6 ms·

That's really thorough and unfortunate. I hadn't heard about all of that. I had a committee interview there maybe 8 years ago and already that was such an impe

by swozey 3y ago

That's really thorough and unfortunate. I hadn't heard about all of that. I had a committee interview there maybe 8 years ago and already that was such an impersonal feeling that I really disliked my experience and didn't continue, not that they'd have hired me in the end. I had 2 referrals for the team I wanted to join and I thought I'd be interviewing with that teams members who knew me from various foss projects or at least knew of the projects. When I heard it was by committee my anxiety went through the roof. I hope things improve for everyone.

dmoy 3y ago
It's more like two committees in fact. There's the not-quite-randomly-selected people who interview you, and write feedback. Then there's the completely separate set of people on the hiring committee who make a decision reading the feedback and other stuff (referrals, resume, etc). The latter group doesn't talk to the former group though, just the written feedback.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  It's not clear that hiring people you know directly into your team is even a good idea. I liked the Google interview system, and since leaving I have only seen worse ones.
  - swozey 3y ago
    You like the possibility of someone being placed onto your team without anyone who is part of that team having interviewed them? Maybe that does happen at some point, I forget. Long time. If it doesn't.. I think I would absolutely hate that. I don't interview people I know personally or refer or know from projects but I absolutely want 2-3 from my team to be speak to them and us do the technical tests. But I'm an SRE and not a SWE and there are a lot fewer operation/platform people compared to the 6-10 dev teams of 6-12 people doing various languages one sre team supports so there are usually plenty of SWE specific people to bring on committees. My team is 6 who support 80 SWEs so there are just a lot fewer proficient IAC writers on staff.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      Yes, I do prefer choosing new team members from among people who got hired into level by a team-neutral process, because I have seen too many instances of a hiring manager throwing out all the standards to hire a person they want into a particular role, which can be detrimental to companies because hiring people who don't really meet your standards is one of the worst things you can do as a company.
      - refulgentis 3y ago
        Someone managed to pull this off in 2021 at Google and I'm still very, very, confused as to how
pb7 3y ago
The type of nepotism that you were hoping to get you in isn't actually a good thing. A distributed system of interviewers and decision makers is more consistent and less biased. It's one of the reasons why people are able to switch teams quickly and easily -- everyone is held to the same standard and can be relied on. This is a good thing. Sucks that you didn't get in though.
- depr 3y ago
  Doesn't that system of interviewers just bring different biases? Even if they use a standardized scoring method or something, the bias would be built into that. And everyone would indeed be held to the same, biased, standard.
  - tetromino_ 3y ago
    A single interviewer is likely to be strongly biased. But the bias of a pool of thousands of people is much smaller - the individual biases partially cancel out. In addition, the process adds some steps to keep a single person's irrational biases from propagating: formal rubrics, rating broken down into components each of which requires written justification, and the group of people making the decision to hire or not hire are explicitly ones who never see or hear the candidate and are deciding based on interviewers' written reports.
    - mlrtime 3y ago
      >But the bias of a pool Maybe? What if the pool is being influenced with whatever is trendy at the time? I would take my bias of working with a former colleague for years over what the current societal pressures are enforcing. Some may call it nepotism, I'd call it risk management.
      - swozey 3y ago
        Me and 3 other Principal/Staff levels have now worked at 3 companies in a row together over the last 12-15 years. One of us will move elsewhere and slowly bring on the rest of us as we leave if we hear great things about the place. If not we go elsewhere. We actually have a group chat of about 8 people we've all worked at various places together and love to bring others on board because we know their style and that we can work well with them. They are amazing engineers and we've all grown together over the last decade and we know what each of us is great and at where they'd be fantastic in a company. They're SWEs and I'm an SRE so we actually aren't on the same team or anything but they know they can bring me on as a Staff/Princ SRE and we'll get things done well cross-team far beyond what most companies of disparate eng/teams gets done. These are people super passionate about the technology. We give presentations/talks on various projects, etc. I know their skills are up to date and growing constantly. Finding someone passionate is difficult. Maybe not at google but in normal-not-faang world it is.

by swozey 3y ago

dmoy 3y ago

It's more like two committees in fact. There's the not-quite-randomly-selected people who interview you, and write feedback. Then there's the completely separate set of people on the hiring committee who make a decision reading the feedback and other stuff (referrals, resume, etc). The latter group doesn't talk to the former group though, just the written feedback.

jeffbee 3y ago
It's not clear that hiring people you know directly into your team is even a good idea. I liked the Google interview system, and since leaving I have only seen worse ones.
- swozey 3y ago
  You like the possibility of someone being placed onto your team without anyone who is part of that team having interviewed them? Maybe that does happen at some point, I forget. Long time. If it doesn't.. I think I would absolutely hate that. I don't interview people I know personally or refer or know from projects but I absolutely want 2-3 from my team to be speak to them and us do the technical tests. But I'm an SRE and not a SWE and there are a lot fewer operation/platform people compared to the 6-10 dev teams of 6-12 people doing various languages one sre team supports so there are usually plenty of SWE specific people to bring on committees. My team is 6 who support 80 SWEs so there are just a lot fewer proficient IAC writers on staff.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    Yes, I do prefer choosing new team members from among people who got hired into level by a team-neutral process, because I have seen too many instances of a hiring manager throwing out all the standards to hire a person they want into a particular role, which can be detrimental to companies because hiring people who don't really meet your standards is one of the worst things you can do as a company.
    - refulgentis 3y ago
      Someone managed to pull this off in 2021 at Google and I'm still very, very, confused as to how

pb7 3y ago

The type of nepotism that you were hoping to get you in isn't actually a good thing. A distributed system of interviewers and decision makers is more consistent and less biased. It's one of the reasons why people are able to switch teams quickly and easily -- everyone is held to the same standard and can be relied on. This is a good thing. Sucks that you didn't get in though.

depr 3y ago
Doesn't that system of interviewers just bring different biases? Even if they use a standardized scoring method or something, the bias would be built into that. And everyone would indeed be held to the same, biased, standard.
- tetromino_ 3y ago
  A single interviewer is likely to be strongly biased. But the bias of a pool of thousands of people is much smaller - the individual biases partially cancel out. In addition, the process adds some steps to keep a single person's irrational biases from propagating: formal rubrics, rating broken down into components each of which requires written justification, and the group of people making the decision to hire or not hire are explicitly ones who never see or hear the candidate and are deciding based on interviewers' written reports.
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    >But the bias of a pool Maybe? What if the pool is being influenced with whatever is trendy at the time? I would take my bias of working with a former colleague for years over what the current societal pressures are enforcing. Some may call it nepotism, I'd call it risk management.
    - swozey 3y ago
      Me and 3 other Principal/Staff levels have now worked at 3 companies in a row together over the last 12-15 years. One of us will move elsewhere and slowly bring on the rest of us as we leave if we hear great things about the place. If not we go elsewhere. We actually have a group chat of about 8 people we've all worked at various places together and love to bring others on board because we know their style and that we can work well with them. They are amazing engineers and we've all grown together over the last decade and we know what each of us is great and at where they'd be fantastic in a company. They're SWEs and I'm an SRE so we actually aren't on the same team or anything but they know they can bring me on as a Staff/Princ SRE and we'll get things done well cross-team far beyond what most companies of disparate eng/teams gets done. These are people super passionate about the technology. We give presentations/talks on various projects, etc. I know their skills are up to date and growing constantly. Finding someone passionate is difficult. Maybe not at google but in normal-not-faang world it is.