3 ms·

The thing is clearing the interviews is much harder than doing the day to day job in any of these companies. In all of big tech, most people are working on triv

The thing is clearing the interviews is much harder than doing the day to day job in any of these companies. In all of big tech, most people are working on trivial crud apps or trivial services passing data around. The skills to succeed are similar to cheating in interviews. Most people I know in all of big tech have never used any data structure more complex than a resizable array. Very few people in big tech work on the real hard problems. The interview process difficulty and the day to day job difficulty are just not related, not to mention that in day to day job being able to get solutions from others is a very important skill for you to succeed. One thing the interview process does is to weed out totally incompetent candidates. Even one such candidate, once inside, can be extremely harmful to the morale of a team.

sokoloff 3y ago
Your last point is an important one. There are a large number of incompetent applicants. Prior to the most recent round of tech layoffs, I would go so far as to say that the majority of applicants were incompetent. That's not to say the majority of programmers are incompetent, but because the interview filter processes tend to not select the incompetent, they accumulate in the applicant pool. Any "fix" to the interview process has to accommodate the reality that the left half of the applicant pool distribution is of terribly low levels of ability.
- gedy 3y ago
  > Any "fix" to the interview process has to accommodate the reality that the left half of the applicant pool distribution is of terribly low levels of ability. I would like to see some distinction between people who apply cold, and people who have been reached out to by a company. I'm an experienced, employed engineer, and if a company reaches out to me, I expect to not be treated in an interview like "gotta see if you are a faker! You could be coasting for 15 years! We get soooo many applicants." That's the (in-house) recruiter's job, or hiring manager's. Don't waste my damn time like this.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    I think there are three categories rather than just two. Cold application, reached out to by a recruiter, or referred by a former colleague. Seeing how internal recruiting or "sourcing" works, I don't see it as being vastly different from a cold application. Someone dredged up your profile on LinkedIn and reached out to you based on a keyword search (in all likelihood). Once you responded, they passed you off to the recruiting pipeline. There's not much more signal in you having a keyword on LinkedIn as having a keyword on your resume. Only the third, a referral from an actual ex-colleague, would I skip any of the basic vetting steps. (Said differently, I agree "that's the (in-house) recruiter's job, or hiring manager's"; this is them doing it...)
    - crop_rotation 3y ago
      Referral too at this point is gamed too much. People think of referrals more as a favour that gives them brownie points than anything else.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        100% agreed! That's why I specified "from an actual ex-colleague" rather than "from someone they once got a LinkedIn request from but knows nothing about and couldn't pick out of a police lineup".

sokoloff 3y ago

Your last point is an important one. There are a large number of incompetent applicants. Prior to the most recent round of tech layoffs, I would go so far as to say that the majority of applicants were incompetent. That's not to say the majority of programmers are incompetent, but because the interview filter processes tend to not select the incompetent, they accumulate in the applicant pool. Any "fix" to the interview process has to accommodate the reality that the left half of the applicant pool distribution is of terribly low levels of ability.

gedy 3y ago
> Any "fix" to the interview process has to accommodate the reality that the left half of the applicant pool distribution is of terribly low levels of ability. I would like to see some distinction between people who apply cold, and people who have been reached out to by a company. I'm an experienced, employed engineer, and if a company reaches out to me, I expect to not be treated in an interview like "gotta see if you are a faker! You could be coasting for 15 years! We get soooo many applicants." That's the (in-house) recruiter's job, or hiring manager's. Don't waste my damn time like this.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I think there are three categories rather than just two. Cold application, reached out to by a recruiter, or referred by a former colleague. Seeing how internal recruiting or "sourcing" works, I don't see it as being vastly different from a cold application. Someone dredged up your profile on LinkedIn and reached out to you based on a keyword search (in all likelihood). Once you responded, they passed you off to the recruiting pipeline. There's not much more signal in you having a keyword on LinkedIn as having a keyword on your resume. Only the third, a referral from an actual ex-colleague, would I skip any of the basic vetting steps. (Said differently, I agree "that's the (in-house) recruiter's job, or hiring manager's"; this is them doing it...)
  - crop_rotation 3y ago
    Referral too at this point is gamed too much. People think of referrals more as a favour that gives them brownie points than anything else.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      100% agreed! That's why I specified "from an actual ex-colleague" rather than "from someone they once got a LinkedIn request from but knows nothing about and couldn't pick out of a police lineup".