3 ms·

My Three And A Half Month Facebook Job Interview

15 points by icey 17y ago

hga 17y ago
Geeze, is 3.5 months a typical current or California hiring period??? My rule in the '80s and '90s was that any company that couldn't make up its mind within one month was dropped from consideration; the only time I perhaps regretted this was with Thinking Machines, which started the offer process many weeks after I'd timed out on them and had found another job. But I later gathered they had the worst Boston area hiring practices pretty much for all time, e.g. it took them three tries to fill the position I applied for and in one notorious case, they contacted an applicant's current employer without clearing it with him....
- angelbob 17y ago
  Geeze, is 3.5 months a typical current or California hiring period??? Nope. A week is quick for a big company (default for a startup), a month is slow. Two to three months is Google or Hewlett-Packard.
- _delirium 17y ago
  It's not "typical", but 1+ month isn't uncommon, especially at large companies that require the group actually hiring you to first make up their own mind, then clear it through (possibly several) higher levels of management. Intel seems to not infrequently take 2 months or so, from anecdotal evidence, even for successful applicants (not just forgetting to reject unsuccessful ones). (It'd be interesting if anyone could compile some data.)
- kscaldef 17y ago
  No, not really. I did lots of interviews while working at Yahoo, and groups I worked in always made a hire-no hire decision within 24 hours of interviewing someone. Sometimes the lead up to an interview might stretch out, and sometimes salary negotiations might take a while, but we wouldn't have ever strung someone along for 6 weeks post-interview if we didn't intend to make an offer.
MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
I dunno about CA, but I've interviewed with 2 startups in Atlanta, GA. In both cases I had a response in under 24 hours.
- rjurney 17y ago
  There's a spectrum. Lots of companies have that policy - response within 24-48 hours after an on-site interview. Its sensible.
ashu 17y ago
That is uncommonly long. In most cases, decisions for Engg. positions are made in a lot less time. [I work for FB]
philwelch 17y ago
"I can only speculate as to why so many layers of job interviews seem to be required here in California — possibly because this is an “at will” state. That means you can quit a job without notice, and also get fired without notice. Given the cost of hiring and training a new employee to fill a vacancy, it’s understandable that potential candidates are given a gauntlet of interviews. I’ve heard of colleagues going through as many as eleven sets of interviews with some of the older web-based giants — especially for manager roles — and even waiting as long 8-12 months for an offer. I’m just not used to that." That's the opposite of what you'd expect, actually. Countries where it's very hard or very socially taboo to fire people without very good reason (Europe, Japan) you would expect to have very difficult hiring procedures, but in at-will countries and states, you can afford more risk taking and hiring shouldn't be quite as arduous.
- lmkg 17y ago
  Being able to fire people at-will would encourage companies to save costs with a shorter hiring process. Employees being able to quit at-will would encourage companies to be judicious not to get someone who will flake, or get a free ride on training/certification and scoot.
  - lsb 17y ago
    Training time is quite costly: not only are they learning your systems on your dime, but they're learning them from people far senior (who are teaching them on your dime), so you need to make sure you're going to get a good ROI, and the interview's goal is to confirm that.
synnik 17y ago
I don't have a clue about HR at Facebook, but this sounds like someone who was never seriously considered, and only kept "in the running" because he was submitted by an internal candidate. Especially if he was explicitly told that they were doing due diligence on OTHER candidates. To me, that is very clearly a message of, "You are good enough to hire, but only if our first 10 choices decline the job." But there is a lesson to be learned here -- don't start scaling back your personal work/projects just because a potential job would be a conflict of interest.
alex_c 17y ago
During that period, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to create my own outside Facebook applications. However, my would-be-colleague didn’t know the answer and the HR person didn’t answer. So I suspended working on my in-progress apps and doing any writing about Facebook for my clients for most of the latter half of 2009, losing out on earnings I badly needed. For what it's worth, when I interviewed with Facebook in 2008 I was told that it wouldn't be a problem to keep maintaining and working on my Facebook apps outside of work. I guess writing about Facebook might be a bit more difficult. Also, I got an answer only a day or two after the on-site interviews. I wouldn't say the whole process moved quickly, but definitely not unreasonably slow.
rjurney 17y ago
The google style long-term interrogation is a major turn off. I wouldn't even consider working somewhere that interviews in that style. One six hour white board grilling is bad enough. Two is the limit. More than that... seriously, piss off. Why do people go through all that - days and days of evaluation?
- gmurphy 17y ago
  I come from a country where resume decides most things and interviews are mere sanity checks, so at the time (2005), I didn't know what to expect of my day-long Google interview. At the end of the day though, I emailed home: "Even if I didn't get the job, that was AWESOME" - if you can accept the potential ego-bruise, interviewing that way can be pretty fun. It's like mountain biking, but with whiteboards. Not that there aren't better interview systems, but I'm not sure how well many of them scale.
aditya 17y ago
Why is recruiting so broken??!!
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
ojbyrne 17y ago
Given that he wouldn't be a "software engineer" (TN-visa compatible) and a contract employee, I don't see how the USCIS would have let him work in California (unless he's an american citizen or something - the article implies he's Canadian). Perhaps it took facebook a while to actually figure that out.
- djcapelis 17y ago
  He could also have a permanent residency card. There are quite a few Canadians floating around the US who maintain Canadian citizenship but have US residency for some reason or another, sometimes via marriage, sometimes for some other reason.
  - ojbyrne 17y ago
    He suggested he was working in Toronto. I do know that there are plenty of Canadians with permanent residency in the US, because I keep hoping one of them will adopt me.
ashishbharthi 17y ago
From my experience so far, longer it takes lesser are the chances of getting selected.

15 points by icey 17y ago

hga 17y ago

Geeze, is 3.5 months a typical current or California hiring period??? My rule in the '80s and '90s was that any company that couldn't make up its mind within one month was dropped from consideration; the only time I perhaps regretted this was with Thinking Machines, which started the offer process many weeks after I'd timed out on them and had found another job. But I later gathered they had the worst Boston area hiring practices pretty much for all time, e.g. it took them three tries to fill the position I applied for and in one notorious case, they contacted an applicant's current employer without clearing it with him....

angelbob 17y ago
Geeze, is 3.5 months a typical current or California hiring period??? Nope. A week is quick for a big company (default for a startup), a month is slow. Two to three months is Google or Hewlett-Packard.
_delirium 17y ago
It's not "typical", but 1+ month isn't uncommon, especially at large companies that require the group actually hiring you to first make up their own mind, then clear it through (possibly several) higher levels of management. Intel seems to not infrequently take 2 months or so, from anecdotal evidence, even for successful applicants (not just forgetting to reject unsuccessful ones). (It'd be interesting if anyone could compile some data.)
kscaldef 17y ago
No, not really. I did lots of interviews while working at Yahoo, and groups I worked in always made a hire-no hire decision within 24 hours of interviewing someone. Sometimes the lead up to an interview might stretch out, and sometimes salary negotiations might take a while, but we wouldn't have ever strung someone along for 6 weeks post-interview if we didn't intend to make an offer.

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago

I dunno about CA, but I've interviewed with 2 startups in Atlanta, GA. In both cases I had a response in under 24 hours.

rjurney 17y ago
There's a spectrum. Lots of companies have that policy - response within 24-48 hours after an on-site interview. Its sensible.

ashu 17y ago

That is uncommonly long. In most cases, decisions for Engg. positions are made in a lot less time. [I work for FB]

philwelch 17y ago

"I can only speculate as to why so many layers of job interviews seem to be required here in California — possibly because this is an “at will” state. That means you can quit a job without notice, and also get fired without notice. Given the cost of hiring and training a new employee to fill a vacancy, it’s understandable that potential candidates are given a gauntlet of interviews. I’ve heard of colleagues going through as many as eleven sets of interviews with some of the older web-based giants — especially for manager roles — and even waiting as long 8-12 months for an offer. I’m just not used to that." That's the opposite of what you'd expect, actually. Countries where it's very hard or very socially taboo to fire people without very good reason (Europe, Japan) you would expect to have very difficult hiring procedures, but in at-will countries and states, you can afford more risk taking and hiring shouldn't be quite as arduous.

lmkg 17y ago
Being able to fire people at-will would encourage companies to save costs with a shorter hiring process. Employees being able to quit at-will would encourage companies to be judicious not to get someone who will flake, or get a free ride on training/certification and scoot.
- lsb 17y ago
  Training time is quite costly: not only are they learning your systems on your dime, but they're learning them from people far senior (who are teaching them on your dime), so you need to make sure you're going to get a good ROI, and the interview's goal is to confirm that.

synnik 17y ago

I don't have a clue about HR at Facebook, but this sounds like someone who was never seriously considered, and only kept "in the running" because he was submitted by an internal candidate. Especially if he was explicitly told that they were doing due diligence on OTHER candidates. To me, that is very clearly a message of, "You are good enough to hire, but only if our first 10 choices decline the job." But there is a lesson to be learned here -- don't start scaling back your personal work/projects just because a potential job would be a conflict of interest.

alex_c 17y ago

During that period, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to create my own outside Facebook applications. However, my would-be-colleague didn’t know the answer and the HR person didn’t answer. So I suspended working on my in-progress apps and doing any writing about Facebook for my clients for most of the latter half of 2009, losing out on earnings I badly needed. For what it's worth, when I interviewed with Facebook in 2008 I was told that it wouldn't be a problem to keep maintaining and working on my Facebook apps outside of work. I guess writing about Facebook might be a bit more difficult. Also, I got an answer only a day or two after the on-site interviews. I wouldn't say the whole process moved quickly, but definitely not unreasonably slow.

rjurney 17y ago

The google style long-term interrogation is a major turn off. I wouldn't even consider working somewhere that interviews in that style. One six hour white board grilling is bad enough. Two is the limit. More than that... seriously, piss off. Why do people go through all that - days and days of evaluation?

gmurphy 17y ago
I come from a country where resume decides most things and interviews are mere sanity checks, so at the time (2005), I didn't know what to expect of my day-long Google interview. At the end of the day though, I emailed home: "Even if I didn't get the job, that was AWESOME" - if you can accept the potential ego-bruise, interviewing that way can be pretty fun. It's like mountain biking, but with whiteboards. Not that there aren't better interview systems, but I'm not sure how well many of them scale.

aditya 17y ago

Why is recruiting so broken??!!

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

ojbyrne 17y ago

Given that he wouldn't be a "software engineer" (TN-visa compatible) and a contract employee, I don't see how the USCIS would have let him work in California (unless he's an american citizen or something - the article implies he's Canadian). Perhaps it took facebook a while to actually figure that out.

djcapelis 17y ago
He could also have a permanent residency card. There are quite a few Canadians floating around the US who maintain Canadian citizenship but have US residency for some reason or another, sometimes via marriage, sometimes for some other reason.
- ojbyrne 17y ago
  He suggested he was working in Toronto. I do know that there are plenty of Canadians with permanent residency in the US, because I keep hoping one of them will adopt me.

ashishbharthi 17y ago

From my experience so far, longer it takes lesser are the chances of getting selected.