4 ms·

LOL two interviews a week.. I do about five to six a week and had three in a single day! My goal is to get four in one day... When you're growing staff by 100

by kator 14y ago

LOL two interviews a week.. I do about five to six a week and had three in a single day! My goal is to get four in one day... When you're growing staff by 100's of percent year over year recruiting has to be one of the most important tasks you can put energy behind. You want the right people on the right teams and you don't want a random non-tech person making the determination. I see engineers over-worked, up to their ears and always complaining about interviewing. I often wonder, we're in a rational, problem solving industry but we can't see the simplest problems. You're over worked and up to your ears because the team doesn't have enough people on it or the "right people" in it and you're slammed. Does it make more sense to just keep working your backlog or take time to get quality people on the team so you can double your velocity on your next sprint? Why is this so hard for people to see? You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the right people for your team. It's a numbers game, perhaps it's hard for programmers to understand that the hiring process is a lot like debugging, most people don't like doing it but if you don't things will break and stay broken. All this said I do think companies have a hard time figuring out how to balance this. I'm consulting right now with a company that has a very large recruiting team and crazy hiring goals. Meanwhile they were sending a lot of "questionable" candidates to the engineering teams. Engineers were bitching about this to me over lunch in the hallways etc. My response, simple, I swam up stream. I started meeting with the recruiting team, reviewing as many candidates as I can and helping them develop a better process. We're setting goals and measuring our rejection rates and getting feedback on each one even if it went bad. Recently I told them that if we're cutting someone on site to let me do it. I want to meet these people before we cut them to understand what went wrong, did we do something wrong? Did we cut the wrong candidate? I want to give everyone the benefit of doubt and figure out how to improve the process. Could we have avoided wasting their time and ours? In the OP's case perhaps upstream should have been measured by how many she rejected. They should have been incentivized to improve their own "quality score" instead of burying people on the "well-calibrated interviewer" list. You can sit there and bitch about something that is broken.. Or you can choose to fix it.. Which will it be!?

aaronblohowiak 14y ago
I think the problem was really that the author was doing two a week when others were doing one a quarter -- for something that was supposed to be a shared responsibility. I agree that your people are your product, but it is bad management to overburden someone with a task they dislike (though they excel at it.)
- nostrademons 14y ago
  Interview loading at Google is very strange. I've been interview-trained for 2 years now, I'm in the interviewer database, my skills are updated, and I set my constraints to 2/week. I've been assigned a total of 3 interviews in those 2 years. Meanwhile I have friends that're in the 2/week club. I suspect that recruiters are going off name-recognition: there're some interviewers that they know & like, and so they assign candidates preferentially to those interviewers with digging into the database to see if there'd be another equally-qualified engineer. Many other things work like that too. If you do code reviews quickly, you'll get a reputation as a good reviewer, which means...more code reviews. If you always know the answers to people's questions, it means you'll get more people asking you questions. If you're a UI wizard, it means you'll always be assigned UI work, even if you want to do something else. The usual way out of this is to learn to say "No". That's how I escaped the UI trap, and I've done it to get out of code review & question overload as well. I suspect Rachel's problem could've been solved by setting her interview constraints to 0/week, which (if done by enough people) would've also forced the recruiters to look further down the interviewer database and find untapped engineers for interviews.
- kator 14y ago
  Yea I feel for the OP, basically what I'm saying is about all the other people in her story. The people in recruiting should have been doing a better job on quality. The other team members should realize how important it is to do the screening instead of pretending working on code was more important. My gut tells me that most likely the lack of quality coming out of the recruiting team was burning people out on teams. If an engineer thinks there is a 1:100 chance the person will get hired and they have to invest 2 hours in each person they'll never bother. If the recruiting focuses on quality and gets it down to less time and higher acceptance rates the engineers might (reluctantly) be more comfortable "spending 2 hours" on a screen rather then "wasting 2 hours".
blacksmythe 14y ago
>> Does it make more sense to just keep working your backlog or >> take time to get quality people on the team so you can double >> your velocity on your next sprint? Agree. A good hire can help you a lot, and a bad hire hurts orders of magnitude more than the time spent on an interview. Interview time has a very high ROI.
- michaelt 14y ago
  Interview time has a very high ROI. The author says she did about 100 phone screens or onsite interviews; and they lead to 2 hires 1 of whom quit. Seems to me how much profit there is in panning a river for gold depends on whether a river has much gold in it. And it sounds like she was panning a river that didn't have much gold in it. What would you say is your interview-to-hire ratio?
  - kator 14y ago
    To be clear I've been arguing all along that this in an indication that higher up in the pipeline they must have quality issues. Each step of an interview is an INVESTMENT. First investment is the Recruiter's time (sorry but they get paid and SHOULD get paid to take this first step) Second investment is the screener (yup I'm looking at you Phone Screener and I do it all week long, suck it up and enjoy the ride) Third and MOST EXPENSIVE investment is the on-site, team interview, disrupting many people's lives and productivity including the CANDIDATE (blows my mind that NOBODY here seems to be on the side of the Candidate who is trying to find a new team and a incremental change in their career) Fourth and even more expensive is ON BOARDING Fifth and yet another expensive investment is ON GOING management and integration So let's think about this.. Where in the process do you want to spend time? Should you be upset that YOU PERSONALLY saved many hours your teams of wasted time? Or upset you spent 2 hours of your time? Answer this carefully.. Think slowly about this.. it's the deepest issue here.. And says a lot about who YOU are...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - furyofantares 14y ago
Nate75Sanders 14y ago
2 things: - Most people didn't get into programming so that they could interview people 10+ hours per week. - Plenty of managers won't really count interviewing time in the project management tools (or give you credit however time is managed). You're still on the hook for whatever work you would have been responsible for with 0 interviews.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  The second point is very important. If you are expected to interview people 10+ hours per week, that needs to be considered in your project goals and timeline expectations.
  - kator 14y ago
    Yes and if your manager doesn't understand then it's time to find a new partner in your career.. I am always amazed at people who will let a PHB torture them and gladly bitch about it at every family function and with a round of friends at the bar. Really.. So you're an amazing talented person and you're letting a PHB ruin you life.. What does that say about YOU.. ????
- kator 14y ago
  > Most people didn't get into programming so that they could interview people 10+ hours per week. I agree that said I like working on really good teams with smart people so there is some balance, you either are willing to invest in improving your team or you can sort of hope it happens by accident. Hoping it happens by accent is like hoping you'll win the Lotto but never buying a ticket! > Plenty of managers won't really count interviewing time in the project management tools (or give you credit however time is managed). You're still on the hook for whatever work you would have been responsible for with 0 interviews. Then clearly for that manager this is not a priority and they should leave you alone. :-) I think the challenge then in that situation is the manager is making a big mistake. I'm a hands-on manager, I take stories off the board, I code, I do meetings and I know how hard it is to really deliver when you're doing lots of "distracting" things. If your manager is pressuring you to do interviews then you need to push back and take less work off the backlog. Employment should be a dialog, not a series of orders barked at you by someone who doesn't understand their impact.
benjiweber 14y ago
> Does it make more sense to just keep working your backlog or > take time to get quality people on the team so you can double > your velocity on your next sprint? Unless you're working on a new project or have very long sprints then it's going to take more than one sprint to significantly increase velocity after increasing team size. It's also really hard to double velocity by increasing team size unless you have a really small team that's not spending much of its time developing. Going from 7 to 14 developers will add a huge amount of communication overhead and give a slew of new problems.

by kator 14y ago

aaronblohowiak 14y ago

I think the problem was really that the author was doing two a week when others were doing one a quarter -- for something that was supposed to be a shared responsibility. I agree that your people are your product, but it is bad management to overburden someone with a task they dislike (though they excel at it.)

nostrademons 14y ago
Interview loading at Google is very strange. I've been interview-trained for 2 years now, I'm in the interviewer database, my skills are updated, and I set my constraints to 2/week. I've been assigned a total of 3 interviews in those 2 years. Meanwhile I have friends that're in the 2/week club. I suspect that recruiters are going off name-recognition: there're some interviewers that they know & like, and so they assign candidates preferentially to those interviewers with digging into the database to see if there'd be another equally-qualified engineer. Many other things work like that too. If you do code reviews quickly, you'll get a reputation as a good reviewer, which means...more code reviews. If you always know the answers to people's questions, it means you'll get more people asking you questions. If you're a UI wizard, it means you'll always be assigned UI work, even if you want to do something else. The usual way out of this is to learn to say "No". That's how I escaped the UI trap, and I've done it to get out of code review & question overload as well. I suspect Rachel's problem could've been solved by setting her interview constraints to 0/week, which (if done by enough people) would've also forced the recruiters to look further down the interviewer database and find untapped engineers for interviews.
kator 14y ago
Yea I feel for the OP, basically what I'm saying is about all the other people in her story. The people in recruiting should have been doing a better job on quality. The other team members should realize how important it is to do the screening instead of pretending working on code was more important. My gut tells me that most likely the lack of quality coming out of the recruiting team was burning people out on teams. If an engineer thinks there is a 1:100 chance the person will get hired and they have to invest 2 hours in each person they'll never bother. If the recruiting focuses on quality and gets it down to less time and higher acceptance rates the engineers might (reluctantly) be more comfortable "spending 2 hours" on a screen rather then "wasting 2 hours".

blacksmythe 14y ago

>> Does it make more sense to just keep working your backlog or >> take time to get quality people on the team so you can double >> your velocity on your next sprint? Agree. A good hire can help you a lot, and a bad hire hurts orders of magnitude more than the time spent on an interview. Interview time has a very high ROI.

michaelt 14y ago
Interview time has a very high ROI. The author says she did about 100 phone screens or onsite interviews; and they lead to 2 hires 1 of whom quit. Seems to me how much profit there is in panning a river for gold depends on whether a river has much gold in it. And it sounds like she was panning a river that didn't have much gold in it. What would you say is your interview-to-hire ratio?
- kator 14y ago
  To be clear I've been arguing all along that this in an indication that higher up in the pipeline they must have quality issues. Each step of an interview is an INVESTMENT. First investment is the Recruiter's time (sorry but they get paid and SHOULD get paid to take this first step) Second investment is the screener (yup I'm looking at you Phone Screener and I do it all week long, suck it up and enjoy the ride) Third and MOST EXPENSIVE investment is the on-site, team interview, disrupting many people's lives and productivity including the CANDIDATE (blows my mind that NOBODY here seems to be on the side of the Candidate who is trying to find a new team and a incremental change in their career) Fourth and even more expensive is ON BOARDING Fifth and yet another expensive investment is ON GOING management and integration So let's think about this.. Where in the process do you want to spend time? Should you be upset that YOU PERSONALLY saved many hours your teams of wasted time? Or upset you spent 2 hours of your time? Answer this carefully.. Think slowly about this.. it's the deepest issue here.. And says a lot about who YOU are...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- furyofantares 14y ago

Nate75Sanders 14y ago

2 things: - Most people didn't get into programming so that they could interview people 10+ hours per week. - Plenty of managers won't really count interviewing time in the project management tools (or give you credit however time is managed). You're still on the hook for whatever work you would have been responsible for with 0 interviews.

sliverstorm 14y ago
The second point is very important. If you are expected to interview people 10+ hours per week, that needs to be considered in your project goals and timeline expectations.
- kator 14y ago
  Yes and if your manager doesn't understand then it's time to find a new partner in your career.. I am always amazed at people who will let a PHB torture them and gladly bitch about it at every family function and with a round of friends at the bar. Really.. So you're an amazing talented person and you're letting a PHB ruin you life.. What does that say about YOU.. ????
kator 14y ago
> Most people didn't get into programming so that they could interview people 10+ hours per week. I agree that said I like working on really good teams with smart people so there is some balance, you either are willing to invest in improving your team or you can sort of hope it happens by accident. Hoping it happens by accent is like hoping you'll win the Lotto but never buying a ticket! > Plenty of managers won't really count interviewing time in the project management tools (or give you credit however time is managed). You're still on the hook for whatever work you would have been responsible for with 0 interviews. Then clearly for that manager this is not a priority and they should leave you alone. :-) I think the challenge then in that situation is the manager is making a big mistake. I'm a hands-on manager, I take stories off the board, I code, I do meetings and I know how hard it is to really deliver when you're doing lots of "distracting" things. If your manager is pressuring you to do interviews then you need to push back and take less work off the backlog. Employment should be a dialog, not a series of orders barked at you by someone who doesn't understand their impact.

benjiweber 14y ago

> Does it make more sense to just keep working your backlog or > take time to get quality people on the team so you can double > your velocity on your next sprint? Unless you're working on a new project or have very long sprints then it's going to take more than one sprint to significantly increase velocity after increasing team size. It's also really hard to double velocity by increasing team size unless you have a really small team that's not spending much of its time developing. Going from 7 to 14 developers will add a huge amount of communication overhead and give a slew of new problems.