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I was struck by the following passage: "Job search in tech is extra long and frustrating: For tech jobs add about 3-5 more interviews + technical tests, onlin

I was struck by the following passage: "Job search in tech is extra long and frustrating: For tech jobs add about 3-5 more interviews + technical tests, online and onsite, if you even make it past the first step because a lot of times you will never hear from a company after sending in your application, or the company will stop responding to your emails at some point in the interview process. The tech hiring process also seems to take about 3 times longer than in other industries. Brace yourselves!" Sadly this is a very common refrain. And unfortunately this is now true even if you have years of experience. Hiring is just plain broken. Full stop. This is also a fairly recent development in the industry. The hiring process was not broken like this 8 or even 5 years ago. It's sad that an awful and unprofessional experience is now the norm and something that should be expected. I blame recruiters for much of this unprofessionalism but I also blame the companies that either permit such unprofessional behavior or else are simply unaware at how bad or broken their process is. Its strange that the industry seems to have whipped itself into such a neurosis about the possibility of "false positives" that it has created a uniquely miserable experience that seems to embrace absurdity and disrespect as a matter of course. The fact that industry seems to collectively trend hop - Whiteboarding! Take home projects! Hacker Ranks Tests! This "everyone else is doing it" mentality only serves to perpetuate this.

flukus 9y ago
> It's sad that an awful and unprofessional experience is now the norm and something that should be expected. That's because there are a lot of awful, unprofessional programmers out there trying to get jobs and we need a way to filter them out. Even then these methods only filters out the worst of the worst, the developers that can solve fizzbuzz level problems. We either have to put up with this or have some sort of industry certification. >The hiring process was not broken like this 8 or even 5 years ago. All of this was happening 8 years ago, it was even worse then with "why are manhole covers round" levels of stupidity.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"That's because there are a lot of awful, unprofessional programmers out there trying to get jobs and we need a way to filter them out." And asking people to "to reverse a binary tree via Hackerank or asking people to spend 4-6 hours on a "homework assignment" does very little to filter awful or unprofessional people. >"All of this was happening 8 years ago, it was even worse then with "why are manhole covers round" levels of stupidity." No that was the beginning. The beginning of the "Google does this so we should too" mentality.
- reitanqild 9y ago
  That's because there are a lot of awful, unprofessional programmers out there trying to get jobs and we need a way to filter them out. Agree. After being told a couple of times how happy <company> are to finally see a real, competent programmer when I enter the room and just answer simple questions I've come to accept that there must be a few people out there pretending to be programmers in their applications. Even then these methods only filters out the worst of the worst, the developers that can solve fizzbuzz level problems. Well, the problem is that the sum of these methods (clueless(?) recruiters, keyword filtering etc) often filter out me before I even get to an interview. The ones who hire me tend to be very happy though :-)
  - flukus 9y ago
    > After being told a couple of times how happy <company> are to finally see a real, competent programmer when I enter the room and just answer simple questions One of the more depressing experiences I've had is heading into an interview (on the interviewer side) after seeing someone completely fail a fizzbuzz test. Everyone looks at each other thinking "well maybe if they knock it out of the park during the interview...". It's like dating as an extremely lonely person. > Well, the problem is that the sum of these methods (clueless(?) recruiters, keyword filtering etc) often filter out me before I even get to an interview. I've never had a problem with this, except maybe lately with angular. I structure my resume to include the keywords but in a format actual hiring managers want to see, eg, Experience with a number of MVC frameworks including ASP MVC, Monorail, Ruby on Rails (ROR). I don't know if that's the reason it's never been an issue for me, but I hope it helps.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      >"One of the more depressing experiences I've had is heading into an interview (on the interviewer side) after seeing someone completely fail a fizzbuzz test. Everyone looks at each other thinking "well maybe if they knock it out of the park during the interview...". It's like dating as an extremely lonely person." This is exactly the situation that a recruiter should be preventing. That person shouldn't have made it through door. Your process was broken.. Unqualified people applying for jobs is not unique to the tech industry.

flukus 9y ago

> It's sad that an awful and unprofessional experience is now the norm and something that should be expected. That's because there are a lot of awful, unprofessional programmers out there trying to get jobs and we need a way to filter them out. Even then these methods only filters out the worst of the worst, the developers that can solve fizzbuzz level problems. We either have to put up with this or have some sort of industry certification. >The hiring process was not broken like this 8 or even 5 years ago. All of this was happening 8 years ago, it was even worse then with "why are manhole covers round" levels of stupidity.

bogomipz 9y ago
>"That's because there are a lot of awful, unprofessional programmers out there trying to get jobs and we need a way to filter them out." And asking people to "to reverse a binary tree via Hackerank or asking people to spend 4-6 hours on a "homework assignment" does very little to filter awful or unprofessional people. >"All of this was happening 8 years ago, it was even worse then with "why are manhole covers round" levels of stupidity." No that was the beginning. The beginning of the "Google does this so we should too" mentality.
reitanqild 9y ago
That's because there are a lot of awful, unprofessional programmers out there trying to get jobs and we need a way to filter them out. Agree. After being told a couple of times how happy <company> are to finally see a real, competent programmer when I enter the room and just answer simple questions I've come to accept that there must be a few people out there pretending to be programmers in their applications. Even then these methods only filters out the worst of the worst, the developers that can solve fizzbuzz level problems. Well, the problem is that the sum of these methods (clueless(?) recruiters, keyword filtering etc) often filter out me before I even get to an interview. The ones who hire me tend to be very happy though :-)
- flukus 9y ago
  > After being told a couple of times how happy <company> are to finally see a real, competent programmer when I enter the room and just answer simple questions One of the more depressing experiences I've had is heading into an interview (on the interviewer side) after seeing someone completely fail a fizzbuzz test. Everyone looks at each other thinking "well maybe if they knock it out of the park during the interview...". It's like dating as an extremely lonely person. > Well, the problem is that the sum of these methods (clueless(?) recruiters, keyword filtering etc) often filter out me before I even get to an interview. I've never had a problem with this, except maybe lately with angular. I structure my resume to include the keywords but in a format actual hiring managers want to see, eg, Experience with a number of MVC frameworks including ASP MVC, Monorail, Ruby on Rails (ROR). I don't know if that's the reason it's never been an issue for me, but I hope it helps.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    >"One of the more depressing experiences I've had is heading into an interview (on the interviewer side) after seeing someone completely fail a fizzbuzz test. Everyone looks at each other thinking "well maybe if they knock it out of the park during the interview...". It's like dating as an extremely lonely person." This is exactly the situation that a recruiter should be preventing. That person shouldn't have made it through door. Your process was broken.. Unqualified people applying for jobs is not unique to the tech industry.