6 ms·

Feels like in some sections of the US like big tech, the talent vetting process has evolved into some adversarial battle of attrition where the idea is to grind

by davedx 2y ago

Feels like in some sections of the US like big tech, the talent vetting process has evolved into some adversarial battle of attrition where the idea is to grind down the pool of candidates until only a few are left rather than find some potential new colleagues. Tools like this have emerged as a direct response to that process. What a bizarre way to begin a working relationship.

stego-tech 2y ago
Sadly, these sorts of “practical interviews” aren’t just limited to Big Tech. There’s been an arms race for thirty years now between applicants and employers, the latter creating new hurdles to overcome and the former finding new ways to bypass unnecessary hurdles. Employers demanded applications instead of resumes, so candidates used copy machines. Then they wanted block lettering, so candidates used type writers. ATS systems could search for keywords, so candidates flooded their resumes with them. Then employers allowed online applications, and the floodgates opened proper - applications from all over the world, desperate for good employment. So they made you create an account, and applicants wrote or used bots to automate it - which became site features like “Quick Apply” on LinkedIn and Indeed. Practical interviews used to be a single round for only the most senior roles, but then employers wanted everyone to be as qualified as those roles but not pay them that much, which started the cheating arms race. Ultimately, the problem remains a glut of qualified talent demanding salaries to pay the bills, and employers who want to pay as little as possible. The two sides are adversaries by default, and few companies do the work of mending the relationship into something more cooperative.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  this does NOT match my experience as an interviewer. Our company went through piles of candidates who were not qualified and it took us months to find a good fit after going through hundreds of resumes and scores of interviews. I hope the folks we hired are paid enough to retain because there were was absolutely no glut of talent. It was hard to find the folks we wound up hiring. There was a glut of applications, yes, but the vast majority were totally unqualified.
  - stego-tech 2y ago
    So you're confusing your specific requirements with my generalization of "talent". Depending on your specifics, there might not be a glut of talent in that specific field or expertise, but there's still a surplus of domestic college grads unable to find work in their chosen fields, and companies who refuse to pay domestic graduates what they're worth when they can outsource to contractors, MSPs, or offshore work entirely for less. My perspective on this issue is that the reason there's an abundance of candidates in any given application pool is because of a mismatch of expectations between employees and employers, even today. Employers have cultivated an environment where candidates must job hop frequently to grow their earnings, because internal advancement has dried up and employers haven't respected loyalty in decades. This results in a plurality of the workforce "always looking for work", because they see no potential in their current role for growth or advancement; in fact, the whole reason they applied to your role is because they wanted that growth or advancement, and now they have it, so it's time to apply elsewhere for the next step up. I get that this environment totally sucks for both parties, but it's important to note that employers are the only ones who can change the system, since they hold the bulk of the power in individual negotiations. Unfortunately, the current attitude seems to be more of the status quo: more technology to "make it easier to find the best candidates" (thus removing humans from even more of the hiring process), forcing existing workers out (thus increasing the applicant pool), and then bemoaning about their problems on Business News ("too many unqualified applicants") or forums. Applicants didn't create this mess, and we can't fix it.
    - dahart 2y ago
      > we can’t fix it Applicants don’t have to apply to Google or Facebook for jobs they’re not qualified for, and if they stopped, the mess you’re referring to would disappear. At least at Google and Facebook’s doors, anyway. It might move somewhere else simply because there are a lot of people (literally everyone) looking for jobs that pay well. It’s funny to tell someone on the other side of the interview table that they’re confused, when they’re giving you information that can help you. Knowing that there is an abundance of low quality applications is useful information. Mismatch of expectations might be an accurate generalization, but arguing the expectations of applicants isn’t part of the problem is not accurate at all. Applicants definitely aim high and spam companies with resumes for jobs they’re not qualified for. I even tell new grads to aim a little higher than the exact job description, but within reason. To be fair, a lot of people don’t know what’s reasonable and don’t know how competitive their cohort is and they have little to lose by taking their chances. The lore about having to job-hop has always existed, it was true 30 years ago, and it’s still a story people tell today. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Don’t get confused by hearing stories. Neither the number of stories you hear, nor the story-teller’s confidence in their take, proves anything about how the business world works. You need more first-hand knowledge of how many people don’t have to job hop. Companies do promote people, and some companies do respect loyalty. Instead of insisting it’s a fight and wallowing, go find the good jobs at good companies working for good managers and figure out how to stand out from the applicants who are less qualified than you.
- eastbound 2y ago
  As an employer, I know candidates use LinkedIn’s “Apply in one click” in bulk. When we contact them, half of them notice they don’t even fit the criteria in our ad (be a Java developer, for starters).
  - stego-tech 2y ago
    And while I sympathize with your frustration, workers are caught between companies who can't even be bothered to send a rejection form letter anymore, companies posting "ghost jobs", and companies who post such broad salary ranges (if any at all) that they're unusable. Then you roll in the "resume farms" abroad (shady recruiters submitting candidates without approval and who don't match the requirements, so they can net a payday), and it's a nightmare for both sides (workers and employers). Where my sympathy dissipates, though, is the knowledge that workers are merely responding to the ever-increasing demands of employers. It's ultimately up to the employers to fix this mess, because they're the ones who created it in the first place. It might mean an in-person career event to weed out remote candidates, if you're adamant about a local hire, with humans reviewing resumes in-hand, in real time, absent ATS and AI systems getting in the way. It might mean forgoing practical interviews entirely, in favor of better verbal interviews that assess skills and competencies, with hypothetical questions AI can't quickly or reliably answer. And it also might mean rebuilding company loyalty and incentivizing people to stay instead of leave. It might mean reducing the amount of jobs you're posting externally by resuming promoting internally again. It might mean dangling carrots that keep workers from jumping ship every two years to grow wages in a meaningful way. Point is, there's a lot of ways to address this, but the current attitude is "MOAR TECHNOLOGY", which doesn't seem to address either side's core grievances around the hiring and employment processes.
    - gotoeleven 2y ago
      How do employers fix being blasted with resumes from unqualified morons?
      - __turbobrew__ 2y ago
        A lot use recruiters to reach out to talent, that is how I got my current job. I applied directly and got ghosted but a month later a 3rd party recruiter reached out to me and I got the same job I applied for. Lots of other jobs have funnels through referrals and networks, people can make recommendations of past colleagues. The only way to stop people from blasting resumes is to make it cost them something, for example charge $5 — which goes to charity — to apply for the job.
- dahart 2y ago
  This is all fully explained by salaries going up, and the pool of young applicants getting bigger faster than the number of jobs available, while the pool of highly qualified applicants remains small. Jobs at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, are all legitimately competitive, and because more people are applying, those companies have the freedom to be choosier and the incentive to compete for the good ones. Because salaries have gone up (or even simply the perception of salaries), and because salaries are high compared to other jobs, more and more bright-eyed kids are hoping to punch above their weight in interviews, which is why companies are flooded with low-quality applications and don’t have a choice about needing to sift them efficiently. This is the natural state of a competitive environment, and interviews will get “better” for candidates when there are more jobs than good candidates. But be careful what you wish for; if the job market gets less competitive for candidates, salaries and benefits and working conditions go with it. While there might be some truth it to, framing it as an arms race is a mentality that will not help the average candidate, and might do them harm. Employers always have and always will want to pay as little as possible, obviously, that’s the definition of a company. But they do actually compete with each other for good talent, and they do pay a lot relative to other jobs, and some companies’ definitions of pay as little as possible is still to pay enough that employees are well compensated and don’t leave.
treyd 2y ago
I have a theory that job search sights have an incentive to make the application/recruiting process so much of a slog due to (1) the hundreds of applications many people have to send out and (2) the hundreds of applications that companies have to sort through, as a way to justify their own existence.
motohagiography 2y ago
key insight. the factors influencing this are a couple I can think of. the first is just the sheer volume of applicants made possible by the internet and the mobility of workers, where you get hundreds of profiles to sort through for any job and use a coarse technical funnel to sort them. the second is we can't just pick good colleagues because the regulatory and litigation environment imposes selection criteria where we have to evaluate all these applicants equally. these aren't justifications for the confrontational interview filter, but some upstream factors that are worth picking at to see if something better could become a solution to them.
CharlieDigital 2y ago
I've recently been studying leetcode (for reasons) and went through an interview process. It was, by far, the most boring interview I've ever had to participate in. The leetcode problem was easy (detect if two strings are anagrams; solved with O(n) solution in < 10 LOC; then aggregate sets of anagrams). System design was easy because it is to the point that it is largely "formulaic". It feels like those rhythm games where you need to know when the trigger is coming and the pattern to hit those triggers (talk about functional requirements -> talk about non-functional requirements -> write some API routes -> draw a load balancer (because of course, there's always a load balancer) -> draw a service -> draw Redis/Memcached -> draw a database). It's comically laughable how it's just like a rhythm game at this point. What I don't understand is why teams don't just "get to the point". A lot of times, the assessment is looking for specific notes. Why not just ask about those notes directly? A friend recently went through an interview where he was docked for not using C# `yield` when implementing an `IEnumerable`. But had the interviewer asked "What is `yield` and why would you use it?", the interviewer would have gained the same exact insight in 15 seconds with one question. I think what's also striking is how slow orgs are to adapt their interview process to account for AI. There's a distinct lack of focus on code reviews as part of the assessment. If the future of coding is AIs for productivity, then teams should be adding code reviews into their process (check for correctness, check for defects, check for performance, check for security, etc).
- emseetech 2y ago
  | distinct lack of focus on code reviews as part of the assessment "Writing code is easy, reading code is hard" An interview based on reading, explaining and critiquing complicated code would give a better window into a candidate's skills than having them solve the kind of coding challenge that can be completed in a short interview. Also, being able to identify which algorithms would be useful in solving a unique problem and explain what the pros & cons are would go further than implementing an algorithm abstractly.
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    That was my favorite interview ever. The guy gave me 30 lines of code, and asked questions about it. Including finding the questionable constructs in it.
emseetech 2y ago
The move away from on-the-job training has played a role. If a company doesn't provide any early guidance and mentorship (which everyone could use regardless of industry experience), then that has to be replaced by finding the perfect candidate who can immediately be productive.
- jamaicahest 2y ago
  > then that has to be replaced by finding the perfect candidate who can immediately be productive. We're called freelance consultants. And we charge a high price for that service.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    yes and companies basically are just paying that high price with a salary
heresie-dabord 2y ago
The ideal purpose of hiring is to find a skilled candidate who will be a good fit and maybe even bring talent and energy to the role. The hiring entity will ideally provide mentoring and training to ensure a successful investment and relationship. But the catch is... the people doing the hiring must themselves ideally be talented, energetic, skillful mentors who envisage building a positive culture.
deadbabe 2y ago
Literally all the engineers at the company went through the same process. For all the bitching and complaining an interviewee does, there’s probably a hundred people who just went through the process and got hired. Suck it up, it’s part of the job. If you can’t do it, you don’t belong. Simple as that.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  > who just went through the process and got hired. You say that as if there's The One True Interview Routine™ and it doesn't change from team to team, person to person, month to month. I actually would bet that no single organization interviews with the consistency you're describing, not even FAANG with their holier-than-thou grinders If it wasn't such a monster drain on human productivity, I think it'd be funny if there was "rolling interviews" where each new hire got to send prior hires though "the process" on the yearly anniversary of those prior hires
- acheron 2y ago
  This is called “hazing”.
  - deadbabe 2y ago
    Do you want a job or do you want to live unhazed?
- maxnevermind 2y ago
  That's actually a good point. I believe that BigTech these days look for conformists, not superstar SWEs. If you agree to waste your time on preparation to meaningless LeetCode style interview then you are one of them and ready to be a part of the company. I do believe that is actually one of the things that being tested by such an interview, it's not a proxy for IQ, it's a proxy for candidate's readiness to eat dull corporate BS and not complain about it.
  - deadbabe 2y ago
    People would rather get paid $80k a year and be a non-conformist than get paid $200k a year to conform to the requirements of a job. Simple as that. Problem is those non-conformists keep applying to the $200k jobs expecting the $80k treatment.
dahart 2y ago
On one hand, that’s what it always was, by definition - a company is looking for the best candidates it can get with a given budget, and the best-case scenario for the company is there’s a large pool of candidates to choose from. On the other hand, from my perspective and experience on both sides of the interview table, to me it seems like the perception that this is adversarial is coming primarily from young candidates whinging on the internet in large numbers about interviews being unfair or “broken” or doing it the wrong way. Every time this comes up on HN, there are hordes of comments demanding we stop whiteboarding in interviews, or claiming anything not exactly in the job description is out of bounds, or decrying the abuse that coding live inflicts. There are blog posts every week about how to fix the problem, where the problem is usually the interviewee’s comfort, and not the company’s efficiency or effectiveness. The truth is that companies need people, and the employees there do want new colleagues. If you truly understand that, and also that the selection process is unavoidable and working as designed, then it will help you navigate the selection process and appeal to the company, it will help you get the job. I’m well aware of the fears young candidates have, since I was one. Getting a job can be hard, and it might even be getting harder over time. But to me it’s also funny that software engineers looking for 6-figure salary jobs complain about interviews and competition and having to demo their skills for an hour or two. Don’t forget to look around at other industries and ask whether it’s really better over there. People in music and films and advertising and art have to grind for years, suffer low-wage or historically unpaid internships. Doctors have to do residency, grad school, and get licensed. Most people make less money, many people have to do labor. Most jobs have much bigger downsides than what we have to do in our interviews as software engineers. We have opportunity and privilege and with the right practice and attitude and with reasonable expectations, it’s really not that hard to do well in interviews and land a good job. Many kids are hearing stories of FAANG and million dollar salaries and expecting to somehow land their first job out of school in one of the top 5 most coveted and competitive companies. I know this because I just spent a day at a university career fair a few weeks ago talking to hundreds of graduating seniors, most of whom are all expecting to shoot the moon for the same 3 jobs, and most of whom are not very eager to consider the idea of starting at a smaller company and working their way up for a few years. FAANG feels adversarial only because it’s actually legitimately super competitive, but as a candidate, figuring out how to have a non-adversarial approach is the key to getting the job. Tools like this are the opposite of what they need.

by davedx 2y ago

stego-tech 2y ago

Sadly, these sorts of “practical interviews” aren’t just limited to Big Tech. There’s been an arms race for thirty years now between applicants and employers, the latter creating new hurdles to overcome and the former finding new ways to bypass unnecessary hurdles. Employers demanded applications instead of resumes, so candidates used copy machines. Then they wanted block lettering, so candidates used type writers. ATS systems could search for keywords, so candidates flooded their resumes with them. Then employers allowed online applications, and the floodgates opened proper - applications from all over the world, desperate for good employment. So they made you create an account, and applicants wrote or used bots to automate it - which became site features like “Quick Apply” on LinkedIn and Indeed. Practical interviews used to be a single round for only the most senior roles, but then employers wanted everyone to be as qualified as those roles but not pay them that much, which started the cheating arms race. Ultimately, the problem remains a glut of qualified talent demanding salaries to pay the bills, and employers who want to pay as little as possible. The two sides are adversaries by default, and few companies do the work of mending the relationship into something more cooperative.

dingnuts 2y ago
this does NOT match my experience as an interviewer. Our company went through piles of candidates who were not qualified and it took us months to find a good fit after going through hundreds of resumes and scores of interviews. I hope the folks we hired are paid enough to retain because there were was absolutely no glut of talent. It was hard to find the folks we wound up hiring. There was a glut of applications, yes, but the vast majority were totally unqualified.
- stego-tech 2y ago
  So you're confusing your specific requirements with my generalization of "talent". Depending on your specifics, there might not be a glut of talent in that specific field or expertise, but there's still a surplus of domestic college grads unable to find work in their chosen fields, and companies who refuse to pay domestic graduates what they're worth when they can outsource to contractors, MSPs, or offshore work entirely for less. My perspective on this issue is that the reason there's an abundance of candidates in any given application pool is because of a mismatch of expectations between employees and employers, even today. Employers have cultivated an environment where candidates must job hop frequently to grow their earnings, because internal advancement has dried up and employers haven't respected loyalty in decades. This results in a plurality of the workforce "always looking for work", because they see no potential in their current role for growth or advancement; in fact, the whole reason they applied to your role is because they wanted that growth or advancement, and now they have it, so it's time to apply elsewhere for the next step up. I get that this environment totally sucks for both parties, but it's important to note that employers are the only ones who can change the system, since they hold the bulk of the power in individual negotiations. Unfortunately, the current attitude seems to be more of the status quo: more technology to "make it easier to find the best candidates" (thus removing humans from even more of the hiring process), forcing existing workers out (thus increasing the applicant pool), and then bemoaning about their problems on Business News ("too many unqualified applicants") or forums. Applicants didn't create this mess, and we can't fix it.
  - dahart 2y ago
    > we can’t fix it Applicants don’t have to apply to Google or Facebook for jobs they’re not qualified for, and if they stopped, the mess you’re referring to would disappear. At least at Google and Facebook’s doors, anyway. It might move somewhere else simply because there are a lot of people (literally everyone) looking for jobs that pay well. It’s funny to tell someone on the other side of the interview table that they’re confused, when they’re giving you information that can help you. Knowing that there is an abundance of low quality applications is useful information. Mismatch of expectations might be an accurate generalization, but arguing the expectations of applicants isn’t part of the problem is not accurate at all. Applicants definitely aim high and spam companies with resumes for jobs they’re not qualified for. I even tell new grads to aim a little higher than the exact job description, but within reason. To be fair, a lot of people don’t know what’s reasonable and don’t know how competitive their cohort is and they have little to lose by taking their chances. The lore about having to job-hop has always existed, it was true 30 years ago, and it’s still a story people tell today. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Don’t get confused by hearing stories. Neither the number of stories you hear, nor the story-teller’s confidence in their take, proves anything about how the business world works. You need more first-hand knowledge of how many people don’t have to job hop. Companies do promote people, and some companies do respect loyalty. Instead of insisting it’s a fight and wallowing, go find the good jobs at good companies working for good managers and figure out how to stand out from the applicants who are less qualified than you.
eastbound 2y ago
As an employer, I know candidates use LinkedIn’s “Apply in one click” in bulk. When we contact them, half of them notice they don’t even fit the criteria in our ad (be a Java developer, for starters).
- stego-tech 2y ago
  And while I sympathize with your frustration, workers are caught between companies who can't even be bothered to send a rejection form letter anymore, companies posting "ghost jobs", and companies who post such broad salary ranges (if any at all) that they're unusable. Then you roll in the "resume farms" abroad (shady recruiters submitting candidates without approval and who don't match the requirements, so they can net a payday), and it's a nightmare for both sides (workers and employers). Where my sympathy dissipates, though, is the knowledge that workers are merely responding to the ever-increasing demands of employers. It's ultimately up to the employers to fix this mess, because they're the ones who created it in the first place. It might mean an in-person career event to weed out remote candidates, if you're adamant about a local hire, with humans reviewing resumes in-hand, in real time, absent ATS and AI systems getting in the way. It might mean forgoing practical interviews entirely, in favor of better verbal interviews that assess skills and competencies, with hypothetical questions AI can't quickly or reliably answer. And it also might mean rebuilding company loyalty and incentivizing people to stay instead of leave. It might mean reducing the amount of jobs you're posting externally by resuming promoting internally again. It might mean dangling carrots that keep workers from jumping ship every two years to grow wages in a meaningful way. Point is, there's a lot of ways to address this, but the current attitude is "MOAR TECHNOLOGY", which doesn't seem to address either side's core grievances around the hiring and employment processes.
  - gotoeleven 2y ago
    How do employers fix being blasted with resumes from unqualified morons?
    - __turbobrew__ 2y ago
      A lot use recruiters to reach out to talent, that is how I got my current job. I applied directly and got ghosted but a month later a 3rd party recruiter reached out to me and I got the same job I applied for. Lots of other jobs have funnels through referrals and networks, people can make recommendations of past colleagues. The only way to stop people from blasting resumes is to make it cost them something, for example charge $5 — which goes to charity — to apply for the job.
dahart 2y ago
This is all fully explained by salaries going up, and the pool of young applicants getting bigger faster than the number of jobs available, while the pool of highly qualified applicants remains small. Jobs at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, are all legitimately competitive, and because more people are applying, those companies have the freedom to be choosier and the incentive to compete for the good ones. Because salaries have gone up (or even simply the perception of salaries), and because salaries are high compared to other jobs, more and more bright-eyed kids are hoping to punch above their weight in interviews, which is why companies are flooded with low-quality applications and don’t have a choice about needing to sift them efficiently. This is the natural state of a competitive environment, and interviews will get “better” for candidates when there are more jobs than good candidates. But be careful what you wish for; if the job market gets less competitive for candidates, salaries and benefits and working conditions go with it. While there might be some truth it to, framing it as an arms race is a mentality that will not help the average candidate, and might do them harm. Employers always have and always will want to pay as little as possible, obviously, that’s the definition of a company. But they do actually compete with each other for good talent, and they do pay a lot relative to other jobs, and some companies’ definitions of pay as little as possible is still to pay enough that employees are well compensated and don’t leave.

treyd 2y ago

I have a theory that job search sights have an incentive to make the application/recruiting process so much of a slog due to (1) the hundreds of applications many people have to send out and (2) the hundreds of applications that companies have to sort through, as a way to justify their own existence.

motohagiography 2y ago

key insight. the factors influencing this are a couple I can think of. the first is just the sheer volume of applicants made possible by the internet and the mobility of workers, where you get hundreds of profiles to sort through for any job and use a coarse technical funnel to sort them. the second is we can't just pick good colleagues because the regulatory and litigation environment imposes selection criteria where we have to evaluate all these applicants equally. these aren't justifications for the confrontational interview filter, but some upstream factors that are worth picking at to see if something better could become a solution to them.

CharlieDigital 2y ago

I've recently been studying leetcode (for reasons) and went through an interview process. It was, by far, the most boring interview I've ever had to participate in. The leetcode problem was easy (detect if two strings are anagrams; solved with O(n) solution in < 10 LOC; then aggregate sets of anagrams). System design was easy because it is to the point that it is largely "formulaic". It feels like those rhythm games where you need to know when the trigger is coming and the pattern to hit those triggers (talk about functional requirements -> talk about non-functional requirements -> write some API routes -> draw a load balancer (because of course, there's always a load balancer) -> draw a service -> draw Redis/Memcached -> draw a database). It's comically laughable how it's just like a rhythm game at this point. What I don't understand is why teams don't just "get to the point". A lot of times, the assessment is looking for specific notes. Why not just ask about those notes directly? A friend recently went through an interview where he was docked for not using C# `yield` when implementing an `IEnumerable`. But had the interviewer asked "What is `yield` and why would you use it?", the interviewer would have gained the same exact insight in 15 seconds with one question. I think what's also striking is how slow orgs are to adapt their interview process to account for AI. There's a distinct lack of focus on code reviews as part of the assessment. If the future of coding is AIs for productivity, then teams should be adding code reviews into their process (check for correctness, check for defects, check for performance, check for security, etc).

emseetech 2y ago
| distinct lack of focus on code reviews as part of the assessment "Writing code is easy, reading code is hard" An interview based on reading, explaining and critiquing complicated code would give a better window into a candidate's skills than having them solve the kind of coding challenge that can be completed in a short interview. Also, being able to identify which algorithms would be useful in solving a unique problem and explain what the pros & cons are would go further than implementing an algorithm abstractly.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  That was my favorite interview ever. The guy gave me 30 lines of code, and asked questions about it. Including finding the questionable constructs in it.

emseetech 2y ago

The move away from on-the-job training has played a role. If a company doesn't provide any early guidance and mentorship (which everyone could use regardless of industry experience), then that has to be replaced by finding the perfect candidate who can immediately be productive.

jamaicahest 2y ago
> then that has to be replaced by finding the perfect candidate who can immediately be productive. We're called freelance consultants. And we charge a high price for that service.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  yes and companies basically are just paying that high price with a salary

heresie-dabord 2y ago

The ideal purpose of hiring is to find a skilled candidate who will be a good fit and maybe even bring talent and energy to the role. The hiring entity will ideally provide mentoring and training to ensure a successful investment and relationship. But the catch is... the people doing the hiring must themselves ideally be talented, energetic, skillful mentors who envisage building a positive culture.

deadbabe 2y ago

Literally all the engineers at the company went through the same process. For all the bitching and complaining an interviewee does, there’s probably a hundred people who just went through the process and got hired. Suck it up, it’s part of the job. If you can’t do it, you don’t belong. Simple as that.

mdaniel 2y ago
> who just went through the process and got hired. You say that as if there's The One True Interview Routine™ and it doesn't change from team to team, person to person, month to month. I actually would bet that no single organization interviews with the consistency you're describing, not even FAANG with their holier-than-thou grinders If it wasn't such a monster drain on human productivity, I think it'd be funny if there was "rolling interviews" where each new hire got to send prior hires though "the process" on the yearly anniversary of those prior hires
acheron 2y ago
This is called “hazing”.
- deadbabe 2y ago
  Do you want a job or do you want to live unhazed?
maxnevermind 2y ago
That's actually a good point. I believe that BigTech these days look for conformists, not superstar SWEs. If you agree to waste your time on preparation to meaningless LeetCode style interview then you are one of them and ready to be a part of the company. I do believe that is actually one of the things that being tested by such an interview, it's not a proxy for IQ, it's a proxy for candidate's readiness to eat dull corporate BS and not complain about it.
- deadbabe 2y ago
  People would rather get paid $80k a year and be a non-conformist than get paid $200k a year to conform to the requirements of a job. Simple as that. Problem is those non-conformists keep applying to the $200k jobs expecting the $80k treatment.

dahart 2y ago

On one hand, that’s what it always was, by definition - a company is looking for the best candidates it can get with a given budget, and the best-case scenario for the company is there’s a large pool of candidates to choose from. On the other hand, from my perspective and experience on both sides of the interview table, to me it seems like the perception that this is adversarial is coming primarily from young candidates whinging on the internet in large numbers about interviews being unfair or “broken” or doing it the wrong way. Every time this comes up on HN, there are hordes of comments demanding we stop whiteboarding in interviews, or claiming anything not exactly in the job description is out of bounds, or decrying the abuse that coding live inflicts. There are blog posts every week about how to fix the problem, where the problem is usually the interviewee’s comfort, and not the company’s efficiency or effectiveness. The truth is that companies need people, and the employees there do want new colleagues. If you truly understand that, and also that the selection process is unavoidable and working as designed, then it will help you navigate the selection process and appeal to the company, it will help you get the job. I’m well aware of the fears young candidates have, since I was one. Getting a job can be hard, and it might even be getting harder over time. But to me it’s also funny that software engineers looking for 6-figure salary jobs complain about interviews and competition and having to demo their skills for an hour or two. Don’t forget to look around at other industries and ask whether it’s really better over there. People in music and films and advertising and art have to grind for years, suffer low-wage or historically unpaid internships. Doctors have to do residency, grad school, and get licensed. Most people make less money, many people have to do labor. Most jobs have much bigger downsides than what we have to do in our interviews as software engineers. We have opportunity and privilege and with the right practice and attitude and with reasonable expectations, it’s really not that hard to do well in interviews and land a good job. Many kids are hearing stories of FAANG and million dollar salaries and expecting to somehow land their first job out of school in one of the top 5 most coveted and competitive companies. I know this because I just spent a day at a university career fair a few weeks ago talking to hundreds of graduating seniors, most of whom are all expecting to shoot the moon for the same 3 jobs, and most of whom are not very eager to consider the idea of starting at a smaller company and working their way up for a few years. FAANG feels adversarial only because it’s actually legitimately super competitive, but as a candidate, figuring out how to have a non-adversarial approach is the key to getting the job. Tools like this are the opposite of what they need.