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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”?

#531

Post by sgtnoodle »

thirdwhrldPzz wrote: post #402
sgtnoodle wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do we know this isn’t blind faith and the numbers are “made up”? Other than fiat wealth generation, what gains are there to treating each other like this?

I'm not sure what you mean? Are you suggesting that companies shouldn't avoid hiring unqualified people that generate less value than their cost on average?

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

#532

Post by vikingcaffiene »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #475
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! So, I'll say that we are still tweaking and trying to get things just right but, as of the time of me writing this, here is the process: - HR call 30 min. - Talk to hiring manager (me) 30 min. Get to know each other and feel out if there is a mutual fit. - Technical panel 1hr. Speak with several engineers on the team who share your discipline (front end or back end for example). Again no live coding. We just…

Sorry, but this just sounds very easy to bullshit. Unless you're doing real in depth quizzing of stuff people wouldn't know if they didn't work with it (e.g. in HFT, explaining what a potential implementation of std::string could be and what the tradeoffs of each design choice would be), generic backend principles are very easy to spew correct answers for without actually knowing how to code. How are you going to fil…

> generic backend principles are very easy to spew correct answers for without actually knowing how to code

I'm not sure I agree with this. IMO trying to get someone to explain the ins and outs of a particular facet of the technology your team works in is less effective than getting a sense of how a candidate architects their code and manages complexity. That type of "art more than a science" craftsmanship is not something you can easily fake in my experience. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. We shall see. So far I've had pretty good luck with the approach and gotten some really great teammates.

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

#533

Post by _dain_ »

0des wrote: post #216
grapeskin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All we need is a “3+ interviews considered harmful” post to hit HN a few months in a row and we can finally solve this problem. That, or we’ll have some representative from the big 5 saying “Hey guys, Jayden from (x soulless Silicon Valley company) here. Not speaking on behalf of my employer but actually at X Corp(tm) we’ve found that anything less than 37 interviews (+tip) isn’t enough to let the real stars shine th…

Its always a Jayden.

living in fear of my name becoming a byword for some unpleasant stereotype person in 20 years

no i'm not telling you what it is :(

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

#534

Post by turdprincess »

StupidUser123 wrote: post #106
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,…

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’ve been employed by everyone from small consulting firms to big tech to FAANG and I’ve never seen anyone let go for performance. This includes serial low performers that produced nothing for years. Aside from a very few (like 1 or 2) select companies, the bar to staying employed is laughably low in tech.

In my opinion this is a big problem. I wish there was a stronger culture of letting low performers go quickly in tech. This would reduce the need for exhaustive interview loops and ultimately make the industry more inclusive because you could afford to take a chance on someone without being chained to them for years to come.

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

#535

Post by alfiedotwtf »

When did needing to spend a month prepping for interviews become the norm :sadface:

I understand that companies in Silicon Valley have a huge influx of applicants and so the filtering needs to be high, but the way interviewing practices have spread to other parts of the world because of cargo culting is frustrating.

Companies have a hiring crisis but shoot themselves in the foot during the interview process.

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

#536

Post by vikingcaffiene »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #461
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #346

Hiring manager here. IMO the current tech hiring norms are gross and not sustainable. It feels like a weird hazing ritual and with the current market, is the single biggest reason you can't hire. Why on earth would someone burn a weekend on a take-home test for your startup when they have 15 other irons in the fire? At my current employer we got rid of all that ridiculousness. No take home test. No live coding. We've…

Going through a few days of grueling interviews every few years is vastly preferable to spending a few years working alongside people who can't pull their own weight. Hiring managers are timid about letting people go and it can take an extraordinary amount of time to part ways with unproductive people.

> Hiring managers are timid about letting people go and it can take an extraordinary amount of time to part ways with unproductive people.

With respect, it sounds like you had a bad manager. Underperforming teammates are your managers responsibility. They should be working to address that issue with said teammate or part ways. Sucks. Not fun. It's the job though.

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

#537

Post by mrwebmaster »

Recently did 5 interviews, and I liked it. I’d had no issues doing more if needed, just to be on the safe side for both parties.

I guess that when a family doesn’t depend on your job or you are not leaving a good position, it could be OK to join a company after 3 or 4 interviews. But if you have a family or are leaving a good position, there is much more at stake. 7 interviews is not that high of an investment to lower the risk of a bad move, that could have a negative impact on your career and the future of your family.

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

#538

Post by ripper1138 »

hamandcheese wrote: post #215
ipaddr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are hiring someone with 10 years experience it becomes a lot easier. Just try them out, 9/10 will succeed.

I’ve seen way too many “experienced devs” who are terrible coders.

I’ve seen way too many people show up after a 12 week “SWE interview bootcamp”, pass interviews, and not know how to read an API doc and write code against it. I’ll take the experienced dev.

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

#539

Post by babyshake »

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,…

I'm convinced that the best interview is to give someone an app (react or node app for example) and do exactly what occurs all the time in the real world. Give vague indication that a feature appears to sometimes not work correctly.

In the app code there should be one or two very obvious bugs and easy optimizations to make, and then put more subtle and challenging to fix issues there as well. And ideally make it something where a really sharp and experienced developer would identify some high-level architectural flaw and they would know how to rearchitect it.

Everyone knows that the leetcode-style questions are contrived and don't usually reflect real world work but we continue to do it anyways.

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

#540

Post by greenyoda »

ipaddr wrote: post #274
hamandcheese wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen way too many “experienced devs” who are terrible coders.

In the end prioritize for the position. If you want good coders look for resumes with startup experience. You don't survive as a senior developer at a startup without being being able to write code under pressure. If you want someone who can glue various systems while cross communicating to various stakeholders look for someone at a larger company. If you want both, look for both sets of experience on the resume. Peo…

> If you want good coders look for resumes with startup experience. You don't survive as a senior developer at a startup without being being able to write code under pressure.

Lots of code that's written under pressure isn't good code. It's code that barely works and is hard to maintain. For a startup that's trying to get an MVP out quickly (and may not be around in a couple of years), that may be just what they need. But a huge company like Google needs developers who can write software that's reliable, performs well and is maintainable for years after the original developer is gone.

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