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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#651

Post by b112 »

Bodell wrote: post #627
lordnacho wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point I'm pretty sure FAANG hiring is just a random walk. Every now again someone happens to have looked at all the questions they ask recently for that particular interview cycle (or avoid the trap ones like that) and that person gets hired (and then put on the ad targeting team or whatever). This might actually be part of the retention strategy. If everyone who works at FAANG knows that they're somewhat l…

Sometimes I see articles about a wrongfully convicted man being let out of prison. This usually comes with a cash payment of some sort. The whole we took 20 years of your life, oops, here’s a million dollars. Every time I see this though I think ‘no, no way does money replace my time.’ That’s simply not good enough. And not because the payments are usually ludicrously low, but because there is no amount of money that…

Yes and what this means is that Google, and others, are hiring those most willing to do anything for money.

That always works out well.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#652

Post by rcthompson »

XorNot wrote: post #264
ladberg wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similarly bad Google experience that I've talked about before[0] but will copy here: I was asked to do a task that eventually boiled down to a topological sort, and I thought the question consisted of recognizing that the answer was a topological sort and moving on because it was over the phone. However, that was not the case. The interviewer wanted me to code it all out over Google Docs, but I didn't remembe…

At this point I'm pretty sure FAANG hiring is just a random walk. Every now again someone happens to have looked at all the questions they ask recently for that particular interview cycle (or avoid the trap ones like that) and that person gets hired (and then put on the ad targeting team or whatever).

I think there's probably one or more "real" filtering steps to start with, but after those steps there's still way more qualified candidates than positions to fill, and at that point the only possible solution is to choose randomly. But that's not "satisfying" so instead they just keep interviewing and finding reasons to reject people (all completely arbitrary, since everyone is already qualified) until they reach the target number, at which point all remaining candidates get offers. Which effectively results in wasting a bunch of everyone's time and then choosing randomly anyway.

(This is a massive oversimplification, of course, but you get the idea.)

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#653

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

woofie11 wrote: post #643
crispyambulance wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experiences that people describe here just confirm something that many of us has learned a long time ago: NOBODY HAS "FIGURED OUT" HIRING ! Not Google, not Apple, no one. Sure, some places (and individual interviewers) are better at it than others. But at the end of the day, hiring is a deeply subjective process with lots of error and uncertainty built into it's nature. The subjectivity is intrinsic. Places like…

Pretend there's a Programming Quotient (PQ) which is like IQ. Let's say Google would like candidates with PQ>130 with 95% confidence. Google has an error with std. div. of 15 points in measurement of PQ in jobs interviews. Google then needs to set the hiring bar at 160 PQ in order to get those candidates. This: - screens most qualified candidates out; but - most candidates who do screen in are qualified Statistics wo…

> all Googlers are convinced they all have a PQ>160, and are superior to everyone else.

And likewise, other employers looking to hire ex-Googlers are convinced of the same.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#654

Post by skeeter2020 »

saagarjha wrote: post #476
XorNot wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I'm pretty sure FAANG hiring is just a random walk. Every now again someone happens to have looked at all the questions they ask recently for that particular interview cycle (or avoid the trap ones like that) and that person gets hired (and then put on the ad targeting team or whatever).

You don't pass a FAANG interview by looking up all the questions and memorizing them, you just get a feel for what they'd ask you and learn how to respond with what they want.

That's what they're trying to achieve, but it's imperfect at best, so I'm not sure you can state that professional leetcoders don't get jobs at FAANG

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#655

Post by dagw »

papito wrote: post #599
bb88 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I wanted to interview at google, I sensed some frustration between HR and the engineering. Some engineers just didn't make good interviewers. HR wished I had gotten a different interviewer.

The problem is that many out there try to copy the dysfunctional FAANG interview style. Google was asking those dumb brain-teaser questions for years, which were obviously useless to the naked eye, and then they realized themselves that those were counter-productive. Yet, you could expect one of those in almost any interview process. Seemingly smart people are ready to jump on bandwagons, too.

Google was asking those dumb brain-teaser questions for years

Microsoft started doing this, realized it was a bad idea, and stopped before Google even really started this practice. So Google is as guilty of bandwagon jumping as everybody else here.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#656

Post by 2001lodyssee »

MattGaiser wrote: post #67
2001lodyssee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my long and storied career, well long at least, every single truly heinous, project-killin', crazy person actually interviewed pretty well. Honestly, I don't have a good solution to the problem.

I suspect the reasons they killed the project were all over the map too, so you are basically searching for a big unknown problem.

I would also suspect that any filtering mechanism that cuts out the truly destructive people might well be either unacceptable or illegal at this point.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#657

Post by mcv »

rwmj wrote: post #454
jd115 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed for a software engineering position with Goldman once (in London). The process spanned several weeks of phone interviews with people in the UK and US (I lost track of the count), followed by a full day of back-to-back interviews on-site with 12 different people - some via video conference with New York. Questions were extremely diverse, both wide and deep. Early on in the process I decided to look at th…

I once had a weird interview at an investment bank for a backroom sysadmin position. I went to the interview in a smart cotton tennis shirt, black trousers, and was interviewed by a bunch of techie people wearing pretty much the same kind of clothes. The interview covered many technical issues and seemed to go really well. When I got out and was on my way home, the recruitment consultant phoned me up and quite litera…

For one of my first job interviews I called to company whether they wore suits. They said yes. I bought a suit and got a haircut, and was interviewed by two techies in smudgy polo and sweater. I felt way overdressed, didn't get hired, and decided to never do this again. A neat button-down shirt is plenty.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#658

Post by TGImemegen »

cheschire wrote: post #538
TGImemegen wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googler here. At some stage of the interview process, we have to check whether you're able to code, there's no way around it if you're applying for a coding position. So yes, we'll have you code the solution to a problem. Of course in the real world we'd use a library or look up the algorithm on stack overflow like everyone else. Good for you if you came up with a workable algorithm for the problem quickly. But that'…

There’s enough counter anecdotes here on HN when this topic comes up that the wording of your post comes off as tone deaf. You actually seem to believe every interviewer at Google behaves like you, for the same reasons, to the same standards. “We do NOT” “You messed up” “let me be very clear” “whether you’re able to code” These types of statements come off as patronizing. If your whole process sounded like this, and…

I tried conveying what I was told when I was trained for conducting interviews, what I've explicitly seen demanded on the interview forms I have to fill out and what I get as feedback from hiring committees. Thus I indeed assume that my opinion represents the majority of interviewers. Whether that assumption is warranted or not, I wouldn't know.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#659

Post by skeeter2020 »

trinovantes wrote: post #301
ladberg wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similarly bad Google experience that I've talked about before[0] but will copy here: I was asked to do a task that eventually boiled down to a topological sort, and I thought the question consisted of recognizing that the answer was a topological sort and moving on because it was over the phone. However, that was not the case. The interviewer wanted me to code it all out over Google Docs, but I didn't remembe…

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.

What is super frustrating is that these same companies and people are convinced they can find game-changing productivity gains in software development, like magnitude-level improvements, yet ask questions that, what little increases we've made in the past 50+ years have made trivial.This is just a lazy question.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#660

Post by BurningFrog »

Bodell wrote: post #627
lordnacho wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point I'm pretty sure FAANG hiring is just a random walk. Every now again someone happens to have looked at all the questions they ask recently for that particular interview cycle (or avoid the trap ones like that) and that person gets hired (and then put on the ad targeting team or whatever). This might actually be part of the retention strategy. If everyone who works at FAANG knows that they're somewhat l…

Sometimes I see articles about a wrongfully convicted man being let out of prison. This usually comes with a cash payment of some sort. The whole we took 20 years of your life, oops, here’s a million dollars. Every time I see this though I think ‘no, no way does money replace my time.’ That’s simply not good enough. And not because the payments are usually ludicrously low, but because there is no amount of money that…

> Same as there is no amount of money you could give me to end my life, a position which I assume is shared by a vast majority of humans.

Pretty sure a lot of older parents would take a deal with lethal injection + $1M for their kids to inherit.

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