8 ms·

Why software engineers don’t get jobs: Three horror stories

96 points by iwangulenko 9y ago

lucideer 9y ago
2 and 3 are relevant and generally applicable, and basically boil down to: 2. HR had arbitrary unreasonable box-ticking requirements rather than assessing the candidate intelligently 3. HR was hopelessly disorganised The first one however seems subjective. Maybe the candidate wasn't suitable for the role - the recruiter thinks he was the best frontender he'd found that year, the tech lead disagreed with his assessment. It does seem like the company HR handled things badly afterwards (incompetent HR is a bit of a theme here) but the original reason for rejection might have been valid.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Interviewer didn’t have context, says in the article.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  In the first case, the tech lead discarded the candidate without looking at him/her seriously or interviewing, just by looking for a few minutes at the submitted piece of decent code and finding it somewhat unusual.
  - misja111 9y ago
    The article said that the interviewer looked for 10 minutes at the code. If it was really just a simple assignment and the candidate came up with a complex homemade framework then that is enough time to cast some very serious doubts.
swsieber 9y ago
3. Forgotten Huh? Where was the follow-up from the applicant? Always follow up.
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  Yeah but engineers usually don't, and that is why I try to "teach" them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be&t=2424 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be... "if no one follows up, it does not mean no"
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - pandaman 9y ago
    It's a good thing to do when you are in sales. Your entire job consists of contacting people. My job, as a programmer, is writing code. I will write and re-write code until it works so I understand you. However, contacting people is not my job. If somebody contacts me and then goes silent - it's just unprofessional in my view. Why would I want to deal with a company, which hires HR who are not able to respond to emails? For all I know they also hire accountants who are unable to cut paychecks.
- jarofgreen 9y ago
  They might have, it's not entirely clear from that story. The problem is - I've been here - there is only so much you can follow up. If you follow up once, and they don't reply, then what? Try a 2nd time? A 3rd? If your unlucky and your first follow up was swallowed by whatever reason caused the original problem, do you keep trying and look pushy? Or, you might have another prospect and althought you'd prefer the first one, you can't keep the second one waiting for ever so at some point you give up on the first and take the second. How many times do you give someone a chance to follow up before giving up? I once had a boss interview, then a good tech interview, then for several weeks tried to get any response at all out of the boss for a follow up. I gave up and moved on. Several months later by chance I saw the boss at a tech event across the room, we nodded hi, and the next day he emailed me asking about the job. Dude, that was 2 months ago. I already had another job by then.
seattle_spring 9y ago
I think I've been rejected for all 3 reasons: 1. Docusign, for not using Coffeescript, Angular, and Stylus (3 technologies I had never previously used) to solve their very long take-home test. I apparently provided a great solution, but they were concerned that I didn't follow those rules specifically. No, I'm not going to spend hours getting up to speed on your framework just for an interview, nor am I going to submit sub-standard solutions to to conform to your arbitrary restriction of using the framework du-jour. 2. Google, for not being able to, "prove a random number is truly random," during my onsite interview panel. The guy offered no hints when I wasn't sure where to start, he simply continued to repeat the question, a bit slower each time. 3. A local Seattle startup, who required 3 onsites: A technical, a culture, and then a full-day of "integration" (working on real problems with the team). I apparently passed the first 2, but was not invited to the 3rd. Turns out the HR director that was working with me quit before scheduling the 3rd. I never found out until after I had already accepted another position.
- meesterdude 9y ago
  > The guy offered no hints when I wasn't sure where to start, he simply continued to repeat the question, a bit slower each time I hear the same approach works really well when trying to talk to someone that doesn't understand english
  - nraynaud 9y ago
    nope, it's louder and always at the same speed.
  - nether 9y ago
    Maybe it does? When I was learning Russian, it just helped to hear everything slowed down by 2x.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    I’m in Germany, and I keep forgetting to ask them to slow down when they German at me too quickly. Of course, when they know I’m English, then they English at me and I don’t learn German anyway…
mixmastamyk 9y ago
Now try being not an ex-googler, or not so great on the spot. Have been a great Python developer for years but personally have given up on jobs that require “tech” interviews.
- benedikt 9y ago
  The "tech interviews" are way too often more about stroking their own egos than to understand how the candidate works.
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    I know right? Interviewers say "the solution isn't important, we just want to understand your thought process" but if you don't get the solution dollars-to-donuts you're not getting the offer.
- steven777400 9y ago
  I have to encourage you not to give up on all tech interviews. (By that I think you mean "hands-on"/"practical" type tests). I do hiring for our agency, which consists entirely of non-rock-stars, at non-rock-star pay, solving non-rock-star problems, in non-rock-star time. We still do practical tests for all interviews. Some people, actually, do just get up and walk out. I wish they'd at least look. We do problems on the level of "fizz-buzz" or similar. Quick 10-20 minute problems. We don't make full completion a binary success/failure metric. We just want to hear you discuss your thought process and see that you're aware of variables, if statements, and for loops. Because, yeah, turns out some candidates who claim years of programming experience ... aren't. But no tricks. And we also make sure the request is suitable to the resume (think about it as resume validation). So we wouldn't say "Python person, write a method for us in C#" or vice-versa. Smart people can easily cross-train themselves once the job starts. It's more about finding someone who has the fundamentals and can apply them. In conclusion, I would defend the hands-on "tech" interview as necessary and not even evil.
  - merb 9y ago
    we do that aswell, but we are in germany and there an interview is still standard.
DavidWoof 9y ago
1. Honestly, if I were giving a simple coding exercise and the candidate submitted work using their own custom framework (which is implied here), I might reject them also, or at least put them at the bottom of the interview list. It's just a complete misread of requirements, and points to an inability to follow directions. 2. On the one hand, Joel Spolsky created a lot of problems with his idea that a "no" from any interviewing dev results in a "no". Some people just don't evaluate interviews very well. OTOH, everything looks like it went well here. One interviewer voiced concerned about a specific technical field, but the team as a whole gave that item its appropriate weight. No problem. 3. Yeah, HR often sucks. But I don't see how a story about the recruiter completely dropping the ball for two months is somehow a defense of how valuable recruiters are.
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  OP here. 1) The candidate implicitly thought he should use it, because I liked his stuff during our technical interview. But then the interviewing engineer at the firm did not take time to look into my notes. So it's more an example of me pushing what I like instead of assessing what the firm likes / how much time they really have looking at profiles.
- collyw 9y ago
  Regarding your point 1, wouldn't the sensible thing be to question them about this sort of thing? Find out their reasoning for implementing the solution the way they did.
  - DavidWoof 9y ago
    A lot of this depends on context, and obviously we're not getting any of that in a quick anecdote (not OP's fault, just the nature of things). In a larger company, where you're always hiring and there's specific time allotted for it, that approach makes some sense. But in a smaller company where I might have one or two positions to fill and the interview process is a serious hit on productivity, presumably the net step is to set up interviews and the first interviews are going to go to the people who didn't completely misread the exercise and submit Enterprise FizzBuzz.
cordite 9y ago
Recently experienced No. 3 in form, was scheduled with the wrong person and the remote conference room was empty. Turns out the interviewer was another person in their own other room. Emailing the HR rep ten minutes in resolved the issue within five mins.
Bahamut 9y ago
I have had some sad rejections over the years. I remember one company rejected me a few months ago for not knowing enough algorithm/data structure knowledge - I subsequently passed interviews with two teams at my current employer, one of the famous big tech companies. I had a startup pass on me as well that prior job search for reasons unknown even after acing their interview. I found out only 2-3 weeks after interviewing, and I think they’re still trying to hire for the position (it uses Angular 1 - I also happen to probably be still one of the most knowledgable people about Angular 1 outside of Google). I got insight into one company’s interview process after doing a take home project, and one person mistakenly replying to all with me in the email chain - the person didn’t think highly of my work on it, despite that I only spent 4 hours (the time I could spare on it) and kept clean abstractions, setup, and accomplished the main point of the take home project. That experience cemented to me that take home projects are a race to the bottom with it being necessary to spend an extraordinary amount of time and little reward back. Amazon ghosted me while we were in the process of setting up onsites in San Francisco and we were taking about compensation in parallel (they started the comp conversation) - I’m pretty sure they did so after a few back and forths due to not being willing to bend on comp numbers. I still get emails from recruiters about 10 times a year from them. I’m sure I’ve had others, pretty sure most people who’ve been in the industry for a while gets them if they have interviewed around.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  Most places will stop contacting you if you tell them to.
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  Well, salary negotiating is hard, it's usually the part programmers like most during my talks on "how to hire software engineers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be&t=1596 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be...
  - Bahamut 9y ago
    That's fine, but ghosting while also in the process of setting up an onsite is pretty bad, especially for a company that should be at the stage where they get that right. There's no good reason for that behavior.
zerr 9y ago
Iwan, another angle to diversify from other recruiters - orient (at least partially) on REMOTE.
collyw 9y ago
Well at least they all got replies. I have had at least 3 interviews where I did a take home exercise and didn't even get a reply. Unless I really want the job I refuse them now. I have a decent score (top 5%) on Stack Overflow for my tech of choice, so do I really need to waste an afternoon or more writing some mini application for you?
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  "if no one follows up, it does not mean no", that is what I learned after doing recruiting for some time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be&t=2415 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be...
  - MBCook 9y ago
    If no one follows up they don’t care enough. My time is valuable too. When I was searching for a job earlier this year that bit one company. They apparently really liked me but didn’t call back until weeks later by which time I had already found something.
  - thebosz 9y ago
    My time is valuable. About a year ago, I interviewed with a couple of companies. One particular interview I thought went very well. They never got back to me so I kept doing interviews and eventually landed a job that I love. About a month later that company finally got back to me and wanted to set up a final/offer discussion. I told them that because they took so long, I wasn't interested. I'm not going to wait around and hope you get back to me, my time is more valuable than that.
- fred_is_fred 9y ago
  I'm with you on take homes. A large Seattle tech company had me sit in a hotel and do a take home after a full day of interviews and then after no reply for a week claimed they never got it. I re-forwarded them the original email. Now that I'm older I refuse. Why? Because I work full-time, I have a family that I either care for, cook for, or put to bed. And when I'm not doing either of the above, I try to work-out for personal health and sanity reasons. The take-home test only works in the "app does everything for you and you have no family" that defines living in SF.
NumberSix 9y ago
I would not take excuses like this for rejecting a candidate, especially a highly qualified/skilled candidate, at face value. Despite the pervasive rhetoric about wanting the "best" or hiring only the "best," both individual interviewers and companies as a whole are often afraid of hiring candidates who know more or are more skilled than themselves. The unstated fears include that the candidate will, if hired, outshine colleagues, his or her boss, or even, in some cases, the founder or CEO of the company -- especially in the case of startups where venture capitalists or other investors could be impressed by the new hire. Since it is usually not acceptable to reject an applicant for this reason, some pretext will be generated. One way is to focus in on some area where the candidate is weak or different such as using a different software tool. Another way is to use trick questions or problems. This is an article on how this was allegedly done in academia in the Soviet Union: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556.pdf
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  OP here Actually, I had drafted "Horror story 4: Candidate was rejected because he was better than the interviewer" but I thought it is too complex to be included. I might write a whole blog post about it. Thanks so much for linking to the paper.
  - s3nnyy 9y ago
    Just included fourth story in the original post but will write an extensive thing about this topic.
    - zootam 9y ago
      really cool to see live updates like this. thanks for the good stories.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    There’s the related “interviewer is fundamentally wrong and unable to see it”: http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1ilh7o/what_to_do_technical_interview_where_interviewer/ http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1ilh7o/wh... He didn’t even understand the question “what would you have to see to convince you that you’re wrong?” meaning he wouldn’t even be able to recover from the error!
mythrwy 9y ago
My belief is most people would secretly like to hire (or see hired) people who are just a little less smart and/or a little less able than themselves. So this dynamic is often at play under the covers. The exceptions to this are truly great managers and co-workers and companies that have a bright future but unfortunately it's kind of rare IMOP.
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  You are now the second person mentioning this in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15682260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15682260) I really had this case where a 22yr old open-source contributing child-prodigy programmer would be rejected at the code-screening phase by a guy, let's call him "Jon". We had a phone call with three people: HR, Jon and me. The reasons why Jon rejected the candidate were all a bit funny and I could not tell if Jon was serious or not. Also, Jon's Github contributions, pull requests and other things were rather shitty anyhow, but he was responsible for the first screenings so I had to listen to his feedback. Jon pinpointed to some problems in the candidate's code which were more style and not problems. Other things had good reason (verbose try catch blocks). When I started to get defensive and mentioned that the quality of the submission is better than Jon's stuff on Github, HR stopped me and told me "We're not assessing John here" Added it to the post.
siliconc0w 9y ago
I've been on both sides of the table and the reality is that high stakes full day interviews kinda suck - they're noisy and tuned for high false positives (if they're even tuned at all). Sometimes people get lost solving a problem, or don't ask clarifying questions, or are just too nervous, drank too much coffee, or maybe just didn't get a full night's rest. For most processes - it usually takes more than one bad round but one bad round can rattle a candidate who can cascade. I like to think i'm a decent interviewer (and interviewee - not particularly gifted at CS but I've run enough rounds to recognize most problem types) I've gotten offers from 'big 5' companies but have been rejected by some as well. One reasonably well respected tech company wouldn't even screen me. Just a vague rejection, 'not a good fit at this time'. Who knows why - resume went to a busy team lead who looked at it for 5 seconds and took a dislike to some word choice. Or maybe they were on a hiring freeze and the 'open positions' were just for show. Maybe the non-technical recruiter didn't recognize the technologies listed actually matched what they were looking for. Who knows. The process sucks. Everyone knows it sucks. Maybe 'of all the processes it sucks the least' Churchill-style. I think it's slowly getting better, people are getting more objective - less stupid brain teasers. As engineers we want things fixed fast (like a merged PR) but people driven processes move and change slowly.
msl09 9y ago
It seems to me that using those websites(stackoverflow, linkedin, whatever else) for landing in jobs is a big waste of time for prospective employees because of how messy and quirky the hiring process is. Most of the people I know that have been successful at being hired by big companies had some kind of (living, breathing) coach to walk through the process. Am I the only one seeing that pattern?
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  The signal-to-noise ration and linkedin is surely very low nowadays. I am actually working on a article describing what I learned hiring and firing freelance recruiters who work mainly with Linkedin.
san_at_weblegit 9y ago
1. As an engineer I would definitely not work with a team that comes up with the first reason for rejection (Provided that I have not mentioned that stack on my resume to begin with). 2. The second reason is more of a choice of the given company. There are companies on the other hand which give out an offer all based on cultural fit. More than often good interviewers never make a decision on the result of the puzzles but on how the candidate approaches it. Downside is that not all people are up for it in the interview hour even if they are really smart otherwise. 3. Third is bad luck (cause of disorganized recruiting). The delay in response has something to do with the candidate too, how much vulnerable they are for the job. Personally I discuss the expectations for the interview process beforehand which is super helpful since I almost always get the feedback the next day irrespective of whether its an offer or rejection. On the flip side there should be another discussion on how engineers get the jobs. I am sure those stories would be interesting too. It is not about the technical competency for majority of the times. Interviewing is an art and the candidates who are able to make the interviewers feel good about themselves have much more chances of offers.
mike-cardwell 9y ago
I was recently contacted by a company whos CEO had read some stuff that I'd written online and asked me to interview at their place. Their interview consisted of: 1. A logic test. They sent me a bunch of logic questions unrelated to programming or my abilities as a programmer. I had a certain amount of time to answer and submit the questions. Sounds like something dreamed up by a HR droid with no knowledge of programming, but I went with it. 2. A programming test. They sent me a list of instructions for a thing to build. I can't remember how long I was given, but it was something like a full days work, and I needed it. I submitted the work. Heared back a few weeks later that they decided to hire somebody else. No conversation about the work whatsoever. I logged into skype today and noticed that the developer who sent me the instructions for the thing to build, tried to contact me 3 days later to ask where the work was. Even though earlier in the conversation I provided a link to the gitlab repo. Ultimately, I don't even know if they looked at my work. I don't know why they called it an "interview" seeing as I never actually held a conversation with anybody. Next time a company contacts me because they think they might want to hire me, I'm going to demand an interview. If your interview is a series of tests, you can get lost.
- golergka 9y ago
  > They sent me a bunch of logic questions unrelated to programming or my abilities as a programmer How can logic questions be "unrelated" to programming?
  - mike-cardwell 9y ago
    Quite easily?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lostmsu 9y ago
I've been rejected from Facebook at some moment. I assume that happened, because we had some sort of disagreement with the interviewer. That seemed like a system design question, and at some moment I suggested to use SHA256 hashes to identify unique arbitrary long human input sequences (no malicious intent assumed). And he asked me what would I do if there's a collision. Estimating probability of such collision to under about 10^-40 over span of 30 years of everyone on Earth typing input for that system at max speed did not convince him there's no need to handle collisions, and he kept insisting on that question. Well, I got hired by another big company here, on a more interesting project.

96 points by iwangulenko 9y ago

2 and 3 are relevant and generally applicable, and basically boil down to: 2. HR had arbitrary unreasonable box-ticking requirements rather than assessing the candidate intelligently 3. HR was hopelessly disorganised The first one however seems subjective. Maybe the candidate wasn't suitable for the role - the recruiter thinks he was the best frontender he'd found that year, the tech lead disagreed with his assessment. It does seem like the company HR handled things badly afterwards (incompetent HR is a bit of a theme here) but the original reason for rejection might have been valid.

mixmastamyk 9y ago
Interviewer didn’t have context, says in the article.
PeterisP 9y ago
In the first case, the tech lead discarded the candidate without looking at him/her seriously or interviewing, just by looking for a few minutes at the submitted piece of decent code and finding it somewhat unusual.
- misja111 9y ago
  The article said that the interviewer looked for 10 minutes at the code. If it was really just a simple assignment and the candidate came up with a complex homemade framework then that is enough time to cast some very serious doubts.

swsieber 9y ago

3. Forgotten Huh? Where was the follow-up from the applicant? Always follow up.

s3nnyy 9y ago
Yeah but engineers usually don't, and that is why I try to "teach" them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be&t=2424 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be... "if no one follows up, it does not mean no"
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pandaman 9y ago
  It's a good thing to do when you are in sales. Your entire job consists of contacting people. My job, as a programmer, is writing code. I will write and re-write code until it works so I understand you. However, contacting people is not my job. If somebody contacts me and then goes silent - it's just unprofessional in my view. Why would I want to deal with a company, which hires HR who are not able to respond to emails? For all I know they also hire accountants who are unable to cut paychecks.
jarofgreen 9y ago
They might have, it's not entirely clear from that story. The problem is - I've been here - there is only so much you can follow up. If you follow up once, and they don't reply, then what? Try a 2nd time? A 3rd? If your unlucky and your first follow up was swallowed by whatever reason caused the original problem, do you keep trying and look pushy? Or, you might have another prospect and althought you'd prefer the first one, you can't keep the second one waiting for ever so at some point you give up on the first and take the second. How many times do you give someone a chance to follow up before giving up? I once had a boss interview, then a good tech interview, then for several weeks tried to get any response at all out of the boss for a follow up. I gave up and moved on. Several months later by chance I saw the boss at a tech event across the room, we nodded hi, and the next day he emailed me asking about the job. Dude, that was 2 months ago. I already had another job by then.

seattle_spring 9y ago

I think I've been rejected for all 3 reasons: 1. Docusign, for not using Coffeescript, Angular, and Stylus (3 technologies I had never previously used) to solve their very long take-home test. I apparently provided a great solution, but they were concerned that I didn't follow those rules specifically. No, I'm not going to spend hours getting up to speed on your framework just for an interview, nor am I going to submit sub-standard solutions to to conform to your arbitrary restriction of using the framework du-jour. 2. Google, for not being able to, "prove a random number is truly random," during my onsite interview panel. The guy offered no hints when I wasn't sure where to start, he simply continued to repeat the question, a bit slower each time. 3. A local Seattle startup, who required 3 onsites: A technical, a culture, and then a full-day of "integration" (working on real problems with the team). I apparently passed the first 2, but was not invited to the 3rd. Turns out the HR director that was working with me quit before scheduling the 3rd. I never found out until after I had already accepted another position.

meesterdude 9y ago
> The guy offered no hints when I wasn't sure where to start, he simply continued to repeat the question, a bit slower each time I hear the same approach works really well when trying to talk to someone that doesn't understand english
- nraynaud 9y ago
  nope, it's louder and always at the same speed.
- nether 9y ago
  Maybe it does? When I was learning Russian, it just helped to hear everything slowed down by 2x.
- ben_w 9y ago
  I’m in Germany, and I keep forgetting to ask them to slow down when they German at me too quickly. Of course, when they know I’m English, then they English at me and I don’t learn German anyway…

mixmastamyk 9y ago

Now try being not an ex-googler, or not so great on the spot. Have been a great Python developer for years but personally have given up on jobs that require “tech” interviews.

benedikt 9y ago
The "tech interviews" are way too often more about stroking their own egos than to understand how the candidate works.
- jogjayr 9y ago
  I know right? Interviewers say "the solution isn't important, we just want to understand your thought process" but if you don't get the solution dollars-to-donuts you're not getting the offer.
steven777400 9y ago
I have to encourage you not to give up on all tech interviews. (By that I think you mean "hands-on"/"practical" type tests). I do hiring for our agency, which consists entirely of non-rock-stars, at non-rock-star pay, solving non-rock-star problems, in non-rock-star time. We still do practical tests for all interviews. Some people, actually, do just get up and walk out. I wish they'd at least look. We do problems on the level of "fizz-buzz" or similar. Quick 10-20 minute problems. We don't make full completion a binary success/failure metric. We just want to hear you discuss your thought process and see that you're aware of variables, if statements, and for loops. Because, yeah, turns out some candidates who claim years of programming experience ... aren't. But no tricks. And we also make sure the request is suitable to the resume (think about it as resume validation). So we wouldn't say "Python person, write a method for us in C#" or vice-versa. Smart people can easily cross-train themselves once the job starts. It's more about finding someone who has the fundamentals and can apply them. In conclusion, I would defend the hands-on "tech" interview as necessary and not even evil.
- merb 9y ago
  we do that aswell, but we are in germany and there an interview is still standard.

DavidWoof 9y ago

1. Honestly, if I were giving a simple coding exercise and the candidate submitted work using their own custom framework (which is implied here), I might reject them also, or at least put them at the bottom of the interview list. It's just a complete misread of requirements, and points to an inability to follow directions. 2. On the one hand, Joel Spolsky created a lot of problems with his idea that a "no" from any interviewing dev results in a "no". Some people just don't evaluate interviews very well. OTOH, everything looks like it went well here. One interviewer voiced concerned about a specific technical field, but the team as a whole gave that item its appropriate weight. No problem. 3. Yeah, HR often sucks. But I don't see how a story about the recruiter completely dropping the ball for two months is somehow a defense of how valuable recruiters are.

s3nnyy 9y ago
OP here. 1) The candidate implicitly thought he should use it, because I liked his stuff during our technical interview. But then the interviewing engineer at the firm did not take time to look into my notes. So it's more an example of me pushing what I like instead of assessing what the firm likes / how much time they really have looking at profiles.
collyw 9y ago
Regarding your point 1, wouldn't the sensible thing be to question them about this sort of thing? Find out their reasoning for implementing the solution the way they did.
- DavidWoof 9y ago
  A lot of this depends on context, and obviously we're not getting any of that in a quick anecdote (not OP's fault, just the nature of things). In a larger company, where you're always hiring and there's specific time allotted for it, that approach makes some sense. But in a smaller company where I might have one or two positions to fill and the interview process is a serious hit on productivity, presumably the net step is to set up interviews and the first interviews are going to go to the people who didn't completely misread the exercise and submit Enterprise FizzBuzz.

cordite 9y ago

Recently experienced No. 3 in form, was scheduled with the wrong person and the remote conference room was empty. Turns out the interviewer was another person in their own other room. Emailing the HR rep ten minutes in resolved the issue within five mins.

Bahamut 9y ago

I have had some sad rejections over the years. I remember one company rejected me a few months ago for not knowing enough algorithm/data structure knowledge - I subsequently passed interviews with two teams at my current employer, one of the famous big tech companies. I had a startup pass on me as well that prior job search for reasons unknown even after acing their interview. I found out only 2-3 weeks after interviewing, and I think they’re still trying to hire for the position (it uses Angular 1 - I also happen to probably be still one of the most knowledgable people about Angular 1 outside of Google). I got insight into one company’s interview process after doing a take home project, and one person mistakenly replying to all with me in the email chain - the person didn’t think highly of my work on it, despite that I only spent 4 hours (the time I could spare on it) and kept clean abstractions, setup, and accomplished the main point of the take home project. That experience cemented to me that take home projects are a race to the bottom with it being necessary to spend an extraordinary amount of time and little reward back. Amazon ghosted me while we were in the process of setting up onsites in San Francisco and we were taking about compensation in parallel (they started the comp conversation) - I’m pretty sure they did so after a few back and forths due to not being willing to bend on comp numbers. I still get emails from recruiters about 10 times a year from them. I’m sure I’ve had others, pretty sure most people who’ve been in the industry for a while gets them if they have interviewed around.

stevenwoo 9y ago
Most places will stop contacting you if you tell them to.
s3nnyy 9y ago
Well, salary negotiating is hard, it's usually the part programmers like most during my talks on "how to hire software engineers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be&t=1596 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be...
- Bahamut 9y ago
  That's fine, but ghosting while also in the process of setting up an onsite is pretty bad, especially for a company that should be at the stage where they get that right. There's no good reason for that behavior.

zerr 9y ago

Iwan, another angle to diversify from other recruiters - orient (at least partially) on REMOTE.

collyw 9y ago

Well at least they all got replies. I have had at least 3 interviews where I did a take home exercise and didn't even get a reply. Unless I really want the job I refuse them now. I have a decent score (top 5%) on Stack Overflow for my tech of choice, so do I really need to waste an afternoon or more writing some mini application for you?

s3nnyy 9y ago
"if no one follows up, it does not mean no", that is what I learned after doing recruiting for some time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be&t=2415 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be...
- MBCook 9y ago
  If no one follows up they don’t care enough. My time is valuable too. When I was searching for a job earlier this year that bit one company. They apparently really liked me but didn’t call back until weeks later by which time I had already found something.
- thebosz 9y ago
  My time is valuable. About a year ago, I interviewed with a couple of companies. One particular interview I thought went very well. They never got back to me so I kept doing interviews and eventually landed a job that I love. About a month later that company finally got back to me and wanted to set up a final/offer discussion. I told them that because they took so long, I wasn't interested. I'm not going to wait around and hope you get back to me, my time is more valuable than that.
fred_is_fred 9y ago
I'm with you on take homes. A large Seattle tech company had me sit in a hotel and do a take home after a full day of interviews and then after no reply for a week claimed they never got it. I re-forwarded them the original email. Now that I'm older I refuse. Why? Because I work full-time, I have a family that I either care for, cook for, or put to bed. And when I'm not doing either of the above, I try to work-out for personal health and sanity reasons. The take-home test only works in the "app does everything for you and you have no family" that defines living in SF.

NumberSix 9y ago

I would not take excuses like this for rejecting a candidate, especially a highly qualified/skilled candidate, at face value. Despite the pervasive rhetoric about wanting the "best" or hiring only the "best," both individual interviewers and companies as a whole are often afraid of hiring candidates who know more or are more skilled than themselves. The unstated fears include that the candidate will, if hired, outshine colleagues, his or her boss, or even, in some cases, the founder or CEO of the company -- especially in the case of startups where venture capitalists or other investors could be impressed by the new hire. Since it is usually not acceptable to reject an applicant for this reason, some pretext will be generated. One way is to focus in on some area where the candidate is weak or different such as using a different software tool. Another way is to use trick questions or problems. This is an article on how this was allegedly done in academia in the Soviet Union: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556.pdf

s3nnyy 9y ago
OP here Actually, I had drafted "Horror story 4: Candidate was rejected because he was better than the interviewer" but I thought it is too complex to be included. I might write a whole blog post about it. Thanks so much for linking to the paper.
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  Just included fourth story in the original post but will write an extensive thing about this topic.
  - zootam 9y ago
    really cool to see live updates like this. thanks for the good stories.
- SilasX 9y ago
  There’s the related “interviewer is fundamentally wrong and unable to see it”: http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1ilh7o/what_to_do_technical_interview_where_interviewer/ http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1ilh7o/wh... He didn’t even understand the question “what would you have to see to convince you that you’re wrong?” meaning he wouldn’t even be able to recover from the error!

mythrwy 9y ago

My belief is most people would secretly like to hire (or see hired) people who are just a little less smart and/or a little less able than themselves. So this dynamic is often at play under the covers. The exceptions to this are truly great managers and co-workers and companies that have a bright future but unfortunately it's kind of rare IMOP.

s3nnyy 9y ago
You are now the second person mentioning this in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15682260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15682260) I really had this case where a 22yr old open-source contributing child-prodigy programmer would be rejected at the code-screening phase by a guy, let's call him "Jon". We had a phone call with three people: HR, Jon and me. The reasons why Jon rejected the candidate were all a bit funny and I could not tell if Jon was serious or not. Also, Jon's Github contributions, pull requests and other things were rather shitty anyhow, but he was responsible for the first screenings so I had to listen to his feedback. Jon pinpointed to some problems in the candidate's code which were more style and not problems. Other things had good reason (verbose try catch blocks). When I started to get defensive and mentioned that the quality of the submission is better than Jon's stuff on Github, HR stopped me and told me "We're not assessing John here" Added it to the post.

siliconc0w 9y ago

I've been on both sides of the table and the reality is that high stakes full day interviews kinda suck - they're noisy and tuned for high false positives (if they're even tuned at all). Sometimes people get lost solving a problem, or don't ask clarifying questions, or are just too nervous, drank too much coffee, or maybe just didn't get a full night's rest. For most processes - it usually takes more than one bad round but one bad round can rattle a candidate who can cascade. I like to think i'm a decent interviewer (and interviewee - not particularly gifted at CS but I've run enough rounds to recognize most problem types) I've gotten offers from 'big 5' companies but have been rejected by some as well. One reasonably well respected tech company wouldn't even screen me. Just a vague rejection, 'not a good fit at this time'. Who knows why - resume went to a busy team lead who looked at it for 5 seconds and took a dislike to some word choice. Or maybe they were on a hiring freeze and the 'open positions' were just for show. Maybe the non-technical recruiter didn't recognize the technologies listed actually matched what they were looking for. Who knows. The process sucks. Everyone knows it sucks. Maybe 'of all the processes it sucks the least' Churchill-style. I think it's slowly getting better, people are getting more objective - less stupid brain teasers. As engineers we want things fixed fast (like a merged PR) but people driven processes move and change slowly.

msl09 9y ago

It seems to me that using those websites(stackoverflow, linkedin, whatever else) for landing in jobs is a big waste of time for prospective employees because of how messy and quirky the hiring process is. Most of the people I know that have been successful at being hired by big companies had some kind of (living, breathing) coach to walk through the process. Am I the only one seeing that pattern?

s3nnyy 9y ago
The signal-to-noise ration and linkedin is surely very low nowadays. I am actually working on a article describing what I learned hiring and firing freelance recruiters who work mainly with Linkedin.

san_at_weblegit 9y ago

1. As an engineer I would definitely not work with a team that comes up with the first reason for rejection (Provided that I have not mentioned that stack on my resume to begin with). 2. The second reason is more of a choice of the given company. There are companies on the other hand which give out an offer all based on cultural fit. More than often good interviewers never make a decision on the result of the puzzles but on how the candidate approaches it. Downside is that not all people are up for it in the interview hour even if they are really smart otherwise. 3. Third is bad luck (cause of disorganized recruiting). The delay in response has something to do with the candidate too, how much vulnerable they are for the job. Personally I discuss the expectations for the interview process beforehand which is super helpful since I almost always get the feedback the next day irrespective of whether its an offer or rejection. On the flip side there should be another discussion on how engineers get the jobs. I am sure those stories would be interesting too. It is not about the technical competency for majority of the times. Interviewing is an art and the candidates who are able to make the interviewers feel good about themselves have much more chances of offers.

mike-cardwell 9y ago

I was recently contacted by a company whos CEO had read some stuff that I'd written online and asked me to interview at their place. Their interview consisted of: 1. A logic test. They sent me a bunch of logic questions unrelated to programming or my abilities as a programmer. I had a certain amount of time to answer and submit the questions. Sounds like something dreamed up by a HR droid with no knowledge of programming, but I went with it. 2. A programming test. They sent me a list of instructions for a thing to build. I can't remember how long I was given, but it was something like a full days work, and I needed it. I submitted the work. Heared back a few weeks later that they decided to hire somebody else. No conversation about the work whatsoever. I logged into skype today and noticed that the developer who sent me the instructions for the thing to build, tried to contact me 3 days later to ask where the work was. Even though earlier in the conversation I provided a link to the gitlab repo. Ultimately, I don't even know if they looked at my work. I don't know why they called it an "interview" seeing as I never actually held a conversation with anybody. Next time a company contacts me because they think they might want to hire me, I'm going to demand an interview. If your interview is a series of tests, you can get lost.

golergka 9y ago
> They sent me a bunch of logic questions unrelated to programming or my abilities as a programmer How can logic questions be "unrelated" to programming?
- mike-cardwell 9y ago
  Quite easily?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lostmsu 9y ago

I've been rejected from Facebook at some moment. I assume that happened, because we had some sort of disagreement with the interviewer. That seemed like a system design question, and at some moment I suggested to use SHA256 hashes to identify unique arbitrary long human input sequences (no malicious intent assumed). And he asked me what would I do if there's a collision. Estimating probability of such collision to under about 10^-40 over span of 30 years of everyone on Earth typing input for that system at max speed did not convince him there's no need to handle collisions, and he kept insisting on that question. Well, I got hired by another big company here, on a more interesting project.