6 ms·

I think the author has not really interviewed in the past couple of months / years. Now-a-days I see interviewers skipping the pleasantries and straight jumping

I think the author has not really interviewed in the past couple of months / years. Now-a-days I see interviewers skipping the pleasantries and straight jumping on to LC style questions. In fact, in a lot of companies, the first couple of rounds are online assessments where you try to pound on LC mediums or hards without even talking to anybody else

version_five 5y ago
Do you think this is a response to tech salaries getting higher, and more unqualified people who interview well applying for jobs? A couple years ago we were hiring data scientists, and started with a chat with the hiring manager, and then at some point a technical evaluation. We attracted business grads and others for the position (in addition to cs folks), and a lot of them talked a good game but couldn't do basic data science stuff. So we ended up switching the process to have some kind of table stakes technical evaluation up front, and then do the interviews. I don't think it's ideal, but the filter has to be somewhere, and companies want to optimize hiring to cut people as quickly as possible rather than do a bunch of interviews and drop them later.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  I think it's a result of the cost of technical testing reducing to a negligible amount, and then as you say, an unhealthy relationship with risk aversion. If any company can open a funnel to the entire timezone or world and put everyone through a HackerRank test they bought off the shelf, they have sunk no real cost by the time they interview someone and potentially no shortage of people who'll go through with it. This is proven out by how little of a signal these cost-of-entry tests apparently provide, because they go on to do other tests anyway, and inevitably reject candidates who passed all of them for any reason they can come up with.
  - version_five 5y ago
    > I think it's a result of the cost of technical testing reducing to a negligible amount This is a good point that I overlooked and definitely agree is also present. The same thing is happening with other types of interviews - I have seen companies hiring now where the candidate is asked to record video answers to prompted question, that from what I remember are evaluated by some kind of machine learning. They can open up the funnel without having to do anything (except forgo candidates that either have some self respect or are not desperate for work)
    - brailsafe 5y ago
      Yes, absolutely. I've bumped into literally random people out in the world, outside of tech, who have experienced and complained (unprompted) about those creepy AI interviews and they find it dystopian. I've been asked at least 3 times to do a similar thing, and every time I've just refused, it's a few steps too far for me to even participate in, even though I am almost completely out of options at this point.
tester34 5y ago
>Now-a-days I see interviewers skipping the pleasantries and straight jumping on to LC style questions lmao software houses in Eastern EU jump straight into day-to-day stuff, 99% of the stuff was normal development, that 1% was just for lulz, to check whether you heard about stuff. 0 algo questions.

version_five 5y ago

Do you think this is a response to tech salaries getting higher, and more unqualified people who interview well applying for jobs? A couple years ago we were hiring data scientists, and started with a chat with the hiring manager, and then at some point a technical evaluation. We attracted business grads and others for the position (in addition to cs folks), and a lot of them talked a good game but couldn't do basic data science stuff. So we ended up switching the process to have some kind of table stakes technical evaluation up front, and then do the interviews. I don't think it's ideal, but the filter has to be somewhere, and companies want to optimize hiring to cut people as quickly as possible rather than do a bunch of interviews and drop them later.

brailsafe 5y ago
I think it's a result of the cost of technical testing reducing to a negligible amount, and then as you say, an unhealthy relationship with risk aversion. If any company can open a funnel to the entire timezone or world and put everyone through a HackerRank test they bought off the shelf, they have sunk no real cost by the time they interview someone and potentially no shortage of people who'll go through with it. This is proven out by how little of a signal these cost-of-entry tests apparently provide, because they go on to do other tests anyway, and inevitably reject candidates who passed all of them for any reason they can come up with.
- version_five 5y ago
  > I think it's a result of the cost of technical testing reducing to a negligible amount This is a good point that I overlooked and definitely agree is also present. The same thing is happening with other types of interviews - I have seen companies hiring now where the candidate is asked to record video answers to prompted question, that from what I remember are evaluated by some kind of machine learning. They can open up the funnel without having to do anything (except forgo candidates that either have some self respect or are not desperate for work)
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    Yes, absolutely. I've bumped into literally random people out in the world, outside of tech, who have experienced and complained (unprompted) about those creepy AI interviews and they find it dystopian. I've been asked at least 3 times to do a similar thing, and every time I've just refused, it's a few steps too far for me to even participate in, even though I am almost completely out of options at this point.

tester34 5y ago

>Now-a-days I see interviewers skipping the pleasantries and straight jumping on to LC style questions lmao software houses in Eastern EU jump straight into day-to-day stuff, 99% of the stuff was normal development, that 1% was just for lulz, to check whether you heard about stuff. 0 algo questions.