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> That sounds to me like someone who isn't prepared to invest their time and energy in your team. And why should they? If you are running them through some ela

by alexc05 10y ago

> That sounds to me like someone who isn't prepared to invest their time and energy in your team. And why should they? If you are running them through some elaborate hazing ritual before they are a member of the team. If at any point during the hazing ritual, any unknown person can black-ball them, in what way do they owe you the courtesy of helping you improve your team? The contract in this instance is not "I will help you out of the goodness of my heart" the contract is "I will help you for x hours a day in return for a wage of y" Anyways, I appreciate where you're coming from, and agree that you want to work with "generally agreeable" people, and should hire the same. In my opinion, it does not necessarily logically follow, that someone who is unwilling to prostrate themselves before a noxious process is not willing to invest in the team they join. It is incumbent upon the hirer to respect the applicant as well as the inverse.

skybrian 10y ago
At least at Google I don't believe it's the case that "any unknown person can black-ball them". There are hiring committees and they can ignore a bad interview if they have other evidence that the candidate is solid. Now, if there are two different people who rank a candidate badly, or the other interviewers are meh, that might be taken more seriously. I agree about the hazing ritual aspect of it though. I think it comes from engineers doing interviews who are just going through the motions without taking it seriously or trying to improve, which is what you get if everyone is supposed to do interviews.
- alexc05 10y ago
  in Gayle Laackman's "Cracking the coding interview": > Amazon’s “bar raiser” interviewer is charged with keeping the interview bar high. They at- tend special training and will interview candidates outside their group in order to balance out the group itself. If one interview seems significantly harder and different, that’s most like- ly the bar raiser. This person has both significant experience with interviews and veto power in the hiring decision. You will meet with your recruiter at the end of the day. I can confirm that for me, the interview was 4*45 minute whiteboard coding sessions. In two of the interviews it was 2-on-one. Unlike Gayle's description however, I received no debrief or description of what aspect of the 4+ hour ordeal I was rejected on. (Not to mention the night before where there was a 5 hour social/mixer). It seems that since her writing, they've adopted a no-feedback policy. So all in, I spent a day "investing the effort in their team's interviewing techniques" but got nothing but a black hole in return and down a day's vacation. I've got a lot of sympathy for the person who says "this interview process is a lot of work" and who, after 17 years coding in production, decides they don't have time to invest in helping a room full of 20 somethings improve their interview skills. It probably sounds a lot more bitter than I mean it to. I've looked for work 3 times since '98 and found it pretty quickly each time. (One of those times was within a day of starting to look) I do worry about ageism going forward. Fortunately my current place has a lot of those gandalf-looking fellas. I love working with they grey-beards of programming. In fairness, I think my experience with Facebook's interview process was worse.

by alexc05 10y ago

skybrian 10y ago

At least at Google I don't believe it's the case that "any unknown person can black-ball them". There are hiring committees and they can ignore a bad interview if they have other evidence that the candidate is solid. Now, if there are two different people who rank a candidate badly, or the other interviewers are meh, that might be taken more seriously. I agree about the hazing ritual aspect of it though. I think it comes from engineers doing interviews who are just going through the motions without taking it seriously or trying to improve, which is what you get if everyone is supposed to do interviews.

alexc05 10y ago
in Gayle Laackman's "Cracking the coding interview": > Amazon’s “bar raiser” interviewer is charged with keeping the interview bar high. They at- tend special training and will interview candidates outside their group in order to balance out the group itself. If one interview seems significantly harder and different, that’s most like- ly the bar raiser. This person has both significant experience with interviews and veto power in the hiring decision. You will meet with your recruiter at the end of the day. I can confirm that for me, the interview was 4*45 minute whiteboard coding sessions. In two of the interviews it was 2-on-one. Unlike Gayle's description however, I received no debrief or description of what aspect of the 4+ hour ordeal I was rejected on. (Not to mention the night before where there was a 5 hour social/mixer). It seems that since her writing, they've adopted a no-feedback policy. So all in, I spent a day "investing the effort in their team's interviewing techniques" but got nothing but a black hole in return and down a day's vacation. I've got a lot of sympathy for the person who says "this interview process is a lot of work" and who, after 17 years coding in production, decides they don't have time to invest in helping a room full of 20 somethings improve their interview skills. It probably sounds a lot more bitter than I mean it to. I've looked for work 3 times since '98 and found it pretty quickly each time. (One of those times was within a day of starting to look) I do worry about ageism going forward. Fortunately my current place has a lot of those gandalf-looking fellas. I love working with they grey-beards of programming. In fairness, I think my experience with Facebook's interview process was worse.