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My opinion: If you do a phone screen with someone in a more or less 1on1 kind of setting and they can't tell you whether you passed that stage within an hour, t
by wayn3 10y ago
My opinion: If you do a phone screen with someone in a more or less 1on1 kind of setting and they can't tell you whether you passed that stage within an hour, their organization must be dysfunctional (they have the job of conducting the interview but not the authority to pass/fail you?) and, therefore, absolutely not worth working for.
The only lengthy part of the "interviewing" should be the negotiation, and by that point you are actually already kind of hired. Unless you blow it.
Things will be longer the bigger the company is because they have to involve legal and all this stupidity, but early stage YC companies don't get the benefit of the doubt here.
There's this hubris of cultural fit, which is code for "is this guy conformist enough that we can give him an arms length of desk space next to another 50 developers without him flipping?". Its true, cultural fit is super important. But that's at least in part due to the insanity that is software engineer working conditions. Give your people actual offices to perform actual work in and all your culture issues will vanish.
- jldugger 10y ago> If you do a phone screen with someone in a more or less 1on1 kind of setting and they can't tell you whether you passed that stage within an hour, their organization must be dysfunctional (they have the job of conducting the interview but not the authority to pass/fail you?) and, therefore, absolutely not worth working for. The university I work for has a fairly standardized process for full time hires. We schedule and sit in on all phone screens, individually evaluate candidates, and then promote some of them on to the next step. Sometimes we're in a position where more people "pass" the phone screen than we would want to bring in for onsites. There's an anxiety in immediately failing people we don't bring in, in case the batch we bring onsite does poorly.
- wayn3 10y agoSo you either tell them that they're on the waiting list or you end up in the dysfunctional basket.
- davidgerard 10y ago"cultural fit" is in practice a code word for "illegal discrimination".
- wayn3 10y agoYes. But people would do well to get over discrimination. (in the silicon valley software engineering job market. im not talking about minorities in poor neighborhoods having literally no chance of living the american dream. ok? thank you) Maybe its illegal, but if you're a 45 year old professional with a family seeking a job where you can be highly effective for 8 hours and then go home and play with your kids, do you really want to join a startup that asks you to be in the office for 12 hours so you can play foosball for 6 and do stupid shit for the other 6? Maybe at some point you have to somewhat appreciate being discriminated against. As silly as that may sound (because they are helping you stay away from pointless drama) People who discriminate against "the old" in jobs where experience clearly enables you to do your job 10x better are just nuts. Don't sue them. Pity them. And then move on.