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"But we have a labor shortage" /s On a serious note, I've also been nearly burned out by these week-long take home assignments which are only one stage of seve

"But we have a labor shortage" /s On a serious note, I've also been nearly burned out by these week-long take home assignments which are only one stage of several and end up eating my weekends completely only to find myself rejected or ghosted after completing them (I'm a penetration tester so most common candidate testing methodology I've seen is a week long CTF set up by their security team, where you need to find as many flags/vulnerabilities as you can and also write a report, so it always ends up into a huge time sink of finding needles in a haystack and also write a multi page report about how I did it, only for then to be rejected). Often there's also some IQ test and other nonsense stages, plus the usual Zoom/Teams/Meets calls in between with their recruiters/hiring managers, during working hours. Oh, and don't get me started on the 20 page online form with 50 questions some companies want you to fill as part of your application. I honestly have no idea how people with full time jobs who can't slack off at work and have other responsibilities, hobbies and interests, are able to keep this up. I feel like these long and stressful interview processes are mainly geared towards ambitious new-grads or people with no other goal in life than always interviewing for the next best job. I sometimes want to give up on the IT industry and go to med school instead as I don't see how I can keep this up long term, for the grand sum of €50K/year, if this interviewing process is the norm or if it will get even crazyer. Or maybe I should quit my job, start learning leetcode, and move to a country with some FAANG jobs.

formerly_proven 4y ago
> I feel like these long and stressful interview processes are mainly geared towards ambitious new-grads or people with no other goal in life than working. The point is probably very much this - finding people who will over-perform without reciprocation.
kayadera 4y ago
On a some related note, I struggle to understand how those with no-slack full-time technical jobs have technical hobbies. I'll give it a go every so often but get burned out quickly. I have a nice collection of in-progess but dormant pieces of software.
- id 4y ago
  Maybe there aren't that many no-slack full-time technical jobs.
  - ok123456 4y ago
    or maybe the people who have slack full-time jobs are trying to protect them.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Don’t. It’s bullshit. At big tech companies when times are good, many people are sitting around waiting for paint to dry. (Ie some nutty process) Remember they are a profit center and get slacktime and fancy stuff. Ditto outside of engineering. I knew one SE with a pretty big territory who travelled with his wife. They were swingers. The dude would just setup random meetings so the company would spring for their hotel. We’d get our steak dinner, they would get their freak on. At the end, he’s pulling in 3% of whatever crap we were buying.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  > I have a nice collection of in-progess but dormant pieces of software. That's already more than I have; I get my job satisfaction from my job, I like to spend my free time with family and hobbies that don't involve more work. But, different strokes for different people; I like playing video games, others like writing code for fun.
- bluGill 4y ago
  I used to. Then I got married, a wife and kids are far more fulfilling. When I get any free time (rare) I want to be out in my shop doing something not technical. Or at least not technically in the way of my job, sometimes the things I work on are mechanically complex.
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>Often there's also some IQ test and other nonsense stages I actually support IQ tests and the likes, but it's the way that all these companies are doing this which sticks out. All of them somehow have their own flavor and keep the information to themselves (or to the company which they outsource their shenanigans to). It would be so much more efficient if we had an employee-centric approach where employees could provide access to this information, with verification, and it was up to the employee to give employers information on their current status and growth. You want the data? There you go, verified, now move on to stage 5 and no dawdling. If you're going to toss out CVs, portfolios, certificates, diplomas, that's one thing (why again are we doing this?). If you're also going to give us all different kinds of "here's this whacky syntax no one uses" questions along with the umpteenth "IQ test" because god forbid we shorten the process, you're not suffering from a labor shortage. You're suffering from being a pretty princess too afraid to take a risk.
- mattcwilson 4y ago
  Pretend you’re hiring in this landscape. If people will submit to it, if it provides a more reliable signal of likely success than degrees or certifications do, and if you feel like it’s required to stay competitive, why wouldn’t you? (To be clear: I don’t condone the practice at all, but I at least can understand possible rationales)
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    >If people will submit to it, if it provides a more reliable signal of likely success than degrees or certifications do I agree with the general premise (this wouldn't happen if people finally stood up against it), but this has yet to be proven. Hiring absolutely isn't grounded in reality as much as it likes to think it is, even if the arguments sound rational beyond surface level. Additionally I feel most companies severely underestimate the costs of this entire circus, and overestimate the risks and cost of bad hires. But that's not something I can back up with numbers.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    > if it provides a more reliable signal of likely success than degrees or certifications do Does it though? Has anyone done any form of analysis to show it works? I know my boss a few years back asked about asking technical questions and HR said we had to run a real scientific experiment to prove it works, basically a round of technical interviews, but the technical interviewers write down a score but are not invited to the actual decision process, then after 6 months we open the score and see if it correlates at all to on the job performance. When we interview there is a set of questions we are allowed to ask/score on (HR says they have run the data to prove those results make a difference) Most companies could get just as good results if they put all resumes in a box and do a random drawing to figure out who to hire.

formerly_proven 4y ago

> I feel like these long and stressful interview processes are mainly geared towards ambitious new-grads or people with no other goal in life than working. The point is probably very much this - finding people who will over-perform without reciprocation.

kayadera 4y ago

On a some related note, I struggle to understand how those with no-slack full-time technical jobs have technical hobbies. I'll give it a go every so often but get burned out quickly. I have a nice collection of in-progess but dormant pieces of software.

id 4y ago
Maybe there aren't that many no-slack full-time technical jobs.
- ok123456 4y ago
  or maybe the people who have slack full-time jobs are trying to protect them.
Spooky23 4y ago
Don’t. It’s bullshit. At big tech companies when times are good, many people are sitting around waiting for paint to dry. (Ie some nutty process) Remember they are a profit center and get slacktime and fancy stuff. Ditto outside of engineering. I knew one SE with a pretty big territory who travelled with his wife. They were swingers. The dude would just setup random meetings so the company would spring for their hotel. We’d get our steak dinner, they would get their freak on. At the end, he’s pulling in 3% of whatever crap we were buying.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
> I have a nice collection of in-progess but dormant pieces of software. That's already more than I have; I get my job satisfaction from my job, I like to spend my free time with family and hobbies that don't involve more work. But, different strokes for different people; I like playing video games, others like writing code for fun.
bluGill 4y ago
I used to. Then I got married, a wife and kids are far more fulfilling. When I get any free time (rare) I want to be out in my shop doing something not technical. Or at least not technically in the way of my job, sometimes the things I work on are mechanically complex.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

>Often there's also some IQ test and other nonsense stages I actually support IQ tests and the likes, but it's the way that all these companies are doing this which sticks out. All of them somehow have their own flavor and keep the information to themselves (or to the company which they outsource their shenanigans to). It would be so much more efficient if we had an employee-centric approach where employees could provide access to this information, with verification, and it was up to the employee to give employers information on their current status and growth. You want the data? There you go, verified, now move on to stage 5 and no dawdling. If you're going to toss out CVs, portfolios, certificates, diplomas, that's one thing (why again are we doing this?). If you're also going to give us all different kinds of "here's this whacky syntax no one uses" questions along with the umpteenth "IQ test" because god forbid we shorten the process, you're not suffering from a labor shortage. You're suffering from being a pretty princess too afraid to take a risk.

mattcwilson 4y ago
Pretend you’re hiring in this landscape. If people will submit to it, if it provides a more reliable signal of likely success than degrees or certifications do, and if you feel like it’s required to stay competitive, why wouldn’t you? (To be clear: I don’t condone the practice at all, but I at least can understand possible rationales)
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  >If people will submit to it, if it provides a more reliable signal of likely success than degrees or certifications do I agree with the general premise (this wouldn't happen if people finally stood up against it), but this has yet to be proven. Hiring absolutely isn't grounded in reality as much as it likes to think it is, even if the arguments sound rational beyond surface level. Additionally I feel most companies severely underestimate the costs of this entire circus, and overestimate the risks and cost of bad hires. But that's not something I can back up with numbers.
- bluGill 4y ago
  > if it provides a more reliable signal of likely success than degrees or certifications do Does it though? Has anyone done any form of analysis to show it works? I know my boss a few years back asked about asking technical questions and HR said we had to run a real scientific experiment to prove it works, basically a round of technical interviews, but the technical interviewers write down a score but are not invited to the actual decision process, then after 6 months we open the score and see if it correlates at all to on the job performance. When we interview there is a set of questions we are allowed to ask/score on (HR says they have run the data to prove those results make a difference) Most companies could get just as good results if they put all resumes in a box and do a random drawing to figure out who to hire.