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I just went through the interview process with multiple Bay Area startups. Competency and experience don't really account for much and it is much more about th

I just went through the interview process with multiple Bay Area startups. Competency and experience don't really account for much and it is much more about the companies internal politics. People are thrown in a room without any evidence based HR training to wing it. The processes are ridiculously bureaucratic, in most scenarios you need approval from 5 different people who at any time can decide they don't like you for their own personal reasons. Given a 50/50 chance with each person, that is a 3% chance of getting an offer. People have no idea what they are doing.

dahart 7y ago
> People have no idea what they are doing Just for some friendly and non-judgemental feedback from a different point of view, to me that sounds like more of your own fear coming out than reality. Everyone who interviewed you also said the same things out of fear before they were hired, and then they got in and didn't manage to change it. That could mean it's not viewed as a problem from the inside... Companies are hiring people onto teams, not to hero-solve pure code problems in a vacuum, but to work together with other people. Communication and personality and attitude are all super important, usually more important than technical skill. (That doesn't mean technical skill is unimportant, it means precisely that people skills are more important, for the average programmer candidate.) It's a feature, not a bug, that team consensus is needed. And there's rarely 50/50 chances, using that to speculate wildly on your chances will prove incredibly inaccurate... the most common case behind the scenes is that more or less everyone agrees that either the candidate is right, or that they're not right, or that everyone is meh on the candidate so nobody is pulling for them. Chances are determined by how many people are applying for the job versus how many jobs are available, with a side of how long the company wants to take to fill those positions. The company has the upper-hand knowledge of what the candidate pool looks like, and they can hire the top 10% of those candidates who apply. As an applicant, you have no idea and no control over that. All you can do is improve yourself, research as much as you can, try many options, and try again when it doesn't work out.
- bradlys 7y ago
  I'm working at a unicorn. It's a relatively unknown one. They have no idea what they're doing. I've talked to peers across the bay and with my various companies I've worked at - they almost universally don't know what they're doing. I've interviewed at over 100 places in the bay area. I'd say that from internally and externally, most of the companies here have no idea what they're doing. Most don't use rubrics, most don't have a standardized set of questions that have been heavily reviewed and tested, there is either no training or inadequate training, and most are winging it completely. Many ask whiteboard questions to interview candidates and they never had to do them for the job they got (got in through referral or at a different stage when they weren't doing such questions). Resume, referrals, and charisma will get you into positions very easily in many of these companies even if you're very technically challenged compared to others with less resume+referral+charisma. Being liked is one of the best ways to get into positions you are terrible at but compensated so well for.
  - dahart 7y ago
    I hear you and I can very much agree ... especially for startups. And the majority of companies are startups. But! I don’t know exactly what “they don’t know what they’re” doing even means, it’s not well defined. That sentence implies you have some specific unstated expectations. What are you expecting, and why? What I’ve seen a lot of in interview and hiring threads is a lot of expectations that aren’t fully realistic. Does it matter if someone who didn’t get asked whiteboard questions is asking you whiteboard questions? That question is implying some vague concern about fairness, and isn’t focused on whether whiteboard questions are a good idea. On the positive side, at least they’re asking coding questions and not hiring 100% based on resume and charisma, which definitely happens in other industries. Younger programmers especially seem to think more often that highly reliable technical evaluation in interviews is both achievable and desirable above soft skills. In my experience that view may be too narrow. I’ve interviewed and hired many people over the years for several companies, large and small, and no matter how much advice I offer about what is actually important when interviewing, it seems like candidates rarely listen, and instead complain that “they don’t know what they’re doing”, as if they know better. I honestly think interviews are legitimately scary, and that fear comes out in various ways with programmers suggesting their ideas for “improvements”, but by and large the system is working, good companies are finding good people. I know there are a lot of interviews that are stupid, and I know there are bad companies out there. The suggestions in the article won’t fix that. Being liked is a good way to get hired period. Being liked and being good technically is better. Being technical and not likeable is a good way to not get the job. It has very little to do with the occasional cases of incompetent people being hired and paid a lot.

dahart 7y ago

> People have no idea what they are doing Just for some friendly and non-judgemental feedback from a different point of view, to me that sounds like more of your own fear coming out than reality. Everyone who interviewed you also said the same things out of fear before they were hired, and then they got in and didn't manage to change it. That could mean it's not viewed as a problem from the inside... Companies are hiring people onto teams, not to hero-solve pure code problems in a vacuum, but to work together with other people. Communication and personality and attitude are all super important, usually more important than technical skill. (That doesn't mean technical skill is unimportant, it means precisely that people skills are more important, for the average programmer candidate.) It's a feature, not a bug, that team consensus is needed. And there's rarely 50/50 chances, using that to speculate wildly on your chances will prove incredibly inaccurate... the most common case behind the scenes is that more or less everyone agrees that either the candidate is right, or that they're not right, or that everyone is meh on the candidate so nobody is pulling for them. Chances are determined by how many people are applying for the job versus how many jobs are available, with a side of how long the company wants to take to fill those positions. The company has the upper-hand knowledge of what the candidate pool looks like, and they can hire the top 10% of those candidates who apply. As an applicant, you have no idea and no control over that. All you can do is improve yourself, research as much as you can, try many options, and try again when it doesn't work out.

bradlys 7y ago
I'm working at a unicorn. It's a relatively unknown one. They have no idea what they're doing. I've talked to peers across the bay and with my various companies I've worked at - they almost universally don't know what they're doing. I've interviewed at over 100 places in the bay area. I'd say that from internally and externally, most of the companies here have no idea what they're doing. Most don't use rubrics, most don't have a standardized set of questions that have been heavily reviewed and tested, there is either no training or inadequate training, and most are winging it completely. Many ask whiteboard questions to interview candidates and they never had to do them for the job they got (got in through referral or at a different stage when they weren't doing such questions). Resume, referrals, and charisma will get you into positions very easily in many of these companies even if you're very technically challenged compared to others with less resume+referral+charisma. Being liked is one of the best ways to get into positions you are terrible at but compensated so well for.
- dahart 7y ago
  I hear you and I can very much agree ... especially for startups. And the majority of companies are startups. But! I don’t know exactly what “they don’t know what they’re” doing even means, it’s not well defined. That sentence implies you have some specific unstated expectations. What are you expecting, and why? What I’ve seen a lot of in interview and hiring threads is a lot of expectations that aren’t fully realistic. Does it matter if someone who didn’t get asked whiteboard questions is asking you whiteboard questions? That question is implying some vague concern about fairness, and isn’t focused on whether whiteboard questions are a good idea. On the positive side, at least they’re asking coding questions and not hiring 100% based on resume and charisma, which definitely happens in other industries. Younger programmers especially seem to think more often that highly reliable technical evaluation in interviews is both achievable and desirable above soft skills. In my experience that view may be too narrow. I’ve interviewed and hired many people over the years for several companies, large and small, and no matter how much advice I offer about what is actually important when interviewing, it seems like candidates rarely listen, and instead complain that “they don’t know what they’re doing”, as if they know better. I honestly think interviews are legitimately scary, and that fear comes out in various ways with programmers suggesting their ideas for “improvements”, but by and large the system is working, good companies are finding good people. I know there are a lot of interviews that are stupid, and I know there are bad companies out there. The suggestions in the article won’t fix that. Being liked is a good way to get hired period. Being liked and being good technically is better. Being technical and not likeable is a good way to not get the job. It has very little to do with the occasional cases of incompetent people being hired and paid a lot.