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The hiring process has been like this for a long time. I had a hiatus from work in 2016 and when I tried to get back to the job market it was impossible to fin

The hiring process has been like this for a long time. I had a hiatus from work in 2016 and when I tried to get back to the job market it was impossible to find anything, even when I was over qualified for many of the positions I applied to and was even willing to take a considerable pay cut just because I was switching business domains (although the stack and many of the required soft skills to do the job remain the same) The vast majority of the interviewers I faced had no idea what they were doing or trying to measure. Loop interviews were the worst because it generally takes just one guy out out five to dislike you even if you had a great time with the other four. I mean I bet most of these guys in loop interviews would not even hire themselves It became so dreadful and time consuming that I had to tell recruiters right away I would not be doing any whiteboarding or solving puzzles. Pair programming and short take home projects were fine. That helped filtering companies but my leads dropped by 90%.

rickstanley 4y ago
I can relate to the hiatus situation and "one dislike". I'm employed right now, for about 1 and half years, but there was a time that I tried to switch path from Web/Mobile developer to full backend developer, and in this attempt I got a job interview for a digital bank; I had everything checked out and expected to continue to step 2, even a friend of mine who works there thought I'd pass the process easily, but to our surprise, I didn't make it to the next step, and when I asked the interviewer for feedback they gave me a bullet list with just one bullet saying that I didn't "explore business logic much"! It didn't make any sense! I found it preposterous and insulting, to say the least. When I ask for feedback, I want to know what are you looking for and why I wasn't compatible with your position.
- yuuho 4y ago
  That's standard. Honest feedback can get them in legal trouble. Making up a BS reason is expected if somebody's personality was really off-putting. Nobody is ever going to give you honest feedback about that.
- arp242 4y ago
  It's more or less impossible to review non-trivial code without feedback from the author (i.e. have a conversation) outside of cases where it's just truly obviously awful. Often stuff just gets rejected for "I wouldn't have written it like this". Okay, fine; but that doesn't mean I can't write it like that. But if I don't know what you want... The reason people don't give concrete feedback is because there often just isn't a clear one beyond "I don't like it".
  - Mizoguchi 4y ago
    Software Development and related careers are the only ones where grown up adults with years of experience in their fields are still treated like college students in the interview process. It doesn't matter if you wrote a library 15 years ago still being used today by hundreds of thousands of developers around the world some even working for the company interviewing you. Were you responsible for designing and building QA systems used by Boeing and NASA? That's cool, now please write a bubble sort algorithm on a whiteboard and then guess how many cars there are in the US (explain your thought process). Imagine how ridiculous and insulting it would be for a seasoned lawyer, a doctor or a CPA, to endure this nonsensical, pointless scrutiny when interviewing for a job. But somehow in tech this is not only common but accepted by job seekers as normal.
    - nytesky 4y ago
      I think you actually explain why these interviews are structured this way. Tech is pretty ageist and obsessed with youth, and in fact stodgy aerospace like Boeing and NASA are kind of held in contempt and derided for making peanuts. These interviews are a good way to filter (and even discourage) older applicants, since the cultural fit for the task IS someone recently in college.
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      > Imagine how ridiculous and insulting it would be for a seasoned lawyer, a doctor or a CPA, to endure this nonsensical, pointless scrutiny when interviewing for a job. Good examples, because lawyers, doctors, and CPAs all have formal exams and licensures, and a board that certifies that you have the qualifications to do your job. So when a hospital interviews a doctor, they don't have to go over first year anatomy to understand whether the doctor knows where the appendix is. The process certifies a base standard of knowledge. Software engineers don't have this, and every time it's brought up in conversation, it gets poo-poo'ed. So, 1. Companies have no idea if you know how to even turn on a computer, and 2. Candidates have to start from scratch every time explaining what a linked list is. Wouldn't it be great, both from an employer's POV and from the candidate's POV, if you could show that you passed the exam and received your license from the Coding Board, therefore you have some very basic set of skills? Then, you could both skip the fizzbuzz part of the interview and interview about more domain-specific questions. It would cut the interview time by probably 50-75%. But for reasons, HN commenters hate this idea, it's imposing "gatekeeping" and infringing on their freedom to pick up a Raspberry Pi and call themselves an engineer. So..... we all have to live with these incredibly inefficient and capricious hiring processes.
weatherlite 4y ago
There's just too many devs chasing too few jobs imo, programmers have become somewhat of a commodity and it's going to get much worse now with interest rates higher and staying higher. And soon A.I might eliminate humans from the equation even further. At the same time there are professions like child care, education, healthcare where personnel is always needed and overworked. To me it looks like we need to reorganize the job market but we'll see what the higher ups come up with - maybe they prefer to let "market forces" do their thing.
- mellavora 4y ago
  > there are professions like child care, education, healthcare where personnel is always needed and overworked. and also severely underpaid, and demonized if they try to organize.
  - weatherlite 4y ago
    I agree but that can change. We still live in a democracy.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > There's just too many devs chasing too few jobs imo, programmers have become somewhat of a commodity and it's going to get much worse now with interest rates higher and staying higher. Programmers, sure. Engineers? Everyone seems to be fighting to hire them. Writing code from a detailed spec is the easy part. Back in the days, people were doing it directly in assembly before someone came up with a compiler. When the great offshoring craze started, suddenly everyone was now an "architect" writing these specs and submitting them to an "AI" (called a programmer in India) to be translated into (sometimes working!) code. So the coding part was cheap and easy, but getting the detailed spec hasn't gotten any easier than it was. And the industry learned (mostly thanks to FAANG) that the best people to write these specs were also capable of coding them faster than by splitting teams in two and having the actual programming be done elsewhere. > At the same time there are professions like child care, education, healthcare where personnel is always needed and overworked. Then maybe they should make these jobs more like engineering. Where's the Google of child care? Seriously, one of the big caveat of education and child care is that comp is on a pay scale, voted by the public, and you get paid for years of services and not results. So the teacher that can't get fired because of union rules, that keeps getting complains after complains and doesn't care will get more money than you and will get first pick for any assignments. Thanks to over-regulation, healthcare is by far the most dysfunctional field of work in the western hemisphere. Turf wars between professions, bloated administrations and out of control spending is the norm. Most of the overwork is due to completely dysfunctional management.
the_af 4y ago
> Loop interviews were the worst because it generally takes just one guy out out five to dislike you even if you had a great time with the other four. Steve Yegge famously described Google's "interview anti-loop" where you got two interviewers in the pipeline that wouldn't have hired each other, so whatever pleases one interviewer would get you rejected by the other (and viceversa). In those cases there's no way to win. I suppose the length of the interview process increases the chance you'll hit this anti-loop.

rickstanley 4y ago

I can relate to the hiatus situation and "one dislike". I'm employed right now, for about 1 and half years, but there was a time that I tried to switch path from Web/Mobile developer to full backend developer, and in this attempt I got a job interview for a digital bank; I had everything checked out and expected to continue to step 2, even a friend of mine who works there thought I'd pass the process easily, but to our surprise, I didn't make it to the next step, and when I asked the interviewer for feedback they gave me a bullet list with just one bullet saying that I didn't "explore business logic much"! It didn't make any sense! I found it preposterous and insulting, to say the least. When I ask for feedback, I want to know what are you looking for and why I wasn't compatible with your position.

yuuho 4y ago
That's standard. Honest feedback can get them in legal trouble. Making up a BS reason is expected if somebody's personality was really off-putting. Nobody is ever going to give you honest feedback about that.
arp242 4y ago
It's more or less impossible to review non-trivial code without feedback from the author (i.e. have a conversation) outside of cases where it's just truly obviously awful. Often stuff just gets rejected for "I wouldn't have written it like this". Okay, fine; but that doesn't mean I can't write it like that. But if I don't know what you want... The reason people don't give concrete feedback is because there often just isn't a clear one beyond "I don't like it".
- Mizoguchi 4y ago
  Software Development and related careers are the only ones where grown up adults with years of experience in their fields are still treated like college students in the interview process. It doesn't matter if you wrote a library 15 years ago still being used today by hundreds of thousands of developers around the world some even working for the company interviewing you. Were you responsible for designing and building QA systems used by Boeing and NASA? That's cool, now please write a bubble sort algorithm on a whiteboard and then guess how many cars there are in the US (explain your thought process). Imagine how ridiculous and insulting it would be for a seasoned lawyer, a doctor or a CPA, to endure this nonsensical, pointless scrutiny when interviewing for a job. But somehow in tech this is not only common but accepted by job seekers as normal.
  - nytesky 4y ago
    I think you actually explain why these interviews are structured this way. Tech is pretty ageist and obsessed with youth, and in fact stodgy aerospace like Boeing and NASA are kind of held in contempt and derided for making peanuts. These interviews are a good way to filter (and even discourage) older applicants, since the cultural fit for the task IS someone recently in college.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    > Imagine how ridiculous and insulting it would be for a seasoned lawyer, a doctor or a CPA, to endure this nonsensical, pointless scrutiny when interviewing for a job. Good examples, because lawyers, doctors, and CPAs all have formal exams and licensures, and a board that certifies that you have the qualifications to do your job. So when a hospital interviews a doctor, they don't have to go over first year anatomy to understand whether the doctor knows where the appendix is. The process certifies a base standard of knowledge. Software engineers don't have this, and every time it's brought up in conversation, it gets poo-poo'ed. So, 1. Companies have no idea if you know how to even turn on a computer, and 2. Candidates have to start from scratch every time explaining what a linked list is. Wouldn't it be great, both from an employer's POV and from the candidate's POV, if you could show that you passed the exam and received your license from the Coding Board, therefore you have some very basic set of skills? Then, you could both skip the fizzbuzz part of the interview and interview about more domain-specific questions. It would cut the interview time by probably 50-75%. But for reasons, HN commenters hate this idea, it's imposing "gatekeeping" and infringing on their freedom to pick up a Raspberry Pi and call themselves an engineer. So..... we all have to live with these incredibly inefficient and capricious hiring processes.

weatherlite 4y ago

There's just too many devs chasing too few jobs imo, programmers have become somewhat of a commodity and it's going to get much worse now with interest rates higher and staying higher. And soon A.I might eliminate humans from the equation even further. At the same time there are professions like child care, education, healthcare where personnel is always needed and overworked. To me it looks like we need to reorganize the job market but we'll see what the higher ups come up with - maybe they prefer to let "market forces" do their thing.

mellavora 4y ago
> there are professions like child care, education, healthcare where personnel is always needed and overworked. and also severely underpaid, and demonized if they try to organize.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  I agree but that can change. We still live in a democracy.
908B64B197 4y ago
> There's just too many devs chasing too few jobs imo, programmers have become somewhat of a commodity and it's going to get much worse now with interest rates higher and staying higher. Programmers, sure. Engineers? Everyone seems to be fighting to hire them. Writing code from a detailed spec is the easy part. Back in the days, people were doing it directly in assembly before someone came up with a compiler. When the great offshoring craze started, suddenly everyone was now an "architect" writing these specs and submitting them to an "AI" (called a programmer in India) to be translated into (sometimes working!) code. So the coding part was cheap and easy, but getting the detailed spec hasn't gotten any easier than it was. And the industry learned (mostly thanks to FAANG) that the best people to write these specs were also capable of coding them faster than by splitting teams in two and having the actual programming be done elsewhere. > At the same time there are professions like child care, education, healthcare where personnel is always needed and overworked. Then maybe they should make these jobs more like engineering. Where's the Google of child care? Seriously, one of the big caveat of education and child care is that comp is on a pay scale, voted by the public, and you get paid for years of services and not results. So the teacher that can't get fired because of union rules, that keeps getting complains after complains and doesn't care will get more money than you and will get first pick for any assignments. Thanks to over-regulation, healthcare is by far the most dysfunctional field of work in the western hemisphere. Turf wars between professions, bloated administrations and out of control spending is the norm. Most of the overwork is due to completely dysfunctional management.

the_af 4y ago

> Loop interviews were the worst because it generally takes just one guy out out five to dislike you even if you had a great time with the other four. Steve Yegge famously described Google's "interview anti-loop" where you got two interviewers in the pipeline that wouldn't have hired each other, so whatever pleases one interviewer would get you rejected by the other (and viceversa). In those cases there's no way to win. I suppose the length of the interview process increases the chance you'll hit this anti-loop.