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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”?

#481
post #98
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Often, legally, firing people is harder than hiring. 2. Hire more, fire fast sounds good on paper but will destroy morale as the team identity will be constantly influx. 3. Engineers will spend less time onboarding newer engineers to the detriment of everyone because well, they might not just last.

Basically everywhere in NA has allowances for probationary periods with at-will employment. Moreover, prospective hires could start on contract. Morale is improved when team members feel like they have some control over their membership. It seems like you're assuming that a great many people would be fired; why so? In my experience, having worked for several such companies, firing is rare because even minimal filters…

What's practically possible is always a subset of what's legally possible. I think probationary periods/contract-to-hire situations are extremely unlikely to work for anything beyond absolute entry level, for a number of reasons.

For one thing, it's a huge amount of uncertainty to put on the potential hire, which means you'll be strongly biasing your hiring pool towards people who don't have better options. It feels like in an effort to reduce the interview time, you've effectively expanded it to multiple months.

Second, how do you calibrate the "default" option? Is the expectation that everyone on a probation period will be hired unless proven otherwise, or is it that most will be let go unless actively vouched for? Is that expectation clear across the team? If there's a mismatch across team members, you have big problems. People who want to keep a prospect will be annoyed if they're let go, and vice versa. People who need to work with a prospect will have to figure out whether it's safe to actually trust them with anything - on the one hand, you have to give them enough work to prove themselves; on the other hand, you can't give them anything too important or with too long a horizon, because they might be gone before they get to launch.

And finally - how long does that trial period need to go on to be useful? The goal in designing a hiring process is to get a reasonable level of precision/recall (different companies will balance differently between those) with a reasonable level of investment. If you've increased investment without increasing precision, then you've done something wrong. Given how long it takes to ramp up a new hire and have them actually be productive, I don't think you're going to learn much in a ~6 month probationary period that you couldn't already tell in a day of interviews.

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

#482
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’ve been close to one person getting fired? How do you have an opinion on the PIP process or firing at all if you have next to no experience with it? I knew a guy at a FAANG who earned himself and his report a PIP for the grave sin of choosing the wrong deputy to send upstairs while he was on vacation. The deputized person went to one meeting and ran his mouth (arguably, told the truth). Both are no longer at t…

Been at one of FAANG for a few years. Never saw this play out. Sounds like something that is more likely to happen on the management side than it is the IC side…

Most ICs are pretty well insulated from this, because if they understood what went on at calibration a lot of good contributors would become pretty bitter.

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

#484
post #304
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Often, legally, firing people is harder than hiring. 2. Hire more, fire fast sounds good on paper but will destroy morale as the team identity will be constantly influx. 3. Engineers will spend less time onboarding newer engineers to the detriment of everyone because well, they might not just last.

in the US employment is at will or whatever it's called so they can fire you on the spot for no reason at all.

They can legally fire you on the spot, yes, but all that means is that the fired person can't sue their former employer. That doesn't mean it's actually a good strategy for the employer to do so frequently, because the employer's relationship with any given employee doesn't exist in a vacuum, and has effects on the employer's relationship with other employees and potential hires.

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

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. It’s great getting data points on several programming interviews, system design, etc. That makes my sell interview so much easier because I can trust the process to assess their technical skills. You need multiple people because you’re consta…

> I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. The truth is that nobody likes being interviewed . Getting tested and judged by strangers isn’t fun. But developers also really don’t like being surrounded by unqualified developers who slipped through a weak interview process. They also don’t like having significant numbers of their teammates fired and replaced all the time becaus…

> the outcome of such a rigorous process. It also helps protect people from becoming false negatives because they didn’t mesh with a single interviewer or struggled with a single interview problem.

Not really. When I was at Google there were tons of candidates that would get passed on because of one of the interviews going badly.

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

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I’ve seen it’s almost always as you describe or something political like a manager taking over a group and wanting to make room for their friends. But if employees are burning out and then being PIPed instead of getting support I think that is a rather sad indictment of our industry in an of itself.

>if employees are burning out and then being PIPed instead of getting support I think that is a rather sad indictment of our industry in an of itself The thing is most big companies don't care about your burn-out or personal situation, they either have product launch deadlines to meet, or revenue targets or customers to please, and people in the trenches are considered replaceable so churn is something they account f…

Your manager might also have a specific target for “unregretted attrition”, i.e. getting rid of people using the PIP process. If there is not a clear person who is the weakest link, then the manager will pick their least favorite. And remember, performance is very subjective.

I have seen a couple of people get fired for cause; that was always clear. I’ve never seen an unambiguous PIP.

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

#487
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. It’s great getting data points on several programming interviews, system design, etc. That makes my sell interview so much easier because I can trust the process to assess their technical skills. You need multiple people because you’re consta…

> Is it annoying for candidates? Yeah, but we pay you a lot of money, and it does actually work for us. Is it perfect? No, but it does work. I've never been paid for interviewing. You mean you pay the successful candidates well, which is what? 10% of the people you subject to this obnoxious process?

My FAANG team does 2x screening interviews plus a round of 3 to 4 full interviews. We try to interview at most 4 candidates in the full loop. That’s about 5 hours of interview time, and the average candidate will succeed by the 3rd or 4th interview.

Given that we are making a $200-600k+ decision and that the average candidate stands to gain tens of thousands of dollars or more, the 20-40 hours spent interviewing seems time well spent on both sides.

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a HM at a big tech company with this format as well. Honestly, I really like it. I don’t want to hire the wrong person, it’s expensive and it makes my job awful for a while. It’s great getting data points on several programming interviews, system design, etc. That makes my sell interview so much easier because I can trust the process to assess their technical skills. You need multiple people because you’re consta…

> Is it annoying for candidates? Yeah, but we pay you a lot of money, and it does actually work for us The best candidates can get jobs paying the same or more money with fewer interviews, so the very best aren’t going to pick you.

Yeah, but the worst will also have an easier time. Missing out on a great developer is still a good deal if you also prevent 10 mishires.

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

#490
I recently applied for an effectively specialized support job at a FAANG. After filling up a form ~40min, and one technical interview ~1hr, I got an email to congratulate me for moving onto the next stage and to get ready for 5x 1hr interviews.

In NZ where I am from, this is unheard of, so I asked if they were paid interviews and what is the pay range for this job (since it was not discussed at all at this point). They very carefully made sure not to answer any of the questions so I said I won't proceed with my application and gave a bit of feedback that they are looking for desperate people, not talented people.

Ridiculous, they are not worth my time.

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