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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#801

Post by resonious »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #388
neilv wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the entire question was: What's not in a Linux inode? Were they considering you as an experienced developer of a Unix/Posix filesystem, who would almost certainly know what an inode is? Or were they considering you as someone who had been using a Unix so long and extensively that you had a chance of once having had to configure an older filesystem for huge numbers of inodes. Or a chance that, for some rare reason,…

It was probably an opener for discussion. Assume the best about the interviewer for a minute. What is the best possible interpretation of where they wanted to go with the question?

The fact that the interviewer didn't get the joke and immediately divulged "the answer" makes it hard to assume the best here. If they were really trying to open a dialogue, I'd expect a chuckle and maybe some clarification (like, what _is_ in an inode?)

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#802

Post by marcosdumay »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #435
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…

> The interviewer told me very matter of factly that it was in fact, the filename. which is not even true in some file systems that can inline data directly into the inode, if the data is small enough. for the downvoter(s): > If the data of a file fits in the space allocated for pointers to the data, this space can conveniently be used. For example, ext2 and its successors store the data of symlinks (typically file n…

> the data of symlinks (typically file names)

This means the name of the file the symlink points to. It's not the file name of the symlink itself.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#803

Post by learc83 »

dahart wrote: post #95
madengr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? I have seen people with 25 years service (electrical engineer) walked out with zero notice. Unless you are unionized, you can be fired on the spot.

Increasing risk of liability for firing is real, as is increasing oversight of discrimination law. You can be fired on the spot for breaking company policy, or doing something illegal. Without more info, that’s what I might assume you saw. But getting fired for mildly low performance without notice is not normal, at least not among engineers in large companies, and assuming it’s not because a division or the company…

> result in legal action compelling the company to prove the employee was failing

The company doesn’t have to prove that the employee was failing. It’s perfectly legal for a company to fire an employee because they the employee likes the wrong football team.

The employee or people pursuing legal action on behalf of multiple employees has to prove that the company fires the employee(s) because they were a member of a protected class.

Assuming there are no incriminating emails stating that that was the reason, the only realistic way to do that is to show a pattern.

If an employee decides to sue, whether you had them on a documented performance improvement plan for 6 months or 6 days isn’t going to be the deciding factor.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#804

Post by RandallBrown »

Nition wrote: post #150
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…

And yet if they ask you for an answer to a quirky question like "why are manhole covers round?", they expect a clever answer like "they can't fall in", rather than a pedestrian answer like "well, probably they just started making them that shape for some simple production reason, and then everyone else just kinda of did the same thing because it worked."

A bad interviewer might expect a certain answer but a good interviewer will use it as an opportunity to examine the interviewee's critical thinking skills.

Are there any other reasons the cover would be round? It gives you an insight into their thought process as they come up with more ideas and explanations.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#805

Post by siva7 »

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.

wait until you see this asshole move being pulled to find a bug in production code under time pressure their team has failed in the real environment by being given out some thousand-lines long printed code from the development branch.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#806

Post by balls187 »

atoav wrote: post #304
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…

Weird. When I was casting for actors instead of trying to "trick them into doing something bad" and throwing them out, I tried my best to get it to work with them, even if it meant I had to do something different. A casting is always stressful, they don't need me as an enemy as well. If they are not good enough with a ton of help, they won't be good enough period. If they are really good with a little of help, they c…

I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, and in light of the role unconscious biases plays in hiring, I'm challenging my own beliefs on how to run an interview.

How does an interviewer ensure all candidates are offered help fairly and equally?

What is the purpose of asking a question, that if a solution is found after "hints" are offered, would be acceptable for hiring?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#807

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

gorpomon wrote: post #608

On my team, I inherited an interview process with 7 steps. It's a long one for sure, and it's not a process I can change. But as a hiring manager I mitigate issues brought up in this article by doing a few really easy things: 1. On my first chat with a candidate, I layout the entire interview process. I acknowledge that it is long and I preemptively thank them for going through the process and say that we value their…

I liked that. I was a manager for 25 years. I think I did OK with my decisions (for the most part).

One thing that I noticed at my company:

When I first got hired (in 1990), it was made clear that I was a desired and valued employee. They were a very picky company, and might well have rejected me, but I felt respected and valued, from my first interview (I was flown out to the West Coast, and interviewed by two managers at a trade show).

As the years have gone by, I noticed that our HR department started to have a very different posture. They had to be the ones in charge. Applicants were supplicants. The company was doing them a favor, by considering them for this position.

Also, the HR department started to project this attitude to current employees, to a visibly increasing degree, over the 27 years that I was at that company. By the time I left, the HR posture was that employees were little more than serfs. There was no illusion that employment was a two-way relationship. They started to impose some really draconian policies on employees, with "termination of employment" as the only choice, if the new policy was not acceptable. No negotiations.

I think that this is an attitude that has become a standard in HR, these days, and that part of the reason for this interview process, is to filter for people that won't talk back to HR, and are willing to abase themselves for the company.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#808

Post by kevstev »

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.

We may have had the same interviewer- tbh I thought this was pretty reasonable and more of a warm up really. I think this also lead to a discussion on some questionable logic and how you could improve the code.

I had 10+ years experience in C++, I thought it was completely reasonable. Especially compared to their later questions around something along the lines of finding a shortest path in a tree. I interviewed there a bit before their process was so well known to be game-able, I went in with zero study time on obscure algorithms outside knowing the O(N) of the most widely used, and certainly did not practice actually writing or interacting with trees and such.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#809

Post by marcosdumay »

lrem wrote: post #434
janoc wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Famously even if you know the answer pretty well, say because you were the original creator of the thing, but answer in a way that they can't link to the answer key, you still fail. Which is the most ridiculous part of it. You are being examined and evaluated over trivia in a subject that the examiner likely has no idea about and where there are only 1-2 possible "correct" answers. That's like sending a janitor to "…

What alternative would be more efficient and acceptable? A typical team of 6-8 replaces two persons per year. The number of resumes per opening is measured in thousands.

If you want to mechanically apply a trivia test, then at least make it multiple choice.

You will still be choosing people through a mechanical procedure, what is quite stupid, but it's less stupid than that way.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#810

Post by balls187 »

atoav wrote: post #445
konschubert wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a risk that you accidentally do the thinking for them and give the answers for them without noticing. Doing a collaborative interview requires careful attention by the interviewer, but I agree it’s worth it.

That is the hard part of the job. You need to be able to take yourself out of the equation. If you can't do that, you are simply the wrong person for the job. Usually it is not hard to notice whether you'd like someone to succeed and then factor that in.

> Usually it is not hard to notice whether you'd like someone to succeed and then factor that in.

What about the opposite, that you don't like someone, or worse, you are indifferent to their success?

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