8 ms·

Bootcamp in the Marine Corps is an example of a tough hiring practice. Are your friends and family doctors or lawyers, per chance? Both professions use grueli

• danenania 13y ago
  No one here is objecting to being tested and challenged. People just want to be tested on how well they can actually perform the job and build solid products, not how well they can memorize algorithm implementations. It's like screening Marines based on whether they can build a rifle by hand. It's a cool skill and could be useful in some ways, but it's not the job.
  • Tloewald 13y ago
    Hiring is a two way process. They're looking for employees, and you're looking for a salary, colleagues, boss, etc. A company that fucks up an interview fails. My toughest interview process involved driving 200 miles to spend a day doing psychological tests (after my interview). I got the job. Really, the hirer failed the interview, but I wanted out of my current job. Whose fault was that? Turned out to be a great job (my boss told me that he looked at my portfolio and CV and simply said "hire that guy" — the process was hoop jumping.
    • tekromancr 13y ago
      I have lost jobs based on those bullshit, pseudo-scientific psych tests. Some of them are straight out of the back of an issue of Cosmo. If I was a moral-less dirtbag I would still have scruples about trying to sell a company on personality tests as part of an interview process.
• SiVal 13y ago
  Sorry, but the thing that reeks of entitlement is Google's abusive "we can pass you from interviewer to interviewer, making you do anything we want for days, and you'll take it because there are plenty more where you came from," hiring practices. If Google thinks they have the power to do what they want to a candidate, and the GP poster thinks he has the power to limit how much of his time he'll offer them, I don't see why he is the only one accused of reeking of entitlement.
  • Jabbles 13y ago
    "making you do anything we want for days" Days? I believe the median is 5 hours. The decision may then take days... but that's not the same thing.
    • Nursie 13y ago
      When I was talking to them I was informed the hiring process usually took around 8-9 weeks. First a screening call, then a phone interview, then sometime later an in person interview, then an evaluation day in a Google building with multiple interviews and talks with various parts of various teams, then they would let you know within a couple of weeks. Yeah, no thanks.
      • freyr 13y ago
        The process may span 8 or 9 weeks, but you'd probably actively spend about 8 or 9 hours. That's a couple hours on the phone, and 5-6 hours on site. Presumably, you expect to hold the job for next few years of your life, at a minimum. If you can't budget 10 hours of your time, and you can't wait for a few weeks for an answer, it just doesn't sound like you really want to work there. Unless you're in desperate need for a job sooner... then I'd understand better.
        • Nursie 13y ago
          I was unemployed at the time (I'd just moved back to the UK and was looking for work) and didn't fancy hanging around for 2 months, so there is that. But even if I was employed I'd be looking for an out much faster. I work with 4 week notice periods (max). A two month decision process is just messing you about. --edit-- I'll add that the work sounded uninspiring, the location wasn't ideal and I was trying to go freelance/contract at the time (successful within a couple of weeks) so their goals and mine were completely misaligned...
• ozgung 13y ago
  Two wrongs don't make a right. Hiring is broken in general and it's even more broken in SW and engineering. Not only hiring is broken, but most exams and tests are also broken. It's always possible to cheat, game the system or fake. When we were students all of us experienced studying a subject just before an exam and immediately forgetting it afterwards. Exams don't prove that you really know the topic. More importantly, you may still fail at an exam when you know the topic well but not prepared properly. The underlying assumption in these hiring processes is that the interviewer knows the difference between a good hire and a bad one, therefore she knows exactly what to test. This is far from reality. The truth is that the test is arbitrary and the candidates are expected to comply.
  • Tloewald 13y ago
    This seems like rubbish to me. Exams work fine if they're employed in the right incentive system. In US universities it's not exams that are broken, it's the incentive system that they operate in. Today, exams are simply a tool for instructors to get good evals, students to get good grades, and universities to maintain accreditation. Job interviews work fine if done properly. First, interview the right people (filter out hopeless candidates). Second, have the right people do the interview (hint: future colleagues). It's not perfect, but it's not "broken". If you really knew the subject, you would have passed that exam.
    • kanzure 13y ago
      > If you really knew the subject, you would have passed that exam. Developers pass those exams and still hate the process. What now?
• eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  A qualification process is very different from a hiring process. You only pass through engineering exams, the bar exam, or medical residency once. In your life. A coder will probably go through a dozen different hiring rounds over their career, assuming each hiring round actually leads to a long-term job.
• ap22213 13y ago
  In a certain state of the economy, you're right. But, at least here in the US, we currently have way more demand for good developers than we have supply. Basic economics says that your model will not work. For example, the company for which I work bills me out at $250 / hr. I get something like 15-30 job requests from other companies a week. It would not make any economic sense for me to pursue any of these other companies unless the interview process was dead simple, transparent, and easy (and the total compensation was _at least_ 15% higher than my current compensation). But, 99% of them will only offer modest pay adjustment (%2-3?), and then they expect me to sit through several hours of interviews. And, if I pass that nontransparent process, they ask me to sign a ridiculous employment agreement that signs away all my personal IP. Seriously? The problem with recruiting today is that most companies who have good talent understand how valuable their best talent is. They treat them very well. And, the companies that want to obtain that talent completely under-offer their side of the deal. Another problem is that most developers suck at negotiation. I see lots of anger on HN about not getting the 6-figure salary. Well, that's their fault for not asking for it. If they're a relatively good developer (top 25%), they should be making at least 6-figure, easy. And, if they're not, that's their fault, not the fault of others that know their value and how to demand a cut of it.
  • deleted 13y ago
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  • mason55 13y ago
    > But, at least here in the US, we currently have way more demand for good developers than we have supply. Basic economics says that your model will not work. The problem is that hiring someone who can't code doesn't help me. And a bad engineer is worse than no engineer at all. It's not like a grocery store where a bad employee is just really slow and a really bad employee steals things costing me a percent of a percent on my margins. A single bad engineer could theoretically destroy a company if they were savvy enough. Pretty much anyone who does technical hiring will tell you that it's way worse to hire a bad candidate than to not hire a good one and interviews are tuned for that. It's the opposite of the American criminal justice system. A no-hire doesn't mean you're a bad candidate but a hire recommendation is very likely to mean that you're a good one.
• geebee 13y ago
  I think engineering is a tougher path than you do. It's as if physician had to pass a whiteboard exam on a randomly chosen topic from organic chemistry every time he or she interviewed for a new job. While I agree that the premed curriculum and med school are rigorous, attrition rates in engineering are very high. It's tough to get into med school, but it's tough to major in CS or engineering, and getting into a top grad school in engineering is very selective. Attrition rates at top med schools are typically below 1%. In engineering PhD programs, attrition rates are above 35%.
  • sandipc 13y ago
    I agree with you, but also keep in mind that leaving an engineering PhD program early ("Mastering out") still keeps your job prospects wide open. In comparison, leaving an MD program early leaves you very few options in the field, in my opinion.
    • geebee 13y ago
      Oh yes, I agree, there are all kinds of differences between the two. A partially completed degree at any level of CS helps you in your career (in fact, the blog post was written by someone who does not have a college degree). I've discussed this with people on HN before, and I really wish I could find better stats on MS attrition rates, especially at good schools. I was once a PhD student at UC Berkeley, and I felt it was pretty much a horror show of failure and attrition (the experience caused me to view claims of a "shortage" of US grad students in a very different light). It's tough to get into med school (or a top law school), but looking at the numbers, it doesn't appear to be any worse than top engineering grad schools (where GPAs and GRE scores are sky high). But in the professional schools, once you're in, attrition rates are very low. Yale law school, for instance, has no 1L attrition. Columbia's 1L attrition rate is 0.3%. Attrition rates for elite med schools tend to be well below 1%. Something odd is going on when congress claims that there is such a severe shortage that we need to start awarding green cards to anyone who gets a grad degree in STEM from a US university [1], yet attrition rates start at 35% (in engineering) and only get worse from there. I think that engineering, math, physical sciences are a pretty grueling path compared to the professions - a point of view supported (at least at the PhD level) by a RAND position paper: http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html Anyway, none of this is meant to refute your point - you are right about the MS issue. Though I really do wish we had better info on MS attrition rates. When I was at UCB, there was some attrition from the MS program as well, though it was not anywhere close to as high as the PhD program. [1] I support this, however, I don't support the reasoning behind it - that a poor educational system is the cause of the non-participation of US students in STEM grad programs. I believe the aversion is rational and market driven, and any policy to expand the engineering workforce at the graduate level should consider this carefully.
• rayiner 13y ago
  The bar exam is a licensure process, not a hiring process. The hiring process at a large firm (analagous to a big software company) is a 20 minute screener where you chat about the weather, followed by a callback where they put you up in a nice hotel, and you have a series of 20 minute chats about the weather punctuated by a nice lunch at the local steakhouse. Gruelling it isn't... Not that I would suggest replicating it mind you. The interviews are simple because they're literally just screening for people who can't have a converstaion about the weather. 95% of the substantive decision is just looking at the rank of your school and then your GPA. 90% of the candidate pool is excluded by arbitrary cutoffs from the get go. Which is an awful way to hire.
  • hackinthebochs 13y ago
    The bar exam is a part of the hiring process, its just that its outsourced to a licensing agency. In the software field, each company just does it themselves.
    • rayiner 13y ago
      It's really not. At least at large organizations, it is taken for granted that anyone you hire will pass the bar exam. It doesn't factor into the hiring decision at all.
      • hackinthebochs 13y ago
        So I could walk into a Law office and if I talk a good game I'll get hired without having passed the bar? If not, then it is a part of the hiring process, as it is a pre-interview filter.
        • nitrogen 13y ago
          By extending this logic, kindergarten is part of the hiring process. Better make sure you get into that top-notch preschool if you want to get a job at Google in 20 years!
• mrbgty 13y ago
  I've often wished software dev interviews were as simple as passing a test I took on my own time and didn't have to share the results until I passed.