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>I should pause here and point out that an interview at Apple was an all-day affair. Pairs of engineers would meet with and interview me for perhaps an hour. Th

>I should pause here and point out that an interview at Apple was an all-day affair. Pairs of engineers would meet with and interview me for perhaps an hour. The first pair of engineers might grill me on some esoteric topic like code design, afterwards the next pair of engineers would sit down and maybe cover programming language specific questions. This took place in 1995, and sounds pretty much exactly like a technical interview panel today. Were people similarly disgruntled about the process back then? The author certainly doesn’t come across that way.

zerr 4y ago
The content is the key difference - doesn't require months of leetcode grinding.
notakio 4y ago
I went through the Apple interview process in 2006, and would say that my experience was definitely not predominantly a "technical interview panel". It was an all-day event, to which they had flown me in to do, and though I was asked technical questions by some of the interviewers, many of them were more interested in how I handled stress, or solved "political issues". A couple of them were more interested in answering any questions I had about what working in the group was like, in a way trying to let me know what I was in for if I got the position. I got the position, and stayed there for 8 years. I remain relatively close to about 30% of the people that interviewed me to this day, and that concern for letting me know what I was signing up for was genuine. The stress of the job was at times pretty high, and keeping a cool head under circumstances where everything was going wrong was absolutely critical. I saw a number of people who came after me, leave before me for that very reason. Since then, I've walked out of interviews where I felt like they were wasting my time. But I've also often had the luxury of not really needing the jobs I've applied for, generally, so other people's mileage may vary widely. It's the employer's job to figure out whether you're a good fit for the position, but it is the potential employee's job to figure out whether you want the position in the first place. Being able to get an accurate read on what you're thinking about going into (and spending a sizable chunk of your daily life doing) can save you a world of hurt.
twawaaay 4y ago
No, people were not. What changed is the demand grew enormously and in response, as in every other business of life, a lot of people who only have passing interest in it got into it because it pays well. So now you have companies have to sort through huge pile of mediocre candidates. This causes the process to be very noisy, a lot of screwed incentives and a lot of false positives and negatives. Applicants are now hedging their bets and applying to multiple places means that they are unwilling to spend entire day in each one. And companies (those that do not understand how important hiring is) also have incentives to spend less effort on hiring. And developers became much more cynical. Partly because of high demand they are aware of. Partly because companies do not treat them well (like not giving raises at a rate their potential salary is appreciating as the market and their experience changes). And partly because new generations are just much more disillusioned. I had a person recently refuse to come to 2h interview. Apparently it was too much effort. Good riddance and thank you for saving my time. Good news is that good developers can still easily find a good job wherever they want. Bad news is that most people are not good developers and they don't even know about it because really good developers are so few and concentrated in relatively few places. In effect, most developers will never have a chance to work with one.
- hasmolo 4y ago
  i don’t think you’re wrong, i just think you may have lost sight of some external factors. in 1995, the market was naturally filled with folks interested in computers more organically. now, software writing is the modern “factory floor” worker bee position. interestingly, a huge part of the field can’t accept that we aren’t especially unique or smart, just able to tell a computer how to process inputs. we take this need to feel as if we are a part of the intellectual class, based on a rose colored glasses view of a time 20 to 30 years ago when the only people that worked on software were all staff+ enigneers. then we create this perverse concept of a “real” engineer, and that engineer is just way more willing to aquiesce to _any_ thing you do, and therefore is a “team player”. telling someone to interview for two hours, having them decide that of all the offers of interviews they had yours was least interesting with the highest barrier to entry, and you deciding they were at fault isn’t going to help you deal with the modern realities of software, and how far we’ve come for our idealized version of where we came from
lapcat 4y ago
> The author certainly doesn’t come across that way. 1) The author got the job. 2) The author has kept that job ever since, for over 25 years. Perhaps that was the last job interview the author ever had, in 1995? So there would be little reason for the author to come across as disgruntled in 2022 about 1995. Though the author does go on and on about the "Andy" interviewer... There's a certain irony to this, because Apple itself was flailing and failing in 1995, unable to produce its own new operating system, and had to acquire NeXT and Steve Jobs to come back and save the company from bankruptcy. So Apple's hiring process was not necessarily producing results.
- joezydeco 4y ago
  I think the "Andy" interviewer was key, and was a set up the whole time to see how the candidate would really perform under stress: 1) Previous interviewers set up Andy as the toughest part of the interview, preloading the stress. 2) Andy comes last, when the candidate is tired 3) Andy hits you with that wall of stress. Doesn't matter what it is. The candidate gave Andy an easy task by admitting he was weak on something right away. The answer didn't matter as long as you didn't fold.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Uh, that sounds sociopathic and sadistic. No thanks. Seriously, I would run away as fast as possible from a potential employer who plays abusive mind games with potential employees.
    - joezydeco 4y ago
      This is Apple. I personally read it as "we're making sure you can handle Steve Jobs if he walks into the room"
      - lapcat 4y ago
        Except this was 1995, and Steve Jobs was not in any room at Apple. In fact, Jobs left Apple in 1985.
mikelevins 4y ago
I interviewed at Apple in 1987, and it was an all-day interview, but it wasn't much like the technical interviews I've done in more recent years--the ones characterized by brain teasers and whiteboard coding. There was none of that in my Apple interviews. They made me an offer and I worked there for ten years. Now, we can't conclude from that whether Apple has adopted whiteboarding and brain teasers generally. In those days Apple did interviews the way they did everything else: each group at the company did things their own way. I don't know whether that's true anymore; I left Apple in 1998. All I know is that I interviewed with them again four or five years ago, and that was a lot of interviews over a couple of days, but still no whiteboarding or brain teasers. The first time I encountered what is now referred to as the technical interview was at Microsoft in about 1990 or 1991. I bombed it. Turns out I'm worthless at whiteboarding and brain teasers. They gave me an offer, anyway. Two, in fact. I turned down both. Microsoft would have made me a lot of money, but I didn't want to work for those guys. That pattern repeated several times over the years: bomb technical interview; get offer anyway. Finally I just stopped doing it. I don't like it and I don't think it measures anything relevant to my work. If it did, why would I get offers after bombing those parts of interviews? Why would most of my employers be people I've worked for before? Why would they ask me to work for them again? So, generally speaking, I just don't do those kinds of interviews anymore. If you believe in them for hiring, knock yourself out. We're not a match.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > In those days Apple did interviews the way they did everything else: each group at the company did things their own way. I don't know whether that's true anymore; It's still true.
- rsanek 4y ago
  Does anyone even do brain teasers anymore? I recall them being popular 5-10 years ago but when I did my last round of interviews I didn't get a single one (across full interview loops with 6 Silicon Valley companies)
- chrchang523 4y ago
  It sounds like you're misevaluating your technical interview performance. You can feel like you're "bombing" an interview, while still performing above expectation. Some interviewers ask hard technical questions, don't expect most candidates to complete them within the allotted time, and give "hire" recommendations for some (but of course not all) that don't.
rockyj 4y ago
I would take a 1 day multiple round interview any day. Nowadays, it is like - - Recruiter reaches out on LinkedIn. You reply. - Call with recruiter, repeat every thing in resume. Recruiter says ok, sometimes they just say we were looking for X years in Python to a JS programmer. - First call with a manager (after 1 week) to check fit. - Take home programming assignment (spend 4-6 hours on weekend). - If code review is ok, another call to discuss the solution or improve it (1 hr, after 2 weeks). - Last call with senior manager (1 hr, another week wait) - HR offer All in all, it takes around 6 weeks and multiple calls (not to mention doing this for multiple offers). Worst case - you fail at the last round, or code is rejected due to some crazy reason and yes, even after all this you get a 10% raise :D
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  My experience is: - recruiter calls and brief about interview process - take screening interview (algorithm) - go on site for 5 more interviews (algorithms, system design, behavior) - failed, and study leetcode for 2 years - reiterate -> 100% raise, $10000 sign-on bonus Overall, this is the best ROI of my whole life
  - rockyj 4y ago
    Maybe possible in the US. Have not experienced this in any other place.
    - yodsanklai 4y ago
      I work in Europe. This is quite standard for big tech companies. Of course, pay raise depends where you're coming from.
      - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
        Europe where? I can assure you every European country is completely different. The tech scene is London is vastly different than Vienna, and so are the wages.
deepGem 4y ago
My first interview out of college in 1999-2000 was something like this. A full day interview about designing the components of a TCP-IP stack interspersed with some personality/behaviour interviews. End of the day, you either knew you had an offer or you didn't. I had an offer. I would kill for such an interview experience now. The last interview I attended stretched across a month or may be more. Glad I got the job but boy what a nightmare. If someone told me today that I would finish all rounds of interviews in one day and this became a standard, even figuring out for hedging I would take a week off, schedule 5 interviews and be done. Even fundraising for a startup doesn't take 2 months these days, whereas an interview will. That should tell you how broken the process is.
duxup 4y ago
Kinda depends on who it is and how it goes. Provided I'm a significant way through the hiring process spending a day in person with people who seem relevant to he job would be fine provided I liked the company / had confidence in the process / liked the job. A family member recently applied for a job and got invites for 12 hours of meetings over 2.5 weeks. No sense of where they were in the hiring process. No significant questions had been answered about the job. At least half the people in the invite were not directly involved with the job / HR types .... I think what people get upset about is how seemingly meandering these interviews are now / interviewing with people who don't know jack squat and so on.

zerr 4y ago

The content is the key difference - doesn't require months of leetcode grinding.

notakio 4y ago

I went through the Apple interview process in 2006, and would say that my experience was definitely not predominantly a "technical interview panel". It was an all-day event, to which they had flown me in to do, and though I was asked technical questions by some of the interviewers, many of them were more interested in how I handled stress, or solved "political issues". A couple of them were more interested in answering any questions I had about what working in the group was like, in a way trying to let me know what I was in for if I got the position. I got the position, and stayed there for 8 years. I remain relatively close to about 30% of the people that interviewed me to this day, and that concern for letting me know what I was signing up for was genuine. The stress of the job was at times pretty high, and keeping a cool head under circumstances where everything was going wrong was absolutely critical. I saw a number of people who came after me, leave before me for that very reason. Since then, I've walked out of interviews where I felt like they were wasting my time. But I've also often had the luxury of not really needing the jobs I've applied for, generally, so other people's mileage may vary widely. It's the employer's job to figure out whether you're a good fit for the position, but it is the potential employee's job to figure out whether you want the position in the first place. Being able to get an accurate read on what you're thinking about going into (and spending a sizable chunk of your daily life doing) can save you a world of hurt.

twawaaay 4y ago

No, people were not. What changed is the demand grew enormously and in response, as in every other business of life, a lot of people who only have passing interest in it got into it because it pays well. So now you have companies have to sort through huge pile of mediocre candidates. This causes the process to be very noisy, a lot of screwed incentives and a lot of false positives and negatives. Applicants are now hedging their bets and applying to multiple places means that they are unwilling to spend entire day in each one. And companies (those that do not understand how important hiring is) also have incentives to spend less effort on hiring. And developers became much more cynical. Partly because of high demand they are aware of. Partly because companies do not treat them well (like not giving raises at a rate their potential salary is appreciating as the market and their experience changes). And partly because new generations are just much more disillusioned. I had a person recently refuse to come to 2h interview. Apparently it was too much effort. Good riddance and thank you for saving my time. Good news is that good developers can still easily find a good job wherever they want. Bad news is that most people are not good developers and they don't even know about it because really good developers are so few and concentrated in relatively few places. In effect, most developers will never have a chance to work with one.

hasmolo 4y ago
i don’t think you’re wrong, i just think you may have lost sight of some external factors. in 1995, the market was naturally filled with folks interested in computers more organically. now, software writing is the modern “factory floor” worker bee position. interestingly, a huge part of the field can’t accept that we aren’t especially unique or smart, just able to tell a computer how to process inputs. we take this need to feel as if we are a part of the intellectual class, based on a rose colored glasses view of a time 20 to 30 years ago when the only people that worked on software were all staff+ enigneers. then we create this perverse concept of a “real” engineer, and that engineer is just way more willing to aquiesce to _any_ thing you do, and therefore is a “team player”. telling someone to interview for two hours, having them decide that of all the offers of interviews they had yours was least interesting with the highest barrier to entry, and you deciding they were at fault isn’t going to help you deal with the modern realities of software, and how far we’ve come for our idealized version of where we came from

lapcat 4y ago

> The author certainly doesn’t come across that way. 1) The author got the job. 2) The author has kept that job ever since, for over 25 years. Perhaps that was the last job interview the author ever had, in 1995? So there would be little reason for the author to come across as disgruntled in 2022 about 1995. Though the author does go on and on about the "Andy" interviewer... There's a certain irony to this, because Apple itself was flailing and failing in 1995, unable to produce its own new operating system, and had to acquire NeXT and Steve Jobs to come back and save the company from bankruptcy. So Apple's hiring process was not necessarily producing results.

joezydeco 4y ago
I think the "Andy" interviewer was key, and was a set up the whole time to see how the candidate would really perform under stress: 1) Previous interviewers set up Andy as the toughest part of the interview, preloading the stress. 2) Andy comes last, when the candidate is tired 3) Andy hits you with that wall of stress. Doesn't matter what it is. The candidate gave Andy an easy task by admitting he was weak on something right away. The answer didn't matter as long as you didn't fold.
- lapcat 4y ago
  Uh, that sounds sociopathic and sadistic. No thanks. Seriously, I would run away as fast as possible from a potential employer who plays abusive mind games with potential employees.
  - joezydeco 4y ago
    This is Apple. I personally read it as "we're making sure you can handle Steve Jobs if he walks into the room"
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Except this was 1995, and Steve Jobs was not in any room at Apple. In fact, Jobs left Apple in 1985.

mikelevins 4y ago

I interviewed at Apple in 1987, and it was an all-day interview, but it wasn't much like the technical interviews I've done in more recent years--the ones characterized by brain teasers and whiteboard coding. There was none of that in my Apple interviews. They made me an offer and I worked there for ten years. Now, we can't conclude from that whether Apple has adopted whiteboarding and brain teasers generally. In those days Apple did interviews the way they did everything else: each group at the company did things their own way. I don't know whether that's true anymore; I left Apple in 1998. All I know is that I interviewed with them again four or five years ago, and that was a lot of interviews over a couple of days, but still no whiteboarding or brain teasers. The first time I encountered what is now referred to as the technical interview was at Microsoft in about 1990 or 1991. I bombed it. Turns out I'm worthless at whiteboarding and brain teasers. They gave me an offer, anyway. Two, in fact. I turned down both. Microsoft would have made me a lot of money, but I didn't want to work for those guys. That pattern repeated several times over the years: bomb technical interview; get offer anyway. Finally I just stopped doing it. I don't like it and I don't think it measures anything relevant to my work. If it did, why would I get offers after bombing those parts of interviews? Why would most of my employers be people I've worked for before? Why would they ask me to work for them again? So, generally speaking, I just don't do those kinds of interviews anymore. If you believe in them for hiring, knock yourself out. We're not a match.

BeetleB 4y ago
> In those days Apple did interviews the way they did everything else: each group at the company did things their own way. I don't know whether that's true anymore; It's still true.
rsanek 4y ago
Does anyone even do brain teasers anymore? I recall them being popular 5-10 years ago but when I did my last round of interviews I didn't get a single one (across full interview loops with 6 Silicon Valley companies)
chrchang523 4y ago
It sounds like you're misevaluating your technical interview performance. You can feel like you're "bombing" an interview, while still performing above expectation. Some interviewers ask hard technical questions, don't expect most candidates to complete them within the allotted time, and give "hire" recommendations for some (but of course not all) that don't.

rockyj 4y ago

I would take a 1 day multiple round interview any day. Nowadays, it is like - - Recruiter reaches out on LinkedIn. You reply. - Call with recruiter, repeat every thing in resume. Recruiter says ok, sometimes they just say we were looking for X years in Python to a JS programmer. - First call with a manager (after 1 week) to check fit. - Take home programming assignment (spend 4-6 hours on weekend). - If code review is ok, another call to discuss the solution or improve it (1 hr, after 2 weeks). - Last call with senior manager (1 hr, another week wait) - HR offer All in all, it takes around 6 weeks and multiple calls (not to mention doing this for multiple offers). Worst case - you fail at the last round, or code is rejected due to some crazy reason and yes, even after all this you get a 10% raise :D

yodsanklai 4y ago
My experience is: - recruiter calls and brief about interview process - take screening interview (algorithm) - go on site for 5 more interviews (algorithms, system design, behavior) - failed, and study leetcode for 2 years - reiterate -> 100% raise, $10000 sign-on bonus Overall, this is the best ROI of my whole life
- rockyj 4y ago
  Maybe possible in the US. Have not experienced this in any other place.
  - yodsanklai 4y ago
    I work in Europe. This is quite standard for big tech companies. Of course, pay raise depends where you're coming from.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      Europe where? I can assure you every European country is completely different. The tech scene is London is vastly different than Vienna, and so are the wages.

deepGem 4y ago

My first interview out of college in 1999-2000 was something like this. A full day interview about designing the components of a TCP-IP stack interspersed with some personality/behaviour interviews. End of the day, you either knew you had an offer or you didn't. I had an offer. I would kill for such an interview experience now. The last interview I attended stretched across a month or may be more. Glad I got the job but boy what a nightmare. If someone told me today that I would finish all rounds of interviews in one day and this became a standard, even figuring out for hedging I would take a week off, schedule 5 interviews and be done. Even fundraising for a startup doesn't take 2 months these days, whereas an interview will. That should tell you how broken the process is.

duxup 4y ago

Kinda depends on who it is and how it goes. Provided I'm a significant way through the hiring process spending a day in person with people who seem relevant to he job would be fine provided I liked the company / had confidence in the process / liked the job. A family member recently applied for a job and got invites for 12 hours of meetings over 2.5 weeks. No sense of where they were in the hiring process. No significant questions had been answered about the job. At least half the people in the invite were not directly involved with the job / HR types .... I think what people get upset about is how seemingly meandering these interviews are now / interviewing with people who don't know jack squat and so on.