4 ms·

A better question: could you find ten thousand qualified people in 2021 who really want to go through 4 rounds of interviews with a company that's quantitativel

A better question: could you find ten thousand qualified people in 2021 who really want to go through 4 rounds of interviews with a company that's quantitatively proven to promote human misery?

lmilcin 5y ago
Of course they will. A lot of people will gladly accept FAANG salary and then bend backwards to rationalize it. Or they just simply don't care. Four rounds of interviews is not a problem if you are good at what you are doing and only need to visit 2-3 companies to get the offer you want. It only becomes a problem if you need to visit a lot of companies and I suspect that is where a lot of complaints come from.
- flyingchipmann 5y ago
  The reason to interview a lot of companies at once is because of the competing offers. The candidate would have a huge raise by doing so. Certain companies would give out minimum offers most of the time unless they see the competing offers now, like Google/Microsoft.
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    Never had this happen to me and also they don't need more than one competing offer. Why would you need ten offers? If you complain that companies waste your time then what is shopping for offers if not massive waste? There are ways to check what you can earn at most large companies. Just find the company you want to work for and focus getting as good impression as you can. It is likely going to yield better results than trying to optimize your effort to be as low as possible because you need to run so many concurrent processes. Remember, one good offer is better than ten worse.
    - flyingchipmann 5y ago
      Yes, one competing offer is enough. Applying for more is just upping the chances. The competition is fierce and luck is also very important. It's good to have backup plans.
    - lrvick 5y ago
      I have known a number of people that interviewed with FAANG companies simply to get salary negotiation leverage with no intention of ever working there on ethical grounds. Wasting the time of several unethical companies while getting valuable interview experience is a win/win.
esyir 5y ago
Well, I'd gladly be one of them. I have a strong disagreement with the current HN hivemind over the "evil" of Facebook. I'd put them at equal levels of "evil" with the rest of the AANG. That and I'm personally invested in the metaverse. My whole life I've been wanting virtual worlds, inspired by the virtual-virtual worlds oft-portrayed by media. By some twist of fate, it seems that my generation might very well be the one to get that.
- celim307 5y ago
  The virtual world you are envisioning and the one that will be built can be two very different things
- lrvick 5y ago
  The other AANG companies are equally terrible, I would agree. That doesn't make helping them make the world worse any more ethical. Many maintain cognitive dissonance here I think because giving up Facebook products is easier than giving up AANG products. Also do you really want -Facebook- to be in charge of the next generation of the internet? You can choose to use your capability to join others in building something open and decentralized instead, like the current internet.
vineyardmike 5y ago
I'd work for a company that had done bad stuff if I'm not contributing to it - even better if its providing an alternative path to profitability that may reduce reliance on their "dirty" money. This seems like a desperate ploy to find "another thing" for Facebook to escape their past/present - and they should move on from it. Few companies are benevolent and have never done something wrong. Apple and the CSAM is only the latest bad story for them. Google and privacy and dragonfly. Amazon and warehouse workers. Facebook and... Facebook. Microsoft and antitrust/EEE.
- lrvick 5y ago
  Yes. And we should all stop writing code for any of those companies. They will -always- do whatever the most profitable thing is, users be damned. They are machines that generate money. The only internet services that ever have a chance of putting the best interests of users first are open source decentralized ones.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > we should all stop writing code for any of those companies. > The only internet services that ever have a chance of putting the best interests of users first are open source decentralized ones. This isn't really a practical advice. Most "open source decentralized [companies]" aren't profitable enough to pay a salary for all these engineers - even at a lower rate than they make. Also, every company is a machine that generates money. That isn't inherently so bad we should abandon all businesses.
MarkSweep 5y ago
Of the companies I have interviewed at in the recent years, including a subset of FAANG companies (Facebook, Apple, Google), I think the Facebook process was the most humane. Besides a sprinkling of recruiter calls, the process consisted mostly of a 1 hour coding challenge while also talking on the phone, plus an "onsite" of 4 interviews. I say "onsite" because this was in COVID times, so it was still on video chat / coder pad. Now Apple, yeah, that was like 5 rounds. I wrote about that previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26226809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26226809 I still agree that the Leetcode interview (and perhaps many interview types in general) promote human misery and does not really do that great of a job of selecting for people to do well at their jobs. Getting better at it involved repeated failing at it in painful ways and a little studying. Not to mention all the days off to spend a day writing on white boards. One more aside: don't make jokes about coding on a whiteboard or using whiteboard-based version control, as funny as these jokes are, you will just come off as arrogant.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Silicon Valley always has an answer to that problem: import the labor you want, give them the values you want them to have. If they don't like it, you can always send them back. Most quickly learn to value what they're told to value.
invalidusernam3 5y ago
Sadly, for enough money, yes

A better question: could you find ten thousand qualified people in 2021 who really want to go through 4 rounds of interviews with a company that's quantitatively proven to promote human misery?

lmilcin 5y ago

Of course they will. A lot of people will gladly accept FAANG salary and then bend backwards to rationalize it. Or they just simply don't care. Four rounds of interviews is not a problem if you are good at what you are doing and only need to visit 2-3 companies to get the offer you want. It only becomes a problem if you need to visit a lot of companies and I suspect that is where a lot of complaints come from.

flyingchipmann 5y ago
The reason to interview a lot of companies at once is because of the competing offers. The candidate would have a huge raise by doing so. Certain companies would give out minimum offers most of the time unless they see the competing offers now, like Google/Microsoft.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  Never had this happen to me and also they don't need more than one competing offer. Why would you need ten offers? If you complain that companies waste your time then what is shopping for offers if not massive waste? There are ways to check what you can earn at most large companies. Just find the company you want to work for and focus getting as good impression as you can. It is likely going to yield better results than trying to optimize your effort to be as low as possible because you need to run so many concurrent processes. Remember, one good offer is better than ten worse.
  - flyingchipmann 5y ago
    Yes, one competing offer is enough. Applying for more is just upping the chances. The competition is fierce and luck is also very important. It's good to have backup plans.
  - lrvick 5y ago
    I have known a number of people that interviewed with FAANG companies simply to get salary negotiation leverage with no intention of ever working there on ethical grounds. Wasting the time of several unethical companies while getting valuable interview experience is a win/win.

esyir 5y ago

Well, I'd gladly be one of them. I have a strong disagreement with the current HN hivemind over the "evil" of Facebook. I'd put them at equal levels of "evil" with the rest of the AANG. That and I'm personally invested in the metaverse. My whole life I've been wanting virtual worlds, inspired by the virtual-virtual worlds oft-portrayed by media. By some twist of fate, it seems that my generation might very well be the one to get that.

celim307 5y ago
The virtual world you are envisioning and the one that will be built can be two very different things
lrvick 5y ago
The other AANG companies are equally terrible, I would agree. That doesn't make helping them make the world worse any more ethical. Many maintain cognitive dissonance here I think because giving up Facebook products is easier than giving up AANG products. Also do you really want -Facebook- to be in charge of the next generation of the internet? You can choose to use your capability to join others in building something open and decentralized instead, like the current internet.

vineyardmike 5y ago

I'd work for a company that had done bad stuff if I'm not contributing to it - even better if its providing an alternative path to profitability that may reduce reliance on their "dirty" money. This seems like a desperate ploy to find "another thing" for Facebook to escape their past/present - and they should move on from it. Few companies are benevolent and have never done something wrong. Apple and the CSAM is only the latest bad story for them. Google and privacy and dragonfly. Amazon and warehouse workers. Facebook and... Facebook. Microsoft and antitrust/EEE.

lrvick 5y ago
Yes. And we should all stop writing code for any of those companies. They will -always- do whatever the most profitable thing is, users be damned. They are machines that generate money. The only internet services that ever have a chance of putting the best interests of users first are open source decentralized ones.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > we should all stop writing code for any of those companies. > The only internet services that ever have a chance of putting the best interests of users first are open source decentralized ones. This isn't really a practical advice. Most "open source decentralized [companies]" aren't profitable enough to pay a salary for all these engineers - even at a lower rate than they make. Also, every company is a machine that generates money. That isn't inherently so bad we should abandon all businesses.

MarkSweep 5y ago

Of the companies I have interviewed at in the recent years, including a subset of FAANG companies (Facebook, Apple, Google), I think the Facebook process was the most humane. Besides a sprinkling of recruiter calls, the process consisted mostly of a 1 hour coding challenge while also talking on the phone, plus an "onsite" of 4 interviews. I say "onsite" because this was in COVID times, so it was still on video chat / coder pad. Now Apple, yeah, that was like 5 rounds. I wrote about that previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26226809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26226809 I still agree that the Leetcode interview (and perhaps many interview types in general) promote human misery and does not really do that great of a job of selecting for people to do well at their jobs. Getting better at it involved repeated failing at it in painful ways and a little studying. Not to mention all the days off to spend a day writing on white boards. One more aside: don't make jokes about coding on a whiteboard or using whiteboard-based version control, as funny as these jokes are, you will just come off as arrogant.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

Silicon Valley always has an answer to that problem: import the labor you want, give them the values you want them to have. If they don't like it, you can always send them back. Most quickly learn to value what they're told to value.

invalidusernam3 5y ago

Sadly, for enough money, yes