25 ms·

I recently agreed to go through a 5-round process which totaled to about 6 hours. I'm the first person to bitch about the ineffectiveness of leetcode/hackerrank

I recently agreed to go through a 5-round process which totaled to about 6 hours. I'm the first person to bitch about the ineffectiveness of leetcode/hackerrank bullshit for people with 10+ of verifiable experience, but I went through this one because it was a field I had never worked in before, and the personnel I was speaking with were truly interesting. Sans all of those qualifiers, anything more than 3 rounds is a deal breaker for me. If you don't know if I'm the right fit after 3 hours, verifiable experience, a public body of work, and a list of references, then your company culture isn't a good fit for me.

echelon 5y ago
Devil's advocate. Every bad hire costs the company $50,000 - 200,000. Sometimes more. They can also sink or demoralize teams. Many of the people conducting interviews are new to the process and don't know how to extract signal. Sometimes scales don't line up. When you have a revolving door of employees (because that's the way things are these days), have trouble scheduling interviews (busy engineers trying to get their own work done), and can't get enough skilled interviewers on a panel, then of course the process will be a suboptimal experience for candidates. To a degree, companies would rather a good candidate was passed over than a bad candidate was accepted. Type I and II errors. Companies also don't like telling candidates how they did because that opens them up to lawsuit liabilities. You have to do enough interviews to get signal yet not piss off candidates. (Or your employees in the interview pool!) It's a hard problem for companies too.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  > because that's the way things are these days Why is nothing done about this? As turnover soars and tenure plummets, I am willing to buy that companies do not value codebase knowledge, domain knowledge, or believe that it takes time for an engineer to get going. I can buy them seeing us engineers as replaceable widgets. But we are at the point where a lot of companies cannot replace us and yet nothing is done about the endless parade out the door. The focus is entirely on shovelling new people in.
  - creato 5y ago
    I think most engineers overestimate their irreplaceability. If a company actually wants you to stay, they'll fight for you. They just choose not to for >90% of engineers leaving. Chances are, the new hire replacements will be in the same 90%, so it is a wash (minus ramp-up time), but maybe the company gets lucky and finds someone in the other 10%.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      I get them being replaceable, but there must be companies would be getting to the point where there aren't replacements, or at least not good ones as the demand for engineers grows.
- thayne 5y ago
  They least they could do is let you know up front what the interview process is going to be like. From what I've seen the candidate often has no idea if the second interview is the final interview or just the next in a long series. And I've even seen employers wait weeks befor calling back to inform the candidate they qualify for a third interview. And if you have a revolving door of workers, that suggests something else is wrong. Maybe you should focus on retaining existing workers rather than acquiring new ones.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  If someone is new to the interviewing process, then they shouldn't be doing interviews alone. If they don't know how to gather information from a resume, then they shouldn't be reading resumes alone. You say that a bad hire is worth tens of thousands of dollars, but if that's the case, then most of what you said is irrelevant because a company that is smart enough to recognize this would be smart enough to never put a junior manager in a situation to make a terrible decision.
  - echelon 5y ago
    > If they don't know how to gather information from a resume, then they shouldn't be reading resumes alone. You would be shocked how many people blatantly lie or overstate their roles on resumes. Senior, junior, it happens all over. A good practice is to ask candidates to go in depth about recent resume items and explain the technicals, business needs, etc. > If someone is new to the interviewing process, then they shouldn't be doing interviews alone. Most don't. But are you really calibrated after five interviews? Ten? And what about all the other folks that need to shadow / train?
    - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
      It's either important and expensive or it isn't. I wouldn't be "shocked" by anything. I used to be a recruiter. In my current dev position, I have absolutely nuked candidates by asking basic questions that the managers (who were eager to hire someone to fill a spot) and other devs (who would feel uncomfortable if they asked the question and hence didn't) failed to ask. A candidate who will try to bullshit me about something he doesn't actually know is someone who will waste time on projects by not using all the resources available to him to find the correct solution (this usually involves being brave enough to ask questions if you don't understand something). If my future depends on your success, then I'm going to ask questions that will make me feel like I can trust my future in your hands. If a manager is getting paid $150K a year and it costs $200K to fire a bad employee, then "when they're ready" is the correct metric to use.
  - gentleman11 5y ago
    So they can learn from experienced interviewers who just make you leetcode and answer dumb stock questions (my biggest weakness is…)? What we need is for people to interview with zero experience and figure out a better way on their own, not copy a bunch of bad processes out of insecurity
- void_mint 5y ago
  Your response is the voice of the company. The person you're responding to, and lots of candidates, don't really care about the voice of the company. From a company's perspective, sure waste all the time you want, you want to be _sure_. But to candidates, getting dragged around sucks, and is usually a waste
- s5300 5y ago
  The lower end of that, and honestly, the higher end, is just about complete rounding error to any FAANGM+ caliber company. I have seen a fairly small amount of employees hit the lower end on a singular dining bill when they had a company card and were meeting with business partners they were trying to "impress" (obviously, the joke is free nice food and drink for all involved at the companies expense) If you were fickle you could perhaps justify that as priced in to keeping good relations... but in the same light I'd call your figures priced into the talent acquisition process.
- billytetrud 5y ago
  Yes, every bad hire is really bad. However, companies generally don't put in any effort into seriously evaluating your publicly available work. I have reams and reams of open source code companies can take a look at, and I've never seen any evidence that any company I've ever interviewed at has looked at that work. That's a result of companies being completely incompetent at evaluation and disrespecting their candidates time. Its wasteful and stupid. Its honestly flabbergasting how many companies don't put in the effort to make their hiring process passible, much less anything near "good".
  - bfung 5y ago
    Being on the hiring end, it’s less out of incompetence and more of not enough time, and open source code is low signal that the candidate can actually solve problems. If I submit some “open source” code as some proof that I can code, how do you know I didn’t copy the code from somewhere? Also, writing code for the sake of writing code doesn’t tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and translate that to an automated process. It just say that person isn’t that busy and can, excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive. Writing code can be a hobby, sure, but that’s only a small part of a software job and no amount of open source code can tell a company if the candidate can work with others and solve problems.
    - buck4roo 5y ago
      > no amount of open source code can tell a company if the candidate can work with others and solve problems. Balderdash. When was the last time an interview task involved working with others? I'd offer that open source PRs show this way better, and in an appropriate context (as a collaborator) rather than what we have now: adversarial interview{er,ee}s.
    - billytetrud 5y ago
      > how do you know I didn’t copy the code from somewhere? You can ask your candidate to explain the code... Is that not obvious? > writing code for the sake of writing code doesn’t tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and translate that to an automated process Kind of sounds like you don't know what open source software is. > excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive I won't excuse your language. You sound like you're part of the problem buddy. I don't think you have any idea how to evaluate a programmer.
- rgbrenner 5y ago
  This is mostly management speak for: don't blame us, we're just incompetent. If you run a company and you have a "revolving door of employees" (ie: we can't retain talent), your managers "are new to the process" and don't know what they're looking for (ie: we hire inexperienced managers), and you "can't get enough skilled interviewers on a panel" (ie: "we don't hire enough engineers and we're too cheap and shortsighted to put them on tasks like hiring")... then yeah, you should expect your hiring costs to go up, have a revolving door of employees (because you don't know how to hire), and your teams to be demoralized. The consequences of that are your (company's) fault. You should own up to your shortcomings and work on your hiring process... don't just punish the candidates indefinitely so that you can ignore your problems. (I say this as a serial founder, and hopefully never need to be on the other end of the hiring process.)
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Are there companies that don't have a revolving door? Talent retention seems to be solidly tagged #wontfix.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Cheezemansam 5y ago
      A lot of IT positions at Universities. To the point where it can be a problem as in a Junior Position, it can be really hard to be promoted internally unless someone decides to leave, which they rarely do because people in Senior level Uni positions get good pay and they tend to be very chill environments.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  +1 to everything you said. I’d like to add time aspect as well. If selected, candidate will spend next 12-18 months with the team, 5 days a week. I look at those 5-6 hrs as worth an upfront investment from both the sides just ensure those days months aren’t miserable and you don’t end up parting ways on bad terms. I’m saying this as an interviewee as well as hiring manager who has conducted more than a thousand interviews. Nothing frustrates a team and hiring manager more than a mishire. It’s the same for candidate, they have to go through the charade of interviewing at tens of places again.
- Gauge_Irrahphe 5y ago
  When you have a revolving door of employees, the job sucks in some way and people leave for places that suck less. You have two ways to solve this problem: 1. Figure out what makes your employees keep leaving. 2. Hire people who are not good enough to work elsewhere.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  "revolving door of employees (because that's the way things are these days)" 2 things that line hits me. 1. Remuneration. If I can jump ship and come back later to much more money, why not? 2. I work to make myself replaceable. This is what good documentation, code comments, architecture is for!
  - tcmart14 5y ago
    So what I get is, write shitty confusing code and don't document it. Job security, got it!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stevekemp 5y ago
It's interesting to hear of these experiences because my own job applications have usually taken four steps: * See the advert online, and send an email/fill out a form to apply. * Have a quick phone-chat with a HR-person, where they ask about salary, history, and try to decide if I'm a chancer, or I have some somewhat useful skills. * Have a 30-60 minute interview with some technical people, in-person. * Optionally have a second interview with a tech-lead, or somebody else higher up the chain. * Receive offer, rejection, or get ghosted. Smaller companies sometimes have different processes. More than once I've sent an email/CV in to apply and been invited out for beer/food, and received a verbal offer the following morning. No other interviews, or tests.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  Yes, same for me. I was going through my past interviews, and the most I’ve had before an offer has been two, both scheduled on the same day. And I’ve worked in agencies and big orgs, in both private and public sector. Maybe we’ve just been lucky?
- ExitPlatosCave 5y ago
  Hey Steve, Thought your comment was interesting, so went to check out your profile. That was also clean and well made, so followed through to your website. Found this: "I published a simple tool to all your repository details from Github, self-hosted Github Enterprise installations, and other compatible systems." Do you mean: ...to [pull] all your repository details Since you have such a nice profile and everything I thought maybe you intended to include this word in there. Hope this is helpful. Somewhat related to interviewing and getting hired. If it's in an appropriate comment for this threat then please remove it. @admin
  - stevekemp 5y ago
    A little off-topic, but appreciated regardless. I'll fix the entry you mention - as you suspected a missing word there.
  - tome 5y ago
    Hey ExitPlatosCave, Thought the beginning of your comment was interesting, so went to check out the middle of your comment. That was also clean and well written, so followed through to the end. Found this: "If it's in an appropriate comment for this threat then please remove it." Do you mean: If it's in an inappropriate comment for this thread then please remove it. Since you have such a nice comment and everything I thought maybe you intended not to make these typos. Hope this is helpful.
Plasmoid 5y ago
I wonder if this is a way to crowd out competitors. Take up so much of a candidate's time that they can only interview at a handful of places successfully. Either the candidate goes all in on you or they pass without using your resources. Kinda the grocery store shelving model of competition.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  And it’s to weed out people who value their own time and who won’t take part in pointless company mandated bullshit. If someone sits though 6 hours of interviews and pointless exercises that should instead be solved by consulting the documentation, they will probably just do what they are told without fuss, will work overtime for free and will let the company walk all over them with regards to sick pay, holidays, etc.

echelon 5y ago

Devil's advocate. Every bad hire costs the company $50,000 - 200,000. Sometimes more. They can also sink or demoralize teams. Many of the people conducting interviews are new to the process and don't know how to extract signal. Sometimes scales don't line up. When you have a revolving door of employees (because that's the way things are these days), have trouble scheduling interviews (busy engineers trying to get their own work done), and can't get enough skilled interviewers on a panel, then of course the process will be a suboptimal experience for candidates. To a degree, companies would rather a good candidate was passed over than a bad candidate was accepted. Type I and II errors. Companies also don't like telling candidates how they did because that opens them up to lawsuit liabilities. You have to do enough interviews to get signal yet not piss off candidates. (Or your employees in the interview pool!) It's a hard problem for companies too.

MattGaiser 5y ago
> because that's the way things are these days Why is nothing done about this? As turnover soars and tenure plummets, I am willing to buy that companies do not value codebase knowledge, domain knowledge, or believe that it takes time for an engineer to get going. I can buy them seeing us engineers as replaceable widgets. But we are at the point where a lot of companies cannot replace us and yet nothing is done about the endless parade out the door. The focus is entirely on shovelling new people in.
- creato 5y ago
  I think most engineers overestimate their irreplaceability. If a company actually wants you to stay, they'll fight for you. They just choose not to for >90% of engineers leaving. Chances are, the new hire replacements will be in the same 90%, so it is a wash (minus ramp-up time), but maybe the company gets lucky and finds someone in the other 10%.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I get them being replaceable, but there must be companies would be getting to the point where there aren't replacements, or at least not good ones as the demand for engineers grows.
thayne 5y ago
They least they could do is let you know up front what the interview process is going to be like. From what I've seen the candidate often has no idea if the second interview is the final interview or just the next in a long series. And I've even seen employers wait weeks befor calling back to inform the candidate they qualify for a third interview. And if you have a revolving door of workers, that suggests something else is wrong. Maybe you should focus on retaining existing workers rather than acquiring new ones.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
If someone is new to the interviewing process, then they shouldn't be doing interviews alone. If they don't know how to gather information from a resume, then they shouldn't be reading resumes alone. You say that a bad hire is worth tens of thousands of dollars, but if that's the case, then most of what you said is irrelevant because a company that is smart enough to recognize this would be smart enough to never put a junior manager in a situation to make a terrible decision.
- echelon 5y ago
  > If they don't know how to gather information from a resume, then they shouldn't be reading resumes alone. You would be shocked how many people blatantly lie or overstate their roles on resumes. Senior, junior, it happens all over. A good practice is to ask candidates to go in depth about recent resume items and explain the technicals, business needs, etc. > If someone is new to the interviewing process, then they shouldn't be doing interviews alone. Most don't. But are you really calibrated after five interviews? Ten? And what about all the other folks that need to shadow / train?
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    It's either important and expensive or it isn't. I wouldn't be "shocked" by anything. I used to be a recruiter. In my current dev position, I have absolutely nuked candidates by asking basic questions that the managers (who were eager to hire someone to fill a spot) and other devs (who would feel uncomfortable if they asked the question and hence didn't) failed to ask. A candidate who will try to bullshit me about something he doesn't actually know is someone who will waste time on projects by not using all the resources available to him to find the correct solution (this usually involves being brave enough to ask questions if you don't understand something). If my future depends on your success, then I'm going to ask questions that will make me feel like I can trust my future in your hands. If a manager is getting paid $150K a year and it costs $200K to fire a bad employee, then "when they're ready" is the correct metric to use.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  So they can learn from experienced interviewers who just make you leetcode and answer dumb stock questions (my biggest weakness is…)? What we need is for people to interview with zero experience and figure out a better way on their own, not copy a bunch of bad processes out of insecurity
void_mint 5y ago
Your response is the voice of the company. The person you're responding to, and lots of candidates, don't really care about the voice of the company. From a company's perspective, sure waste all the time you want, you want to be _sure_. But to candidates, getting dragged around sucks, and is usually a waste
s5300 5y ago
The lower end of that, and honestly, the higher end, is just about complete rounding error to any FAANGM+ caliber company. I have seen a fairly small amount of employees hit the lower end on a singular dining bill when they had a company card and were meeting with business partners they were trying to "impress" (obviously, the joke is free nice food and drink for all involved at the companies expense) If you were fickle you could perhaps justify that as priced in to keeping good relations... but in the same light I'd call your figures priced into the talent acquisition process.
billytetrud 5y ago
Yes, every bad hire is really bad. However, companies generally don't put in any effort into seriously evaluating your publicly available work. I have reams and reams of open source code companies can take a look at, and I've never seen any evidence that any company I've ever interviewed at has looked at that work. That's a result of companies being completely incompetent at evaluation and disrespecting their candidates time. Its wasteful and stupid. Its honestly flabbergasting how many companies don't put in the effort to make their hiring process passible, much less anything near "good".
- bfung 5y ago
  Being on the hiring end, it’s less out of incompetence and more of not enough time, and open source code is low signal that the candidate can actually solve problems. If I submit some “open source” code as some proof that I can code, how do you know I didn’t copy the code from somewhere? Also, writing code for the sake of writing code doesn’t tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and translate that to an automated process. It just say that person isn’t that busy and can, excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive. Writing code can be a hobby, sure, but that’s only a small part of a software job and no amount of open source code can tell a company if the candidate can work with others and solve problems.
  - buck4roo 5y ago
    > no amount of open source code can tell a company if the candidate can work with others and solve problems. Balderdash. When was the last time an interview task involved working with others? I'd offer that open source PRs show this way better, and in an appropriate context (as a collaborator) rather than what we have now: adversarial interview{er,ee}s.
  - billytetrud 5y ago
    > how do you know I didn’t copy the code from somewhere? You can ask your candidate to explain the code... Is that not obvious? > writing code for the sake of writing code doesn’t tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and translate that to an automated process Kind of sounds like you don't know what open source software is. > excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive I won't excuse your language. You sound like you're part of the problem buddy. I don't think you have any idea how to evaluate a programmer.
rgbrenner 5y ago
This is mostly management speak for: don't blame us, we're just incompetent. If you run a company and you have a "revolving door of employees" (ie: we can't retain talent), your managers "are new to the process" and don't know what they're looking for (ie: we hire inexperienced managers), and you "can't get enough skilled interviewers on a panel" (ie: "we don't hire enough engineers and we're too cheap and shortsighted to put them on tasks like hiring")... then yeah, you should expect your hiring costs to go up, have a revolving door of employees (because you don't know how to hire), and your teams to be demoralized. The consequences of that are your (company's) fault. You should own up to your shortcomings and work on your hiring process... don't just punish the candidates indefinitely so that you can ignore your problems. (I say this as a serial founder, and hopefully never need to be on the other end of the hiring process.)
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Are there companies that don't have a revolving door? Talent retention seems to be solidly tagged #wontfix.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Cheezemansam 5y ago
    A lot of IT positions at Universities. To the point where it can be a problem as in a Junior Position, it can be really hard to be promoted internally unless someone decides to leave, which they rarely do because people in Senior level Uni positions get good pay and they tend to be very chill environments.
vishnugupta 5y ago
+1 to everything you said. I’d like to add time aspect as well. If selected, candidate will spend next 12-18 months with the team, 5 days a week. I look at those 5-6 hrs as worth an upfront investment from both the sides just ensure those days months aren’t miserable and you don’t end up parting ways on bad terms. I’m saying this as an interviewee as well as hiring manager who has conducted more than a thousand interviews. Nothing frustrates a team and hiring manager more than a mishire. It’s the same for candidate, they have to go through the charade of interviewing at tens of places again.
Gauge_Irrahphe 5y ago
When you have a revolving door of employees, the job sucks in some way and people leave for places that suck less. You have two ways to solve this problem: 1. Figure out what makes your employees keep leaving. 2. Hire people who are not good enough to work elsewhere.
_carbyau_ 5y ago
"revolving door of employees (because that's the way things are these days)" 2 things that line hits me. 1. Remuneration. If I can jump ship and come back later to much more money, why not? 2. I work to make myself replaceable. This is what good documentation, code comments, architecture is for!
- tcmart14 5y ago
  So what I get is, write shitty confusing code and don't document it. Job security, got it!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

stevekemp 5y ago

It's interesting to hear of these experiences because my own job applications have usually taken four steps: * See the advert online, and send an email/fill out a form to apply. * Have a quick phone-chat with a HR-person, where they ask about salary, history, and try to decide if I'm a chancer, or I have some somewhat useful skills. * Have a 30-60 minute interview with some technical people, in-person. * Optionally have a second interview with a tech-lead, or somebody else higher up the chain. * Receive offer, rejection, or get ghosted. Smaller companies sometimes have different processes. More than once I've sent an email/CV in to apply and been invited out for beer/food, and received a verbal offer the following morning. No other interviews, or tests.

robin_reala 5y ago
Yes, same for me. I was going through my past interviews, and the most I’ve had before an offer has been two, both scheduled on the same day. And I’ve worked in agencies and big orgs, in both private and public sector. Maybe we’ve just been lucky?
ExitPlatosCave 5y ago
Hey Steve, Thought your comment was interesting, so went to check out your profile. That was also clean and well made, so followed through to your website. Found this: "I published a simple tool to all your repository details from Github, self-hosted Github Enterprise installations, and other compatible systems." Do you mean: ...to [pull] all your repository details Since you have such a nice profile and everything I thought maybe you intended to include this word in there. Hope this is helpful. Somewhat related to interviewing and getting hired. If it's in an appropriate comment for this threat then please remove it. @admin
- stevekemp 5y ago
  A little off-topic, but appreciated regardless. I'll fix the entry you mention - as you suspected a missing word there.
- tome 5y ago
  Hey ExitPlatosCave, Thought the beginning of your comment was interesting, so went to check out the middle of your comment. That was also clean and well written, so followed through to the end. Found this: "If it's in an appropriate comment for this threat then please remove it." Do you mean: If it's in an inappropriate comment for this thread then please remove it. Since you have such a nice comment and everything I thought maybe you intended not to make these typos. Hope this is helpful.

Plasmoid 5y ago

I wonder if this is a way to crowd out competitors. Take up so much of a candidate's time that they can only interview at a handful of places successfully. Either the candidate goes all in on you or they pass without using your resources. Kinda the grocery store shelving model of competition.

dkdbejwi383 5y ago
And it’s to weed out people who value their own time and who won’t take part in pointless company mandated bullshit. If someone sits though 6 hours of interviews and pointless exercises that should instead be solved by consulting the documentation, they will probably just do what they are told without fuss, will work overtime for free and will let the company walk all over them with regards to sick pay, holidays, etc.