11 ms·

Get mock interviews now, pay when you find your next job

97 points by leeny 5y ago

AlwaysRock 5y ago
I signed up for a dedicated coaching program with interviewing.io and ended up getting a refund because I didnt think they were actually very good at coaching. The platform seems like its mostly useful for people who are already good at technical interviews, or at least good at solving technical problems, and just need practice writing code in front of other people or in a live setting. Has anyone used interviewing.io with good/great results?
- ineedasername 5y ago
  at least good at solving technical problems, and just need practice writing code in front of other people or in a live setting. I think you mean this as a minor criticism, but this seems to be exactly the point of the service. To figure out a way to find people that are actually competent at the work itself, but not in the somewhat uncorrelated skill of public speaking & live coding w/ an audience. Also a good way of identifying people that haven't gone to top tier elite schools but are just as good or better as those graduates: Recruiters at a FAANG might disregard a graduate from Generic State University w/ 2-3 years of experience under normal conditions, but if you get one that is willing to place a $1024 bet on themselves and then passes the tech interview with flying colors, it's a much easier sell. Now, with all that said, after 6 years I'd still really like to know what their long-term outcomes are. What's their typical tenure at that job, where do they land for $job +1, +2, etc.?
  - AlwaysRock 5y ago
    I should have been more specific. Has anyone had a good experience with the dedicated coaching program? I know the value of a mock interview. The coaching program didnt see to provide the value that they advertised for me. I wanted to know if I'm unique or if other have had the same experience.
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  i did one session of the system design interview, it was a good way to check my interviewing skills and what i needed to improve on. The most effective way to use this service is for yourself to study your ass of first then just use one or two sessions to validate that.
- paxys 5y ago
  I don't see the word "coaching" anywhere on interviewing.io. Mock interviews are usually done at the last stage when you have already done the rest of the prep work. I haven't used this platform but did get friends to help me with them and they were immensely helpful. You can have all the technical knowledge in the world but end up crumbling under the pressure of a live interview setting. If you are unfamiliar with the material in the first place then mock interviews are pointless.
  - travisjungroth 5y ago
    Maybe it’s only after log-in. They sell coaching packages. Weirdly, the FAQ is a Google Doc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7mJDPkEykKzSYjj-Wmza-UXGNAkL7kphwcpmmWOjRg/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7mJDPkEykKzSYjj-Wmza-UX...
    - AlwaysRock 5y ago
      Yeah. This is what I was talking about. It's $4000 to $3500 for 10 mock interviews and there is supposed to be some type of training/coaching build it. But it's basically just 10 mock interviews.
      - leeny 5y ago
        Hey Taylor, OP and founder here. I've shared your feedback with our team. The purpose of this program is to go beyond just mock interviews, and it looks like we've not done a good job here. I'm glad you got a refund already, but if have more feedback you can share, please email me at aline@interviewing.io
        AlwaysRock 5y ago
        Sure. I'll forward along my conversations with Shamiya and Lauren. They were fine during my interactions with them but it didnt seem like they had much ability to do anything other than just match me with another mentor. After 3 unsuccessful/unfruitful coach matches I asked for the refund.
- skullgrid 5y ago
  I did a 10 session package (got it on sale) that focused on (distributed) system design and ML system design. I felt confident in the coding piece, but I didn't have the opportunity to work on large scale systems in my previous role. I believed that I could obtain a sufficient level of knowledge by self-study and practice, but I also have a toddler that takes up a lot of time and energy, so I wanted to be more efficient. I think it was valuable to absorb knowledge from a mentor that has real experience working in my target role. It turned out that was very successful in my real interviews. I think that I would have still done OK had I not done the interviewing.io, but, by my estimate, the return on investment was high, since I received multiple offers and negotiated up. e: I wanted to add that my mentor and I decided that we would do 4 pure teaching sessions, and then the remainder would be partial mock interviews that would transition over sessions from them doing most of the talking to me doing most of the talking. I found this format to be good for building my own confidence.
  - AlwaysRock 5y ago
    That is interesting. Glad to hear it worked well for you. Having the coach be upfront about some being teaching and some being mock interviews is helpful. The FAQ doesnt really address HOW they are going to coach or help you get better and in my experience it was, "Do a lot of leetcode". I guess saying, "We will help you with the last 20% of interview prep" or polishing doesnt sounds as good.
ggoo 5y ago
When I was learning how to interview better, I just applied to companies I ethically didn't agree with.
- m00x 5y ago
  Ironic since this is wasting interviewers' time, making your own ethics questionable.
  - haliskerbas 5y ago
    Sometimes you just have to play the game of capitalism.
  - blairbeckwith 5y ago
    If you view every minute an interviewer is doing actual work as harmful to the world, then wasting said interviewers time would be even more of an ethical good would it not?
    - legostormtroopr 5y ago
      This also assumes that the interviewee has the "right" ethics. From their perspective, yes wasting time in an interview is ethically good to them. But outsiders may agree with the interviewers ethics, and would see wasting their time as unethical.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      I know this wasn’t your point, but I’d like to call out the common assumption that interviewing isn’t “actual work”. It is. Recruiting, interviewing, mentoring, all of that is just as important as shipping code.
      - boardwaalk 5y ago
        I don’t think that was the assumption here. They were saying that interviewing someone who doesn’t want the job isn’t actual (useful) work in the sense it can’t produce the goal (a good hire).
systemsignal 5y ago
Anyone have advice for getting to the interview in the first place?
- trhway 5y ago
  just reply to FB/Google/AMZN recruiters. These FAANG companies are basically running "practice-interview-as-a-service", and as a bonus if you happen to like their offer (it seems though that their offers on second and further attempts are pretty low - as you're put into "benchwarmers") you can even spend some time working there.
- leeny 5y ago
  OP here. If you do well in practice, you can book interviews with companies through us (we hire for Amazon, Dropbox, Clubhouse, MongoDB, and a bunch of others). You skip all the recruiter calls and scheduling and just go straight to the real interview. And if you find a job through us, you don't have to pay for practice.
- DeWilde 5y ago
  You mean getting past the resume/application stage?
- _odey 5y ago
  Here is what workred in my recent job search, that just ended this week: 1. Messgae people on LinkedIn, the more senior in the company, the better. This was by far the fastest and most reliable way for me to get to the first round. 2. Message the company via a recruiting@, or contact@, even a support@ email they have on their website. Not as reliable as option 1 but better than the job application forms. 3. Have them contact you via a "HN who is hiring?" post, it's rare, but it does happen. If it's a job post form, then personally I'd just consider it a loss. Don't know why, it's not like I provide different or less info compared to direct messaging, but that just leaves me ignored for weeks, or rejected with a template message.
jonathankoren 5y ago
Coding interviews are the easiest interviews. There’s very little difference between the problems, and they usually don’t need a trick. Just discuss your solution before you start writing the code, and assuming you don’t get a jerk or completely blank, you’ll be fine. It’s the most objective of all the rounds. It’s literally just practice. The fact that it’s so paint by numbers, is probably one of the reasons why interview coaching focuses on it. Manufacture some demand, and you have a low effort company. Technical design is a bit harder to prepare for, because it’s more about trying pattern match systems you know against the problem presented. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of high level case studies or design discussions. The ones that are hardest to prepare for, and no doubt has sunk many a candidate are the softer interviews, particularly management interviews and cultural fit interviews. Those are a complete crapshoot. There’s probably stock answers to prepare, but the questions are pretty random. If you can figure out how to coach the those in 202X (as opposed to recycling 1965’s advice), then you’ve got something.
- homie 5y ago
  Absolutely agree. I’ve found that behavioral interviews are harder than technical interviews at this point. If you don’t have the set of experiences they’re looking for then it’s game over. This can be ameliorated slightly if the interviewer is willing to accept a hypothetical, but this has rarely been the case for me recently.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    Or if your management philosophy doesn’t mesh with theirs. “Tell me about the last time you had make your team work late for a deadline.” “I don’t. It’s been my experience as both an IC and a a manager that crunches just burn people out, and you end up getting less quality work out of them. It’s much better to communicate early and either adjust deadlines or deliverables.” “What if you can’t?” “Unless there is an external forcing function on the company, everything should be negotiable. Does this happen a lot here?” “One or twice a year.” “Huh. It’s only happened to me once in ten years, and that was due to a multimillion dollar contract deadline. If it happens regularly here, then the company should fire the directors of engineering for gross incompetence. They can’t project manage.” Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, but at that point, why would I have wanted it?
ramesh31 5y ago
I don't understand this. Why wouldn't you just practice by interviewing with random companies? If you are hired, just counteroffer with an absurd salary requirement. And if they accept, then congrats you don't need to practice interviewing anymore.
- canti 5y ago
  Not everyone has the luxury of having such an abundance of tech interviews that they can simply use some of them as practice for the "real" interviews
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  Feedback, focus, efficiency. I did about session a day for maybe two or three weeks. I'll compare it to trying to practice by doing real interviews. I got much more detailed and honest feedback from my practice interviews than any real one I've had. I got to practice just the interview type I wanted, algorithms, without doing other things that would come up in a series of interviews (culture, system design, etc). I also didn't have to contact and coordinate with >= 10 companies to get 10 sessions. I just booked 10 sessions.
- potatochup 5y ago
  I used to do interviews for interviewing.io, and it's a bit different. For my work, I'm not going to give any feedback, and will try leave early if it's not going well. When I was being paid for it via interviewing.io, I would give people fairly detailed feedback on what went well and what went wrong, and also answer any questions the mock candidate had.
- iandouglas 5y ago
  For me, I'd use a platform like interviewing.io where you'll GET actionable feedback -- most companies won't give you feedback at all, other then "here's your offer" or "nah, thanks anyway"
lkxijlewlf 5y ago
You know hiring is fucked when entire industries spring up around the process.
- lrem 5y ago
  A local company here is offering an insurance whose whole point is to handle the claims with your real insurance. I wish they were joking.
- decebalus1 5y ago
  "During a gold rush, sell shovels"
DeWilde 5y ago
Applied for their site a while back, but was put on hold because there were too many applicants. Have yet to get a response from them. Meanwhile got the job I was looking for, without any mock interview sites.
jaimebuelta 5y ago
Come on, this interview process is going too far... I think most of the people working in tech knows that the interview process is just plain silly, but we keep doing it because reasons... And, the worst of it, it doesn't make any sense that for a senior role you get a code interview (or multiple), and then, if you don't pass it, they encourage you to re-apply in 6 months or a year...
slytherone 5y ago
I like how this company posts videos of interviews so I can learn from other people
- decebalus1 5y ago
  hello fellow hn-ers, I also like how [company] offers this [benefit] to [customers]
- leeny 5y ago
  Here's the link to our youtube channel if folks wanna see what slytherone is referring to: https://www.youtube.com/c/interviewingio https://www.youtube.com/c/interviewingio
kache_ 5y ago
I actually made some friends over discord who ran mocks with me. Being a person who spent most of university partying rather than hanging out with the studious people, I didn't have much friends who had the same programming skill as I was. Just look around, I'm sure you can find people with similar skill to run mocks with you (without having to go through some paid service that most likely employs desperate people ergo less qualified people). Plus, running the interviews yourself could be more valuable than going through one.
- leeny 5y ago
  OP here. Our interviewers are all senior engineers from FAANG and FAANG-adjacent companies. Average is 8 years of experience. They've also all conducted at least 20 interviews on behalf of their employer. They're not desperate... they're doing this because they 1) get paid and 2) enjoy helping people get better at this stuff. Happy to set you up with an account so you can get a feel for the quality.
  - Wagthesam 5y ago
    I'm senior at a large bay area tech co. I used this service a few years ago and actually got great feedback and tips (11 offers during that search, almost 100% offer rate for onsite). I'm also on the recorded interviews list One of my interviewer (from ms) actually had too high a bar and was good to see an upper bound for coding interviews Highly recommend this service
  - kache_ 5y ago
    Have you tried to flip the script and allow people training for interviewing to interview master interviewees? So they can see what success looks like?
  - dundarious 5y ago
    Given the widespread (and not unreasonable) belief that FAANG-style interview processes function as more of a quantity filter (quite arbitrarily reduce the candidate pool down to a size that human hiring teams can deal with) rather than a quality filter (find ideal workers), it's quite humorous to see the same people running those ineffective interviews profiting off of making them a worse quantity filter. If you squint at it, you can see this is graft/corruption but legalized through layers of indirection (a classic practice in the US).
throwaway158497 5y ago
One thing I wish people leeny (who work with hiring managers) tell companies is that as people start hitting 35-40, they dont' have same motivation to solve a trick coding question in 40 min interview. I can demonstrate that I have all the knowledge to do the problem, but if you want me to write compilable (throwaway) code with absolutely no mistakes, you have to loose some candidates. As you age, solving one off puzzles is a nuisance.
- mbrameld 5y ago
  You're saying you can demonstrate that you have the knowledge to do the problem, but you can't actually do the problem? I'm 43 myself, it's not something I do for fun but I can certainly code up a DFS/BFS implementation or something similar in 40 minutes. With a modern IDE it's not unreasonable for me to expect it to work correctly on the first try.
  - throwaway158497 5y ago
    Try doing it with coderpad IDE with no autcommplete. On top of that, for Java, make sure you declare everything as static, because top level class has static on it. A reasonable middle ground is that I demonstrate I know all the concepts in the interview and I can send a fully compilable version after the interview. >>I'm 43 myself, it's not something I do for fun but I can certainly code up a DFS/BFS implementation or something similar in 40 minutes. Do you think you can do or have you done this? There is a difference between the two.
- iandouglas 5y ago
  For me it's experience in the industry. If you can see my work history, that I have >25 years in the industry, working for mid and large size companies, and lots and lots of startups, why do I need to do something like a 2-pointer / heap / etc kind of problem to prove I can code? One of my favorite job offers was literally a conversation that played out like: Manager: Cool, come to our office and meet the team Me: Want me to prep for a tech challenge or something? Manager: Nah, you were employed by ____ for __ years -- if you were incompetent, they would have fired you years ago.
drekipus 5y ago
I don't get why everyone seems so hung up on the interview. Relax, talk about yourself, talk about what you've done. I think doing things like this and from the thousands of Reddit posts about "the dreaded interview problem" only leads people to over think it and have worse anxiety and performance, not better. The interview to my first job was just listening to my then-boss talk about the company for 30 minutes, the second was stonewalling while my boss grilled me to make sure I know what I said I know. You're not going to be able to "train" for that just like you can't "train" for getting rejected for dating, you just have to learn social interactions and go do it a couple of times. ---- I did just remember my worst interview experience, where, after being jobless for a number of years (early on, mind. I'm still young) I applied for phone IT support. - the interviewers asked me to: "describe the best vacation you had" "I haven't really been on a vacation" (I haven't been working, poor family, etc) "Ok describe the vacation you would like to have" "... I literally don't want a vacation.. I am looking to find work." (Jobless.for.years. every day has been a mediocre vacation up until this point.) "..... Ok just tell us a story about a vacation" "....... Ok I suppose I'll go to Rome then? And uh... " Draws blanks You can't be prepared for interviews where the interviewers are shit, nor if they blindside you with questions like that. You also might lose your ability to detect bullshit if you try.
- Kranar 5y ago
  If the company you're interviewing for is just some boss rambling about his wife, then sure, don't bother training for it or doing everything you can to increase your chances of success. If the company you're interviewing for is among the highest paying companies in the world, where you can literally change the quality of your life and your family's life by making enough money to comfortably retire as a multimillionaire by the time you're 35-40... then investing months doing the dreaded leetcode grind, mock interviews, and doing everything in your power to prepare for it is absolutely worth it. In fact, seeing just how few people are willing to actually invest time and effort into excelling at an interview process that can tangibly improve ones life in ways very few other professional careers can is even more of a reason to do it. Every time I see people who are dismissive of technical questions, rant about how it's unfair that interviewers expect them to understand fundamental data structures, algorithms, time complexity, and think that all they should need to know to be a developer is how to glue a few APIs together, it makes me both sad to see how low of a standard we hold ourselves to, but also in a selfish way it makes me happy knowing that the competition for competent developers is so low.
VirusNewbie 5y ago
I've watched some of the interviews they put up on youtube, but one thing I found lacking was an actual answer of "I would pass you, but maybe 20% of my peers wouldn't" vs. "This is a hard no for me at my current company, but previous companies you have a 50/50 shot". Instead all the feedback seems like "you did good, but you should work on..." Regarding the 'pay later' thing, I wonder if the term is too short? Let's say theoretically I sign up, completely and utterly bomb the first mock interview, and decide I need to spend 3 months doing hackerrank every weekend. Then I do another one, and i'm doing better, by the time I get the actual job the time period has expired?
- leeny 5y ago
  OP here. You don't pay til you find a job. That's really how it works. It takes as long as it takes.
RenvoiDeChien 5y ago
I found Pramp to be useful, if you need practice with LeetCode style questions and explaining yourself to the interviewer, a peer in the same situation. It's free (technically you have to pay after the free interviews count, but being reviewed positively by the other interviewer gives you free interviews, so I've done 10 and still have free ones to spare). The participants skew junior but I still feel it's worthwhile.

97 points by leeny 5y ago

I signed up for a dedicated coaching program with interviewing.io and ended up getting a refund because I didnt think they were actually very good at coaching. The platform seems like its mostly useful for people who are already good at technical interviews, or at least good at solving technical problems, and just need practice writing code in front of other people or in a live setting. Has anyone used interviewing.io with good/great results?

ineedasername 5y ago
at least good at solving technical problems, and just need practice writing code in front of other people or in a live setting. I think you mean this as a minor criticism, but this seems to be exactly the point of the service. To figure out a way to find people that are actually competent at the work itself, but not in the somewhat uncorrelated skill of public speaking & live coding w/ an audience. Also a good way of identifying people that haven't gone to top tier elite schools but are just as good or better as those graduates: Recruiters at a FAANG might disregard a graduate from Generic State University w/ 2-3 years of experience under normal conditions, but if you get one that is willing to place a $1024 bet on themselves and then passes the tech interview with flying colors, it's a much easier sell. Now, with all that said, after 6 years I'd still really like to know what their long-term outcomes are. What's their typical tenure at that job, where do they land for $job +1, +2, etc.?
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  I should have been more specific. Has anyone had a good experience with the dedicated coaching program? I know the value of a mock interview. The coaching program didnt see to provide the value that they advertised for me. I wanted to know if I'm unique or if other have had the same experience.
strikelaserclaw 5y ago
i did one session of the system design interview, it was a good way to check my interviewing skills and what i needed to improve on. The most effective way to use this service is for yourself to study your ass of first then just use one or two sessions to validate that.
paxys 5y ago
I don't see the word "coaching" anywhere on interviewing.io. Mock interviews are usually done at the last stage when you have already done the rest of the prep work. I haven't used this platform but did get friends to help me with them and they were immensely helpful. You can have all the technical knowledge in the world but end up crumbling under the pressure of a live interview setting. If you are unfamiliar with the material in the first place then mock interviews are pointless.
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  Maybe it’s only after log-in. They sell coaching packages. Weirdly, the FAQ is a Google Doc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7mJDPkEykKzSYjj-Wmza-UXGNAkL7kphwcpmmWOjRg/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7mJDPkEykKzSYjj-Wmza-UX...
  - AlwaysRock 5y ago
    Yeah. This is what I was talking about. It's $4000 to $3500 for 10 mock interviews and there is supposed to be some type of training/coaching build it. But it's basically just 10 mock interviews.
    - leeny 5y ago
      Hey Taylor, OP and founder here. I've shared your feedback with our team. The purpose of this program is to go beyond just mock interviews, and it looks like we've not done a good job here. I'm glad you got a refund already, but if have more feedback you can share, please email me at aline@interviewing.io
      - AlwaysRock 5y ago
        Sure. I'll forward along my conversations with Shamiya and Lauren. They were fine during my interactions with them but it didnt seem like they had much ability to do anything other than just match me with another mentor. After 3 unsuccessful/unfruitful coach matches I asked for the refund.
skullgrid 5y ago
I did a 10 session package (got it on sale) that focused on (distributed) system design and ML system design. I felt confident in the coding piece, but I didn't have the opportunity to work on large scale systems in my previous role. I believed that I could obtain a sufficient level of knowledge by self-study and practice, but I also have a toddler that takes up a lot of time and energy, so I wanted to be more efficient. I think it was valuable to absorb knowledge from a mentor that has real experience working in my target role. It turned out that was very successful in my real interviews. I think that I would have still done OK had I not done the interviewing.io, but, by my estimate, the return on investment was high, since I received multiple offers and negotiated up. e: I wanted to add that my mentor and I decided that we would do 4 pure teaching sessions, and then the remainder would be partial mock interviews that would transition over sessions from them doing most of the talking to me doing most of the talking. I found this format to be good for building my own confidence.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  That is interesting. Glad to hear it worked well for you. Having the coach be upfront about some being teaching and some being mock interviews is helpful. The FAQ doesnt really address HOW they are going to coach or help you get better and in my experience it was, "Do a lot of leetcode". I guess saying, "We will help you with the last 20% of interview prep" or polishing doesnt sounds as good.

ggoo 5y ago

When I was learning how to interview better, I just applied to companies I ethically didn't agree with.

m00x 5y ago
Ironic since this is wasting interviewers' time, making your own ethics questionable.
- haliskerbas 5y ago
  Sometimes you just have to play the game of capitalism.
- blairbeckwith 5y ago
  If you view every minute an interviewer is doing actual work as harmful to the world, then wasting said interviewers time would be even more of an ethical good would it not?
  - legostormtroopr 5y ago
    This also assumes that the interviewee has the "right" ethics. From their perspective, yes wasting time in an interview is ethically good to them. But outsiders may agree with the interviewers ethics, and would see wasting their time as unethical.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    I know this wasn’t your point, but I’d like to call out the common assumption that interviewing isn’t “actual work”. It is. Recruiting, interviewing, mentoring, all of that is just as important as shipping code.
    - boardwaalk 5y ago
      I don’t think that was the assumption here. They were saying that interviewing someone who doesn’t want the job isn’t actual (useful) work in the sense it can’t produce the goal (a good hire).

systemsignal 5y ago

Anyone have advice for getting to the interview in the first place?

trhway 5y ago
just reply to FB/Google/AMZN recruiters. These FAANG companies are basically running "practice-interview-as-a-service", and as a bonus if you happen to like their offer (it seems though that their offers on second and further attempts are pretty low - as you're put into "benchwarmers") you can even spend some time working there.
leeny 5y ago
OP here. If you do well in practice, you can book interviews with companies through us (we hire for Amazon, Dropbox, Clubhouse, MongoDB, and a bunch of others). You skip all the recruiter calls and scheduling and just go straight to the real interview. And if you find a job through us, you don't have to pay for practice.
DeWilde 5y ago
You mean getting past the resume/application stage?
_odey 5y ago
Here is what workred in my recent job search, that just ended this week: 1. Messgae people on LinkedIn, the more senior in the company, the better. This was by far the fastest and most reliable way for me to get to the first round. 2. Message the company via a recruiting@, or contact@, even a support@ email they have on their website. Not as reliable as option 1 but better than the job application forms. 3. Have them contact you via a "HN who is hiring?" post, it's rare, but it does happen. If it's a job post form, then personally I'd just consider it a loss. Don't know why, it's not like I provide different or less info compared to direct messaging, but that just leaves me ignored for weeks, or rejected with a template message.

jonathankoren 5y ago

Coding interviews are the easiest interviews. There’s very little difference between the problems, and they usually don’t need a trick. Just discuss your solution before you start writing the code, and assuming you don’t get a jerk or completely blank, you’ll be fine. It’s the most objective of all the rounds. It’s literally just practice. The fact that it’s so paint by numbers, is probably one of the reasons why interview coaching focuses on it. Manufacture some demand, and you have a low effort company. Technical design is a bit harder to prepare for, because it’s more about trying pattern match systems you know against the problem presented. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of high level case studies or design discussions. The ones that are hardest to prepare for, and no doubt has sunk many a candidate are the softer interviews, particularly management interviews and cultural fit interviews. Those are a complete crapshoot. There’s probably stock answers to prepare, but the questions are pretty random. If you can figure out how to coach the those in 202X (as opposed to recycling 1965’s advice), then you’ve got something.

homie 5y ago
Absolutely agree. I’ve found that behavioral interviews are harder than technical interviews at this point. If you don’t have the set of experiences they’re looking for then it’s game over. This can be ameliorated slightly if the interviewer is willing to accept a hypothetical, but this has rarely been the case for me recently.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  Or if your management philosophy doesn’t mesh with theirs. “Tell me about the last time you had make your team work late for a deadline.” “I don’t. It’s been my experience as both an IC and a a manager that crunches just burn people out, and you end up getting less quality work out of them. It’s much better to communicate early and either adjust deadlines or deliverables.” “What if you can’t?” “Unless there is an external forcing function on the company, everything should be negotiable. Does this happen a lot here?” “One or twice a year.” “Huh. It’s only happened to me once in ten years, and that was due to a multimillion dollar contract deadline. If it happens regularly here, then the company should fire the directors of engineering for gross incompetence. They can’t project manage.” Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, but at that point, why would I have wanted it?

ramesh31 5y ago

I don't understand this. Why wouldn't you just practice by interviewing with random companies? If you are hired, just counteroffer with an absurd salary requirement. And if they accept, then congrats you don't need to practice interviewing anymore.

canti 5y ago
Not everyone has the luxury of having such an abundance of tech interviews that they can simply use some of them as practice for the "real" interviews
travisjungroth 5y ago
Feedback, focus, efficiency. I did about session a day for maybe two or three weeks. I'll compare it to trying to practice by doing real interviews. I got much more detailed and honest feedback from my practice interviews than any real one I've had. I got to practice just the interview type I wanted, algorithms, without doing other things that would come up in a series of interviews (culture, system design, etc). I also didn't have to contact and coordinate with >= 10 companies to get 10 sessions. I just booked 10 sessions.
potatochup 5y ago
I used to do interviews for interviewing.io, and it's a bit different. For my work, I'm not going to give any feedback, and will try leave early if it's not going well. When I was being paid for it via interviewing.io, I would give people fairly detailed feedback on what went well and what went wrong, and also answer any questions the mock candidate had.
iandouglas 5y ago
For me, I'd use a platform like interviewing.io where you'll GET actionable feedback -- most companies won't give you feedback at all, other then "here's your offer" or "nah, thanks anyway"

lkxijlewlf 5y ago

You know hiring is fucked when entire industries spring up around the process.

lrem 5y ago
A local company here is offering an insurance whose whole point is to handle the claims with your real insurance. I wish they were joking.
decebalus1 5y ago
"During a gold rush, sell shovels"

DeWilde 5y ago

Applied for their site a while back, but was put on hold because there were too many applicants. Have yet to get a response from them. Meanwhile got the job I was looking for, without any mock interview sites.

jaimebuelta 5y ago

Come on, this interview process is going too far... I think most of the people working in tech knows that the interview process is just plain silly, but we keep doing it because reasons... And, the worst of it, it doesn't make any sense that for a senior role you get a code interview (or multiple), and then, if you don't pass it, they encourage you to re-apply in 6 months or a year...

slytherone 5y ago

I like how this company posts videos of interviews so I can learn from other people

decebalus1 5y ago
hello fellow hn-ers, I also like how [company] offers this [benefit] to [customers]
leeny 5y ago
Here's the link to our youtube channel if folks wanna see what slytherone is referring to: https://www.youtube.com/c/interviewingio https://www.youtube.com/c/interviewingio

kache_ 5y ago

I actually made some friends over discord who ran mocks with me. Being a person who spent most of university partying rather than hanging out with the studious people, I didn't have much friends who had the same programming skill as I was. Just look around, I'm sure you can find people with similar skill to run mocks with you (without having to go through some paid service that most likely employs desperate people ergo less qualified people). Plus, running the interviews yourself could be more valuable than going through one.

leeny 5y ago
OP here. Our interviewers are all senior engineers from FAANG and FAANG-adjacent companies. Average is 8 years of experience. They've also all conducted at least 20 interviews on behalf of their employer. They're not desperate... they're doing this because they 1) get paid and 2) enjoy helping people get better at this stuff. Happy to set you up with an account so you can get a feel for the quality.
- Wagthesam 5y ago
  I'm senior at a large bay area tech co. I used this service a few years ago and actually got great feedback and tips (11 offers during that search, almost 100% offer rate for onsite). I'm also on the recorded interviews list One of my interviewer (from ms) actually had too high a bar and was good to see an upper bound for coding interviews Highly recommend this service
- kache_ 5y ago
  Have you tried to flip the script and allow people training for interviewing to interview master interviewees? So they can see what success looks like?
- dundarious 5y ago
  Given the widespread (and not unreasonable) belief that FAANG-style interview processes function as more of a quantity filter (quite arbitrarily reduce the candidate pool down to a size that human hiring teams can deal with) rather than a quality filter (find ideal workers), it's quite humorous to see the same people running those ineffective interviews profiting off of making them a worse quantity filter. If you squint at it, you can see this is graft/corruption but legalized through layers of indirection (a classic practice in the US).

throwaway158497 5y ago

One thing I wish people leeny (who work with hiring managers) tell companies is that as people start hitting 35-40, they dont' have same motivation to solve a trick coding question in 40 min interview. I can demonstrate that I have all the knowledge to do the problem, but if you want me to write compilable (throwaway) code with absolutely no mistakes, you have to loose some candidates. As you age, solving one off puzzles is a nuisance.

mbrameld 5y ago
You're saying you can demonstrate that you have the knowledge to do the problem, but you can't actually do the problem? I'm 43 myself, it's not something I do for fun but I can certainly code up a DFS/BFS implementation or something similar in 40 minutes. With a modern IDE it's not unreasonable for me to expect it to work correctly on the first try.
- throwaway158497 5y ago
  Try doing it with coderpad IDE with no autcommplete. On top of that, for Java, make sure you declare everything as static, because top level class has static on it. A reasonable middle ground is that I demonstrate I know all the concepts in the interview and I can send a fully compilable version after the interview. >>I'm 43 myself, it's not something I do for fun but I can certainly code up a DFS/BFS implementation or something similar in 40 minutes. Do you think you can do or have you done this? There is a difference between the two.
iandouglas 5y ago
For me it's experience in the industry. If you can see my work history, that I have >25 years in the industry, working for mid and large size companies, and lots and lots of startups, why do I need to do something like a 2-pointer / heap / etc kind of problem to prove I can code? One of my favorite job offers was literally a conversation that played out like: Manager: Cool, come to our office and meet the team Me: Want me to prep for a tech challenge or something? Manager: Nah, you were employed by ____ for __ years -- if you were incompetent, they would have fired you years ago.

drekipus 5y ago

I don't get why everyone seems so hung up on the interview. Relax, talk about yourself, talk about what you've done. I think doing things like this and from the thousands of Reddit posts about "the dreaded interview problem" only leads people to over think it and have worse anxiety and performance, not better. The interview to my first job was just listening to my then-boss talk about the company for 30 minutes, the second was stonewalling while my boss grilled me to make sure I know what I said I know. You're not going to be able to "train" for that just like you can't "train" for getting rejected for dating, you just have to learn social interactions and go do it a couple of times. ---- I did just remember my worst interview experience, where, after being jobless for a number of years (early on, mind. I'm still young) I applied for phone IT support. - the interviewers asked me to: "describe the best vacation you had" "I haven't really been on a vacation" (I haven't been working, poor family, etc) "Ok describe the vacation you would like to have" "... I literally don't want a vacation.. I am looking to find work." (Jobless.for.years. every day has been a mediocre vacation up until this point.) "..... Ok just tell us a story about a vacation" "....... Ok I suppose I'll go to Rome then? And uh... " Draws blanks You can't be prepared for interviews where the interviewers are shit, nor if they blindside you with questions like that. You also might lose your ability to detect bullshit if you try.

Kranar 5y ago
If the company you're interviewing for is just some boss rambling about his wife, then sure, don't bother training for it or doing everything you can to increase your chances of success. If the company you're interviewing for is among the highest paying companies in the world, where you can literally change the quality of your life and your family's life by making enough money to comfortably retire as a multimillionaire by the time you're 35-40... then investing months doing the dreaded leetcode grind, mock interviews, and doing everything in your power to prepare for it is absolutely worth it. In fact, seeing just how few people are willing to actually invest time and effort into excelling at an interview process that can tangibly improve ones life in ways very few other professional careers can is even more of a reason to do it. Every time I see people who are dismissive of technical questions, rant about how it's unfair that interviewers expect them to understand fundamental data structures, algorithms, time complexity, and think that all they should need to know to be a developer is how to glue a few APIs together, it makes me both sad to see how low of a standard we hold ourselves to, but also in a selfish way it makes me happy knowing that the competition for competent developers is so low.

VirusNewbie 5y ago

I've watched some of the interviews they put up on youtube, but one thing I found lacking was an actual answer of "I would pass you, but maybe 20% of my peers wouldn't" vs. "This is a hard no for me at my current company, but previous companies you have a 50/50 shot". Instead all the feedback seems like "you did good, but you should work on..." Regarding the 'pay later' thing, I wonder if the term is too short? Let's say theoretically I sign up, completely and utterly bomb the first mock interview, and decide I need to spend 3 months doing hackerrank every weekend. Then I do another one, and i'm doing better, by the time I get the actual job the time period has expired?

leeny 5y ago
OP here. You don't pay til you find a job. That's really how it works. It takes as long as it takes.

RenvoiDeChien 5y ago

I found Pramp to be useful, if you need practice with LeetCode style questions and explaining yourself to the interviewer, a peer in the same situation. It's free (technically you have to pay after the free interviews count, but being reviewed positively by the other interviewer gives you free interviews, so I've done 10 and still have free ones to spare). The participants skew junior but I still feel it's worthwhile.