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Think about time invested in the purchase of an automobile or a house, relative to the cash outlay. Consider how one can get information and predictability aro

Think about time invested in the purchase of an automobile or a house, relative to the cash outlay. Consider how one can get information and predictability around that purchase, as well as the known knowns and unknown unknowns. For a new job from the individual's point of view, think of the life-event risk they're taking on by betting on this new firm. From the firm point of view, particularly for smaller firms (1 - 50), think of the return on equity and opportunity cost. Finally, think about the time spent dating before people move in together, not even get married. On a time per commitment cost / risk-adjusted basis, extensive job interviews may still be underinvesting. All that said, a majority of candidates can be filtered out within 15 minutes. As could, if you care, a majority of workplaces. See also “information asymmetry” and “adverse selection” resulting in disproportionate number of lemons on the market as discussed in “The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

jackblemming 3y ago
It doesn’t matter how many hundreds of rounds of interviews and checks you have, you will always run into Bayes Error. You will never be able to filter out assholes who can hold it together for an interview. Or lazy people who get hired and rest and vest. The solution is not to create a hellish interview pipeline that actually competent people will just say no to. The answer is to accept firing people if they’re a bad fit early, with appropriate severance.
- deleted 3y ago
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- Terretta 3y ago
  I agree with this. And going further, it would also be nice to normalize "dating around" where a candidate and firms could learn a bit about each other while if it's not a fit, the candidate can continue where they are. If we can do parental leave, we should be able to manage life-change leave. Granted, the logistics, IP, confidentiality, and many other things feel incredibly complicated to sort out. And yet firms work with consultants running around talking to all their competitors, and the world doesn't end. At the same time, keeping people in roles that aren't satisfying for either party makes little pragmatic or personal fulfillment sense, yet most of employment law seems oriented for that. Given the asymmetric stakes, seems worth figuring out ways we could prioritize humans over firms.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    > And going further, it would also be nice to normalize "dating around" where a candidate and firms could learn a bit about each other while if it's not a fit, the candidate can continue where they are. Job fairs, mate. That's the idea. Chat to a manager and an HR person, learn about the org, and maybe slip them a resume. 5 min of face time with a candidate or an org can be enough to tell you what you need to know. Though heavily centralized around schools, there are definitely non-school related ones out there, too.
romwell 3y ago
My, what a bad chain of analogies. >Think about time invested in the purchase of an automobile or a house, relative to the cash outlay. That's the time invested by ther party paying the money. They can spend all the time in the world on that (and they are usually the ones that do). Where the owners spend their time is making the property attractive to the buyer. The owners aren't doing labor for customers. And you surely don't get to borrow a car for the weekend from the dealership, or live in a house that you want to buy for a bit. >For a new job from the individual's point of view, think of the life-event risk they're taking on by betting on this new firm. The life-event risk of being able to pay rent/mortgage/bills? Oh my. Employment contracts aren't binding either way. Employees can quit at any time and can be fired at any time. Lateral promotion is a more likely scenario than in-company promotion. Think about how that factors into opportunity cost. >Finally, think about the time spent dating before people move in together, not even get married. That's called having a relationship, something that's a two sided thing. The game isn't one side doing labor for the other, and so the comparison is unjustified. (If yours does, you're not having a relationship, you're being used. Run.) >On a time per commitment cost / risk-adjusted basis, extensive job interviews may still be underinvesting. On the employer's side, perhaps. Many of them aren't doing due diligence. You'd think that spending multiple days on an interview process would involve someone at a FAANG-level company asking a question like Do we actually have any projects that utilize the skills that make this candidate attractive to us?, but in my experience, this is not always the case, by far. >All that said, a majority of candidates can be filtered out within 15 minutes. As could, if you care, a majority of workplaces. Applicants usually have no problem filtering out the workplaces. Selecting between multiple job offers is a good problem to have. Without an offer, there's nothing to filter. >See also “information asymmetry” and “adverse selection” resulting in disproportionate number of lemons on the market as discussed in “The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons The whole thing is premised on buyers (employers, in our case) being uninformed and having no clue about what they're paying money for. Which is exactly the problem here. And tech interviews getting out of control is a symptom of the problem, not a solution.
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Mc91 3y ago
> All that said, a majority of candidates can be filtered out within 15 minutes If I interviewed six candidates, usually one would obviously be head and shoulders above the other five. If I interviewed twelve, two would be. I saw this across various companies over the years. About 15% clearly know more than the other 85%. Also I found I usually could tell this within three questions. If I asked three questions, and the person being interviewed either stumbled over some of the first three, or had a shallow understanding of the topics, I never saw them recover afterward - if they had no or a shallow understanding on the first three questions, so it would be on subsequent questions. I could have wrapped it up after the third question for most people. Once I became aware of this, I still gave them a chance (which never bore fruit), but I began thinking how fast could I wrap up an interview where they had come in without seeming impolite.

jackblemming 3y ago

It doesn’t matter how many hundreds of rounds of interviews and checks you have, you will always run into Bayes Error. You will never be able to filter out assholes who can hold it together for an interview. Or lazy people who get hired and rest and vest. The solution is not to create a hellish interview pipeline that actually competent people will just say no to. The answer is to accept firing people if they’re a bad fit early, with appropriate severance.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Terretta 3y ago
I agree with this. And going further, it would also be nice to normalize "dating around" where a candidate and firms could learn a bit about each other while if it's not a fit, the candidate can continue where they are. If we can do parental leave, we should be able to manage life-change leave. Granted, the logistics, IP, confidentiality, and many other things feel incredibly complicated to sort out. And yet firms work with consultants running around talking to all their competitors, and the world doesn't end. At the same time, keeping people in roles that aren't satisfying for either party makes little pragmatic or personal fulfillment sense, yet most of employment law seems oriented for that. Given the asymmetric stakes, seems worth figuring out ways we could prioritize humans over firms.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > And going further, it would also be nice to normalize "dating around" where a candidate and firms could learn a bit about each other while if it's not a fit, the candidate can continue where they are. Job fairs, mate. That's the idea. Chat to a manager and an HR person, learn about the org, and maybe slip them a resume. 5 min of face time with a candidate or an org can be enough to tell you what you need to know. Though heavily centralized around schools, there are definitely non-school related ones out there, too.

romwell 3y ago

My, what a bad chain of analogies. >Think about time invested in the purchase of an automobile or a house, relative to the cash outlay. That's the time invested by ther party paying the money. They can spend all the time in the world on that (and they are usually the ones that do). Where the owners spend their time is making the property attractive to the buyer. The owners aren't doing labor for customers. And you surely don't get to borrow a car for the weekend from the dealership, or live in a house that you want to buy for a bit. >For a new job from the individual's point of view, think of the life-event risk they're taking on by betting on this new firm. The life-event risk of being able to pay rent/mortgage/bills? Oh my. Employment contracts aren't binding either way. Employees can quit at any time and can be fired at any time. Lateral promotion is a more likely scenario than in-company promotion. Think about how that factors into opportunity cost. >Finally, think about the time spent dating before people move in together, not even get married. That's called having a relationship, something that's a two sided thing. The game isn't one side doing labor for the other, and so the comparison is unjustified. (If yours does, you're not having a relationship, you're being used. Run.) >On a time per commitment cost / risk-adjusted basis, extensive job interviews may still be underinvesting. On the employer's side, perhaps. Many of them aren't doing due diligence. You'd think that spending multiple days on an interview process would involve someone at a FAANG-level company asking a question like Do we actually have any projects that utilize the skills that make this candidate attractive to us?, but in my experience, this is not always the case, by far. >All that said, a majority of candidates can be filtered out within 15 minutes. As could, if you care, a majority of workplaces. Applicants usually have no problem filtering out the workplaces. Selecting between multiple job offers is a good problem to have. Without an offer, there's nothing to filter. >See also “information asymmetry” and “adverse selection” resulting in disproportionate number of lemons on the market as discussed in “The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons The whole thing is premised on buyers (employers, in our case) being uninformed and having no clue about what they're paying money for. Which is exactly the problem here. And tech interviews getting out of control is a symptom of the problem, not a solution.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Mc91 3y ago

> All that said, a majority of candidates can be filtered out within 15 minutes If I interviewed six candidates, usually one would obviously be head and shoulders above the other five. If I interviewed twelve, two would be. I saw this across various companies over the years. About 15% clearly know more than the other 85%. Also I found I usually could tell this within three questions. If I asked three questions, and the person being interviewed either stumbled over some of the first three, or had a shallow understanding of the topics, I never saw them recover afterward - if they had no or a shallow understanding on the first three questions, so it would be on subsequent questions. I could have wrapped it up after the third question for most people. Once I became aware of this, I still gave them a chance (which never bore fruit), but I began thinking how fast could I wrap up an interview where they had come in without seeming impolite.