The rise of never-ending job interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#951

Post by throwaway984393 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 3:26 AM UTC

tschwimmer wrote: post #931

Twirrim wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%, speaking as someone who's been both sides of the equation in FAANG hiring. Part of the problem is the sheer scale of hiring, but I think most of the problem comes down to the lack of feedback or evaluation mechanisms on the interviewing side. They train you up, half a days worth, training tells you not to be an arsehole, not to ask stupid questions, not to have unreasonable demands of candidates, not to be bias…

I also did interviewing at a FAANG and this was not my experience. 1. We trained 4-5 times on each type of question. The first few were shadows, and then we did reverse shadows where someone watched us give the interview and gave feedback later. In one category I asked for and was allowed to reverse shadow an extra 1-2 interviews. 2. There was auditing. In debriefs where you discussed the candidate and reviewed notes…

This has convinced me never to work for a FAANG. That much interview rigor leads away from the "gut instincts" which lead to great hires.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#952

Post by throwaway984393 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 3:37 AM UTC

kxrm wrote: post #114

I am actually going through the hiring process now. I was a hiring manager at my last shop and I tried to be very respectful of the candidates time. The process was first interview was 30 mins and basically a getting to know you and us session. Second interview was a two hour technical interview with debugging/fix this function type question and a single from scratch example question in the candidates language of cho…

I think we can teach people how to hire. The way I would do it is three-part:

1. An exam. You literally take a test. This mostly takes care of the technical portion, evaluates your cognitive skills, IQ, EQ, whatever. The idea is to get a general idea of what you "know" and gives some baseline reference numbers. You could also do a "coding test" as part of the exam, but I would not lean too heavily on those as they are subjective too. You would need to look at the results to see where they were strong/weak, as for some roles it's fine to be weak one place and strong another.

2. A veteran/senior (or two) interviews the candidate, asking deep questions to probe into the person's actual experience - because experience is 1000% more important than "what you know". The way I do this is a "binary search" of questions both simple and very specific, and based on responses I get more general or more specific. I can very quickly discover how much real-world experience the person has this way.

3. An interview with the team. This is actually for the team, not the candidate. The team can see whether the candidate is a mesh for their particular culture. It's just as important that the candidate fits the team as whether they're capable of "performing".

Within this system, you wouldn't ever do more than 5 rounds (3 on average), you get a mix of "impartial facts" (the exam) and "gut feeling", and you still have the human factor both evaluating the person's experience/responses and checking for culture fit.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#953

Post by nowherebeen » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 4:18 AM UTC

alxlaz wrote: post #843

throwawayboise wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never written a sort from scratch since my college days, over 30 years ago. Also never had a job interview that asked me do to so, or any other coding questions. I'm planning more for retirement than a next job at this point, but I shake my head at what my younger colleagues need to go through these days for the opportunity to write JavaScript with IDEs that do most of the work for you.

Not all younger developers have to jump through those hoops. There are plenty of companies that don't do that kind of nonsense, because they're trying to hire good engineers, rather than, specifically, engineers -- good or bad, that'll get sorted out later -- who will happily sacrifice their spare time to figure out how to jump through the arbitrary hoops that their jobs entail. Holding this kind of bullshit intervie…

> the only thing that made me more miserable than interviews like these was the work I got to do afterwards

Can you give some examples?

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#954

Post by nowherebeen » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #581

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…

Sometimes I sarcastically think they already have a friend who applies and needs to fail the others.

That does happen more often than you think. The hiring manager wants to hire a friend, tells HR he needs to hire a good programmer in mind (but doesn’t disclose it’s his friend). HR tend posts job postings for legal reasons knowing full well none of the candidates will be hire. They then reject a few candidates and then brings the friend saying they couldn’t find someone more qualified.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#955

Post by wyclif » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 4:36 AM UTC

actually_a_dog wrote: post #765

rubicon33 wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liken it to what lawyers go through with the bar here in CA. It's gatekeeping. Just like I don't think the CA bar should have a pass rate in the 20% range, I don't think coding interviews should ask riddles that are nearly impossible to solve on the fly unless you get lucky and memorized THAT riddle in your studying.

Except that lawyers have to pass the California bar once in order to get licensed; we SWEs have to pass the "bar" every time we look for a new job.

A big part of the problem that usually never gets discussed is how the lack of institutional trust between tech companies affects hiring and interviewing. There's no licensure in SWE, so in a sense your reputation is based on the companies you've previously worked for. But it seems like even if you have "name brand" corporations on your CV, other companies have no trust that your experience indicates competency. So engineers are forced to go through the leetcode grind every three years (or whenever they change jobs). Seems highly inefficient to me, especially when it's advocated by technologists who say they want to "automate all the things."

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#956

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

arthurcolle wrote: post #521

AlexAltea wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago, while applying to some security engineer position at Google, they were testing low-level skills focusing on vulnerability research, C/C++ and x86. At that point having spent 10+ intense years on that arch: having written binary translators for it, reversing/exploiting software and writing a micro-kernel. After rejection, they recommended me to read a "x86 assembly 101" book which was truly infuriating at t…

Yeah I was asked to complete a pretty challenging question in 25 minutes (eventually solved it after the interview ended in 2 hours) and after it was clear the interview wasn't going anywhere, asked for tips. They said "study data structures and algorithms" Like... yeah thanks I guess this degree and 5+ years experience isn't worth much. Such a broken process

[deleted]

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#957

Post by spfzero » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

I once interviewed at a very well-known computer manufacturer, with 21 people over two full days. But it was known by all that after the two days, you got an offer or you were never going to get an offer. It was fine, no problem, I enjoyed it.

It was respectful of my time. They were serious. I felt valued.

Don’t know why today’s tech companies have abandoned something that so obviously promotes good will in the new employee as well as the one passed by.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#958

Post by nineteen999 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

One of the most interesting interview processes I went through was for a VFX house as a systems administrator. I had been into their offices for multiple interviews, done video interviews with their HR manager who worked in a different country, and was told that I was their preferred candidate.

Six weeks later, I was told I was still their preferred candidate. However they still did not offer me the job. I think they were waiting for me to make a lowball offer since the industry typically doesn't pay well for artists or the systems people.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#959

Post by wyclif » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

perryizgr8 wrote: post #444

laumars wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve written a few Linux file systems and I’m not even sure I’d have answered that question correctly. I’ve also failed job interviews where I was told there was no coding expected in the face to face and then got given a piece of paper and asked to solve 3 theoretical problems in SQL on paper while 3 interviewers watched. 10 years prior I’d worked for several years on Oracle middleware so I knew SQL inside and and o…

> hatech I've never heard 'h' pronounced like that.

I've never heard that either. The most common pronunciation I've heard in the wild is "tch-mod."

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#960

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #324

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #306

I think the post-covid wfh job market has clouded something a bit which is that the tech industry in particular is becoming increasing oversaturated. There is so many people applying for positions now that companies are resorting to these more and more annoying filtering processes. My first job in this field 14 years ago was one interview and I got the job the next day. That would be almost impossible today. I blame…

As someone who is stuck with a "junior developer" who hasn't produced a single line of working code during past 1.5years in my team the "one interview and done" isn't working these days.

Yes, I'm in the same boat. I often interview people who should not be labelling themselves as developers. I think this is just a reflection of the oversaturation of this market. The answer to everyone's problem seems to be "learn to code". But what % of those people actually have an aptitude for coding or a desire for it.