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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#671

Post by stupendoustrace »

mattkrause wrote: post #604
laurent92 wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my startup I interviewed a 48 years old senior Java programmer with excellent resume, who took 1hr to write a String.contains(), it only worked for the requested 4 letters, didn’t work if a letter was repeated twice, and didn’t work with Chinese characters. At least it had the JUnit. I asked an employee to do it too and he made his code pass the JUnit in 6 minutes. The candidate hated the interview, claiming it wa…

But which is more likely? 1. The candidate was a complete and utter fraud and their previous (and apparently well-regarded) employers were too stupid or negligent to notice this, wasting literally millions of dollars (48-21 * $100,000+). 2. Something about the interview failed to let this person demonstrate the skills that had kept them employed for two decades. Maybe their mind went blank under pressure, or at the e…

I had number two happen on an interview recently and I am incredibly happy the interviewer didn't hold it against me. I forgot an otherwise simple word/term, but the pressure of the interview just made my mind go completely blank. I think everyone has a tendency sometimes to forget what it's like to be on the other side, and will hammer on small mistakes, or not consider all the factors.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#672

Post by quietbritishjim »

TheHypnotist wrote: post #645
buro9 wrote: post #593

Ah Amazon... 14 interviews, an additional 5 hour technical test, spanning a total of 3+ months. Only to be informed at the end that I was too technical for the role they had in mind but they were offering me a Senior Principal SDE role instead. By the time we got to the end of the process I'd already concluded that the hiring process was a reflection of their internal decision making and that this was not a company (…

As i mentioned in another post, don't forget to work in those LP's otherwise you get 0 Bezos points and your experience is worthless. Edit: Meant LP's. Leadership Principles.

What's GP? Gaussian process? General practitioner? Or, most commonly on HN, grandparent [post]? Or maybe the whole point of using that abbreviation is to exclude those outside Amazon?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#673

Post by tyingq »

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…

That's a weirdly phrased question anyway. There's a directory entries reference in the inode that leads to the filename. So the name(s) isn't exactly "not in" an inode.

A lot of those interview questions just seem to test for "how good is their memory", which I don't think correlates to future performance very well.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#674

Post by flemhans »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #558
dspillett wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Done right there will be a lot more in there than syntax errors. A good example of this sort of test will separate those who have revised syntax without really thinking (they'll get the syntax errors but little or nothing else, great if you want to employ a human linter) from those who actually think about what they are looking at will spot much more (a logical error that would cause an infinite loop, a point where a…

Does this kind of trick question work well in practice? If they explicitly ask for syntax errors it would be a waste of time to also check the code for other errors. I can’t imagine many people opting to do that unless they know it’s a trick question.

If you'd see an obvious SQL injection, wouldn't it be hard to resist telling them?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#675

Post by scrose »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #558
dspillett wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Done right there will be a lot more in there than syntax errors. A good example of this sort of test will separate those who have revised syntax without really thinking (they'll get the syntax errors but little or nothing else, great if you want to employ a human linter) from those who actually think about what they are looking at will spot much more (a logical error that would cause an infinite loop, a point where a…

Does this kind of trick question work well in practice? If they explicitly ask for syntax errors it would be a waste of time to also check the code for other errors. I can’t imagine many people opting to do that unless they know it’s a trick question.

I don’t see what information people can glean from those trick questions.

Any time I’ve interviewed people I’ve made it a point to emphasize that none of my questions are trick questions and if anything is unclear, they should ask clarifying questions. The result? Interviewees are more comfortable and are far more honest about what they know, what they don’t know, and you get to see a glimpse of what they’re really like.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#676

Post by HWR_14 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #190
vishnugupta wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory https://sellsbrothers.com/12395

Ok but consider - is there any department at Microsoft other than marketing that Richard Feynman would have been suited for?

Richard Feynman oversaw the IBM computer's use and programming used in the Manhattan Project. Microsoft also has an R&D department that would probably just give him a budget and a team of assistants to see what he came up with.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#677

Post by tonyedgecombe »

ladberg wrote: post #235
ironman1478 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. I want to say that that's Google's fault right? Because not everybody is on the team you're interviewing for (I might be wrong)? At Apple you are interviewed by the team, who presumably needs another person to assist them. Also, regardless of whether or not they want to be there, it's a bad look for the company. Somebody took a day off to talk to you, it's only fair that an interviewer reciprocates

Can confirm everything you said is true and that at Google you'll likely never see your interviewers once you start working there but at Apple you'll be working with your interviewers on a daily basis. It has upsides and downsides, like as you said you had to go through 3 different on-sites (one for each team), but you'll get a good sense of the team before getting an offer (and they'll get a good sense of you). I li…

The good thing about interviewing with your teammates is they will be invested in making it success if they recommended you. If you never see the interviewer again then they have no skin in the game.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#678

Post by pinewurst »

pm90 wrote: post #636
throwaway9191aa wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just +1 this as a datapoint. I am not looking externally until I'm sure I'm done at AWS. I've done 80+ interviews here, and I'm consistently amazed by what drives people to say "The candidate wasn't up to the coding bar". As far as I can tell, you are almost never up to the coding bar. I think we interview so many people just to remind ourselves that if we leave, we aren't getting back in. Just to head off the "…

You don’t need to fight tooth and nail for change. Expressing dissent or disagreement with the status quo is a good start.

At Amazon, that’s considered volunteering for a PIP.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#679

Post by corpMaverick »

peakaboo wrote: post #221
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'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…

If I remember correctly the name of the file is not in the inode. That allows you to have a file with different names. (links)

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#680

Post by phibz »

wittyusername wrote: post #82
phibz wrote: post #79

I interviewed with a company out of SV that did this. They started with 3, added another 3, one hour interviews and finally another 3. 9 interviews over the course of almost a month. I was being interviewed for a principal engineer. I was very clear and kept saying I wanted a management track position. They kept saying we love your background we can work with you on this. Ninth interview was with the CTO. He said the…

I think it's time to name and shame not sure why you are being coy when they jerked you around so much.

Fandom.
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