that language.

What about it is disrespectful? It seems to me that it’s testing for something relevant and I don’t see it as otherwise bad (abusive, pure trivia, easily Google-able, etc)

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#417

Post by janoc »

powerapple wrote: post #350
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…

it is not optimal, but there is no alternative. The interviews should show 1) you want the job, i.e. you put some effort; 2) you can learn, i.e. those ridiculous questions; 3) team fit, i.e. you like them, and they like you. Programmer interviews are the only thing people can do in a reasonable timeframe. As programmers we always learn, we learn what we need to learn to do the job, there is no reason to reject someon…

Sorry that's utter BS.

I have just passed an interview for my new job and it was none of the above. Yet very technical, still very involved - but with competent people on the other side that were showing they are as interested in getting someone hired as I was in getting the job.

There were 2 interview calls in all (normally the second one would have been on-site but Covid ...).

No need for BS scripted questions, no need to ask trivia, there was coding test but on a computer (not paper) and nothing crazy you would need to read books or study for.

Is it perfect? Of course not. But that's why there is a 3 months trial period in the contract during which they can terminate the employee "overnight" if not performing satisfactorily.

That's a much better solution than trying to evaluate everything and the kitchen sink in an interview by asking trivia questions and wasting the candidate's time with reams of books to study. Which, in the end, evaluate only whether the candidate is able to cram for interviews and not whether or not they are actually competent at doing their job.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#418

Post by cowanon22 »

Every quality job I've had consisted of 6-8 different interviews. However, all of those jobs also send me a schedule and list of job titles of who I will be interviewing with, and conducted all of them on the same day. At this point I consider it a big red flag if a company excessively spreads them out.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#419

Post by [deleted] »

vmception wrote: post #292
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow. If FAANG companies would offer you 1x, and non-FAANG companies in your area of specialty would offer you x/3, who's paying 3x?

Solo. Right now I can make 3x FAANG comp on a new idea annually without reaching out to my network or needing outside capital. Given how many ways there are to do that and much more, I would like the structure of someone else’s idea to focus (aka being an employee). Doing things solo has overhead costs and liability risks, whereas employment has almost none but half to 3/4ths of your compensation is withheld the whol…

[deleted]

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#420

Post by dexen »

Two months ago there was a news that raised some eye-brows, "Amazon has a quota for the number of employees it would be happy to see leave (businessinsider.com)" [1]. Some of the comments were quite negative, reading it as a dehumanizing practice with no clear upsides. Re-upping my reply [2]:

The article paints a needlessly bleak picture.

The neutral reading of the practice is, "managers are able to take riskier hiring decisions, because they are given an allowed turnover rate".

Which surprisingly enough is a solution to the ever-growing worry of false negatives in hiring - i.e., overlooking good candidates whos resume or interview did not shine strongly enough, or who perhaps are from a shunned, misunderstood culture, or who otherwise did not fit the generic hiring practice prevalent in the society. This solution allows an organization to make riskier hiring decisions at a well understood rate - hopefully catching the false negatives that did slip through competing organizations' hiring process.

--

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27369910

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27370538

Post reply on HN