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The Last Technical Interview

steve-yegge.medium.com

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Re: The Last Technical Interview

#81

Post by izacus »

chihuahua wrote: post #58

The "provisional employment" idea sounds good at first, until you think about how it would actually work in practice. You have 100 applicants for 1 position. Which one do you provisionally hire? Ah of course, we have to do a traditional interview loop to evaluate 10 candidates before we can pick one. So you do the traditional interview loop, and then you have 6 months of provisional employment. You haven't replaced a…

To be honest, a lot of ideas are like that - coming from folks who want to be employed but haven't actually ran an employment process.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#82

Post by ok_dad »

s1ngular1ties wrote: post #78
cryptoboy2283 wrote: post #75

Signals I've got from this post: - Steve's company got acquihired by Amazon, granting him a free ticket in without all the torment of the multi-stage interview pipeline. - It's a well known fact that it's easier to jump from one FAANG to another, so while interviewing at Google he had significant advantage, plus the blog gaining popularity. - All of this has caused a deep down imposter syndrome, which resulted in an…

Steve Yegge writing a self-applause post? Well, I never! =)

Don’t worry he probably got an agent to do it. Maybe ten.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#83

Post by officialchicken »

cryptoboy2283 wrote: post #75

Signals I've got from this post: - Steve's company got acquihired by Amazon, granting him a free ticket in without all the torment of the multi-stage interview pipeline. - It's a well known fact that it's easier to jump from one FAANG to another, so while interviewing at Google he had significant advantage, plus the blog gaining popularity. - All of this has caused a deep down imposter syndrome, which resulted in an…

- "This attracts strong candidates to you, because even your rejections are worth something to them."

That's some solid gaslighting right there! You're right Steve, I would rather be rejected by your team than wasting my time by doing something positive with my career.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#84

Post by JimmyBuckets »

__mharrison__ wrote: post #39

I don't understand how a failing stamp for a campfire is good for the interviewee. It signals that they weren't good enough to get hired. Why would they want to parade that around?

You dont need the failing stamps to hang around. All you need are the successful stamps. It's actually better from a human psychology perspective anyway. Less shame.

Everyone will have some successful stamps, and they accrue over time giving better signal. Hiring managers can make a rational decision about what number of stamps over what period of time is sufficient to evaluate a person, trading against the risk of misreading a profile by accepting someone with fewer stamps.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#85

Post by dnnddidiej »

Seems a bit detached from the real world.

If I am doing a 6 month contract which is what he is proposing then yeah I want a great day rate and to earn 12 months salary in those 6.

It basically means I invest in a company that doesn't believe in me and probably wont try to help me succeed.

Also mortgages, car loans, life and health insurance etc. are harder to get on a short contract.

Hiring is broken (maybe) but 6 month paid interviews are not the solution.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#86

Post by foreigner »

How about instead of a contrived take-home project or doing unpaid "real work" for the company, we ask candidates to do n hours of work on an open source project?

That's real useful work, if we don't hire them they can show it off to a different hiring company, and it makes the world a better place.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#87

Post by dnnddidiej »

nitwit005 wrote: post #7

I gave the feedback at one Google interview that they should send Google employees through to see how many get hired. Good to see they basically tried that. The conclusion at the end that bringing someone on board is the ideal method is true I'm sure, but even that runs into the issue that employee evaluation is an even worse situation than the interview process. You can openly see some managers panic when they reali…

It is not necessarily bad if people hired cannot make it through. Reasons:

1. Standards got higher. Luckily if you got in early and proved yourself you are OK. But doesn't mean you would pass the current interview.

2. A marathon runner (with rare exceptions) can't run a marathon on a random day. They train for a specific date. Same with interview prep.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#88

Post by jb1991 »

blizarre wrote: post #80
jb1991 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is directly addressed in the article.

Not exactly, if I am thinking of leaving my job and I have responsibilities, I will not even entertain taking a leap of faith, resigning from my current position and grinding for 3 month in a super-competitive environment for 1/10 of a chance of getting a better job. I'll talk to recruiters and interview at other companies on my spare time, as before.

My point was that this perspective is not lost on the author of that article, as he directly addresses it.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#89

Post by supriyo-biswas »

cryptoboy2283 wrote: post #75

Signals I've got from this post: - Steve's company got acquihired by Amazon, granting him a free ticket in without all the torment of the multi-stage interview pipeline. - It's a well known fact that it's easier to jump from one FAANG to another, so while interviewing at Google he had significant advantage, plus the blog gaining popularity. - All of this has caused a deep down imposter syndrome, which resulted in an…

I read through it and that’s not the impression I got, it was a thought experiment and not much more.

However, a few companies do have a co-working day, where you work with various people on the team to solve a business problem. I wonder if he could have proposed that instead.

Re: The Last Technical Interview

#90

Post by ludicrousdispla »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #10
nitwit005 wrote: post #7

I gave the feedback at one Google interview that they should send Google employees through to see how many get hired. Good to see they basically tried that. The conclusion at the end that bringing someone on board is the ideal method is true I'm sure, but even that runs into the issue that employee evaluation is an even worse situation than the interview process. You can openly see some managers panic when they reali…

> I gave the feedback at one Google interview that they should send Google employees through to see how many get hired. Good to see they basically tried that. They did, but not with the intention of doing anything about the problem. This is a question of reliability , the conceptual 'correlation' of a measurement instrument with itself when measuring the same thing. Reliability is one of two major concepts in psychom…

The decisions made by individual interviewers are extremely accurate if you realize they are just saying 'YES - I want this person hired' or 'NO - I don't want this person hired'. It's entirely subjective but likely very repeatable.
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