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5 interviews isn't -that- insane, it's on the high end though. But I do know for sure they have turned down extremely technically gifted people for "non-techni

by jpgvm 10y ago

5 interviews isn't -that- insane, it's on the high end though. But I do know for sure they have turned down extremely technically gifted people for "non-technical" reasons, the kind of people that would ensure this sort of disaster wouldn't happen. So maybe the process really isn't that great.

omgdresser 10y ago
I'm biased because I went through the process and was rejected, but I agree. There was more focus on asinine 'behaviorial' questions than the real reason you're talking to someone: are you (relatively) sane, and more importantly are you capable, can you do the job? Everything else is secondary, in my opinion.
ibejoeb 10y ago
I wondered why they always have so many job reqs out, and why they're out for so long. It always seemed like an interesting organization to me, and I like the product, but everything about their hiring process seems to be shoeing people off. Perhaps this will be incentive to try onboarding people or at least to bring in some consultants to shore them up.
- jpgvm 10y ago
  I think part of the problem, as it has already been touched on here is true Ops people are of a different breed to standard developers. They usually have similar coding ability (but different areas of expertise, automation and systems coding over business logic) but drastically different personalities. This is an issue during hiring when companies have minimal Ops background. They (usually) attempt to interview the candidate as they would a normal dev position. This has 2 serious problems. 1) Real Ops candidates are going to seem lacklustre compared to web devs when giving web dev coding tasks and inteview questions. 2) You probably aren't going to ask them anything actually relevant to their ability to do Ops well because you just don't know. This can usually be solved by hiring an experienced SRE manager. However those people are expensive and hard to find. The next best thing is to have a gun SRE in your personal network that you can convince to join your team and help you build it out. If you can't achieve that for whatever reason then you really just have to hire based on experience and suck up the cost of hiring an ex-Google/Facebook/Netflix/Twitter SRE that you can be reasonably confident will be good. That is still hard though because those sorts of people know there is a ton of shit shoveling to be done if you are the first real SRE on board.. you have to clean up the mess left in the wake of "devs doing ops" which is not Devops btw. Devops is what is done by SREs. "devs doing ops" is how this sort of thing happens. /rant
  - ibejoeb 10y ago
    I couldn't agree more. (My followup rant is general, and I have no knowledge of what's going on at GL.) > Real Ops candidates are going to seem lacklustre compared to web devs when giving web dev coding tasks and inteview questions. This drives me insane. I think 50% of my comment history this year is about how not to botch an interview. > You probably aren't going to ask them anything actually relevant to their ability to do Ops well because you just don't know. Yes. You won't be able to quiz that person. You can take a thoughtful look at experience and talk about that, though. > hire based on experience Yup. One of the spook factors at any company is when I see it only hiring down, i.e., lower than the aggregate skill level of its current team. If the VP of engineering knows more about each concentration area than the people he's hiring, there's a storm a-brewin'.

by jpgvm 10y ago

omgdresser 10y ago

I'm biased because I went through the process and was rejected, but I agree. There was more focus on asinine 'behaviorial' questions than the real reason you're talking to someone: are you (relatively) sane, and more importantly are you capable, can you do the job? Everything else is secondary, in my opinion.

ibejoeb 10y ago

I wondered why they always have so many job reqs out, and why they're out for so long. It always seemed like an interesting organization to me, and I like the product, but everything about their hiring process seems to be shoeing people off. Perhaps this will be incentive to try onboarding people or at least to bring in some consultants to shore them up.

jpgvm 10y ago
I think part of the problem, as it has already been touched on here is true Ops people are of a different breed to standard developers. They usually have similar coding ability (but different areas of expertise, automation and systems coding over business logic) but drastically different personalities. This is an issue during hiring when companies have minimal Ops background. They (usually) attempt to interview the candidate as they would a normal dev position. This has 2 serious problems. 1) Real Ops candidates are going to seem lacklustre compared to web devs when giving web dev coding tasks and inteview questions. 2) You probably aren't going to ask them anything actually relevant to their ability to do Ops well because you just don't know. This can usually be solved by hiring an experienced SRE manager. However those people are expensive and hard to find. The next best thing is to have a gun SRE in your personal network that you can convince to join your team and help you build it out. If you can't achieve that for whatever reason then you really just have to hire based on experience and suck up the cost of hiring an ex-Google/Facebook/Netflix/Twitter SRE that you can be reasonably confident will be good. That is still hard though because those sorts of people know there is a ton of shit shoveling to be done if you are the first real SRE on board.. you have to clean up the mess left in the wake of "devs doing ops" which is not Devops btw. Devops is what is done by SREs. "devs doing ops" is how this sort of thing happens. /rant
- ibejoeb 10y ago
  I couldn't agree more. (My followup rant is general, and I have no knowledge of what's going on at GL.) > Real Ops candidates are going to seem lacklustre compared to web devs when giving web dev coding tasks and inteview questions. This drives me insane. I think 50% of my comment history this year is about how not to botch an interview. > You probably aren't going to ask them anything actually relevant to their ability to do Ops well because you just don't know. Yes. You won't be able to quiz that person. You can take a thoughtful look at experience and talk about that, though. > hire based on experience Yup. One of the spook factors at any company is when I see it only hiring down, i.e., lower than the aggregate skill level of its current team. If the VP of engineering knows more about each concentration area than the people he's hiring, there's a storm a-brewin'.