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They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. They were on an unhinged hiring spree before they ipo’d, so this w

They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. They were on an unhinged hiring spree before they ipo’d, so this was coming no matter what.

iLoveOncall 4y ago
> They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. What's the problem with that?
- jesuscript 4y ago
  Really?
- deleted 4y ago
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- kasey_junk 4y ago
  It’s indicative of a very inexperienced staff or one that is desperate for interviewers, presumably because they are binge hiring. There are places that go out of their way to get very junior people interviewing early on purpose but in those cases there is usually someone more senior also involved. For most places though it means they were throwing whoever they could find at the interviews.
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    Why would you need someone with decades of experience to hire an intern or a new grad? It's customary for a lot of companies to have an interviewer which is above or _at_ the level that you are recruiting. Therefore someone with a year or two of experience is perfectly able to hire an intern or someone that will be hired at the same level as them. Looking at Amazon for example, "Hire and Develop the Best" is one of the leadership principles, and you CANNOT be promoted if you don't conduct interviews.
    - reverend_gonzo 4y ago
      Inexperienced engineers simply don’t have the experience to make good hiring decisions. Having them being involved in the process is fine, but they should be shadowing someone more senior.
      - iLoveOncall 4y ago
        Well, most FAANGs would like to disagree. But they must all be wrong.
        gjadi 4y ago
        I don't have data nor an opinion on this matter, but maybe most FAANGs are successful despite their hiring practice, not because of it.
        snapcaster 4y ago
        They clearly were right? they're all laying off 20% of people. Maybe this is what you meant and I just missed the sarcasm
- acdha 4y ago
  That little experience makes it hard to judge applicant quality well and means they probably aren’t answering questions accurately. It’s a dead tell of a company which has a shortage of experienced staff and is growing too quickly — very strongly reminiscent of the dotcom bubble where people had the same “number go up!” mentality & some would openly say they were just looking busy until the IPO.
  - finolex1 4y ago
    Plenty of wildly successful companies (Google, FB, etc.) have all had junior engineers interviewing people.
    - DoctorDabadedoo 4y ago
      No wonder tech interviews these days are so bad.
    - John23832 4y ago
      In the emerging points of their business. Or “juniors” with some kind of valuable expertise to the interview. Not, “just graduated web dev boot camp and have a fleeting interest in web3” junior.
      - iLoveOncall 4y ago
        Which is not at all what we're talking about here since the original comment talks about people with one or two years of experience.
        John23832 4y ago
        It’s was an exaggeration, but the point still stands. Two years experience is “just graduated” into the workforce. The lifespan of a worker is 30+ years.
        acdha 4y ago
- lopkeny12ko 4y ago
  There's nothing inherently wrong with having junior engineers conducting interviews. But if a junior engineer is on my interview panel, I'm going to politely decline and end the process. A junior is not going to have the experience to accurately evaluate someone with close to two decades of experience writing software. Same goes for kids with < 10 years of experience who call themselves "senior," which I find happens often at FAANG. Last I was interviewed by a junior, I brought up a concept for which he had never heard of. Even after explaining it in great detail, he argued with me for half the interview trying to explain why such a system would never hold in practice. Needless to say, I did not get the position. Total waste of my time.
- deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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johnvanommen 4y ago
> They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. I interviewed at a place where 75% of the interviewers didn't show up. The only dude who did, had started the day before...
- monetus 4y ago
  This sounds fascinating. What kind of software/industry?
  - johnvanommen 4y ago
    It was at Puppet Labs. I am a former employee of BladeLogic, and the founder of Puppet used to work there. In 2008, BladeLogic's largest customer hired me (Bank of America.) BofA outsourced my job, so I needed somewhere to work, and I reached out to Puppet. I had an interview schedule with four Puppet employees. 75% of them didn't show up. The one person who DID show up had started the day before my interview. You can find me on LinkedIn, all the history is there.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    I have friends who had the same experience for Goldman Sachs as a new grad Dev.
kkielhofner 4y ago
I spent most of the last two years working on an NFT anti-fraud solution[0]. My two prior startups were (essentially) in telecom and healthcare. Coming from these well established, highly regulated, somewhat legacy industries to "crypto"/NFTs/web3 was a very interesting experience, to say the least. Users/potential customers for our solution ranged from creators to marketplaces to collectors/investors. Several very general and broad observations: 1) The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space. 2) There is a general lack of "adults in the room". I would get on a call with the Founder/CEO of a marketplace or project that was valued (at least) in the > $100m range and hear and see things that were horrifying. My final breaking point was a call with the founder of a well known highly valued NFT marketplace who showed up (Tuesday morning, 10 AM) obviously high on some sort of stimulant. Within the first five minutes of the call they repeated their mantra of "I'm just trying to get made, paid, and laid" several times. They spent the remainder of the (very brief) call describing all kinds of things I'm pretty sure are illegal. On an introductory call. 3) The fraud and overall criminality is well beyond what is publicly known from FTX, Celsius, web3 is going great, etc. The most common reply regarding our solution was along the lines of "Why would we want this? We make our money on fraud". I was frequently reminded me of the scene in The Big Short when they talk to mortgage brokers and come away saying "Why are they confessing?" with the response being "They're not confessing, they're bragging". 4) Any semblance of professionalism and basic standards is generally non-existent. A HEAD OF LEGAL for a well known exchange (Superbowl commercial) would say and post things on LinkedIn that would get you terminated immediately in any other field. Daily. 5) The more technical startups/partners (infrastructure providers, etc) were generally the best to work with. However, the profiles of the founders and team were interesting - many of them had 1-2 years of junior experience at a FAANG (for better or worse). 6) VC in the space is even more wild than what has been reported in the media. I'll just leave this one at that. 7) Many people in the space seemed to just appear from nowhere. Like some of the technical founders with 1-2 years of junior experience and SBF who had a few years doing something at Jane Street I often times couldn't figure out where these people came from or why/how they were here. Of course this is common in tech (from Google to Facebook founders often "appear out of nowhere") but it was still extremely bizarre for SBF type characters to be dealing with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of other people's money with either no reputation/background or a shady one. 8) In my 25 years of experience I've never dealt with a more generally unimpressive group of people. After nearly two years in the space, meeting hundreds of people, there are only a handful I want to maintain any sort of personal or professional relationship with. With my background I knew I would experience some culture shock (for lack of a better term) entering a space that was still (after 14 years) the Wild West. What I experienced was (almost universally) so beyond the pale I finally ran away screaming. I spent more and more of my time and energy attempting to motivate myself and the team by focusing on our efforts to do good in the space but after all of this no amount of rationalizing could make up for the cesspool I was living in every day. Like the famous saying goes - "If you think you might be depressed, first make sure you're not just surrounded by assholes". Basically, what I'm saying is, when I see the unbelievable-to-most FTX (and other) stories unfolding in the media all I can think is "Yep, sounds about right". When I see stories like this and people asking "What are all of these people doing?" I can firmly respond with either "I have no idea" or "Trying to manage this crazy world takes a lot of people". Thankfully I'm not in the space any longer but as shoes keep dropping left and right I don't think I could be surprised by anything anymore. [0] - https://fnftf.io/ https://fnftf.io/
beej71 4y ago
I interviewed with them. It was quite peculiar. I asked them how they were going to manage the extreme planned growth rate and no one had an answer. That was in late May. (They didn't offer me a position for a given reason that was also weird. Strange place.)

They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. They were on an unhinged hiring spree before they ipo’d, so this was coming no matter what.

iLoveOncall 4y ago

> They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. What's the problem with that?

jesuscript 4y ago
Really?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kasey_junk 4y ago
It’s indicative of a very inexperienced staff or one that is desperate for interviewers, presumably because they are binge hiring. There are places that go out of their way to get very junior people interviewing early on purpose but in those cases there is usually someone more senior also involved. For most places though it means they were throwing whoever they could find at the interviews.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Why would you need someone with decades of experience to hire an intern or a new grad? It's customary for a lot of companies to have an interviewer which is above or _at_ the level that you are recruiting. Therefore someone with a year or two of experience is perfectly able to hire an intern or someone that will be hired at the same level as them. Looking at Amazon for example, "Hire and Develop the Best" is one of the leadership principles, and you CANNOT be promoted if you don't conduct interviews.
  - reverend_gonzo 4y ago
    Inexperienced engineers simply don’t have the experience to make good hiring decisions. Having them being involved in the process is fine, but they should be shadowing someone more senior.
    - iLoveOncall 4y ago
      Well, most FAANGs would like to disagree. But they must all be wrong.
      - gjadi 4y ago
        I don't have data nor an opinion on this matter, but maybe most FAANGs are successful despite their hiring practice, not because of it.
      - snapcaster 4y ago
        They clearly were right? they're all laying off 20% of people. Maybe this is what you meant and I just missed the sarcasm
acdha 4y ago
That little experience makes it hard to judge applicant quality well and means they probably aren’t answering questions accurately. It’s a dead tell of a company which has a shortage of experienced staff and is growing too quickly — very strongly reminiscent of the dotcom bubble where people had the same “number go up!” mentality & some would openly say they were just looking busy until the IPO.
- finolex1 4y ago
  Plenty of wildly successful companies (Google, FB, etc.) have all had junior engineers interviewing people.
  - DoctorDabadedoo 4y ago
    No wonder tech interviews these days are so bad.
  - John23832 4y ago
    In the emerging points of their business. Or “juniors” with some kind of valuable expertise to the interview. Not, “just graduated web dev boot camp and have a fleeting interest in web3” junior.
    - iLoveOncall 4y ago
      Which is not at all what we're talking about here since the original comment talks about people with one or two years of experience.
      - John23832 4y ago
        It’s was an exaggeration, but the point still stands. Two years experience is “just graduated” into the workforce. The lifespan of a worker is 30+ years.
        acdha 4y ago
lopkeny12ko 4y ago
There's nothing inherently wrong with having junior engineers conducting interviews. But if a junior engineer is on my interview panel, I'm going to politely decline and end the process. A junior is not going to have the experience to accurately evaluate someone with close to two decades of experience writing software. Same goes for kids with < 10 years of experience who call themselves "senior," which I find happens often at FAANG. Last I was interviewed by a junior, I brought up a concept for which he had never heard of. Even after explaining it in great detail, he argued with me for half the interview trying to explain why such a system would never hold in practice. Needless to say, I did not get the position. Total waste of my time.
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago

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johnvanommen 4y ago

> They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. I interviewed at a place where 75% of the interviewers didn't show up. The only dude who did, had started the day before...

monetus 4y ago
This sounds fascinating. What kind of software/industry?
- johnvanommen 4y ago
  It was at Puppet Labs. I am a former employee of BladeLogic, and the founder of Puppet used to work there. In 2008, BladeLogic's largest customer hired me (Bank of America.) BofA outsourced my job, so I needed somewhere to work, and I reached out to Puppet. I had an interview schedule with four Puppet employees. 75% of them didn't show up. The one person who DID show up had started the day before my interview. You can find me on LinkedIn, all the history is there.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  I have friends who had the same experience for Goldman Sachs as a new grad Dev.

kkielhofner 4y ago

I spent most of the last two years working on an NFT anti-fraud solution[0]. My two prior startups were (essentially) in telecom and healthcare. Coming from these well established, highly regulated, somewhat legacy industries to "crypto"/NFTs/web3 was a very interesting experience, to say the least. Users/potential customers for our solution ranged from creators to marketplaces to collectors/investors. Several very general and broad observations: 1) The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space. 2) There is a general lack of "adults in the room". I would get on a call with the Founder/CEO of a marketplace or project that was valued (at least) in the > $100m range and hear and see things that were horrifying. My final breaking point was a call with the founder of a well known highly valued NFT marketplace who showed up (Tuesday morning, 10 AM) obviously high on some sort of stimulant. Within the first five minutes of the call they repeated their mantra of "I'm just trying to get made, paid, and laid" several times. They spent the remainder of the (very brief) call describing all kinds of things I'm pretty sure are illegal. On an introductory call. 3) The fraud and overall criminality is well beyond what is publicly known from FTX, Celsius, web3 is going great, etc. The most common reply regarding our solution was along the lines of "Why would we want this? We make our money on fraud". I was frequently reminded me of the scene in The Big Short when they talk to mortgage brokers and come away saying "Why are they confessing?" with the response being "They're not confessing, they're bragging". 4) Any semblance of professionalism and basic standards is generally non-existent. A HEAD OF LEGAL for a well known exchange (Superbowl commercial) would say and post things on LinkedIn that would get you terminated immediately in any other field. Daily. 5) The more technical startups/partners (infrastructure providers, etc) were generally the best to work with. However, the profiles of the founders and team were interesting - many of them had 1-2 years of junior experience at a FAANG (for better or worse). 6) VC in the space is even more wild than what has been reported in the media. I'll just leave this one at that. 7) Many people in the space seemed to just appear from nowhere. Like some of the technical founders with 1-2 years of junior experience and SBF who had a few years doing something at Jane Street I often times couldn't figure out where these people came from or why/how they were here. Of course this is common in tech (from Google to Facebook founders often "appear out of nowhere") but it was still extremely bizarre for SBF type characters to be dealing with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of other people's money with either no reputation/background or a shady one. 8) In my 25 years of experience I've never dealt with a more generally unimpressive group of people. After nearly two years in the space, meeting hundreds of people, there are only a handful I want to maintain any sort of personal or professional relationship with. With my background I knew I would experience some culture shock (for lack of a better term) entering a space that was still (after 14 years) the Wild West. What I experienced was (almost universally) so beyond the pale I finally ran away screaming. I spent more and more of my time and energy attempting to motivate myself and the team by focusing on our efforts to do good in the space but after all of this no amount of rationalizing could make up for the cesspool I was living in every day. Like the famous saying goes - "If you think you might be depressed, first make sure you're not just surrounded by assholes". Basically, what I'm saying is, when I see the unbelievable-to-most FTX (and other) stories unfolding in the media all I can think is "Yep, sounds about right". When I see stories like this and people asking "What are all of these people doing?" I can firmly respond with either "I have no idea" or "Trying to manage this crazy world takes a lot of people". Thankfully I'm not in the space any longer but as shoes keep dropping left and right I don't think I could be surprised by anything anymore. [0] - https://fnftf.io/ https://fnftf.io/

beej71 4y ago

I interviewed with them. It was quite peculiar. I asked them how they were going to manage the extreme planned growth rate and no one had an answer. That was in late May. (They didn't offer me a position for a given reason that was also weird. Strange place.)